Will they even practice just walking 1+ months? I ask because in other dances, leads often want to move on the "fancy moves" on group lesson 2.
What Is Tango Doing Right/Wrong: Recruiting and Retaining
- Thread starter JournalInTime
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JournalInTime
Forum Master
Which, in AT, isn't even meant to be danced as a pattern! The patterns are teaching sequences designed to show students how to embed a movement concept in tango, vals, or milonga music, so they see how to flow musically into and out of the movement. They're about context. But yeah, some students proceed to dance teaching patterns as if they were extended steps . . . that's how we get the 8CB on the pista.
Speaking frankly: When I get complimented on my vocabulary – and that's rarer than being complimented on my musicality, comfort of embrace, and posture – it's usually for doing a lot with little. I've danced entire tandas with walking variations, and valses with little more than "progressive turn left/progressive turn right, with changes of dynamics," and had people say good things about it. On the occasions when I go nuts with too much vocabulary – and I admit that I do, because I'm not perfect – it rarely wins me a compliment from any follower who's any good.
Better yet, they could drop patterns completely. They could learn to dance movement particles like pause, weight shift, pivot, displacement, axis shift, and level change, and to compose steps from particles, and then string steps into phrases. That way, they would be on the music, seem to have a big vocabulary, but mostly be doing basic stuff in diverse combinations. Obviously, classes in complete steps or patterns would remain useful, but mostly for teaching context and offering examples.
Ok. Maybe I'm using terminology incorrect. What word do you use for generic things like "8 count basic", "salida", "caminada", "ocho" or "corte"? Step patterns? Figures? Something else? That's the sort of thing I mean when I say someone learned "a pattern". I think you do learn those types of things.
In contrast a series of these things I call a "routine" or possibly "a sequence".
My issue above isn't with students dancing teaching patterns. My issue is that some leads don't know how to signals their suggestions clearly. The consequences is the lead intends to do one thing and the follow perceives a different intention. Or the follow just perceives 'huh'?
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Something like the eight-count basic or any salida is a "sequence" or "pattern," because it consists of multiple movements. Most people would call the movements within those (walk/caminata, cross, etc.) "steps." There's lots of room for vagueness, though, with things that are made up of several movements, like ochos, also being called "steps," with certain people preferring "figures" to differentiate them from walking steps.
For sure, you learn all of these things! Good teachers will make you learn the particles of movement first. I was taught weight shifts in place, steps to the front and sides with either leg, pivots in either direction on either leg, and a couple of other things before being shown ochos or crosses or any of that, and then shown ochos and crosses, and finally shown how to contextualize all of that in the cuadrado and 8CB, not to be danced but to demonstrate flow.
To be perfectly honest, I retained mainly the particles and the concept of flow. That was fortunate for me (others might not have felt so lucky!) due to my brain working better from irreducible elements than from prefabricated structures in general – not just in dance, but in mathematics, physics, writing, mixology, cooking, etc. It meant that if I saw a step, sequence, pattern, whatever you call it, I could often assemble it from parts . . . with a lot of work, of course. I never said it was easy, only fortunate.
Patterns are somewhat at the root of this because leaders who lean on them assume that they can signal "Pattern XYZ" once at the start and have the follower do Pattern XYZ like a robot or a television via remote control. They've never learned to lead the individual particles well, so with a follower who has no idea what Pattern XYZ is, they're lost at sea.
The principal advantage of learning to lead every last bit is that this happens less often (I would not say "never" . . . never say "never"). Disadvantages to this method are doing more work than is absolutely necessary and a heightened risk of falling into being over-controlling leader. Avoiding the latter is why I'm so obsessed with proposal-counterproposal dancing that blurs lead-follow a lot: Doing that serves as a check against becoming over-controlling. I think that particle-based leading is only fun for followers if it's accompanied by conversational dancing with marginal rather than strict roles.
Agreed. I've experienced leads who appear to think the follow will recognize that they want to do a pattern in its entirety based on merely initiating the first bit.
I once took a group lesson I loved where a the teacher intentionally picked out three beginner things that "start" the same and discussed what the leader needed to do so that the follow knew which to do. So, sort of like "AB" vs "AC" vs AD. It made it clear to leaders that merely indicating "A" didn't fully and completely reveal what pattern it is to the follow. You actually need to continue leading!
Sadly, that teacher has left the path of teaching. (Happily, she is going to college. She is 18 and decided that maybe she's better off with a more stable job.)
I rarely run across leaders who are clear but over control. Overcontrol is generally forcing position which, in my view, is not "leading". Good leading primarily indicates. It can also help. But it never forces a move.
For that matter, forcing moves can actually be unclear. Because-- while a leader my not realize it-- they can be forcing one part of the follow to move in one way and another in a contradictory way. That is similtaneously unclear and forceful. It is oddly unclear in the worst possible way.
I don't see proposal counter proposal as different from lead-follow. I thought that's precisely what lead follow is.
