[Tango-L] How about 6 Hours?

[Stephen.P.Brown@dal.frb.org]

;-)  ;-)

IMNSHO, the standard approaches to teaching tango handicaps people in 
learning tango.  First the teachers teach the wrong material to beginners 
and then cover it up by pretending that learning the basics of tango is 
much harder than it is. 

Of course, the instructors have to cope with people who suddenly have 
brain freeze when they are confronted to moving to the music.  That is why 
it is important to break the dance into small rhythmic elements that can 
be learned by beginners.  (The 8-count basic and its derivatives promote 
brain freeze in beginners.)  That is also why not all of the students can 
learn to dance passably in 6-8 weeks, even when taught correctly--only the 
majority can.  (Okay, here I will concede that people attracted to tango 
in Dallas might be more rhythmically gifted than those in Atlanta and Hong 
Kong.)

How much additional work is required to move from passable competence to a 
higher level of competence and then mastery depends on a lot of 
factors--including how much time the would-be dancer puts into practicing, 
and how many wrong directions they get from their instructors.

My own experience as a beginner is relatively familiar:  In a two 
different series of classes that Susan and I took as beginners with two of 
the "great masters" we learned two different 32 step sequences complete 
with the prescribed embellishments.  We were "dancing" tango for about 
half a year before we had an instructor who helped us understand that the 
dance has an underlying structure from which the step patterns are 
created, and several years before someone really taught us a good 
understanding of the rhythm.  We were lucky that the latter two 
instructors came along.  Had they not, we might have remained among those 
thinking that they dance tango while remaining hopelessly trapped in 
unrhythmic patternitis. 

Sure tango instruction has changed since the early 90s--when Susan and I 
first started learning tango--but much of what passes for instruction 
remains rote learning "graded" sets of step patterns with some attention 
to the quality of movement, and nothing else.  We consider rhythm as the 
basis of tango and improvisation as one of its most important 
characteristics, but most instructors ignore rhythm and treat 
improvisation as an advanced topic.

With best regards,
Steve