Friday 25 March 2016

"Trust me, you need me..."

I had planned to write about milongas in other places but something has come up

I don't want to single out Charles. He is a good DJ, one of the best in Britain for me which is to say he plays a lot of the kind of music I like. I have been to many of the milongas he runs. But the milonga is completely separate from what Charles' article is about.

It is simply a good example of something I see in many quarters. Lots of teachers and teacher-bloggers say the same thing. Even people who are just dedicated class-goers talk about how lazy and complacent non-class dancers are or have become. 

One moment some of them try to undermine us calling us Calvinist, Amish even Mormon for preferring embrace and connection to flash moves, the next moment we are called idle. The similarity linking Mormons with the rigour of the other two sects is lost on me. I suspect it’s an example of the easy sensationalism I associate with that peddler - spooner of easy pap into the gaping mouths of her groupies.   A lazy Amish...you know arguments from that camp are cobbled together when they start to look contradictory.  Unsurprising then when it comes from a notorious self-promoter a "peoples’ favourite “tangoblogger”.  I think there must be something odd there in essence.  There is more of the self promotion here and if you can be bothered there’s more still but I find trawling through that stuff off-putting. And there are the many selfy-videos on her Facebook page.  How she can stand the focus I don't know.   I suppose it's all part of the self-improvement deal. But performance where the spotlight is on one couple, that sort of writing, that kind of high self-regard, that didactic approach, that general outlook is far from what dancing tango is like for me.

These sorts are randomly trying all angles for show, for effect, for a shallow attempt to misrepresent and discredit rather than for the substance of the claim. They all have a reason though - the teachers tell you it is because they want your money and the class-goers tell you the same because they've spent so much time and money on classes and workshops and adored their teachers so slavishly that they have gone past the point of no return.

2 comments:

  1. It's interesting to note that the complaints of these teachers who feel the need to undermine people's dancing to fill tango classes are almost always about handicaps (such as off-axis posture and weird embraces) that arise from hours spent copying teachers in tango classes...

    “We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”
    ― Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

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