Trini: "What interests me is why some teachers are able to use complex sequences successfully while others are not.."
Attracted by "Contact improvisation" term I've made a bold visit to a Modern Dance class for "to-be-professional" dancers. It turned out that contact improvisation is considered so complex, that it is taught only to selected advanced members of the group. So that class was about choreography. The instructor, and director at the same time, auditing new dancers for his show, was giving sequences and other had to repeat them. Each sequence contained about 5 figures as I guessed. It was so hard for me, that I was hardly able just to mimic a general line. He has shown them no more than 2 times. And they did it ! These trained-since-babyhood girls and boys. It seems to me that they were so highly trained in technique, figures and choreography, they had well developed "movement memory", that some variation and specific choreography of this "ballet" was not of difficulty for them at all. The emphasis was on who does it better. Theatrically. I think a choreography lesson works the best when people are able easy to execute any small part of it and have developed "movement" memory. It may be useful to show the general line of the dance, how elements and figures work together. Putting them into unusual combinations develops inventiveness and fantasy. I remember myself being a beginner I visited lessons of one teacher which were based on choreography only. I would say it was useless except that I have learned how to distinguish small parts in a complex dance and developed "movement memory" by observing movements, so to speak "movement logic". That in turn greatly helped me when I have being learning tango from video tapes. Igor Polk PS Again, all things can be done right or wrong.. _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
