[Tango-L] Women's technique

[Chris, UK]

Trini wrote:

> Good teaching becomes an exercise in problem solving.

/Bad/ teaching becomes an exercise in problem solving... every bit as fast 
as it creates those very same problems. 

Good teaching is an exercise in not problem creating. It's first 
responsibility is simply not to sabotage the natural development process.

> A problem with having beginning students execute ochos in the
> middle of the floor is that they tend to turn as a block.

Quite. A problem created only by bad teaching.

> Our solution is to use exercises ...

Well, you could instead try the solution that has been working fine for 
most of the last 100 years. The learner partners not with thin air but 
with another human being - one who can already dance. The embrace keeps 
them together in a way that means, apropos ochos, your "turn as a block" 
just does not happen. Pivoting arises naturally from the embrace as 
something fully shared by the couple, rather than simply commanded by one 
and executed by the other.

Steve wrote:

>   Back in the 40s and 50s Arthur Murray advised his female students
>   that they were just as responsible ...

The same guy who invented the follow-the-footprints-on-the-floor method? 
I'll bet his tango classes were a real blast! ;)

>  Women do not get better by osmosis. 

That's exactly what they do.

--
Chris