2542  Christy Cote's syllabus for DVIDA

Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 18:47:08 +0100
From: Hector <hector.ariza@NTLWORLD.COM>
Subject: Re: Christy Cote's syllabus for DVIDA

Interesting. I've heard of Christy Cote's syllabus for DVIDA. Apparently the
DVDs are about to be released, but the book is already available. Has anyone
seen this stuff? Any more feedback out there?

Thanks, Hector.

----- Original Message -----

Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 11:49:39 -0700
From: Lee Sobo <lsobo@EVENTSTOP.COM>
Subject: Christy Cote's syllabus

The fact that a TAngo syllabus was written by Christy is a good thing.
It demonstrates the need for such a thing.

However, it should be noted that we at El Mundo del Tango have been
using a syllabus written by Ive Simard perhaps 10 years ago and is
complete for Bronze, Silver and Gold levels of Tango, Vals, Milonga and
Pecho. This was the first and is the original syllabus written for the
Tango. If you'd like to see the contents, you can view it at
https://www.elmundodeltango.com/video_library.htm.

Just my thought that if you want to use a syllabus, you might want to
consider using the original.

Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 19:04:14 +0000
From: Oleh Kovalchuke <oleh_k@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Christy Cote's syllabus

Lee Sobo wrote about the "original" tango syllabus:

>If you'd like to see the contents, you can view it at
>https://www.elmundodeltango.com/video_library.htm.
>Just my thought that if you want to use a syllabus, you might want to
>consider using the original.

Also from the same site:
https://www.elmundodeltango.com/asimard/Coming_Soon/coming_soon.html

This way is to madness. I'd rather be dancing tango.


Cheers, Oleh K.
https://TangoSpring.com

>From: Lee Sobo <lsobo@EVENTSTOP.COM>
>Reply-To: Lee Sobo <lsobo@EVENTSTOP.COM>
>To: TANGO-L@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
>Subject: [TANGO-L] Christy Cote's syllabus
>Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 11:49:39 -0700
>
>The fact that a TAngo syllabus was written by Christy is a good thing.
>It demonstrates the need for such a thing.
>
>However, it should be noted that we at El Mundo del Tango have been
>using a syllabus written by Ive Simard perhaps 10 years ago and is
>complete for Bronze, Silver and Gold levels of Tango, Vals, Milonga and
>Pecho. This was the first and is the original syllabus written for the
>Tango. If you'd like to see the contents, you can view it at
>https://www.elmundodeltango.com/video_library.htm.
>
>Just my thought that if you want to use a syllabus, you might want to
>consider using the original.

Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 15:18:07 -0500
From: "Christopher L. Everett" <ceverett@CEVERETT.COM>
Subject: Re: Christy Cote's syllabus

Lee Sobo wrote:

>The fact that a TAngo syllabus was written by Christy is a good thing.
>It demonstrates the need for such a thing.
>
>

It demonstrates the need for no such thing. Rather it demonstrates
a person's willingness to create a syllabus.

>However, it should be noted that we at El Mundo del Tango have been
>using a syllabus written by Ive Simard perhaps 10 years ago and is
>complete for Bronze, Silver and Gold levels of Tango, Vals, Milonga and
>Pecho. This was the first and is the original syllabus written for the
>Tango. If you'd like to see the contents, you can view it at
>https://www.elmundodeltango.com/video_library.htm.
>
>

Bleah! Phooey! I suppose we can adopt the Ballroom Dancing Business
Model from here:

1. Make students pay for lessons.
2. Make students pay to perform in the Teacher's/Studio's showcases.
3. Make students pay to rehearse for the showcases.
4. Make the students get all their friends to pay to watch the showcase.
5. Use the showcase to market the teacher/studio.
6. Go back to step 1.

It's a machine for extracting the maximum amount of cash from dance
students, with the unnoticed-until-too-late side effects of laying waste
to individual expression and authenticity.

Let's be honest about why one standardizes anything: for the sake of
making money, nothing else.

I suppose if you want to become the McDonalds of Tango, you are
perfectly free to. But perhaps you should stop calling it Argentine
Tango, and call it Ive Simard Tango instead.

Having watched my share of ballroom people working their way through
bronze, silver and gold syllabi for each and every of 27 different dances,
I might also point out that people dancing out of a syllabus tend to dance
far too alike. We'd never have dancers as different as for example Carlos
Gavito and Omar Vega. We'd have clones.

And they seem not to dance in a way true to the spirit of the original
dance. Watching ballroom dance folks samba turns my stomach,
because I know what real Brazilian samba looks like.

>Just my thought that if you want to use a syllabus, you might want to
>consider using the original.
>
>

Why bother with a second-raters limited conception of Tango?

Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 17:54:06 -0600
From: Tom Stermitz <Stermitz@TANGO.ORG>
Subject: Re: Christy Cote's syllabus

I would judge the success of a curriculum on whether it sent students
out into the community (or festivals or Buenos Aires) with the ability
to dance.

I guess you could create a bunch of dancers who skillfully danced only
with each other, but that is a business strategy, not a successful
community building strategy.

Of course, if your goal is to produce good stage or maybe good showcase
dancers, then that would be a different way of measuring success.

The Bronze/Silver/Gold terminology seems designed to market the
curriculum itself to ballroom studios, or else to market tango to
people familiar with the Ballroom Studio way of doing business.


So, I'm suspicious of any move to get tango into traditionally
organized ballroom studios. Look what they've done to social ballroom!
Only two styles of ballroom they tell us! What about all the OTHER
great social dances and dancers of the 1910s and 1920s?

While some local ballroom studios have offered the odd Argentine tango
class in Denver, their students either cross over to the tango
community, or else they merely dabble in tango, not really learning it.

One problem has been that these ballroom teachers have not been part of
the tango community, so their teaching ability has been based on their
skill at memorizing and regurgitating something off a video, not
actually learning how to tango, or going to Buenos Aires.

They did not at all have an ideology of community building.


On Jul 6, 2004, at 2:18 PM, Christopher L. Everett wrote:

> Lee Sobo wrote:
>
>> The fact that a TAngo syllabus was written by Christy is a good thing.
>> It demonstrates the need for such a thing.
>>
>>
> It demonstrates the need for no such thing. Rather it demonstrates
> a person's willingness to create a syllabus.
>
>> However, it should be noted that we at El Mundo del Tango have been
>> using a syllabus written by Ive Simard perhaps 10 years ago and is
>> complete for Bronze, Silver and Gold levels of Tango, Vals, Milonga
>> and
>> Pecho. This was the first and is the original syllabus written for the
>> Tango. If you'd like to see the contents, you can view it at
>> https://www.elmundodeltango.com/video_library.htm.
>>
>>
> Bleah! Phooey! I suppose we can adopt the Ballroom Dancing Business
> Model from here:
>
> 1. Make students pay for lessons.
> 2. Make students pay to perform in the Teacher's/Studio's showcases.
> 3. Make students pay to rehearse for the showcases.
> 4. Make the students get all their friends to pay to watch the
> showcase.
> 5. Use the showcase to market the teacher/studio.
> 6. Go back to step 1.

Tom Stermitz
2525 Birch St
Denver, CO 80207
h: 303-388-2560