On styles of teaching-and learning.

[Lui]

It would be stupid to teach something to beginners, they can’t use on the dance floor. That’s what you sell them in the high grades .

Of course, you can dance a Base at a Milonga. OK, you need to take a really tiny backward step, but I firmly believe it’s better to dance a graceful Base, than to slaughter music, partner and bystanders with some Kung-Fu-Tango-moves.

A base danced by a beginner will look like a beginner. Which is not a bad thing, as everybody has been a beginner at some point. A hasty double time side step followed by a backward sacade intro into a dragged molinette danced by a intermediate dancer will look like a beginner, who should better restart with the Base. A Base danced by a master will look ... well masterfull. The look will rather depend on skill than on the set of moves.

Most advanced dancers will seldom dance a Base like it is taught in first lessons. More likely the will adapt it to their own taste: Skipping the back step, changing the dynamics of the cross, etc. However, since many basic tango techniques are necessary to execute a good Base. The Base will travel with you on your tango journey in form of those techniques you have trained: The will be used frequently to execute other moves and elements as well.

I always found it somewhat strange and funny that one of the first moves taught in tango already has a quite challenging element – the cross. Many things following, ochos, barridas, etc., are not so difficult as the cross. The Base might be the first pattern shown, but by far not the easiest.

 

[Light Sleeper]

It would be stupid to teach something to beginners, they can’t use on the dance floor. That’s what you sell them in the high grades .

I always found it somewhat strange and funny that one of the first moves taught in tango already has a quite challenging element – the cross. Many things following, ochos, barridas, etc., are not so difficult as the cross. The Base might be the first pattern shown, but by far not the easiest.

I do agree!

By the way, could someone please explain why it is said there is 'no basic' in tango.. couldn't the walk be called 'the basic' (although it is by no means easy, one can get beginners walking around albeit with little elan)?

 

[opendoor]

Re: base

.. could someone please explain why it is said there is 'no basic' in tango.. couldn't the walk be called 'the basic'..

Well said, the walk is the basis, and yet the beginning and the aim of tango dancing, too.

The saying that "there is no basic" comes from the competition under the common tango didactics. The system and teacher training syllabus of Mingo Pugliese is based on the so called basic (la base, paso básico), the numbering, and the molinete. The system of Gustavo Naveira swept it away and replaced it by the step options (front, back, side = opening, crossing forward = front 8, crossing backwards = back 8, and so on...) Following Naveira it is possible to teach everything (volcadas, colgadas, sacadas) right from the beginning, because the basic elements to which every complicated movement can be reduced, are analyzed and figured out.

May be there are some more versions of a basic besides the one of Pugliese. One year ago I learned Gavito´s Base, a different and very elegant combination to get the follower into the cross.

 

[Lui]

I don’t want to step on the toes of the two gentlemen mentioned above, but I believe both teaching approaches are much older and by far not the only ones. Take a look at this dance book from 1914: Hopkins: The Tango and other up-to date dances.On page 40 and the following you will discover the eight count to be very popular back in the days too.

http://www.archive.org/details/danceman239

You will need the obscure djvu viewer, but it’s worth the effort, I’m finally enlightened about the Lame duck step.

The links to get the viewer, you will find here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu

More old tango-related fun books
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=tango%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts

I’m still looking for my old source of the analytic Naveira like approach. Maybe I should come up with some way to file such things. While I can’t prove it at the moment, I believe the most popular teaching approach has been for a long time: Do as I do until you master it and can modify it on your own.

There are many variations of the base out there. Opendoor, If you like, you may ask Gustavo Vidal about his teacher Paiva, who was known for a very elegant leaned style.

 

[Peaches]

I don't know. I think the 8CB can be a useful teaching tool, provided it's done well. It can make for a useful shorthand (step 2), and it incorporates so many fundamental movements into what, in the ballroom world, I'd be tempted to call an amalgamation. It's useful...if it's presented as a teaching tool and a jumping-off point for the fundamental movements themselves and variations, and not a Basic like you'd find in, say, cha cha.

