Re: [TANGO-L] Neuvo vs Traditional (turns)

[Yale Tango Club <yaletangoclub@yahoo.com>]

Hi all
  If you can't do turns, pausing is the only simple way to not crash into the couple ahead of you. I like pauses, of course, but turns are so much fun.
  We at the Yale Tango Club teach bootcamps designed to get our newbies into business ASAP. BTW we don't spend as much time on walking as we should int he very beginning, this is a trade-off as it puts ppl to sleep and you lose them before they can even do decent walking (if you can get them to stick around, they will be receptive and even demanding of walking technique after they have progressed a bit). Beginners  want to do Stuff, so either you lose them to the other teacher who will teach back sacadas to your beginners, or you take up your responsibility and you teach them stuff that feels gratifying but is still easy to do and dance-floor friendly. Fortunately there is nobody in town here who teaches back sacadas.
  Therefore.
  In our bootcamp, class 1 is walking to the beat, the cross (4 counts of it, no backstep), a rockstep and pauses. Class 2 is back ochos and getting in or out incl to the cross. Class 3 is left half turns, two or them, (A) the QQS turn out of ochos into parallel, and (B) the rockstep turn out of parallel into ochos. We drill them to do A+B and B+A so they can do a full 360 turn and end up in the line of dance, whether they are doing ochos or walking in parallel. These are very easy turns and by teaching them early they become an essential part of the vocab. Class 4 is either Everythign All Over Again but Now in Close Embrace, or a class on Everything All Over Again but Now in vals and milonga, with musicality.
  After the bootcamp all the classes are drop-in, and feature more left turns, several right turns, ocho cortado, slightly pivoting mini-leans, more rocksteps, double time steps, back-and-forth steps, more beginnings, pausing and ending moves, all that.
  Our bootcamp is devoid of all the non-essential stuff to get started. Also we don't do anything that is challenging if done in close embrace or bad for floorcraft, or just hard or unpleasant to do. So these things we don't teach in the bootcamp or even EVER: front ochos, the sandwich (which is a musically and physically painful move even in the hands of non-beginners), sacadas on any front ochos, back sacadas, back steps in any way shape or form, calesitas (balance) and molinetes ending on a front ocho. There is nothing wrong with a molinete but when I learned it, I was not taught an effective way to get in or out of them. Feel free to blame my first teacher, but I like the left turns described above SO MUCH better.
  BTW our community is very young but our style is traditional, mostly close embrace or working up to it.
  Best
  Tine



Sean Dockery <sean13@MYREALBOX.COM> wrote:
  Hi All,

Just read through Tom's thoughts on teaching beginners (bellow), most of which I am in agreement with. However, in creating his order of teaching, Tom put turns last.
In our community (San Francisco) there are lots of teachers who produce lots of intermediate dancers, many of whom (quite unfortunately) teach beginners on the dance floor. For this reason, I like to teach beginners "servival molinetes". After all, nobody will do perfect molinete after their first class on the subject, so its good to get them started on a subject that they will probably spend years on. Also, if beginning followers can get around the "Intermediate" leaders in a crude sort of forward- side-back-side, they are less likely to get an earful of advice on "how to do a grapevine". In addition, if you teach leaders to lead the molinete well in the first place (without any complex patterns) this will avoid misconceptions later that leaders often get about the follower's role when they learn complex patterns (often taught with very little technique) The key is to teach the basic technique of the turn, and not show any "patterns" at all.

Sean

__________

People learn linear motions easiest, and circular motions much slower. This
makes sense if you consider how little we spiral and pivot in our normal,
walk-a-day world.

Nuevo Techniques (to me) involve a lot of pivoting and spiraling motions,
which are best introduced later on in the learning process. I prefer it to be
MUCH later on, after people have balance, lead-follow; after they already know
what tango looks and feels like; after they can pretty much ALREADY dance tango.

LINEAR BEFORE CIRCULAR

There are a lot of linear ideas for beginners: rhythms, lead-follow, musical
phrasing, connection, embrace, clean steps, heels down (straight legs). In
fact, a beginner guy can learn enough in one hour to walk a lovely beginner lady
around the room that same day. It is a whole lot easier to learn to TANGO (a
simple tango) than it is to learn the VOCABULARY OF TANGO.

NEGATIVE TECHNIQUE

I'm sure you have seen the poor beginner ladies being cranked off balance by
intermediates trying to thrash them through ochos. If they don't quit, they
are embodying bad habits which will take twice as long to remove. Some teachers
even show ochos in the first classes, before students can hear the beat,
before they can stand upright. And then those same bad Intermediates insist on
teaching the grapevine to every new lady that walks in the door.

A sensible learning methodology would ensure skills build in a logical
sequence:
(1) Stepping on the beat (walking), concepts of the social dance floor, and
Balance
(2) Hearing the musical phrase, initiating/receiving movement, lead-follow
and Balance
(3) Spiraling, no-pivot ochos (close-embrace) and Balance
(4) Spiraling while pivoting (turning ochos or open embrace ochos) and
Balance
(5) Turns still take a lot of practice, but... at least there is a technical
foundation for turns.

SLOWING DOWN THE LEARNING PROCESS

I think many teachers are excited about teaching cool moves, and fail to
provide a good foundation for LATER learning cool moves.

Teaching out of order doesn't speed up the learning process. To the contrary,
it slows people down because they pick up bad habits which take twice as long
to correct. At the worst end, you create a conception of tango as "A BUNCH of
COOL MOVES", rather than cool moves are "SIMPLY THINGS TO DO WHILE DANCING
TANGO".

I see a lot of intermediates with tons of vocabulary but ZERO musicality and
NEGATIVE technique. The poor women who crouch while walking backwards, or on
the other extreme look like they have a stick stuck where the sun doesn't
shine; the poor guys walking around with a hunch, or cranking with their arms.
These bad habits sometimes infect whole communities.... or if we are a little more
lucky, only the segment of the community tied to certain teachers.

Timmy here:
I enjoyed reading every word you wrote Tom.
It's extremely difficult to teach tango and keep students when there are
teachers who will teach what the student wants to learn, verus what the student
needs to learn.
Joanne and I both feel a person should learn the basics of tango first. To
learn the social dance first before going on to other areas of tango. Learn to
navigate around the dance floor before you learn to through a lady up in the
air, or kick between their legs. And how many ladies I see don't, and are not
taught, the importance of collecting their feet. They just want to learn
colgatas and leg raps instead.

I lost count on how many instructors I have had lessons with who constantly
tell us the walk is the whole dance, and how they spent years perfecting their
walk.
It's taken years to where I'm finally seeing the people in Cleveland really
dancing social tango well. Now with Neuvo being introduced, I'm sure the social
dance will lower in quality. I have talked with other cities where they
started out dancing Milonguero and when Neuvo started, the floor craft went down.

What I do see positive about Neuvo is that it is bringing young people into
tango. And I hear in Buenos Aires especially. But soon the kids see the
traditional tango and then are hooked on what I feel is the most romantic style of
tango to dance. For Joanne and I it's the contact we have when we dance that we
love.
For those who favor Neuvo, or Alturnitive, I have no problem with this. But I
do feel if you're going to hold a milonga keep it one or the other, not a
combination of the two.
I don't want to sit at a table waiting for a traditional tango, and I'm sure
the people who prefer alturnitive don't want to wait for something they would
want to dance to either.



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