[Tango-L] "Maestros de cuarta" "the guy who's doing the teaching "

[Alexis Cousein]

On 11/01/2011 20:26, Charles Roques wrote:
> <<While you make good points, and it is a good philosophy to always assume
> the male is wrong, it makes me smile when I then go to class where I
> have some problem with the lady and the teacher finds fault with me, and
> when the teacher tries it out with her, and then proceeds to spend 10-15
> min correcting her. How is that possible if it was not her fault? :-)>>
>
> My point is that it is not your place as a fellow student who is also learning,
 > to make the corrections, but the place of the person who is 
teaching and who is
 > an objective observer of the two of you.

But that's hardly a productive way of learning - if you wait for
a teacher to untangle the knot, you won't be learning a lot, unless
it's a private class.

What a couple in  group classes should do is have a honest
conversation between peers to search for what's right and
what's not. It's best to assume that if something is wrong,
it's your fault, and that holds for both partners, but you also
need to express exactly what you feel as well. As soon as one
partner puts himself (yes, I'm using the generic masculine for
the singular genderless) above the other it's not going to work.

It's a question of attitude. It's not OK to say "you should
be doing this", because it's closing yourself off from
learning anything from your partner. Better ask "why are
you doing this?" --and make that a genuine question.

You might be surprised at the amount of information you receive,
and you'll understand a lot more about what makes followers
follow and leaders lead (and, I might add, eventually, what
makes good leader follow and good followers lead if you
read the footnotes).

Don't teach, ask. And try to discover together what works and what
doesn't when the teacher isn't there.

I'm an insufferably arrogant person at work and on mailing lists,
but I'm not like that in classes at all. A partner afraid of
expressing what she feels isn't going OK isn't going
to help you (just your ego, but your ego isn't going to
improve your dance).