[Tango-L] Nuevo lead and follow and repressed teaching

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

--- On Mon, 7/28/08, steve pastor <tang0man2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: steve pastor <tang0man2005 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Nuevo lead and follow and repressed teaching
> To: "Tango-L" <Tango-L at mit.edu>
> Date: Monday, July 28, 2008, 7:24 PM
> "My point is that when women have the bodywork and
> technique, then they can be lead into a colgada or volcada
> without having been taught the step.  However, getting to
> that point requires a lot of work"
>  
> I am / was very sure that this was true regarding cose embrace / apilado.
> Now, as I watch people, who have paired off, practice the same "nuevo" / stage / fantasia "moves" over and over again. I'm not so sure.
>  
> I never see then practicing "bodywork and technique". And they never seem to "practice" these movements with anyone other than "their" partner, or a very small subset of people.


I can't generalize about the people who see, who I've never seen.  I can tell you that technique and bodywork are best practiced by oneself, off the dancefloor.  If one wants to make efficient use of one's time, I would say that when you have a partner available, then work on your communication skills and the application of technique.  It's when you're by yourself, which is most of the time, that you work on technique and bodywork.  That's when you can pay attention to you.

However, the relationship between nuevo and bodywork/technique may be a catch-22.  The vocabulary we think of as nuevo (such as the bigger colgada and volcadas) require some athleticism to do well.  They are exaggerations of the smaller movements we can find in salon.  It's in repeating these exaggerations that the average person finds the weaknesses in their bodywork.  Once those weaknesses are found and developed, then you can tell the differences easily.  However, it's difficult to feel that knowledge kinesthetically when it's just a tad different.  Sort of like trying to differentiate different shades of gray when they are not side-by-side on a color chart.  But it's really no different than when you're first learning to do turns.

Trini de Pittsburgh