Dancing Teachers
I am not a stellar dancer.
I’m not.
I am not amazing.
I’m not.
I am not even by any stretch of the imagination clean, clear, or even very ‘good’.
I have absolutely ZERO illusions about that or delusions by some people’s standards.
Once, long ago. When I was just a wee little tango devotee. I had the fortune to ask the following question of a dancer that I thought had his collective shit together. I won’t name names here, but if you come to my classes, I’ll tell you who it was! I asked him what his greatest failure was, and he was said….”My Musicality”. I thought I understood what he was talking about at that point. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had no facility to understand it. At the time when I heard that I was astounded, dumbfounded actually, and for me…rather speechless. I sat there motionless for a little bit, letting the words settle. And then he went on to explain that what he was referring to was how he interpreted the music.
There is a reason I started this post by stating that Im not a stellar dancer, and that is because the better I get (by some people’s standards), the less proficient I feel. Which is the same as the story of the dancer above. I didn’t understand his statement above, and now years later I do understand it. He felt inadequate. As do I. These are natural feelings, the better and more studied you are about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, the more you realize that you know absolutely nothing. Tango is one of the only places in the world where not only can you imagine that you’re bad, but you can see it up in your face on a regular basis. You will see this at any given milonga on any given night. You can see who’s who in the room and how they’re dancing and how their partners feel about dancing with them. And you can easily see just how you stack up. This is not about being better or worse but being proficient in your skill set. My first tango teacher used to say to me, if you can get to say “YES” to another tanda, you’re doing pretty good!
I am however a good teacher. I know HOW to teach what I know about tango. And I dance exactly what I teach.
I state this because as I’ve learned over these 4 and a half years, there are 3 kinds of dancing teachers in this tango world, there may in fact be more than this…however, I haven’t run across them.
I’ll explain:
The 1st Kind: The Dancer/Teacher. The first kind refers to the Dancer whom by their very nature has risen above the masses and been asked to perform for a room full of people because they exemplify the very nature of the principles or values that we hold near and dear to our tango hearts – they look good dancing! And because of this, they’re usually asked to teach what they know or how they’ve gotten to what they know to be true for them. They may not be the best teachers in the world and frequently have little facility for communicating through one modality, let alone multiple modalities, their point of view which is usually ‘monkey see, monkey do!’. That’s not true of all Dancer/Teachers but a fair number of them that I’ve had the pleasure of taking classes with. The student is left, as I was, to figure it out for themselves the HOW to do X, Y, and Z! Mind you there’s nothing wrong with this kind of teacher, some people seem to learn best through this method of instruction, and actually a greater number of students actually prefer this method of instruction that includes very little discussion of technique but more emphasis on how it looks but not how you actually do…
The 2nd Kinda: The Teacher/Dancer. This kind refers to the dancer who has turned to Teaching because they’ve experience dancing a little bit, and risen above the masses a bit, and/or think that they have. They possess a fervent desire to control others to get them to do things RIGHT, and while their own dancing may not be stellar, they can at least correct others or so they believe they can. They may in point of fact be quite adept at figuring out the dance, and are quite skilled at explaining that to others. They may have had a LOT of private lessons with a lot of different teachers, and are able to recite the language of those different teachers in a cohesive way on multiple levels. They may have even go so far as to travel from different city to other cities, staying a while and picking up more dancing experience. Through it all they do posses one thing that most dancers do not possess, the ability to analyze and to communicate what they have discovered in a cohesive and clear fashion! Passionately, but cohesively. Mind you, this type of dancing teacher may not dance all that well at all. May have issues displaying x, y, and z vocabulary. Has terrible posture, uses force to accomplish his or her goals, treats the follower as a play thing, or any number of bad habits.
The 3rd Kind: The Dancing Teacher! The last kind refers to the rarity of the mixture of the best of both of the first 2 kinds of dancers. They have an innate skill to dance exactly what they teach and to teach exactly what they dance, and to do it well, and at the same time, have put in enough time to be well respected by their peers and other dancers of all different ages ranges, and styles. They speak with a voice of years of experience. They dance with such grace and unfettered brilliance that you can’t help but admire them. They teach clean and clear technique and style all at the same time. They may be adept at both leading and following and are able to display both sides of the embrace equally well. They are popular for a reason. Their classes are always full and they are able to teach in to multiple modalities not just one. They are able to literally lift up who they dance with and make them look stellar (a rare quality indeed, I’ve only seen it done a handful of times myself) even though who they’re dancing with are absolute beginners. They’re able to dance with the most advanced dancers and the most beginner dancer with equal skill and talent and makes you literally scratch your head.
I think if nothing else I aspire to be the 3rd kind of teacher.