Practica X

I went back home to eat before going out again. My German flatmate, Guisa and I had just defrosted the fridge which had developed a wall of ice within, thick enough to build an igloo. I was dutifully working my way through the chicken breasts which had been left in the freezer. They weren’t mine, but they were only a month old with no claimant and I couldn’t bring myself to chuck them away, not when I see whole families rummaging through the bins of Buenos Aires every night, looking for something in edible condition.

Then I dressed up to go to Practica X with Kemal, a Turkish farmer I met at DNI. I had been to Practica X before with Iancito and knew not to go there without a partner. He, in turn, could speak no Spanish and wanted the moral support.

Practica X has moved from Medrano to a venue in Palermo on Humboldt 1464, between Niceto Vega and Jose Cabrera, which makes it almost impossible for me to get to from my home in San Telmo. Still, plucky bird that I am, I did it. It took two subtes, a colectivo and a walk. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I got there, in time for the lesson. The new venue is a humungous hall with stage lighting apparatus hanging off a high ceiling and wall lights that keep changing colour, the sort of venue one associates with wedding receptions, not dancing tango. There were many women at a loose end, even with a number of women leading other women, so I was ultra relieved to have a partner. Although Kemal has only been dancing two months, he is incredibly keen and a fast learner.

The class was interesting in that it was tightly produced and stage managed. In other words, there was a man with a stopwatch holding up fingers and whispering in the teachers’ ears. It was still far too heavy on teacher talk for my taste. I really didn’t like that they wouldn’t answer questions as they arose, telling students instead that there would be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the lesson. Learning is not achieved by listening passively. Learning involves teaching yourself and this means getting things clear as you go. I like dance lessons to be heavy on demonstration, practice, monitoring and instant feedback and light on theory and explanation. Learning by watching and doing. That would be my way. We shared a table with Claudio, who teaches pedagogy to teachers and he totally agreed with me.

Whilst there is some merit in doing things the way they have always been done, there is also merit in going with the flow and making the most of opportunities. I don’t know why tango teachers don’t avail themselves of modern classroom technology to enhance their teaching. If I were a tango teacher, I would have a video camera to film my demonstration of the information I was trying to convey. I would then project that film onto an electronic whiteboard and have my students attempt to produce the movement themselves, with a model onscreen to follow and check themselves against, playing repeatedly, whilst I wondered around the classroom monitoring and giving feedback. I might even film students to show them what they were doing, so they could judge for themselves what they needed to work on. Whilst tango teachers may be unable to afford the technology, I would have thought that the milonga and practica venues and better established tango schools, would.

I have to say, however, that I really liked Gaston Torelli and Moira Castellano’s take on the giro. They had the man move around the woman and they said something along these lines:

‘Don’t think of the woman as being passively led. Don’t try and get her to do something. Dance and she will naturally respond to your dance.’