TTanguero
Forum Master
It's not dissimilar in tango. Personally, I spent the first three months of privates working primarily on the walk, It has been a core focus in many of my privates since then, but I think that is fairly unusual in the UK at least.
But I think the goal should be to teach people the skill set to do self-improvement. How else are we actually going to evolve good dancers?
The particles need to be sequenced into something that flows naturally from one movement to the next. Otherwise its the equivalent of pressing random keys on a piano
opendoor
Forum Master
Walking is difficult to learn in group classes and it is rarely taught properly. The willingness to deal with it must come from the student. When I had my first private lessons, I asked the teacher how I could improve. Walking was the answer. For two months, I paid to walk up and down the room alone to get feed back. For another two months, I walked up and down side by side. After that came walking in the embrace and so on. But the most intense part still was walking side by side. The teacher can feel the body mechanics directly and can also add her own rhythm on top.
As I've mentioned at least once elsewhere on this board, having multiple patterns with the same beginning in a lesson is standard practice in swing (Lindy Hop/Balboa/WCS/etc.) -- maybe your teacher has experience with that as well as tango.
I doubt it! She's very young and it was her first time leading any group lesson! I suspect she got the advice from someone. But as a follow, I thought it was absolutely terrific. (Because I notice beginner and even intermediate leads so frequently think once they lead the "A" part of the AB pattern, you don't need to signal that the second part is "B" and the follow is left with.... it could be B, or C or....?)
They have a lot to think about leading. So I sympathize. But they need to be shown this issue without it being a "lecture".
JournalInTime
Forum Master
I had a teacher who did that as well! She called your elements B, C, and D "high-contrast leads," because they all look the same at A and then branch off. The objective was less learning A, B, C, and D, and more learning that they can be sorted into almost any order ("almost" because not all combos make physical sense), so you should never, ever assume that one order is standard.
I had a different teacher whose thing was "three ways in, three dynamics in execution, three ways out." So, when he taught, say, B as the day's goal, he insisted that each student couple find their own A1, A2, and A3 to put before it, their own B1, B2, and B3 as variations on it, and their own C1, C2, and C3 to put after it. When he had few students and a bad mood, he made us dance all 27 possibilities {A1, A2, A3}{B1, B2, B3}{C1, C2, C3} in front of him, and until we could dance each one fluidly, he wouldn't acknowledge that we understood B.
This second teacher was the same one who disliked people assuming that turns would be front-side-back-side in a slow-slow-quick-quick-slow timing, or always continue in one sense. So, he made us dance turns that were all front or back steps, or front-side or back-side transitions, in every timing from all slow to all quick, with direction changes as he called them out on any step. However you feel about that artistically or pedagogically, it taught leaders to lead their turns and followers not to fall into default stepping. To this day, when I vals with followers he taught, the level of expression is much higher.
We get those in tango, but also leaders who don't force anything yet leave no space for interpretation. For example, every simple step can be tripled (or, if you're fast enough, quintupled, etc.) without ending up in the wrong walking system, or the follower can insert a pause in many places. However, there are leaders who – more with their glare, sudden tense body language, refusal to invite again, etc. – make it clear that such things Aren't Done. So, they are controlling even if they aren't physically forceful.
A certain kind of tango traditionalist really, truly believes that leaders must be manly men, followers must be womanly women, and Mr. Macho is In Control of the Dance. Follower counterproposals are unwelcome under pain of possibly being criticized on the spot, certainly never being invited again, and conceivably being gossiped about as a bad follower. Mr. Macho gives orders, not proposals. It's still lead-follow, but in the sense of boss-employee, not spontaneous negotiation between equal partners.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Of course! Important skills to teach are self-improvement, improvisation (even invention)), and the ability to self-analyze to detect and fix errors. I'm not saying otherwise.
What I am saying is that these things need an objective external observer to work well, to ask questions such as "Have I improved?", "What do you think of this concept I came up with?", and "Do you notice this, too?" Nobody is genuinely objective with themselves due to a profound observer effect (though some people are egotistical enough to claim to be exceptions to human nature), and social dance partners aren't much better due to having their own dance to worry about and possible social costs to pay. So, for virtually all dancers, the observer task falls to teachers.
I grant that perhaps if you have a practice partner whose level is high enough that they could be a teacher, you might be an exception to this. But planning around all dancers finding that would be folly! The dearth of practice partners is a perpetual complaint in tango, and the number of people who are able to observe and critique others technically rather than emotionally is too low to count on ever finding someone like that.
So, for the ordinary tango dancer – or even the very advanced, talented one – a teacher is on some level the most logical bet.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Yep. That's why I said, "the particles and the concept of flow" (emphasis added). You can't have one without the other. My remark was structured: [(particles) + (flow)] + [proposal-counterproposal dancing]. The two things in brackets [] are on an equal footing, and so are the two things in parentheses (), which I was treating as one.
TTanguero
Forum Master
Sure, but those flows should be improvised on the fly from the particles, not figured out beforehand (other than in the sense of playing with variations in lessons and practicas until your body understands).