club tango

[Lilly_of_the_valley]

Originally Posted by morgrob

None of the earlier replies were negative...it was the ones that started to question the qualifications of the instructor. It was unnecessary and not relevant to the question. He is very knowledgeable and helpful.

Everybody who questioned the instructor (or the the instructions) clearly gave their reasons for doing so, as well as the benefit of the doubt.
If you are so touchy about others giving opinions about your instructor or material being taught, I suggest not challenging the instructor or what is being taught on a public forum. Some opinions will inevitably be not to your liking.

[morgrob]

Ok, I think it best to move on. I honestly did appreciate the replies.

[Gssh]

Originally Posted by morgrob

None of the earlier replies were negative...it was the ones that started to question the qualifications of the instructor. It was unnecessary and not relevant to the question. He is very knowledgeable and helpful.

Originally Posted by morgrob

I have asked the instructor, but he did not really give me a good answer.

......He has kind of called this a sandwich type tango where the beginning is the same, you add something in the middle and then end all the steps in the same way.....

.......I also asked if this was anything similar to Milonga and stuff, he said no, and he showed how those are danced, which are very different than what we are doing......

......This is more of what he calls a night club style.

I am sorry to be blunt, but it was quite difficult to get the impression that your instructor is "knowledgable and helpful" from the OP. I don't think that asking for somebodies qualifications is an implied criticism - the way your instructor presents night club style tango is at the least very unorthodox. Tango has a long history of people developing new approaches, new styles, and your teacher is doing something very different from the "mainstream". Now there are excellent teachers and dancers that very different from the mainstram , e.g. El Pulpo, but as we can not see your instructor dance the next thing that is useful to see where his dancing comes from would be to have some idea what his lineage is, where he goes social dancing, where he has performed.

The situation appears to me roughly equivalent to somebody saying "Have you ever heard of otaku japanese cooking? i have a great teacher, and he already demostrated how to make hash browns and easy over eggs, but i have not been able to find other people doing this otaku style japanese cooking?" Now it is obvous that this is not mainstream japanese cooking, but i also know that there is for example excellent japanese french pastry, and and japanese pizza, and they are very distinctive styles (i love japanese pizza btw - shrimp+sweet potatoes+bacon is a perfect combination) so the idea that there is a school of japanese diner food is not completely impossible, but for me to understand better what this is about i would like to hear "the teacher studied for 10 years as an apprentice in xxx diner in tokyo", or developed it after being a chef in a more traditional japanese place, or learned from somebody who had gone either route.

Asking where the material somebody teaches comes from is not an insult - in my professional life the one of the first things people ask for is what my degree is, and where i got it. If i were to teach tango (which i am not really planning to do) i would expect people to ask where i learned, where i dance, who my influences are, and yes, even the dreaded "have you danced in buenos aires" question (i haven't). When i am in a ma class i usually know my teachers lineage at least 3 generations back, or i know their fight record. I am honestly puzzled that you seem to consider the asking for somebodies qualifications to be negative - most people i know tend to preen like peacocks when they get the chance to tell you all about how they have studied with everybody under the sun and how they have headlined dozends of shows.

Gssh

[dchester]

Originally Posted by morgrob

None of the earlier replies were negative...it was the ones that started to question the qualifications of the instructor. It was unnecessary and not relevant to the question. He is very knowledgeable and helpful.

Peaches seems to admit, herself, that her replies were negative. I just don't understand why they need to be. I respect opinions, and that is fine. Some people take AT more seriously than others. But dance is organic and constantly changing. Without innovations things would get pretty boring. I am by no means and expert, which is why I asked here, like I said. And I appreciate the helpful responses.

My suspicion is that people questioned the qualifications of the instructor, because they assumed your descriptions were accurate. I stopped making that assumption, once I saw the disconnect between your description of "club tango" as not traveling, followed later by your post about what seemed to be the 8CB, which is a traveling pattern.

[Dave Bailey]

Originally Posted by morgrob

I don't get why people all of the sudden jump to the fact that he is a bad instructor.

In my case, it's not a sudden jump, nor is it a definite opinion. I'm simply expressing some concerns. With a lot of caveats thrown in.

Originally Posted by morgrob

He isn't; he is very good. It turns out that it is mostly argentine style with some other stuff thrown in there.

If he's a good teacher, if you're enjoying the classes and improving, that's all you need.

[Dave Bailey]

Originally Posted by morgrob

But I feel like, within the AT community, it is almost blasphemy to do something another way.

Some people are like that. Most of us aren't - and I don't believe any of the contributors to this thread are.

I regularly play "Stairway to Heaven" at my milongas, for example

We're not really berating you - and I'm sorry if it appears that way. But your description did sound a bit, to use a technical term, iffy.

There are a lot of ballroom teachers out there attempting to teach AT based on things like the DVIDA syllabus, which really really isn't useful, so that it's natural to be a little sceptical occasionally.

So in the absence of detailed information, we may be a little more sceptical than we should be. If you could provide more details, we could provide more well-informed feedback.