Are followers in smaller communities pickier?

[tangoing]

Perhaps it's due to my poor English, but I intuitively associate a sentence in the past tense beginning with "when" with the starting point of a positive development. But what you're describing actually is the endpoint of degeneration. A práctica is a very expensive and unprofitable format. During the time I was active, the teacher-student ratio deteriorated first. Then the teacher would only come in to start the music, then retreat to their office to do the bookkeeping, and so on. Nowadays, they're completely absent from the prácticas. If you want to experience real prácticas, you have to go to the beginning junior teacher couples.

A practica without teachers is still beneficial though, as long as you know what you’re working on and/or have friendly advanced dancers in it that know what they’re doing. Otherwise it may just be blind leading the blind.

 

[brujo]

A practica without teachers is still beneficial though, as long as you know what you’re working on and/or have friendly advanced dancers in it that know what they’re doing. Otherwise it may just be blind leading the blind.

For me the practicas are also fantastic as a way to talk to people. It's so hard in milongas because people are so focused on the next dance or really following the rules of no teaching on the floor, where at a practica you can ask people what they like, catch up on their tango journey and get ideas on what to work on in the next private class. As someone that has to drive an hour to any event, it makes driving to milongas and classes worth it because you get more familiar with other people and what they're like.

 

[Rabbit]

You've raised a crucial point here! The highest-level and most famous teachers say – in front of their classes, on social media, in their videos, in their books, etc. – things like "Tango is a feeling, not steps!" and "Tango is an emotion, not steps!" Yay, great, wonderful . . . except that's a privileged view that one starts to appreciate only with dedication measured in lessons that approach careers in terms of time and money, unless one is uncommonly talented or has a free tango teacher as a personal friend or family member. I'm not entirely sure there's any way to judge feeling other than to dance with the potential student, and that comes with its own problems, starting with a back-breaking dancer injuring a teacher and costing them income.

It can be more than one feeling but I'm not sure it is possible to teach it in classes, you have to go and dance and discover it yourself.

And then it is one thing to be able to experience it with a few people and another to be able to create the feeling with a larger variety of partners.

 

[Bailango]

Those scenes also tend to record more for social media. There is a bit more exposure so fewer people start with tango as their first dance. I see a lot more cameras out in zouk and bachata events and dance floors where tango dancers don’t record themselves as much. A lot of west coast swing dancers I meet at beginner classes said they saw it online and find it appealing. Whereas a lot of the tango events in my area even have pretty big no filming on the dance floor policies.

I don’t know about zouk but bachata and salsa videos on social media are widespread. Whether it is social dancing, performance or filming of popular dancers/instructors. You can say it has almost become a culture among the bachata and salsa dancers.

In comparison the WCS videos tend to be mostly about masters or champion level J&J. Not of social dancing. By sheer numbers they dwarf the bachata and salsa vidoes.

Among zouk and bachata many videos tend to be performative exclusively recorded for publishing on social media.

The most critical factor is that the zouk and bachata (and to an extent salsa) videos are made by younger dancers. Mainly in 20s or 30s. They are viewed and followed by the same age group.

Salsa is having the aging problem. The famous instructors of yesteryears are growing older. The younger dancers gravitate more towards bachata. Most bachata “instructors” you see on social media and have become famous are younger. That becomes an additional factor to attract younger dancers. Younger lot of instructors is naturally more social media savvy.

 

[Bailango]

I feel the machismo from Latin America is decoupled a bit from the dance.

Quite the opposite. When they are dancing they bring the machismo factor with them. The others don’t and you are more likely to encounter others in social dancing.

Most folks that I meet in the salsa scene didn't grow up dancing it. There might be a few that are from NY, Colombia or Puerto Rico but more often they are from parts of Mexico where there is more Jose Jose on the radio than Hector Lavoe.

I recall you saying you danced salsa in the Bay Area. There were enough Latinos (mostly Mexicans) in the scene that you could witness rough edges of machismo with in salsa dancing. It was more amplified in LA. NYC was more refined with NYricans for whom salsa is more entwined with the culture than for the Mexicans in California. South Americans bring their own influence which is different from the Mexicans and Caribbeans (PR, Cuba, DR) when it comes to salsa.

So the frowning on men dancing with men or not wanting women to lead comes more from a Catholic patriarchy than from the dancing itself.

You are conflating two different issues. Latin Americans despite being more Catholic than western world, have all those dances as part of their culture. So they don’t frown on men dancing, despite being more homophobic than the west. Ironically it is the western world that view men dancing as gayish.

 

[Bailango]

It is also because prerequisites are not easy to frame in the first place. They are almost always expressed in one of three ways:

1. "Requires Tango N or higher." N is a class level at the studio giving the workshop or hosting the festival offering the workshop, or at the home studio of the person leading the workshop – something like "4" or "IV" or "401." As the only requirements to advance in class level are paying money for and sitting through all of the previous levels, and as there is no testing process or graduation system to hold anybody back if they haven't absorbed the material (that would be commercial suicide, and I've never seen a studio do it), there's no guarantee of "qualified" dancers having the technical skills that Tango N is meant to give in an ideal world. The workshop leader might know some of the students and guide them toward or away from the workshop, but in small places, the students are likely to have come from other small places all over or the leader might be a visitor, while in large places the leader is inevitably a visitor; so, the whole thing is double-blind.

