564  The winning attitude

Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 20:03:06 GMT
From: michael <tangomaniac@JUNO.COM>
Subject: The winning attitude

Most beginners know they don't dance well. Most suffer from performance anxiety. (Any connection between sex and tango is NOT purely coincidental.) The best thing that can be done is to tell them to relax.

When I started I was pathetic, even though I danced ballroom for a year. After one year of private lessons, I moved up to terrible. After four years of lessons, I've moved up to horrible.

What beginners really need are sympathetic partners. A woman has to know how to walk (including ochos)and when to cross AND NOTHING ELSE. A man has to know how to walk and to lead the cross and ochos AND NOTHING ELSE. Jealousy and feelings of insecurity creep in when beginners measure their dancing against more experienced dancers. (The more experienced dancers are not necessarily as experienced as they think. They only look experienced because beginners don't know what to look for in dancing. Once they learn, they find out the experience dancers don't necessarily know how to lead or follow for the complicated figures. One of the partners could be compensating.) I'll never forget Anna who told me "I'd give anything for a man who can do the simple things well."

If a woman told me I was lousy, my response would be "Tell me something I don't know." In interpersonal behavior classes I've attended, participants were told to talk about feelings and not attack the other person. I'm more receptive to a woman who says "I didn't understand the lead" than one who says "you don't know how to lead!!"

Beginners need a winning attitude and not be hard on themselves. The truth is it takes many months to dance tango --- POORLY. Once I learned I didn't have to shove everything I know into 3 minutes 22 seconds, I started to dance better because I was more relaxed. And when I was relaxed, my partner was able to relax.

Michael Ditkoff
Washington, DC
Looking forward to the NY Tango Festival in July


---------- Robert Dodier <robert_dodier@YAHOO.COM> wrote:

Should we tell someone that they, personally, are lousy? Or should we say that their dance technique could stand improvement?



I'd rather be dancing argentine tango