[Tango-L] Approaches to Learning and Authencity (or the lack of if)

[garybarn@ozemail.com.au]

Based on my limited sample, I think that what many teachers of tango  
do is at best extremely inefficient for helping people become social  
tango dancers, and at worst counter-productive. And yes, this does  
include some big names.

OTOH, there are also many individuals who are successful at this  
goal. This seems to often  be because they see it as their primary  
goal - either because they are not driven by a commercial imperative,  
or because they see the building of a social tango community as being  
in their commercial interests.

I think that 'structure of the dance', as formal knowledge, is an  
optional layer, at least for dancers.  An analytical framework for  
codifying structure, and the resulting code, can be a very useful  
learning tool for some people, and has definitely led to a few people  
finding new possibilties.  However, it also seems quite clear that  
many good dancers - including older dancers in Daniel Trenners videos  
- do not have a structural framework.  They have no theory, they just  
do what they do. If asked why, they will say 'I don't know', or make  
something up. This does not mean that there is no structure to what  
they do, just that a formal understanding of that structure is not  
necessary to do it. (Or, you could say they have an intuitive or  
subconscious understanding, not a rational one.)

Classes that I have been to that use structural models as teaching  
aids definitely work for some people - they become more able to dance  
and improvise as a result.  But for most, it is an unnecessary and  
confusing extra layer of thinking.  And for followers, it has almost  
nothing to offer.

I think the idea that everyone will just learn by doing, without  
teaching,  is equally flawed, though it is true for a small minority  
of women.  I have seen it _not_  work plenty of times.  Having large  
numbers of people wanting to learn tango, from a starting base of a  
very small number of good dancers, is a difficult problem to solve.   
Those with the best aptitude will always learn anyway, but the great  
mass of us will not.   So, I am always keen to find different ideas  
as to what we can do in our tango community to have more people learn.

An analogy with language learning is perhaps illuminating:  small  
children learn to speak without much or any formal teaching, but with  
a large amount of exposure, demonstration, and correction.  Yet, very  
few adults can learn language like this, and we resort to having to  
formally  learn structure of the language - even for languages like  
English where the structures are famously inconsistent.

Tango teaching has come a long way in a few years, but has a long way  
to go.

Many are trying, and there are some successes.  Its great to hear  
about some of them on this list - it makes all the carping and nay- 
saying bearable!

Cheers

gary














On 19/07/2007, at 4:11 AM, Stephen.P.Brown at dal.frb.org wrote:

> As I see it, there are four layers of tango learning (from the top  
> to the
> foundation).
>
> 4) Step Patterns and Choreographies
> 3) Structure of the Dance
> 2) Quality of Movement
> 1) Rhythm - the foundation