2. "For [skill level] dancers." This [skill level] is something like "all," "beginner," "beginner-intermediate," "intermediate," "intermediate-advanced," "advanced," or "master." This relies on self-evaluation, because these things don't have any objective definition . . . most people overestimate their skill level. Once again, a workshop leader could in theory evaluate level and guide students toward or away from the workshop, but in reality it's double-blind, so that almost never happens. Occasionally, the leader attempts to work around this by expressing [skill level] in years, but that rates nothing useful, as dancing badly without correction can mean that the real difference between 1 and 20 years is 19 years of mistakes to erase – an effect amplified in smaller communities, where lack of exposure to regular instruction, broader concepts, and many dancers imparts the mistakes of an entire pedagogically inbred group.

3. "Must be familiar with [list of vocabulary]." This at least tries to itemize what's needed instead of using bought-and-paid-for class level or self-assigned skill level. The trouble is that it considers only vocabulary, which isn't half as useful as technical basics for judging capability. The workshop leader could say (to use the boleo example) "Requires supporting-leg stability, free-leg fluidity, considerable flexibility, and having internalized lead-follow with the core (can you dance arms-free?)," but that (1) won't fit in a little box or table that has space for "Tango IV," "Intermediate-Advanced," or "Ochos and Rebotes," (2) is another form of commercial suicide because we live in the TL;DR era where text longer than a few words is ignored, and (3) still depends on self-evaluation. And in small places especially, technique isn't seen as a thing to learn in itself . . . there's no instructor leading regular mirror drills, and people get obsessed with steps because they have four partners to dance with and find the same steps get boring.

Honestly, I think that prerequisites are hopeless for workshops, and that workshop leaders are doomed to spend some, most, or all of their time teaching missing prerequisites instead of the workshop's nominal topic. Giving them the power to kick people out? Commercial suicide again! So, they must shut up and go with the flow.

This is especially true in smaller communities, where nobody might be ready for the workshop's intended topic, and where the workshop leader is a visitor whose paycheck is thanks to that community's invitation and thus who doesn't dare get too demanding, much less show frustration. In that case, the workshop's supposed topic is just a fancy title, a lot like calling a fast-food combo meal "Royale" or "Gourmet." It's marketing, and a smart instructor knows they'll be teaching prerequisites with the pretense of getting to a topic they'll never get to. If they're charismatic and supportive, they'll be able to give everybody who attends a sense of value, though of course a few will grumble about not getting around to the topic. If they're business-savvy, they'll also try to negotiate follow-up workshops or private lessons that do get around to the topic.

This isn't meant as an attack on small communities – community size is just an added layer of difficulty to a general situation. I remember a follower sacada workshop by Pablo Inza and Sofia Saborido, who are decent teachers, at a big festival in my big city. Everybody present supposedly met the prerequisites . . . but not a single follower managed to execute sacadas properly, and Sofia spent all her time explaining to the followers how pivots and front steps (!) work, while Pablo mostly just joked around with the leaders, because "how to receive a follower sacada" isn't that interesting. I attended with a friend, not my usual partner, and was bored out of my skull, as my usual partner is already comfortable with front, side, and back sacadas in all directions on all sides, and I knew I was leading them correctly, so I was essentially the ballet barre for someone learning how to take a decisive step into my space.

You have outlined the challenge. It is an optimization problem. Trying to optimize for identifying appropriate pre-requisite skills creates a lot of friction. In trying to make class efficient, you are introducing frictions all around and thus making the whole process inefficient (time, money, etc).

While it would be great if class has similar skill level students, achieving that comes at a cost.

 

[Bailango]

The best and most fair way I've seen this done ( in blues/fusion ) is via auditions for the more advanced classes. So the beginner / intermediate levels are open to most people who want to try but the advanced classes require you to spend a few minutes being audited by the instructor before the day before to make sure they have the right level or understanding. This does create more work for the instructors and is hard to do with classes that have a lot of people. But it ensures that everyone in a class are actually knows the material built on. You could be the most amazing tango dancer but not have milonga basics down, and the instructor is able to tell you to try again or a simpler class.

What often happens in a multi-week event is that the students are told no on the first week, they work on the stuff they need to work on and then on the second week they are usually ready for the class.

Some events even require you to send in a video of yourself to demonstrate that you're an intermediate level dancer, but these are often pretty exclusive and targeted events.

It's a bit harder to do in role-unbalanced groups because even if you're a lead that is able to do certain things you won't be able to do this as a follower, and vice versa.

Yet ironically the fusion dancers are worst when it comes to technic of partner dancing

The way I am told fusion evolved out of blue dancing community was in response to the critique that blues dancing community had no fundamentals and techniques. Compared to other partner dances where those things were taught.

