Excellent post by Joe! Additional (lengthy) comments below. Joe Grohens wrote: > The meaning of words is developed socially. In tango it is commonplace > to find different people using the same words to mean very different > things.
This is very true, and the salient point of the recent exchanges about "Changes of Direction" and "Volcadas" and the like. Ultimately, the communication reaches an impasse when people start assigning overly technical meanings to these words. Trouble is, it's a symptom that such a person's dance has reached an impasse as well-- if only that person could see it. But there's a more down-to-earth level to this as well, which may help demonstrate why this sort of thing is not merely semantic, but an index of one's values and experience as a dancer. We teachers often use very simple words in our classes & lessons: "embrace" or "walking" or "connection"-- none of these are mysterious terms. At first, new dancers take them for granted, assuming that they understand the dance because they understand the word. Then, as they discover the /thing/ and begin to deepen their knowledge, they realize they DIDN'T understand the word in the beginning at all. Very often, dancers will have a minor revelation at this point, smack themselves in the foreheads, and repeat precisely the same words they've heard in class or around the milongas, surprised at the new sense they make. We've all done it and we've all seen others do it. It happens because we understand the /thing/ freshly, and are revising the word's connotations (and denotations) accordingly. That is, our first-hand, direct experience with the /dance/ leads us to consider the word as something more meaningful, or more specific in its meaning. The danger is that, with a little learning of this type, the word can get locked in its new meaning or association, and become a technical or specific term that essentially is being used as shorthand for something very particular. The knowledge itself seeming like an achievement, the word becomes invested with personal triumph. And it's hard to give up that triumph when it has launched one past a former barrier. But-- it's just a renewed case of taking the word for granted. The word itself represents an idea, an experience, a degree of understanding: and by fixing its meaning too much, a dancer only /establishes/ another impasse. Namely, by turning a simple word from plain prose into jargon. Those of us who have (so to speak) gone well beyond this point, and sundered the cocoon of jargon for ourselves-- in our dance and in our talking about the dance-- are naturally going to take issue with those who insist that their stepping-stone is a monument. The words for us are poetic, not technical. To make them technical is a reduction, and moreover one that may very easily mislead someone who's on a more promising path. It is small-minded teaching, and it interferes with deeper progress and enjoyment. It makes deeper progress exponentially more difficult. It is crutches, not dancing. I see this happening all the time as a teacher and dancer, and it makes me increasingly critical of how teachers give their students half-truths and shortcuts. It leads to disappointment on the dance floor and-- after an initial burst of progress-- to a more serious and lasting retardation of growth. It afflicts teachers most of all: I've seen so many of them atrophy, largely because they seduce themselves into believing their own half-truths, they lose their curiosity, and they delude themselves into thinking they own something. I would even say it's a more dangerous professional hazard than physical fatigue, because it erodes the soul & imagination of a dancer. In short: It's very easy to let words, once invested with the beginnings of direct discovery, define the dance. The more fruitful way is to keep the causality the other way around, with the dance providing the words with meaning and the words never hijacking the dance. That, after all, is what produces the initial breakthroughs: ego is the only thing that shuts off the valve thereafter. Again, bravo to Joe for a great post, whose ending presents this in an ego-free personal account. And bravo to those who patiently, tenaciously indicate when language is being pigeonholed-- though doing such so often invites others to get defensive of their own minor triumphs and to retaliate with accusations of mere semanticism, when in truth it's completely the other way around. Jake _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
