At the end of the pandemic, maybe a new start?

[TTanguero]

1. To master a discipline purely for its own sake – to prove you can do it.
2. To have an excuse to get out of the house and away from work – for the third place.
3. For emotional health – to combat depression, anxiety, or what have you, or simply to play.
4. To make likeminded friends, mainly other tango maniacs who understand your pastime.
5. To keep the brain in shape – to keep learning and retain function.
6. To keep the body in shape – to improve balance, flexibility, posture, etc.
7. Out of love of tango music – it's composition, instruments, sound, textures, etc.
8. To earn money performing, teaching, organizing, or whatever.
9. Out of love of Argentine culture and tradition.
10. To meet potential romantic partners.

Interestingly, what are the top three things for me aren't on your list.

1. The physical, mental, and emotional pleasure of two people moving as one
2. The creativity of expressing the music through movement
3. The meditative benefits I feel from the flow-state of dancing

(Though perhaps my #3 and your #3 are essentially the same thing)

The love of tango music is, for me, something which kind of overlays all three, rather than being a separate item. That is, I listen to tango music all the time at home, and very much enjoy it, but even when sat in my chair listening to it, I'm mentally experiencing it as dance.

 

[JournalInTime]

The love of tango music is, for me, something which kind of overlays all three, rather than being a separate item.

That underlines the other trick with asking people anything and then trying to make lists: overlap. You have people describing two lists of 10 things that cover exactly the same ground overall, but no one of their 10 things is the same. For pianistamediano the mathematician: Two people can span the same space with different bases.

 

[JournalInTime]

The atlantic doesn't make a difference

It clearly does for some things! For instance:

And the quality of movement is also so much higher in salsa, because arms, legs, hands and head ! move independently of each other, and that in fact controlled. In tango you freeze most of your joints and you are allowed to walk like a zombie: forward, backward, sidestep for three month.

What? My tango teachers were very clear that tango requires head implication, especially to initiate turns; active arms for elasticity, suspensions, groundings, and upper-body expression; torso, hips, and legs moving independently to maximize dissociation; a smile; etc. They also said that in real social tango rather than classroom tango, you'll take diagonal and curving steps. All of this was shown and encouraged.

Maybe I had weird teachers. I did have a few with graduate degrees in dance and decades of performances under their belt, all largely in ballet and contemporary, with tango as a sideline. Perhaps if I'd been taught by old Argentines or some generic Arthur Murray instructor, I'd have had the experience you're talking about.

So, if you really describe salsa as easier, then it's the arrogance of the ignorant speaking (or you likewise want to hide the fact that you've also failed badly back then)

I truly don't believe in objective difficulty. It's like these people who reacted to my revelation that I was a theoretical particle physicist with: "Oh my GAWD! That's sooo hard. You must be sooo smart!" Meanwhile, I found it self-evident but couldn't imagine being a biochemist, because biochemistry seemed utterly impenetrable to me and made me feel stupid ("Oh my GAWD! Biochemistry is sooo hard. Biochemists must be sooo smart!").

Each person will arrange any N dances you name in an order of difficulty that's unique to them, based on how well those dances line up with how their brain works, how their body is built, their exposure to music, their expectations from dance, etc. I mean, I know hip-hop dancers who do what I consider "impossible" (like head spins) but can't "get" tango.

 

[JournalInTime]

I truly don't believe in objective difficulty.

To expand: I do believe that some disciplines take longer to master! I don't want someone to read How to Be a Surgeon in 24 Hours and then cut into me, but when I was young and washed dishes, I needed exactly one shift to learn how to do the job, run the machines, and clean up after (the hard part was learning the social tics of all the chefs, sous-chefs, and other "artistic" personalities).

However, I've seen no evidence that masters of salsa take more or less time to get where they are than masters of tango. People do move down the curve from "beginner" to "master" at different rates . . . it'll depend on brain, body, drive, culture, and all that good stuff. But in terms of steps, phases, or whatever, the curve is the same length for either dance.

 

[opendoor]

..Oh my GAWD! Biochemistry is sooo hard. Biochemists must be sooo smart..

We should team up! Any idea?

 

[JournalInTime]

We should team up! Any idea?

Today, tango; tomorrow, the Mundial?

 

[opendoor]

..the Mundial?

Rather thought of something that could bring in big money. A particle physicist and a biochemist together should know how to please the world!

 

[JournalInTime]

Rather thought of something that could bring in big money. A particle physicist and a biochemist together should know how to please the world!

I had a few colleagues "monetize" their expertise. They all went into finance. I lack the most basic rudiments of greed and ambition, so I never felt the call. These days I'm a writer and editor (who writes and edits for pay better than he writes and edits here during coffee breaks) . . . if you have an idea that needs words, I might prove useful.

 

[pianistamediano]

I had a few colleagues "monetize" their expertise. They all went into finance. I lack the most basic rudiments of greed and ambition, so I never felt the call. These days I'm a writer and editor (who writes and edits for pay better than he writes and edits here during coffee breaks) . . . if you have an idea that needs words, I might prove useful.

And if you need someone to do all the fancy maths and crunch the numbers, well... here I am! I expect our joint venture to hit our first billion in three weeks. Give or take two decades.

 

[opendoor]

..Maybe I had weird teachers.. with graduate degrees ..and decades of performances under their belt..

