[Tango-L] Open/crossed step uses?

[Jake Spatz]

Excellent post by Joe! Additional (lengthy) comments below.

Joe Grohens wrote:
 > The meaning of words is developed socially. In tango it is commonplace
 > to find different people using the same words to mean very different
 > things.

This is very true, and the salient point of the recent exchanges about
"Changes of Direction" and "Volcadas" and the like. Ultimately, the
communication reaches an impasse when people start assigning overly
technical meanings to these words. Trouble is, it's a symptom that such
a person's dance has reached an impasse as well-- if only that person
could see it.

But there's a more down-to-earth level to this as well, which may help
demonstrate why this sort of thing is not merely semantic, but an index
of one's values and experience as a dancer.

We teachers often use very simple words in our classes & lessons:
"embrace" or "walking" or "connection"-- none of these are mysterious
terms. At first, new dancers take them for granted, assuming that they
understand the dance because they understand the word. Then, as they
discover the /thing/ and begin to deepen their knowledge, they realize
they DIDN'T understand the word in the beginning at all.

Very often, dancers will have a minor revelation at this point, smack
themselves in the foreheads, and repeat precisely the same words they've
heard in class or around the milongas, surprised at the new sense they
make. We've all done it and we've all seen others do it. It happens
because we understand the /thing/ freshly, and are revising the word's
connotations (and denotations) accordingly. That is, our first-hand,
direct experience with the /dance/ leads us to consider the word as
something more meaningful, or more specific in its meaning.

The danger is that, with a little learning of this type, the word can
get locked in its new meaning or association, and become a technical or
specific term that essentially is being used as shorthand for something
very particular. The knowledge itself seeming like an achievement, the
word becomes invested with personal triumph. And it's hard to give up
that triumph when it has launched one past a former barrier.

But-- it's just a renewed case of taking the word for granted. The word
itself represents an idea, an experience, a degree of understanding: and
by fixing its meaning too much, a dancer only /establishes/ another
impasse. Namely, by turning a simple word from plain prose into jargon.

Those of us who have (so to speak) gone well beyond this point, and
sundered the cocoon of jargon for ourselves-- in our dance and in our
talking about the dance-- are naturally going to take issue with those
who insist that their stepping-stone is a monument. The words for us are 
poetic, not technical. To make them technical is a reduction, and 
moreover one that may very easily mislead someone who's on a more 
promising path.

It is small-minded teaching, and it interferes with deeper progress and 
enjoyment. It makes deeper progress exponentially more difficult. It is 
crutches, not dancing.

I see this happening all the time as a teacher and dancer, and it makes
me increasingly critical of how teachers give their students half-truths
and shortcuts. It leads to disappointment on the dance floor and-- after
an initial burst of progress-- to a more serious and lasting retardation
of growth. It afflicts teachers most of all: I've seen so many of them
atrophy, largely because they seduce themselves into believing their own
half-truths, they lose their curiosity, and they delude themselves into 
thinking they own something. I would even say it's a more dangerous
professional hazard than physical fatigue, because it erodes the soul &
imagination of a dancer.

In short: It's very easy to let words, once invested with the beginnings
of direct discovery, define the dance. The more fruitful way is to keep
the causality the other way around, with the dance providing the words
with meaning and the words never hijacking the dance. That, after all, 
is what produces the initial breakthroughs: ego is the only thing that 
shuts off the valve thereafter.

Again, bravo to Joe for a great post, whose ending presents this in an 
ego-free personal account. And bravo to those who patiently, tenaciously 
indicate when language is being pigeonholed-- though doing such so often 
invites others to get defensive of their own minor triumphs and to 
retaliate with accusations of mere semanticism, when in truth it's 
completely the other way around.

Jake