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

[Club~Tango*La Dolce Vita~]

Dear Chris, Brian and other tangueros

> ";)" ... we infer from Dani that you don't mean anything substantive 
> by statements so labeled.
>You infer wrong. ;)

Ok, now that I know I was wrong in my defence of what I thought to be your playing devil's advocate, here we go...

>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...
>
You have an irritating and nonsensical habit of taking 'quotations' out of context and twisting the meaning to suit your own needs. This is not "an attempt to create a symbolic language to represent the dance", it is an attempt (and a successful one at that) to convey the concept of his work to his students. There is no attempt to start a new language. It's all about interpretation and for a teacher, an innovator, to find ways of clarifying his ideas... making such concepts easier to convey. This is the teacher's (any teacher) job... to find new ways of conveying concepts. What's wrong with that?! The simple fact is that his method works.

You know, one of the things that pisses me off about this List are the eejits, the armchair 'critics' who openly attempt to destructively criticise world-class teachers (and by world-class I mean those subject to international 'limelight'). There is too much of this on this List. How would you (any of you offenders) like to be publicly condemned?

On the other hand, Brian, as much as I thoroughly agree with you about Gustavo, I have to say the following to you:
I get annoyed about peoples' ideas, which often flies in the face of the natural concept of what tango (in fact, almost any partnered dance but more so tango), in my opinion is... machismo vs femininity. The man is the predator, the woman is the prey, as has been since time immemorial (which is undoubtedly the reason why seeing women leading irritates me so much). To hear what should be a machismo tanguero talking of "sitting with tears in our eyes watching them dance" really turns my stomach. Men (even more so in the tango world) should be men... not wimps (American equivalent, I believe, is "wussy" or something).

Anyway, Chris, it's obvious you have never taken any classes/courses with Gustavo. This has to be the case as you have to have come to a cockeyed analysis probably having formulated your ideas from 3rd and 4th-hand twaddle. I have taken workshops, classes, festivals with many, many teachers worldwide over a ten-year period, and I have been on three week-long seminarios with Gustavo and Giselle-Anne to date. My conclusion? Gustavo is THE best. I saw Gustavo and Giselle-Anne performing at the recent Roma Tangocamp and although I did not (sorry, Brian) 'sit with tears in my eyes watching them dance' (yeccchhhh)... they were mind-blowing! It was the best I'd ever seen them.

I've been to many tango (and other) events and always get irritated about how people go over the top and give standing ovations for absolutely any performance regardless; it's as if (like giving tips in restaurants) it's become the expected thing to do, almost a custom. Well, unless it's for Sinatra or someone (or some performance) of that stature, I'm not one for standing ovations. As I said, it as seems to be the wont of so many people these days and for the least little thing. Hoewever, at Tangocamp in Rome, Gustavo and Giselle-Anne, these two, did indeed deserve exactly that.

Chris, come down off your 'high horse', go on one of Gustavo's seminarios and experience the best.

Very best wishes

Dani ~
`El Zorro de Tango' >:-)))))
 
~Tango*La Dolce Vita~
 
Email: dani at tango-la-dolce-vita.eu
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