You shifted the focus a bit. This thread is about new beginnings, change, transformation and jumping in the deep end.
How did you feel at your first salsa lesson. Please finally speak out your mind! Ok, understand, you haven't tried it yet. I thought so.

My first salsa lesson was a disaster. It was like a canonization when I finally came to tango. It was so easy. Admittedly, I first danced at milongas for two years without ever having any lessons. But the feedback from the ladies was clear, you can dance tango, and you can do it impromptu. How much heavier was salsa? Of course, tango is an open-ended art. But that's not what our discussion is about in this thread. It took me more than three years to find my teacher, who took me to another level in tango.
I had a new start in salsa during covid. These people didn't care about the lockdown. And again I found salsa so demanding. After more than 20 years of tango I was better than other salsa beginners. But, whether you accept it or not, compared to tango, salsa is a lot more challenging.

 

[JournalInTime]

And if you need someone to do all the fancy maths and crunch the numbers, well... here I am!

We're a regular Fellowship of the Ring!

I expect our joint venture to hit our first billion in three weeks. Give or take two decades.

Particle physicists are accustomed to uncertainty. Editors, to deadline drift. I'm good with that.

 

[JournalInTime]

How did you feel at your first salsa lesson. Please finally speak out your mind! Ok, understand, you haven't tried it yet. I thought so.

I did try salsa. My first thoughts were annoyance at how the teacher just assumed we could all hear the "1," the "2," and so on without taking the time to count it out and explain it. My second thoughts were about how the music didn't appeal to me – it sounded like a drunken party. I didn't stay.

My first thoughts in tango were, "What, there's a specific way to walk and even to stand? Ugh, I want to leave." My second thoughts were, "This music makes no sense. I want to leave," even after the teacher took the time to count it out and explain it. I stayed with tango at first only because my partner wanted to stay.

People underestimate how the posture and walk of tango are ultra-, super-hard for lots of ordinary folks. I mean, we have a whole culture of people who sit at desks and then sit in cars, and walk only the distance from desk to car or car to desk. This makes tango very challenging.

On the level of music, any dance can be challenging. I agree that salsa can have complex polyrhythms that are hard for many to understand, and understand that it encourages the movement of different body parts to different elements in the music. However, the way I was taught tango, we were thrown immediately into "Dance to the piano. Now the violin. Now the bandoneón. Now the double bass. Now the voice. Now express one with your feet and the other with your lead to your follower." I can't say that seemed any easier to me.

Again, I think there's a lot of variation in how tango is taught. I landed at a school that was very technical, with teachers who weren't into praise but rather remarks like, "If you can't do x, y, and z, you can't really dance this," and, "You're not going to the milonga like that." Very much the classical ballet approach of being tough . . . though only one teacher ever whacked me with a cane.

 

[JournalInTime]

It took me more than three years to find my teacher, who took me to another level in tango.

The coach I work with today, and have worked with for 10 years, was also one of my teachers on Day One of tango. All three of my other private instructors were among the other early teachers. The sort of strictness we expect in private lessons long after being a beginner was present right away for me. Two teachers were career professional dancers with actual academic backgrounds in dance; one was a strict BsAs milonguero type who wanted everything small and on the line of dance from beginners; and one was an ex-nuevo guy who was obsessive in his rejection of nuevo, so he was harsh about "This is tango; this isn't."

The salsa people I met were all employees of a tropical club who taught dance but also worked at a bar. For them, it was all about being easy, accepting, cool, and undemanding. However, they weren't very good at teaching. Still, they definitely left me with the lasting impression that you could come to their bar once a week for a few weeks and be dancing shortly afterward. The tango teachers I had talked in terms of years from Day One.

 

[opendoor]

..did try salsa.. sounded like a drunken party.. didn't stay..

Well ssid!

Now the bandoneón. Now the double bass. Now the voice..

It was very different for me. I didn't need to be asked and taught to dance to the violin. Rather, I was outraged that none of the local teachers paid any attention to the violin. Tango doesn't work in 2por4 for me. I need melodies (terminus technicus is sequences) that end over several bars. I always fought with my teachers, I was never satisfied, I had a difficult time because without ever receiving a tango lexion, I always knew better than and thought I was more competent than my tango teachers. With salsa it's the other way around.

 

[JournalInTime]

People underestimate how the posture and walk of tango are ultra-, super-hard for lots of ordinary folks.

On the level of music, any dance can be challenging.

Again, I think there's a lot of variation in how tango is taught.

By the way, these thoughts strike me as underlying the main reasons why few people can seem to agree on which dance is harder:

1. What you deem important. Posture? Vocabulary? Connection? Musicality? Some other thing? You can claim it's "obviously" one of these, but someone else can assert it's "obviously" another. Who is right? My money is on neither. Not all well-received tango performances are musical . . . people applaud technical difficulty and even pure speed. I saw a performance just the other day that had nothing to do with the music, but boy, the lifts and grand battements were impressive! Those teachers are getting 100 USD an hour to teach, which brings us to . . .

2. What teachers you get. If you get a "Throw them in the deep end!" ballet-school mistress who yells at you and looks ready to hit you, you're going to think the dance is far harder than if you get the chill guy who shouts encouragement. If you can survive the first type of teacher, you can end up better, faster, but you'll think it was harder. If you stick with the second, you may need a long time to improve but you're more likely to stay for that long time.

Looking at just one thing (especially the rhythms in the music) is a gross oversimplification!