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

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

Hi Aron

  Thanks, I got back on the list a week or 2 ago but have been regretting it somewhat - it's the same old hogwash being recycled all over again. Evidently the list hasn't gotten anywhere new in the past half year. I'll probably not stay. Still, I'm here tonight.

  We do 4 classes but they are 1.45h long so not very different from you..

  I leave out the forwd ocho because it gets rarely used in close embrace - at least multiple ochos in a row. We are essentially a close embrace kinda place. We do some beginners classes in a kind of open assymmetrical practice hold and when they have some basics, we switch to close for all the interesting stuff. It would look really stupid if I were to teach them stuff that I would later have to explain, yes well, this move you worked so hard on, it doesn't work so well in close so please forget it now.

  I leave out the sandwich not because it's too hard but because it's too easy. If a beginner knows only 3 moves and one is the sandwich, you can see they will do tons of sandwiches in every song and they will do it with really bad musicality. Also, you are a guy so I'm assuming you don't wear dainty shoes with open toes and open on the side, and so you don't imagine that sanwiches can be really painful especially if there are lots - some guys get very enthousiastic slamming their foot in, and sometimes you get skin pinched under the sole when the guy puts weight onto his foot. I've had nights where I wince every time I feel a sandwich coming and was close to tears by 11. I was wearing designer tango shoes. I don't want to train my leaders to do this.

  I didn't mention the lead-follow technique in my list but of course it's central. Just today I taught a popular class in which I made all the girls lead and all the guys follow. We still had guys dancing with girls. This gave me instantly a lot of bad leaders and followers which was exacly what I wanted. I made the guy-followers do all the bad things that girl-followers do and which they don't like. E.g. walk on their heels, stick their behind out, lean upper boddy backward, pull the leader, veer off to the side, go on autopilot, land ahead of the leader, and be Not Really There. I made the girl- leaders do all the things that girls don't like, I made them manhandle and yank the guy-followers using their arms, lead like wimps, lean backward, walk like ducks, all that. We had a lot of laughs, nobody felt personally targeted (since they were supposed to do bad things), and many very good Aha-moments were reported. During the practica afterward I saw girls practicing with
 girls and guys with guys and it was all very pleasant and relaxed.

  Recently I taught another class I called Tangopolitan: What Guys Want and What Girls Want. I did it because not everybody is crazy enough to hang out on tango-L and find out what the partners want in writing. I let them do the talking and they brought up exactly the points that I expected. We then did exercises to work on those points.

  Tine



Aron ECSEDY <aron@MILONGA.HU> wrote:
  Hi Tine!

The first really interesting subject since quite a while on tango-l! :))

> 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

I also fight with the problem of a slow start-up in tango compared to other
ballroom dances (and salsa! Yuck!)...

> 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.

Now that's unusual. Maybe I am a guy (and was a dancer/teacher when started
tango back then), so I approach the problem a bit more differently.

[typical:]

Our class 1 is mainly just a few exercises giving an idea about follow-lead
(without physical connection first!), relative movement, exercises
acclimatizing the 'pupils' to the closeness of each other (ignoring the fear
of the other's closeness), exercises to 'hit' the beat with a step, some
simple walking w/o connection on the beat, stopping and walking.

Class 2 is mainly linear navigation (walks, minor changes of direction, side
steps), rythm use (simple, skip a beat) w/o connection, then with practice
hold (women only, symmetrical), then major changes of direction (90 degree:
man turns in spot w/o pivot of course, woman takes sidestep around guy),
rocksteps (also: introduction to double beat timing)

Class 3 is usually changes of direction w/ rocksteps, outside walks, cross
system walks (with double beat change of feet), cross (as in milonga)
rocksteps, regular open hold

Class 4 is leading to cross (without back or sidestep, using outside walks
only in 3 beats!), improvisation exercises using all elements from above,
intro to ocho cortado (in fixed set of steps)

Class 5 is improvisation exercises with ocho cortado (with a number of
combinations using different preceding steps), cross and others,
introduction to pivoting (technique) using exercises to spin foot (ankle
around ball of foot, instead of knees/hips etc.), separation of upper and
lower body, concept of upper and lower body muscles (95% of all related
problems stem from the wrong muscles used: when a civil is told to move
upper body (s)he will use even muscles on foot and ear to do so!) and actual
parts of body to be 'felt' moving, some exercises for sequence of
spiral-and-spin

Class 6 solo molinete exercise (fixed square: fw step, spin fw, spin bck,
bck step, side step, repeat) as introduction, then molinete on circle around
partner (on free path using the above exercise only as a 'guide'), changing
speed (size of steps) of molinete (lead by chest of man!), molinete w/
practice hold, stopping and reversing the molinete at any point,
improvisation w/ using molinete as a tool for massive changes of directions

Class 7 separating front and back ochos from the above exercise, explaining
difference of intentionally leading single front and back ochos/crosses
('use space'/'use axis' approach for differentiating between the two),
leading several consecutive crosses (ochos), reversing ocho directions,
deeper explanation of spiraling in ochos, the (apparent) delay between
lead/follow

Class 8 usually for additional practice of all above, extra improvisation
exercises etc.

[I hope I didn't omit anything]

From this point we usually start how to put together simple combinations
from these.

No close embrace until class knows how to use basic improvisation of
crosses, linear steps, giros, simple sacadas in open hold.

Classes are balanced so, that all (100%) students can actually learn to
reproduce all the tasks in the 60 mins.

> 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

Back sacadas are an obvious no-no for a beginner of course. However, many of
these are not really a problem for my beginners. The sandwich is not a major
problem, and front ochos definitely not (actually, they are a whole lot
easier than back ochos - I don't even understand the reason why you leave
them out) and music is really simple in tango (there are only 3
possibilities in general: - in 4/4 - using 1 and 3 (simple), using every
beat 1-2-3-4 (double beat) and skipping any number of beats (relative to
'simple' usually - but that's an affordable simplification I think)).

Of course, this is my 'full basic' solution, which is a trade-off between
being technical and too 'instant' (hasty), with giving variety and
interesting tasks for the students but also keeping in mind, that giving a
much too complicated task will make them frustrated (difference: close
embrace - by definition - makes 40-70% of the people really frustrated, even
just taking up the embrace!).

I would be interested in more "how to start" course-descriptions!

Cheers,
Aron

Ecsedy Aron
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Aron ECSEDY

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