[Tango-L] Using the Social dance as THE model for the student

[Gordon Erlebacher]

I belive that learning always starts by imitation, followed, with proper instruction, 
by improvisation (which is possible once one has a better understanding of the 
structure of the dance, along the lines of what Michaels' teacher proposed. There
are many many such examples. Eventually one finds that can do almost anything 
almost anywhere!!!

Mario, tango has many facets: connection, improvisation, navigation, technique, 
patterns and their infinite variations. Of course, the framework is identical or similar
for everybody. 

I learned spanish several years back. To gain fluency, I started by reading sentences
from a book out loud (very important) and repeated these sentences until I could say 
them fluently and not haltingly. Then I started listening to songs which provided wider
vocabulary and practiced repeating sections that I understood (more and more in time). 
3-4 years after starting this approach, I can not only understand 80% of the spanish that
i hear, but speak fluently (with errors of course), but without the need for translation from 
and to english. I see learning the tango as being the same. There is no way a man will 
acquire the necessary skills in less then 3-4 years, working hard, and dancing as much 
as possible, which you, Mario, appear to be doing. 

     Have fun, 

        Gordon


----- Original Message -----
From: Michael <tangomaniac at cavtel.net>
Date: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 10:29 pm
Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Using the Social dance as THE model for the student
To: Mario <sopelote at yahoo.com>, TANGO-L <tango-l at mit.edu>

> No, Mario. What I see is you want somebody to copy somebody else's 
> dance so they don't have to come up with their own. This is NOT 
> "Dancing with the Stars" where the pro choreographs a dance for the 
> celebrity to memorize. Do you really want somebody to dance the 
> SAME dance over and over again?
> 
> My teacher told me, "Step side left with the woman. You're on your 
> left foot. What foot is the woman standing? If she's standing on 
> her right foot, what can you lead?" Teaching a man how to think is 
> more important than memorizing a routine. Memorized routines don't 
> work when you run out of space.
> 
> Michael
> I danced Argentine Tango --with the Argentines
> 
> From: Mario 
> 
> What I'm enthused about is arriving at a 'whole'  dance...from 
> beginning to end... expressed throughout as one whole fluid 
> reaction to the music.   I'm comparing again to language 
> aquisition; the difference between studying 'parts of speech' 
> (which doesn't work by-the-way) and hanging into a fluent 
> conversation... as I see it from having just gone thru it., the BIG 
> problem for the 2 and 3 years student is putting it all together 
> and enjoying a complete dance...and at the end feeling that he 
> expressed a whole, complete pice of art.   Don't you see what I'm 
> getting at?  Fluency produces fluency...you study fluency by 
> practicing fluency...not grammar.
> _______________________________________________
> Tango-L mailing list
> Tango-L at mit.edu
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
>