1979  Cabotage

Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 11:41:47 -0800
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Cabotage

I was looking for something else altogether, but here's something useful:
navigation.

Who is at fault?

In my neck of the woods (NOT Portland), main culprits are definitely the [non
progressing] old timers (of all "ranks").
For those, a navigation grade in my system is roughly "minus the number of
years dancing".
(NB - There are progressing old timers.)
Reason? In my neck of the woods teaching, in this respect and many others,
has been steadily improving (on average) over the years.
Being that it takes about 15 minutes to bestow a PhD in "tango floor craft
principles", a modicum of better teaching has immediate effects.
Raw beginners CAN move nicely right away, and start right away learning bad
habits from the veterans.
Part of the long run recipe is to teach ONLY ronda-conformant movements.

Concept of tango.

Too highfalutin a thing for such humble (but fundamental) thing as the
do-not-bother-others-while-dancing thing.
A master (say, Naveira) can teach a long (no, not just long, infinite) step
pattern that I would have absolutely no problem with in a CrowdeD milonga.
See the Bridge to Tango 93-94 Masters tape for details.
Yes, some men are a little slow on the uptake, and they need to be taught to
stop before they hit (or are about to get in someone else's way).
Most get it, I think.
On the other hand I know people who do only small things and scare me to
death.
Even though short is generally better for all kinds of reasons, length of
dance elements is a navigational red herring.
Red herrings are the number one cause of people getting the wrong ideas about
navigation. (Goes without saying, right?)

The inevitable nonsense (a cat in hiding with the tail showing).

It is not about tango "navigation", it is about auto driving.
A bureaucrat at the NHTSA has come up with an idea that is getting everybody
excited.
An end to driver licences, driving schools, codes, safety programmes, TV
campaigns, courts (including the court of public opinion), all of that.
People will just get in cars and do whatever they want, no fines, no jail.
Instead of all of that complicated bureaucratic machinery, we will just have
high quality courses and practical sessions where the chosen few who care and
can afford the price tag will improve their skills at staying alive in the
ensuing most interesting action.
Good instructors ought to keep collisions light and not too frequent. Say,
once or twice a minute, or so. After that you are on your own.

The welcome sense.

To put it mildly, I do not always agree with what Janis Kenyon has to say
about tango.
But look at her recent contribution on the navigation subject.
Hers is the way people talk, who understand the (rather simple) subject.
I like especially the last paragraph:

"I danced several tandas last night with Gregorio who uses the space
available and can dance creatively when the floor is very crowded. He dances
mainly in the second lane and went against the line of dance when he could
use the space behind because he couldn't move forward. He protected me, but
there was nothing he could do when the couple doing the 8CB moved in for the
kill."

(Janis, if by 8CB you mean Salida-Resolucisn kinds of combinations, next time
please add "badly" afterward. One can do that classical type of sequence, if
one so wishes, with OnlY ronda conformant steps; or practically in PlacE!)

There is a lot more sense in several other recent contributions, some really
excellent, but I have no time to do them justice.
In fact, in what I have found earlier in the archive, dated within the last
two years or so, the great majority makes eminent sense to me. (Not so in
ancient times.)
It seems that this is one subject that seems to have been "licked" in this
list, though not, alas, in real life.

Final touch

Once, a woman friend of mine (and occasional contributor to this list) and I
were trying to dance in the middle of average local mayhem.
She cannot stand being bumped or worse, and after one more "gentle brush with
death" she commented: "What can be so difficult to understand about moving
counterclockwise around the room?"

What indeed.

Cheers,