--- Mario <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > the last class I took in December was billed as a class > to learn; floor navigation, musicality and connectivity....it cost me $100 and the teacher's idea of musicality was to call out the steps during a song and everyone perform them basic 8, ocho cortado, back ocho, etc etc... in open embrace... that was THE last class I'll ever take from an open embrace teacher
Hi Mario, I'm glad you decided to stay on the list and look forward to your future posts. Before you close off the opportunities to work with open-embrace instructors, I'd like you to consider the possibility that the instructor was using a particular pattern to bring out the musicality in a piece of music. Not being in the class, I can't say for sure that would be the case, but it might be. For example, I teach a vals class after my initial beginners class so that students can get more familiar with phrasing. In vals, the phrasing is pretty predictable with the 1-2-3-1 rhythm clearly emphasized between beats 7 & 8 in an 8-count phrase. So I teach a simple but specific pattern that ends with the woman doing the molinete between beats 7 & 8. When it's done right, the vocabulary matches the phrase and students go "Aha!". When it's not done correctly (e.g., the man begins the pattern with the right foot instead of the left), students can easily tell when they've missed the rhythm. It makes them more conscious of actually dancing to the music and encourages the women to be more responsible for the music, too. The teacher might have also just wanted folks to dance in open because it is often easier to work in open if one is working with patterns, without the additional issues that comes with dancing in close. I bet, though, that if you had decided to close the embrace and still do the pattern, that would have been perfectly fine. I know they'll be folks on their no-pattern, just-dancing blah blah blah kick, but I just figure their tango is as limited as their thought processes. I'd rather not see that happen with you. Just a few thoughts. Trini de Pittsburgh PATangoS - Pittsburgh Argentine Tango Society Our Mission: To make Argentine Tango Pittsburghs most popular social dance! http://patangos.home.comcast.net/ ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
