[Tango-L] Fw: Stone Soup 2008 Follow Up

[Stephen.P.Brown@dal.frb.org]

A few thoughts on the many elements in this topic:

The success of an event depends on the perceptions of those who attended 
the event.  Reviewing a weekend long event after viewing a video excerpt 
requires one to draw a considerable inferrence from what is an incomplete 
and likely faulty record.  In this regard, Miles may be doing the Stone 
Soup Festival and many other such events that he has "documented" with 
video snippets a disservice.  One can easily capture a single dance 
performance on a video, but the sweep of an event that plays out over days 
and involves many people is much more elusive.

In looking through the webpages for festivals worldwide, I don't find it 
uniquely American for the festivals to have classes.  The names of the 
teachers are are among the prominent features on most festival webpages. 
Some festivals in the United States specifically emphasize the milongas 
over instruction.  Many U.S. festivals offer milonga-only passes.  In 
addition, at the festivals I've attended, it is the rare person who 
participates in every class period offered during the festival.

There does seem to be a phenomenon of some tango dancers putting more 
effort into attending classes and less effort into practicing or dancing. 
Maybe they prefer learning to doing, the structured interaction with 
others, or the opportunity to dance with the teachers.  To each their own.

Someone watching YouTube videos of tango dancing and then posing questions 
of others about what is on these videos is asking those others to serve as 
his teachers--but without the formality of attending classes or paying for 
the instruction. 

Good teaching facilitates learning.  Bad teaching discourages learning. 
What is good teaching for one person may be bad for another.  Maybe 
sometimes the student learns regardless of the teaching.

With best regards,
Steve (de Tejas)