Tine wrote: I am an organizer of a festival. I have over the years seen 2500 participants choose an average of 4 classes each. What goes fastest is whizzbang moves for intermediate to interm-adv. The basics classes fill up only when the whizzbang ones are sold out. *************************************************************************************************
I started thinking how festival workshops are advertised. Some festivals list classes for beginners, intermediate, and advanced. Some festivals have workshops that begin at the intermediate level. There really isn't an objective method to define intermediate and advanced. I've seen festivals list number of years dancing as a guide where advanced is 3+ years. (Oh, if that was only true!) The only dancers who are truly honest about their skills are BEGINNERS. It seems that just about everybody else is advanced. I've come across a lot of people who are very judgmental about ranking partners. When something doesn't work in a class and your partner asks "how long have you been dancing?", I guarantee a compliment is not in your future. I've been in classes which were beyond the dancer's skill level but didn't stop them from attending. There seems to be a stigma about being intermediate, as if it's a curse. Instead of listing classes by skill level, how about just listing the workshop name, what is to be covered, and the requirements, such as able to execute ochos, sacadas, etc. Another problem is that sometimes what is taught has no relationship to the workshop title. I remember one teacher saying "We're innocent," meaning "we're teaching this class and have no idea what the title means because we didn't come up with it." Maybe if more emphasis was placed on the workshop subject and not intermediate or advanced, there would be less pressure to take classes beyond a person's skill level. Michael Washington, DC Going Sunday to New York's Brooklyn Antic followed by tango _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
