[Tango-L] Rampant serious misunderstandings about "Gustavo"

[Brian Dunn]

Dear list,

Here in Boulder, we're finishing up two weeks worth of working with Gustavo
Naveira and Giselle Anne, learning from them, sitting with tears in our eyes
watching them dance, listening to their music choices as DJ's, and sharing
the social dance floor with them to live tango music.

Chris, your statements referring to Gustavo Naveira, his ideas, his
teaching, and what he means by various concepts, are so comically at
variance with what we're experiencing here for ourselves that it sadly calls
into question the validity of anything you say.  I say "sadly" because it's
clear you care a lot about tango, and like many of us, have had some
powerful experiences and conclusions which you seem interested in sharing.

To be clear, I am referring to your statements without the ";)" smiley after
or in them, and thus those which you perhaps intend to be taken seriously.
If you just forgot the ";)", well OK, never mind - we infer from Dani that
you don't mean anything substantive by statements so labeled.

You're not the only frequent poster on the list with serious
misunderstandings about Gustavo - just currently the most vociferous.

Assuming you DO have serious conversation to share here...for the record,
could you review for us just what your firsthand experiences with Gustavo's
teaching and dancing were?  Such a context would make your truly bizarre
statements a little easier to understand.

I concur with Steve that if anyone REALLY wants to know what Gustavo and
Giselle think/teach/dance, they should quickly see if there are any spots
left in Atlanta next week for his workshops and performances with Giselle.
G&G will be coming down from high altitude, so it should be incredible -
thinking about them having the extra oxygen in Atlanta makes me really happy
for all you easterners - they're altitude-adapted now, and they absolutely
blew the roof off last night.  People are saying they will remember it for
the rest of their lives.

Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
775 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80302 USA
303-938-0716
www.danceoftheheart.com
"Building a Better World, One Tango at a Time"


-----Original Message-----
From: tango-l-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:tango-l-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf Of
Chris, UK
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2007 12:11 PM
To: Tango-L at mit.edu
Cc: tl2 at chrisjj.com
Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Structure of Tango (Was: Four Layers of
TangoLearning)

Norm wrote

> Learn that this dance pattern has a noun and a verb and based on  
> the syntax (rules) of the language (dance), the verb follows the noun
> .... The latter would be learning the structure of Tango.

Indeed it would... if tango had any such structure. It doesn't. It can't, 
because it's not a symbolic language.

> Since different teachers use different approaches, you sometimes have  
> to translate what is being taught into your own language.

Sure. Here's the translation of Gustavo's basis for structural analysis:

 1) Sentences can be broken down into words.
 2) We've given names (symbols) to those words.

This is an attempt to create a symbolic language to represent the dance. 
In my opinion the best it can do is misrepresent. This makes it useless...

Keith wrote
> 'Structure of the Dance' sounds like another ploy to overly-complicate 
> the process of learning Tango. 

... except as a ploy to over-complicate the process of learning! ;)

> Stephen Brown has dug a deep hole for himself and is now struggling to
> get out. 'Structure of the Dance' as the 3rd of his 4 Layers

Steve has put himself in an interesting place ;) but I think there may be 
merit in principle in the idea of layers of tango learning, so I'm looking 
forward to his further explanation. 

> All he can do is refer to other teachers and make a list of some of the
> more  common steps and figures that are danced in Tango.

Steve's Layer 3 has a little more than that. To find it, take out all the 
steps (as one must, since Steve includes those in Layer 4) and one is left 
(correct me if I am wrong, Steve) with what he's proposing as the Structure.

For example, that ochos are a sub-class of turns. So Steve, I'd like to 
hear a) why you think ochos are /necessarily/ a sub-class of turns b) and 
how this is useful to learning.

> don't think about it too much and you'll learn how to dance.

Agreed.

> Leave the theory alone until you want to start sounding important on
> Tango-L.

...or to start teaching Gustavo-style advanced seminars ;)

--
Chris
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