Debriefing of Try Tango! quick start to Argentine Tango class, 2015-09-04
I enjoyed teaching last night’s Try Tango! quick start to Argentine Tango (see the outline here), a 45 minute introduction to the dance at the beginning of the practilonga. The class received polite applause at the end, and then through the night I appreciated a number of attaboy comments, and particularly the substantive feedback from an experienced dancer saying, “I believe I even learned some things, like that thing you said about how we walk.” [Walking, in an Alexander Technique point of view, is a series of overbalancing forward, “falling”, and recovering. We looked at the effect that way of thinking has on walking, and we viewed how walking backwards is a “video reverse” of walking forwards.]
I particularly value the things that people–teachers
Greetings
I made an effort to greet and connect with each arrival.
Dress
I was freshly washed and wore nice clothes that would pass muster at any milonga, setting a good example.
Wireless Microphone
Although the dance space was small enough that my big voice could easily have covered it, I’m glad I set up the wireless microphone (remember to attach the antennas!) with a headset mic. In this way I could speak in a calm, easy voice and be assured that everyone could easily hear me.
Partners
Dance, at least the one we care about here, and many (most?) others, is about connecting with a partner. Making that sort of connection is probably the big draw for many people. Then it felt as if the solo work was running long. It was fifteen minutes, I think. A full third of the class. And yet, it seemed to produce good results. So often I see people paired up immediately, and the first thing they do is get weirded out over walking either with someone immediately in front of them or with walking backwards. With this solo part I wanted to emphasize two things.
- Walking is a natural thing we do all the time, and we want to bring that natural quality into our walking with a partner.
- There is opportunity and great value to practicing solo.
Ah! I remember now one approach to this I’ve considered: have couples walk side-by-side, hand in hand.
Problem Based Learning – Motivation
We make stronger learning connections, I believe, when we discover (preferably) or have revealed to us the solutions to problems we’ve actually encountered. I was hoping that during the walking people would encounter traffic jams and then wonder what to do in that situation. We had a good number of people, and the size of the dance floor turned out to be quite adequate. The students were quite good at maintaining spacing, so there were no blockages except for the ones
I wanted this a motivation for learning/figuring out what to do on a spot, when you couldn’t be moving across the floor. I wanted to teach about the “rose and vine” (hat tip to Helaine Treitman for that image) nature of tango movement over the course of a song. We covered the concept and the answers, of course, but it didn’t seem to have the same impact as if they’d actually experienced the ‘real’ situation. …Aha! The reason they didn’t encounter the situation is because they were dancing solo! Partner couples, even experienced ones, don’t manage to maintain their spacing that well.
Hm, have to think about this one. I wanted them to have that experience of moving in place (which includes the important weight change) or on a spot before they got partnered up.
Dissociation – and Walking Inside/Outside Partner
We did some dissociation work, like the dressage “shoulder-in” (and “shoulder-out”) walking, as if your partner was to one side or the other of you. But we did not specifically do walking inside/outside of partner. It strikes me now that this would have been useful and desirable. Such work, walking to the outside (on either the “hand” or the “arm” side of the embrace) of a partner is a useful prelude to the motivation for the cross. (We did not cover the cross in this class.)
Designating Leader, Follower, 1st Leader
In my school of thought, everybody learns all the movements – at least at the beginner level – from the beginning–not: leader learns this, follower learns that. When it came time to create initial partners I asked them to form an outer circle and then an inner circle. (I forgot that I was going to ask that all those new to tango go to the inner circle, so that they would be paired with an experienced dancer. I think it worked out that way nonetheless. Hm, maybe I did say that and forgot.)
Then I designated the inner circle as “A” partners, and the outer circle as “B” partners. But it struck me then, as it has in the past observing other teachers designating partners by using non “lead” “follow” language, that this creates a hierarchy, even if only notional. Better would be to use two unrelated terms that are easy to say and distinct to hear, such as: A-1, 5-J, golf-soccer, samba-chacha.
He-She, Leader-Follower
I am proud that throughout the night I never referred to gender, and only once or twice I think, did I fall into leader-follower talk. My new standard for describing what dancers do is to establish the point of view, then talk about “you and your partner”. If I am talking about my demonstration–and I did precious little of that–I refer to I/me/my and my partner.
Pivots
It was gratifying to hear a student exclaim, “Huh! We actually do pivots in ordinary walking,” after my simple “real life” demonstrations [changing course when someone behind calls you; turning a corner]. It feels important to me to instill the feeling that Argentine tango need not be, indeed is not some otherworldly thing, but rather a use of natural body movements that we already know and do routinely.
