Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Recently, I met with a new student, who told me he had a very specific agenda of what he wanted to learn. This student had identified ten figures he had found on YouTube, which he said were his "project for the next two months." If he could master this material, the student felt, his
progress in Tango would be right where he wanted it to be.
Under normal circumstances, I would have immediately told a student like this that I was the wrong teacher for him, and suggest that he look elsewhere. But this student had been recommended by a close associate, so I decided to take things a bit further.
"I'm not sure I'm the right teacher for you," I told him, "but let's look at one of the figures on your wish list, and take things from there."
The student brought up YouTube on his iPhone, and showed me a highly complex, multi-part sequence originally choreographed and performed by the late Osvaldo Zotto and his then partner Lorena Ermocida. "I figure," the student told me, "that
if we mark it out today, I can get it pretty much in my mind, and then work out the finer points next week."
As it happened, I knew this material very well, since I had at one time actually learned it myself, a process which had taken me about three months of intensive work. (At that time, I had been dancing Tango for approximately twenty years.)
"How long have you been dancing Tango," I asked the student.
"Oh, you know, almost a year now," he casually replied.
Sigh.
To make a long story short, I
decided to try working through the figure with the student and his partner step by step to find out what their actual skill levels were, and to determine how far we'd be able to realistically get in "marking out the sequence" by the end of the lesson. What I learned during this process was that -- as I had strongly suspected -- this couple had lofty ambitions, but very little in the way of a fundamental skill foundation on which to build such a sophisticated dance sequence.
Before I continue with the story, I want to spell out what I mean by "a fundamental skill foundation." This couple wanted to incorporate the figure in question into their social dance. To do this, the very first skill set they would have required would be:
· The development and implementation of
individual dance posture at rest.
· An in-depth understanding of -- and the ability to execute -- linear movement alone (forward, backward, to the side, in-place, and pause).
· An in-depth understanding of -- and the ability to effectively overcome -- the crucial challenge of achieving absolute balance at the beginning and end of each
individual movement.
There's a great deal of detail I'm leaving out here, because it would make this primary skill set list go on forever, but you get the idea. Can you do without these primary skills, and expect to become a credible Tango dancer? No, you can't; but lots of people -- maybe the vast majority -- don't give these things a second thought. "Let's just cut to the chase," they say. "We'll pick up
that stuff some other time."
The second skill set would involve:
Fundamental linear movement with a partner. For social dance, this skill set incorporates the highly complex matrix of interconnected skills, which I usually refer to as the "lead/follow mechanism." (For stage dance, this skill is somewhat less
essential, but certainly useful.) The second skill set also incorporates creating the necessary condition for balance at the beginning and end of every individual movement -- within the unique context of the dance partnership. This alone can take months -- sometimes years -- of intensive practice to accomplish.
Let's try one more level. The third fundamental skill set would focus on pivots and balance for
forward and backward ocho as well as giro/molinete. The individual elements of this skill set are quite extensive, and absolutely demand concentrated, step-by-step development, followed by constant practice. During this multi-level process, simple sequences would certainly be incorporated by the teacher in order to integrate slowly developing individual skills into real-world dance situations. However, no competent teacher would even begin to think of starting the process by
choosing a sequence like the one my student presented to me. This would be tantamount to fraud.
During the hour I spent with this particular dance student and his partner, it became clear to me that this individual was doing what so many Tango students routinely do in their efforts to learn this dance -- he was overreaching. He was basing his goals, not on building an actual foundation first, and
then moving on. He wanted to achieve an end result immediately without putting in the time and effort to get there.
This doesn't work; it never has worked; it never will work. And yet, so many students keep banging their heads against the wall in pursuit of the fantasy -- rather than doing what's actually necessary to get there.
At the conclusion of the hour we spent together, the leader, said, "Okay, that was a good start; we can wrap it up next week, and move on to the next figure." I offered a short speech about the importance of primary skill development in advance of tackling such complex material.
The student adamantly disagreed. "That stuff is for beginners. We want to get this show on the
road."
"Okay," I replied, and now said what I probably should have come out with right in the beginning. "But I'm afraid you're going to have to do it without me."
And I added, "Good luck."