 

[pianistamediano]

It is an optimization problem. Trying to optimize for identifying appropriate pre-requisite skills creates a lot of friction. In trying to make class efficient, you are introducing frictions all around and thus making the whole process inefficient (time, money, etc).

While it would be great if class has similar skill level students, achieving that comes at a cost.

tl;dr: people really don't like being told that they're not allowed to do something they want to do, and they really don't like being told that their skills are deficient. Even if it's true!

 

[Bailango]

tl;dr: people really don't like being told that they're not allowed to do something they want to do, and they really don't like being told that their skills are deficient. Even if it's true!

It is simpler. People might be aware they lack skills. They don’t like being told “no, you can’t take this class”.

 

[Tangogal]

A man in my small tango community went down the “learning by osmosis” route. He fully believed that “tango is a feeling” that you don’t need to learn steps and that it’s all natural, organic development from the walk. He went to the milongas and danced with other beginners, he went to the bigger city and danced with beginners. He had many conversations with long-time dancers about their journeys. He went to a festival and danced with nobody as there were no beginners and his skills didn’t meet the expectations of more experienced followers.

He returned to the small community and took private lessons with the instructor. He continued to go to milongas and improve his dancing skills. He’s a good dancer with innate ability but there’s no substitute for a good teacher.

 

[Tangogal]

I also dance other dances. When choosing workshops there’s a world of difference between self-selecting levels and auditions!

Winter Jump is a long-running festival in Oslo. The workshops consist of 5 levels. The first two are intermediate and audition together. The next three are advanced and audition together. The instructors had a fixed number of wristbands to select dancers for each level. All the dancers pair up and dance with a frequent change in partner. As the bands were given out the dancers left the space. The least advanced dancers were the last chosen.

Dancers who choose not to audition are placed is the lower level. There’s usually an opportunity to drop down a level to be in the same group as your friends or partner but rarely a chance to move up (unless one of the teachers is willing to re-audition you).

It was actually a good system as everyone got to choose to be intermediate or advanced but then the instructors (3 couples) picked who went in which class. Whole thing took less than an hour including a 15 minute warmup. Great for us as we were spread across all the groups and swapped videos.

In other festivals the audition is more about the teachers assessing the general level of dancing and choosing material accordingly.

In self-levelling even with comprehensive descriptions you get people in classes way above their competency. Bigger city students decided they were definitely intermediate dancers after less than 6 months but the descriptors were 18months + with knowledge of xyz and social dancing regularly. Smaller city dancers were more familiar with the skill level in the community and self sorted accordingly (or asked the organisers before signing up).

When I sign up for workshops I just agree to whichever level my partner wants to do. I’m not so advanced that I can’t learn in an intermediate level nor so unskilled that I’d be lost in maestro level (real maestros wouldn’t be taking those classes anyway).

 

[Bailango]

A man in my small tango community went down the “learning by osmosis” route. He fully believed that “tango is a feeling” that you don’t need to learn steps and that it’s all natural, organic development from the walk.

The naturally talented outliers who can fast-track above to quickly move past beginner level still need to learn fundamentals and techniques for advancing their dancing skills. They will learn it faster. Natural talent without effort put into improvements, hits a ceiling.

He went to a festival and danced with nobody as there were no beginners and his skills didn’t meet the expectations of more experienced followers.

Only to be expected.

He returned to the small community and took private lessons with the instructor. He continued to go to milongas and improve his dancing skills. He’s a good dancer with innate ability but there’s no substitute for a good teacher.

There is no substitute for proper learning.

 

[itwillhappen]

A man in my small tango community went down the “learning by osmosis” route. He fully believed that “tango is a feeling” that you don’t need to learn steps and that it’s all natural, organic development from the walk.

Yes, something like that is perhaps more suitable for talented followers with prior ballet experience.

 

[JournalInTime]

It can be more than one feeling but I'm not sure it is possible to teach it in classes, you have to go and dance and discover it yourself.

One cannot teach feeling, I agree. However . . . everything is in service to everything else. Feeling demands comfort and musicality, both of those rely on technique, and reaching the limits of technique sends one back to musicality and vice versa. So while feeling cannot be taught, it can to an extent develop only with sufficient study – and when it starts to level out and have a certain sameness, it's often going back to study that provides the technique that broadens and revitalizes it.

I know that there are those who believe that feeling is all one needs. I watch them dance. They certainly seem to be feeling something, but it looks as though their partner would mostly be feeling constrained, controlled, or manipulated. I'm not sure that anybody can become a good dancer on the basis of feeling alone.

And then it is one thing to be able to experience it with a few people and another to be able to create the feeling with a larger variety of partners.

Yes. My comment above assumes one wants to experience an agreeable feeling with everybody one invites to dance. If one is going to expect that with just a few people, my answer would be very different.

 

[Rabbit]

The naturally talented outliers who can fast-track above to quickly move past beginner level still need to learn fundamentals and techniques for advancing their dancing skills. They will learn it faster. Natural talent without effort put into improvements, hits a ceiling.

Most of the "talented" people have previous dance experience and some already good fundamentals. I should know, I was one. I remember the days of answering the question "how long have you been dancing tango" and getting a WTF followup reaction.