Is tango easy?

quixotedlm said:
Frankly, everything I've observed in Tango scenes in my own city, as well as others that I've travelled to, seem to suggest that the social dynamics in Tango are snoottier than the most uptight scenarios that I've seen in salsa.
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Somehow I find it the other way around: the tango scenes I had travelled to are more genuinely welcoming than salsa scenes. for instance, I would feel comfortable sleeping over at a fellow tangueros while in town for a tango event but I'd get a hotel room for salsa congress. (I had slept quite a few couches for lindy/blues exchanges as well)

The subtleties of tango music certainly carries into tango dance, dancers and dance etiquettes. It's hard to picture myself doing cabeceo on a salsa floor - def need to channel my inner diva to grab a lead
 
guysanddolls said:
Somehow I find it the other way around: the tango scenes I had travelled to are more genuinely welcoming than salsa scenes. for instance, I would feel comfortable sleeping over at a fellow tangueros while in town for a tango event but I'd get a hotel room for salsa congress. (I had slept quite a few couches for lindy/blues exchanges as well)
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I agree with this sentiment. I feel like it reinforces my observation though - genuineness often comes with discernment.

As a side note, it's the norm in salsa congresses for acquaintances to share a room. Mixed gender, and sharing beds (platonically) is very common. Not the same as intimate welcome into ones home, but a sense of casual camaraderie that is broadly inclusive.
 
Bugger all that...use a food processor...and vodka in place of half the water. And pre-cook the apples.
 
UKDancer said:
I noticed some promotional blurb for someone's tango classes on Facebook today which made the rather bold claim that which prompted me to think about whether Malcolm Gladwell's '10,000 hours to master a skill' rings true, in general, and to tango, in particular.

As it will take 27+ years, assuming sustained effort of an hour a day, every day, to achieve this mastery, I suppose we might hope for more than 'the basics' in such a time, but what are the basics, and having mastered them, is there very much left to learn? Is this an example of Pareto: 20% on the list of tango skills representing 80% of the dance - or is it the other way around?

Reaching the point where social dancing is no longer embarrassing, and might even be pleasurable, probably doesn't take very long: but mastery - even of the basics? What does that take?
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In this case you can spend 10000 hours without becoming a master. The first ten hours are useful then the 9990 are walking on a plateau. You tell to yourself "I will be good", you start searching for a place and a follower to hone each tango skill for 10000 hours and you discover that is is not possible, because followers just want to dance, while places are not so easy to find and book. After a while you tell to yourself "Ok I will just be mediocre like everybody else".
 
newbie said:
In this case you can spend 10000 hours without becoming a master. The first ten hours are useful then the 9990 are walking on a plateau. You tell to yourself "I will be good", you start searching for a place and a follower to hone each tango skill for 10000 hours and you discover that is is not possible, because followers just want to dance, while places are not so easy to find and book. After a while you tell to yourself "Ok I will just be mediocre like everybody else".
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I'm not sure that I am ready to devote 10,000 hours to my tango development (there are other dances too, remember), but if I thought that for even the average social dancer with modest aspirations, progress was not really possible after 10 hours, then I wouldn't have bothered at all.

And I don't think that the insuperable obstacle to development is the general fecklessness of followers, but I do agree that it takes a particular effort to find somewhere to practise and someone to practise with (ie not just to dance).

But regardless of how long it takes to 'master' this dance, I can't believe the blurb to which I referred earlier that mastery is easy, not even of the basics. I'd go further (although no one else has picked up on this aspect of my original questions), that the basics are so fundamental to the dance, that they are very nearly the whole dance. Anyone who really has mastered them, would find the rest, well, easy.
 
UKDancer said:
Reaching the point where social dancing is no longer embarrassing, and might even be pleasurable, probably doesn't take very long: but mastery - even of the basics? What does that take?
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i think that depends on the skills the person dancing brings with them;

I have had followers dance beautifully after one lesson (sans cruzada) becuase they had ballet training or very good posture and sense of balance/body.

Leader's with martial arts training also have good balance and body awareness and seem to learn more quickly.

Others forget what they did in last weeks class and never progress.
it probably took me two years to become a decent dancer; and learning milonga improved a lot of things...

mastery...one day it will happen...

It takes 10 years to learn a musical instrument; then you can begin to play with the music
that's paraphrasing Jonathon Taylor of Tango Siempre..
 
UKDancer said:
But regardless of how long it takes to 'master' this dance, I can't believe the blurb to which I referred earlier that mastery is easy, not even of the basics. I'd go further (although no one else has picked up on this aspect of my original questions), that the basics are so fundamental to the dance, that they are very nearly the whole dance. Anyone who really has mastered them, would find the rest, well, easy.
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For what it's worth, I agree with both your points,
the second more important than the first.
 
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