It takes many months to dance Tango POORLY

hbboogie1

hbboogie1

New Member
It takes many months to dance Tango POORLY
When I started dancing Tango I was PATHETIC
But after a year of private lessons I moved up to TERRIBLE
After two years of private lessons I moved up to BAD
After three more years of private lessons I moved up to TOLERABLE.
I wonder where I’ll be after another five years of private lessons?
 
Good Gosh, hb, did you have any background in other dances or any music training?
I wonder if you aren't judging yourself a bit harshly?
Who are you judging yourself against, and what criteria are you using?
 
Steve.....it was meant to be tongue in cheek addressing the beginners who have had two or three group lessons and decide to start teaching or preforming. It's quick and easy to learn to dance bad tango but takes years to dance good tango in my humble opinion.
David
 
My bad, huh?
But you fooled me, which is one of the reasons I'm starting to use the emoticons, or whatever the heck they're called now.
 
OK this might be the third thread on this board where the starter would completely disappear from the discussion. But I guess it is not against the rules, and some people feel like discussing the subject anyway....and some beginners might read it in search of information, so....

From my experience, those who for a significant period of time constantly have worked on their dancing with a good instructor, especially taking private lessons, DO improve their tango. And (assuming they do not have some disabilities preventing them from learning, but tango is notorious for helping to overcome those as well) after two years they are usually not terrible or bad tango dancers. They are at least OK dancers.

If a situation described in the initial post really happens, IMO you have not been doing the right thing with your dance education, perhaps, wasting your money and time.
 
hbboogie1 said:
Steve.....it was meant to be tongue in cheek addressing the beginners who have had two or three group lessons and decide to start teaching or preforming. It's quick and easy to learn to dance bad tango but takes years to dance good tango in my humble opinion.
David
Click to expand...

It's a major problem in my local community, people who are very poor dancers and ill-qualified to teach, setting up their own classes. They are often motivated by personality politics and spite, and use their positions to take potshots at other dancers, so it increases the rifts in an already fractured community - not good. And really spoils things for many newcomers to AT, who sign up for classes, pay over their money, and then are subjected to incompetent, but very opinionated, instructors. They usually don't know about, or get told not to bother going to, mainstream milongas and practicas, so they never discover how good AT can be, and we lose them.

Short of setting up a tango association with elected officials, that could register approved teachers and regulate their activities, what can be done about this?
 
Tongue in cheek or not, I've got to say I agree wholeheartedly with the OP. :-)

And it never fails, that just when I think I've gotten somewhere and maybe am dancing OK...things shift again and I'm back to dancing like absolute crap. Thank goodness I've got DH who has a background in music, and he assures me that my feelings are completely normal and somehow part of the learning process. According to him, it translates as progress. Personally, I remain unconvinced. :rolleyes:
 
hbboogie1 said:
Steve.....it was meant to be tongue in cheek addressing the beginners who have had two or three group lessons and decide to start teaching or preforming. It's quick and easy to learn to dance bad tango but takes years to dance good tango in my humble opinion.
David
Click to expand...
We have a similar sense of humor (along with the same first name). The bad thing is that a lot of people don't get my jokes either.

:|
 
After all these years, I've never gotten out of the beginner stage.

As my signature (below) days: When it comes to dancing the Argentine Tango, I am, and will forever be... A beginner!
 
Peaches said:
And it never fails, that just when I think I've gotten somewhere and maybe am dancing OK...things shift again and I'm back to dancing like absolute crap. Thank goodness I've got DH who has a background in music, and he assures me that my feelings are completely normal and somehow part of the learning process. According to him, it translates as progress.
Click to expand...
My theory is that this feeling happens when your awareness of the "amount to learn" expands faster than your actual progression, so it feels like you're going backwards.

So, say, initially you grade yourself on a 1 out of 10, then if you move to 2, that feels like genuine progress - only 8 to go! But then, you realise that you're actually at level 2 out of 100, and if you move to level 3, that's still good progression, but you're more aware of how much else there is to learn.

But this is progress - in both senses. Because you have both a greater appreciation of the depth of dancing, and because you're still going forwards. But it feels like you're going backwards.

Does that make sense?
 
Dave Bailey said:
My theory is that this feeling happens when your awareness of the "amount to learn" expands faster than your actual progression, so it feels like you're going backwards.

So, say, initially you grade yourself on a 1 out of 10, then if you move to 2, that feels like genuine progress - only 8 to go! But then, you realise that you're actually at level 2 out of 100, and if you move to level 3, that's still good progression, but you're more aware of how much else there is to learn.

But this is progress - in both senses. Because you have both a greater appreciation of the depth of dancing, and because you're still going forwards. But it feels like you're going backwards.

Does that make sense?
Click to expand...

Excellent analogy.
 
With privates it's very possible to remain bad for years. No tongue in cheek here. I've seen it at least twice.
Some years ago, one couple coming in our group class after two years of privates and him being unable to lead, and her being unable to follow. It was not a matter of style, they had not been taught performance A.T, supposedly they had been learning social A.T. They decided to switch to group classes and to restart from the beginning. So it actually took them three years to become just mediocre.

Another couple I thought at the end of last year, coming to our group class (not the same group class than the previous couple) at the advanced level and being unable to do the sequence, dancing their sequences instead, and not wanting to trade partners, and then coming to our milonga, and dancing their routines together but the lady unable to follow any other leader here. They came back once to the advanced class. Then they tried the intermediate class. Then they left.
 
hbboogie1 said:
It takes many months to dance Tango POORLY
When I started dancing Tango I was PATHETIC
But after a year of private lessons I moved up to TERRIBLE
After two years of private lessons I moved up to BAD
After three more years of private lessons I moved up to TOLERABLE.
I wonder where I’ll be after another five years of private lessons?
Click to expand...

Ha, ha, ha...sounds like a terrific opener to a very funny book on AT.

Can I add: a few good years down the line past TOLERABLE you find yourself way up there in the Penthouse Suite sitting in SHEER BOREDOM :-)
 
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