I recently attended a weekend workshop series being taught by a famous show dancer.
When he started the series, he watched the class dance, then started teaching fundamentals of social tango at a level that was appropriate for the class. I thought "great! this will be good." As the weekend progressed, it became pretty obvious that many of the students in the class were not interested in what he was teaching, and wanted his flashy show stuff. He's a very good entertainer, and I watched him shift his teaching to fulfill the desires of the majority of the class. I watched him keep trying to come back back to fundamentals, and watched the class keep losing interest, till he changed approach. By the time the weekend was over, he was teaching lots of very difficult showy stuff that most of the students in the class would never be able to do well, but they loved trying. So..... Was this a poor teacher, or a great entertainer & businessman giving the audience what they wanted? I certainly learned a lot from watching him teach. IMHO there are teachers who perform as a way to advertise, and performers who teach as way to make money. Disclaimer: This is simply my observation, and I may be totally wrong. _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
