Monday, May 30, 2011

The importance of individuality

One criticism I recently heard about tango festivals is that it creates clones of the teachers. I appreciate the value of festivals, especially ones that bring great teachers. But great teachers teach more that proper dancing technique. They teach the mindset one must have. They teach the culture of the milonga. They teach the attitude of dancing. Etiquette. All the intangibles that only those who have danced since their childhood or even since their teenage years can understand and transmit it around the world.

Yet I also can see that there is some truth to the criticism, although it's more of a side effect than the desired effect, and it does not happen to everyone. But some students idolize their teachers to the point that they imitate their every single aspect, down to their mannerisms, their clothing accessories, and of course the way they dance, down to the way they wrap their fingers around their partner's hand. This is all good if the teachers are great. But the way I see it, it is not the best way to learn, because no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you get, the best you can be is an imitation of your teacher. And indeed, nobody can dance exactly like anybody else. Imitating everything about somebody is silly. Even if somebody dances exactly like Javier Rodriguez, they'll always be a shadow of him, because Javier Rodriguez is true to himself, he puts who he is into his dancing. And this goes for any other dancer too... I only use Javier Rodriguez as an example not only because I admire him but because there are many imitators of him in this continent. Emulating the superficial aspects of somebody's dance will not give any depth to the dance. It is nothing more than the shell of the original. The copies have not lived the same life as the original. They do not have the same values nor the same attitude towards life. And as such, all they can copy is the surface. There is no depth.

On the other side of the argument, there are dancers with plenty of individuality. They dance like nobody else. Yet they are awful. And what they dance, I don't want to call it tango, because it is a grave insult to everything I love.

Perhaps the most difficult thing in tango is finding one's individuality without falling into the trap of dancing something awful. But it is absolutely essential. I asked Gabriel Misse in a class how to develop one's individuality, and he told me that it was only through technique that this could be achieved. Indeed, I think perhaps the best way to find one's individuality is to perfect proper tango technique, and by that I don't mean the exact details of how famous tango teachers place their hand this way or the other. I mean the most basic things, like walking, embracing, and leading technique. With the right technique and the right mindset, one can put their feelings and emotions into the individuality of their dance, and perhaps this will show on the superficial details, but it will have depth.

9 comments:

  1. We're in complete agreement with you and thanks for this post. It is really hard to comprehend why those who learn from Javier, for example, feel the need to copy his left hand-hold (where he has the middle and ring finger holding the woman's hand in a I-Love-You gesture). That was something we saw a few too many time at the Seoul Tango Festival. You could actually see the stress in the man's hand as he tried to maintain this hand position!?

    J&K

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  2. Don't get me wrong... I think there's plenty to learn from Javier Rodriguez, as well as other great teachers like the Misse brothers, Bichi... But the point is to find yourself in the tango that they teach, not lose yourself in others' individualities.

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  3. "IIt is really hard to comprehend why those who learn from Javier, for example, feel the need to copy..."

    Consider that they are using a teaching method very heavily based on copying the teacher. No surprise that attracts many students who copy everything they see the teacher doing.

    The spookiest example I've seen is girls copying Geraladine Rojas' just-seen-a-dead-rat expression. Thankfully within a few weeks of her moving on, this wears off. Along with what she teaches.

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  4. Chris, I wonder if you've ever taken classes with Javier and Andrea. They definitely do not encourage copying, and those who do are just missing the point. Even the best teachers can't get every single one of their students to perfectly get the message. Of course, all kinds of learning involve a degree of copying, especially in the early stages. If we are to compare tango to a language, Javier and Andrea encourage proper pronunciation, punctuation, grammar, choice of words, etc., not the exact tone of voice, mannerisms, or exact sentences. In fact, professional dancers are disgusted when people copy their steps, because it feels like they're being robbed of their individuality, or, even worse, mocked.
    It's hard to believe you've taken a class with them and not seen the value of their teaching. What you see with the copycats are not the desired effect, they are the side effect.

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  5. > Chris, I wonder if you've ever taken
    > classes with Javier and Andrea.

    I have, though not since about 10 years ago.

    > They definitely do not encourage copying

    That's not what I saw. Their classes we heavily based upon showing steps which we were to copy as they came around and corrected us.

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  6. If, after 10 years, you still haven't gotten the point, there's nothing I can do for you. Even the best teachers can't get all of their students to get the point. You really think they show those steps so that students can do them exactly the same way? You don't think it somehow has to do with the teachers wanting the students to try something beyond their technical ability as a way to stimulate them to improve the technique? Most of the sequences they teach, they improvise on the spot. There is no point in trying to copy it exactly beyond getting the technique right which will allow for more room for creativity. It's not unlike a native speaker teaching a non-native through complex sentences and sophisticated vocabulary, not so that they memorize these sentences but so that they can learn proper grammar and expand their vocabulary. If you're content with a 100 word vocabulary mostly comprised of monosyllabic words, then even the best teachers can't force you. The point was never copying.

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  7. "If, after 10 years, you still haven't gotten the point..."

    Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply I'd been doing classes since 10 years ago. Actually that's about when I stopped doing classes.

    "You really think they show those steps so that students can do them exactly the same way?"

    I do. As soon as I did them a different way, JR came over and "corrected" me.

    "You don't think it somehow has to do with the teachers wanting the students to try something beyond their technical ability as a way to stimulate them to improve the technique?"

    I do. And what a crackpot educational principle that is. People don't learn social dance by struggling outside their abilities. They learn it by dancing their best within their abilities.

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  8. Of course he came over and corrected you, since you were probably doing it with the wrong technique. The point is to get the technique in whatever it is he was teaching so that it can be applied to other things you can do freely. You've had 10 years after the class to meditate about what the point of the class was. As I said before, there's nothing I can do if it still hasn't come to you.
    And it's kind of ridiculous to assume that one's abilities are fixed. If you would rather stay within your initial abilities rather than trying to expand, then of course Javier Rodriguez's classes are not for you.

    That is all.

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  9. "And it's kind of ridiculous to assume that one's abilities are fixed."

    I suggested no such thing. Good learning inside the boundary of one's abilities expands that boundary.

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