[Tango-L] 10,000 instructors or 1 you choose

[Sandhill Crane]

--- On Wed, 12/8/10, HBBOOGIE1 at aol.com <HBBOOGIE1 at aol.com> wrote:

> I see taking endless tango lessons from  different 
> instructors the same way. Everyone is going to teach
> differently so  your poor brain is going to explode
> trying to figure out who's instruction to  follow.

Your head will be just fine. All you have to do is reset
your expectations: every one of those instructors is going
to say some sensible things, and some senseless things,
and it's up to you to sort it out.

Every teacher is going to say stuff that other teachers don't.
That's OK -- we all have idiosyncrasies because our characteristic
behavior is the result of our whole history.
But for exactly that reason, you don't want to
imitate someone else's characteristics, because the most
you can do is to replicate the superficial result of
some internal process.

(I'm reminded of a remark by the jazz pianist Art Tatum,
who said to an imitator, "You know what I play, but you
don't know why I play it.")

It's desirable to figure out what is the important core
stuff and separate it from the nonessentials.
Going to a lot of teachers, and, just as important,
dancing with a lot of different partners, is exactly
the same as polishing rocks in the riverbed -- they
roll around and wear off each other's angles.
What's left is quite literally the core.