The Action is Up Here
“I was watching your feet and they were going every which way!” I was demonstrating the molinete (more on that in a moment) as an application of stepping, then pivoting. (The foundational theme of this class, and my way of thinking about Argentine tango, is that fundamentally the movements are ‘merely’ some form of stepping and some form of pivoting.) I saw myself surrounded by heads tilted down, all eyes on my and my partner’s feet.
I pointed out that, yes, most everyone watching a lesson or demonstration pays close attention to the feet, because that’s where all the action seems to be, and in reality, everything happening below is motivated by what is going on up top. It is the relationship between the partner’s torsos that really tells the story, and we know that legs are under each shoulder (as leaders are told when learning sacadas). If you only think about and work with the relationship with your partner, then the legs and feet will take care of themselves.
This concept of watch the torsos and not the feet was a highlight of the class for me. Not only did that immediately divide the difficulty factor at least in half (two torsos moving slowly versus four feet moving quickly), but somehow the talk of keeping the relationship with the partners, even as they move about each other, conveyed the message of the heart to heart connection. My current partner, who had struggled with doing a back cross after the open step, was now squaring up to me on the open step, so that the back cross came easily. And, the happy results extended to all the students. It was almost magical.
Molinete
The molinete was to illustrate the utility of combining straight steps with pivots between each step. The simplest molinete has the leader stepping outside partner to the hand side of the embrace, such that the partner has done a back cross at the same time. Lead the partner to an open step across my path, then finish with a simple forward ocho. Repeat as desired.
This actually worked pretty well, even though in my experience the molinete isn’t taught until well into a beginner curriculum, and even though many of these students were never-ever dancers. I think some keys to success were: 1) assuming it would be successful, such that students had no feeling that it was a hard figure; and 2) simplifying it to the movement of one torso about the other. Indeed, as asserted, people’s legs and feet
Hm … I was going to question my choice of using the molinete, thinking that for a future class I might prefer to specifically include waking outside partner, on both sides, and then would make use of that with a cambio de frente move. But as I wrote that description, and reflected on the results, I like the way it turned out. In the practilonga that followed I observed people walking comfortably with each other, and using the molinete.
Impeccable language
I am struck (thankfully, only for a precious few moments a couple of times) by how easily a student can become confused by directions: they didn’t hear everything; they didn’t connect it with the context; they took something too literally; they don’t understand the referent (my left or your left?); etc. Of course the teacher can often be the source of the confusion by leaving out parts or making assumptions.
Right versus Wrong
It pleased me that I never found someone doing something “wrong”. I was always able to find some positive aspect in what people were doing, and then suggest ways to make it even better. Likewise, though the temptation is just as strong to do this, I never demonstrated “the wrong way” of doing something. I subscribe to the school that says if you want to show differences you can show a good way and a better way. This way, even if a student misses part of the message (“Now were they showing us what TO DO or what NOT to do?”) they will see a reasonable way of performing.
The Responsibilities of the Roles
I felt a bit chagrined that I had to refer to my outline to be sure I gave all five responsibilities the way I wanted to say them, nevertheless I was pleased at the way they were received.
Storytelling
I am remembering now that I wanted to do more of this. In the opening walk I did paint a picture of a typical milonga. And I believe I spoke throughout in terms of relationships and images and connections, without using prescriptive (“Do this!” “Don’t do that!”) language.
Timing
We started five minutes after the appointed time; we finished on time. People were mostly moving in some way with a minimum of standing and listening to me time.
Feedback
I encouraged each person to help each other person. “What can I do to make this more comfortable for you?” “I am feeling . . .” Despite all the things that can go wrong with it, I feel there is overriding value in peer learning. It builds community and sharing, and it instills the idea that we can all be teachers, beginning with teaching ourselves. Importantly, we want to instill the notion, and encourage development of the ability, for a student to assess the value of what they hear, see, feel. Whether it be from a teacher, another student, a partner, or even themselves!
Peer Review, Video Review
I am guilty of most often giving only lip service to the valuable concept that video review of oneself is a most powerful, fast acting way to internalize changes we want to make to improve our performance.
Regarding feedback (previous item), just as we use teachers and coaches to observe our performance and guide our directions for improvement in dance, we can and should do this for our teaching as well. I expect that many of our local teachers do this, at least informally, in the context of the various and many workshops with visiting masters that occur throughout the year. I wish now that I’d recorded this lesson so that I could have reviewed it with two of my advisers, Andrew Sutton of Dance Ninjas and Ted Maddry.
Encourage Followers, All to Give Ideas
Only Follower saying … “I need a pattern to go from.”
Only Leaders speaking up.
Conclusion
I enjoyed teaching this class, and I hope I have other future opportunities. Judging from what I saw on the dance floor during the practilonga that followed, and from the comments, it was a success. And by reviewing this review before my next outings, I hope to make them even greater successes.
–David