[Tango-L] on open-embrace teaching (was something on inventing steps)

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

--- Mario <sopelote at yahoo.com> wrote:

>   the last class I took in December was billed as a class
> to learn; floor navigation, musicality and
connectivity....it cost me $100 and the teacher's idea of
musicality was to call out the steps during a song and
everyone perform them basic 8, ocho cortado, back ocho, etc
etc... in open embrace... that was THE last class I'll ever
take from an open embrace teacher

Hi Mario,

I'm glad you decided to stay on the list and look forward
to your future posts.  Before you close off the
opportunities to work with open-embrace instructors, I'd
like you to consider the possibility that the instructor
was using a particular pattern to bring out the musicality
in a piece of music.  Not being in the class, I can't say
for sure that would be the case, but it might be.

For example, I teach a vals class after my initial
beginners class so that students can get more familiar with
phrasing.  In vals, the phrasing is pretty predictable with
the 1-2-3-1 rhythm clearly emphasized between beats 7 & 8
in an 8-count phrase.  So I teach a simple but specific
pattern that ends with the woman doing the molinete between
beats 7 & 8.  When it's done right, the vocabulary matches
the phrase and students go "Aha!".  When it's not done
correctly (e.g., the man begins the pattern with the right
foot instead of the left), students can easily tell when
they've missed the rhythm.  It makes them more conscious of
actually dancing to the music and encourages the women to
be more responsible for the music, too.

The teacher might have also just wanted folks to dance in
open because it is often easier to work in open if one is
working with patterns, without the additional issues that
comes with dancing in close.  I bet, though, that if you
had decided to close the embrace and still do the pattern,
that would have been perfectly fine.

I know they'll be folks on their no-pattern, just-dancing
blah blah blah kick, but I just figure their tango is as
limited as their thought processes.  I'd rather not see
that happen with you.

Just a few thoughts.

Trini de Pittsburgh








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