Then again, I'm biased. I was taught with the 8CB from the beginning...although it was only later that I a)learned what the 8CB was, and b)realized that's what had been the basis for my starting off.

I also think that the cross, while it is a complex movement, doesn't necessarily have to be taught that way. Or perhaps not for followers. I learned what the lead for a cross felt like and was taught to follow that feeling long before I had an understanding of just what was going into it, and why it worked the way it did.

 

[Ampster]

I was taught the 8CB, and 6CB. I've used them ever since. I actually use them now as initiation points for many, many other movements, at anytime in between start/end of the 8CB. It is (I think) a good foundation if you know how to adapt it into your repertoíre.

 

[Angel HI]

As said before, I don't know where one would get the idea to not dance the so called pasos básicos 6 and 8. I was at a class taught by a well known milonguero who corrected dancers to dance these steps often. His reasoning..., "they make the transitions clean and simple, and easily followable".

 

[dchester]

As said before, I don't know where one would get the idea to not dance the so called pasos básicos 6 and 8. I was at a class taught by a well known milonguero who corrected dancers to dance these steps often. His reasoning..., "they make the transitions clean and simple, and easily followable".

I will certainly use various pieces of it, but never the whole (8cb) pattern together.

 

[bordertangoman]

I will certainly use various pieces of it, but never the whole (8cb) pattern together.

I would avoid it; its like learning to speak Spanish in order to learn how to tango; just an unnecessary layer of complexity.

the only time I found it useful was in learning Milonga where I was taught an abbreviated Swedish six step; so one could focus on getting the rhythm. ie 1 & 2 were dropped.

 

[AndaBien]

I will certainly use various pieces of it, but never the whole (8cb) pattern together.

If you lead a side-step or a crusada, as all dancers do, it doesn't mean you are using part of the 8-ct basic. You might be just dancing. However, if your mind it thinking about the 8-ct basic, in order to build or approach a sequence, then you are using it. That, I think, is unnecessary and a distraction from the essence of tango.

 

[Captain Jep]

Gosh its amazing how no one will admit to dancing a whole 8 step basic! Is it like pronouncing yourself to be some old fashioned weirdo?

Yes I do it from time to time.

For me its basic problem is not the back step. That can be minimised. Its the way the side step/cross often leads the couple to be two to three steps left of where they started. As far as I am concerned, it can only be danced on a fairly empty floor. Any traffic and you're then going to cause someone somewhere a problem.

 

[Steve Pastor]

Fabian Salas commented on this teaching method in an interview
http://web.archive.org/web/20151022192252/http://www.totango.net/salas.html

(I was there to look for a date related to another thread.)

 

[dchester]

If you lead a side-step or a crusada, as all dancers do, it doesn't mean you are using part of the 8-ct basic. You might be just dancing. However, if your mind it thinking about the 8-ct basic, in order to build or approach a sequence, then you are using it. That, I think, is unnecessary and a distraction from the essence of tango.

I assure you, when walking someone to the cross, I'm not thinking, "step 3, step 4, step 5".

 

[opendoor]

@ Lui thanks for the cited material (hope I will have time in the christmas holydays for the pre-Pugliese traditions..)

... Gustavo Vidal about his teacher Paiva...

.. he does everything only to be a student of Finito....

 

[bordertangoman]

If you lead a side-step or a crusada, as all dancers do, it doesn't mean you are using part of the 8-ct basic. You might be just dancing. However, if your mind it thinking about the 8-ct basic, in order to build or approach a sequence, then you are using it. That, I think, is unnecessary and a distraction from the essence of tango.

yes it would be treating tango as chess; i favour the Ruy Lopez opening: and- the Morphy Defense, the Steinitz Defense, and the Berlin Defense. and the cross is the equivalent of en passant