Re: [TANGO-L] Question about Tango technique - reply to Tom

[Iron Logic <railogic @yahoo.com>]

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they feel they

are forced to do something extremely unnatural to their bodies and can

hardly pay any attention to music or their partners anymore. Intricacies

of tango-didactics! ;-)))

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I think usually its best to teach them exercises they can repeat outside the class. Yes its impossible pay attention to so many intricacies at the same time.





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For instance, when women are instructed to

"collect" - that should be understood not as a command but as a desired

result - because once so instructed, they concentrate on their feet,

lots of tension travels down, lots of stress is applied to the foot, which

stops to support well, and the balance is lost

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Asking women to collect IMO is simply wrong teaching. What is necessary is the ability fully transfer weight in a controlled/conscious way and to always pass through the center. . there exercises for achieving this...anyway.



You are correct about consequences of women trying collect, result is they hop, 'run away' from the partner and balance is missing.

Technique can be counter intuitive, but it needs to be learnt I think there is no alternative, well there which is to be alternative be a beginner for long long time;).

Actually from what you posted, your problem is NOT with teaching technique, rather teachers simply providing descriptions of what they like to see, which is like a doctor trying to hide symptoms, without actually curing. This does not imply teaching technique is not the best way.

Yes the training needs to both psychological and physical. Simply knowing the mechanics does not be mean one can dance.

The other issue is there are lot of thse teachers danced for years and years and acquired skills and become great dancers, and now it is so natural to them and they do not know what they do anymore;). Fortunately it has an unintended benefit, students come to them for long long time.



Rai


Darya Kucherova <kucherova   @ROGERS.COM> wrote:Tom,

I could not agree more! The more I learn about tango, the more I appreciate good teaching, because tango technique is so counter-intuitive. You gave examples yourself! For instance, when women are instructed to "collect" - that should be understood not as a command but as a desired result - because once so instructed, they concentrate on their feet, lots of tension travels down, lots of stress is applied to the foot, which stops to support well, and the balance is lost. In stead, my instructor would tell us to think about our spines, or to find our axis, and if the free leg is relaxed, that will result in the feet collecting. Same goes for big strides. They are a result of a lead for a woman who can understand it and relax the hip so that it goes where she is lead. It is truely amazing for me now (especially given all my previous experience with tiptoes and arched backs ingraned into my tango habbit) what you think or where you concentrate immediately reflects on how you move. In
 general, the more result-driven instuctions are, there more wooden the dancers feel and look. I increasingly find that better instructors find a more, say, yoga-like approach to teaching, the feeling and relaxation driven instruction. Especially for women! For women half of the training seems to be actually psychological rather than physical; because for a contemporary woman to be suddenly completely deprived of individual choice and tuning in, and calming down, and relaxing is much more alien than shaking up, tensing up, making progress, heading on, keeping up and so on.

It is interesting how much effort and experience goes into teaching where the instructor wholly abstracts from the idea of the "image" of how the student must look while dancing versus always focusing on what goes on internally.

regards,
d.