Re: [TANGO-L] Memorized Patterns and Improvised Tango

[Carlos Lima <amilsolrac @YAHOO.COM>]

I have just spent an hour or so trying (almost successfully) to work my way
through and through the "Memorized Patterns and Improvised Tango" thread in
the tango-L archive.

I thought, if I have only one question to ask those contributors, what would
it be? I know. OK, who is in charge of going around freezing the (presumably
beautiful) moves shown by good teachers and great tango masters for the
presumable purpose of giving students some good ideas that they might use in
their own dancing? Please tell me where to find the sonuvabitch, because lots
of pros, for reasons that just may not be 100% innocent, fail to freeze their
examples long enough for the students to get them into their bodies (esp
leaders). Maybe I can get Frosty the tango snowman to come around and do it
behind everybody's back, greatly accelerating the process of learning how to
do a few things fluently and in good form. Am I saying something wrong? Oh, I
am sorry.

If I had only one suggestion to make, what would it be? I know. OK, there are
lots of things one learns: macrame', guitar strumming, to feather a sailboat,
the general theory of relativity (I am afraid I had enough trouble with the
restricted one), oriental languages (I wish), etc. Great variety, true, you
know, large muscle based, small muscle based, purely conceptual,
politics-and-general-human-badness-based. But tango dancing cannot be TotallY
different from EverY single one of those thousands of things. There must be
here and there a tiny bit of commonality, no? You are not going to tell me
tango is just, like, UUUUUUUUUnique, are you? (OK, what about the rest of
you?)

My suggestion, if anybody is still in speaking terms with me, is that you
translate the various proposed ideas about memorizing patterns, and
improvising, and all the rest of it, as closely as possible in terms of
something else that you have successfully learnt. (If nothing, you are
excused. Also, if you pride yourself of possessing no common sense at all,
you will reap no benefit.)

An example? OK. Learn Argentinean Spanish (the best one) by concentrating on
perfect alphabetizing. If you do not know what alphabetizing is, can't help
you, I do not know, either. But I am told it works. At some point diligent
alphabetizers start, suddenly and spontaneously, to express original
thoughts, even speak in verse with lots of lunfardo words. It really works.

Another example? Learn (English style, the best) Viennese waltz by placing
the student inside a huge, fully automated, machine, like those to fix
wrecked cars, that basically MakeS the neophyte dancer go through an
absolutely perfect version of the right movements. After several years of
this, voila', a perfect VW dancer emerges. I have not seen it done exactly
this way, but I have seen great (barely) economically and technologically
feasible imitations. The best that cottage industry can offer.

I have a second question, after all. How come the neophyte leaders lose their
inborn navigational skills as they learn those awful sub-zero patterns? Could
it just, could it just be that the patterns in cause were not only frozen but
also distorted into a Guernica-like jumble by the action of the low
temperatures? Anyway, I am a little skeptical about that inborn ability. OK,
maybe it is there in early childhood; but, if you live long enough, you just
want to trounce those snotty females out there and their dainty escorts. Give
us tangueros the least incentive, and we will be out there, going for the
kill. Everywhere in the world, actually, the best do not dance around the
room; they dance AT the closest neighbouring couple. I think I have got the
hang of it myself.

Cheers,


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