Choosing your own teacher

From years ago, maybe 2015

Many teachers can dance and well.  I like to see them in the ronda. You see then if they can really dance and, much less commonly, how many dance unconsciously without thinking who is watching. 

Fascinatingly, some people who cannot dance at all, whose dancing is somewhere between embarrassingly atrocious and just mediocre set themselves up for reasons of income, pocket money, status or who  knows why and astonishingly, persuade people not only that they can dance but that they are well qualified to show someone else how to dance. What cocky self-aggrandisement on the one hand, what credulousness on the other. 

Women just pick up dance by dancing with good dancers and some of these dance superbly. But they are less common for guys because they don't currently, typically get to pick up dance the same way.

When I wonder, will, if understandably scared of just hanging out in less-than-welcoming milongas and practicas more people choose their own teachers? When will those who, seeing good dancers and hoping to be noticed, go up to someone they don't know or barely know and say: I love how you dance, could you show me sometime how to dance like that? I have never heard of that. Not once. Why is that? What are we so scared of?  What might come of it?

Or at least, I hadn't until I decided to ask one of the most experienced dancers I know, one of that small group who give real dances.  From the the way they dance guys like this seem to just understand women, and what we like.

- I want to ask, did anyone ever say to you, along the lines of: I love how you dance, could you show me sometime how to dance like that? Or did you ever hear of that?

- Yes. :-)

- A guy or a girl? 

- Both. 

- And then what happened?

- I usually would answer e.g. I show you only by dancing with you. Some take the offer, some don't.

- That's what I guessed. Thanks. 

Is it common?

- No.

- So what do you do if they ask questions?

- About how they should dance? Usually I just smile :-)

It made perfect sense. What else would you do? Tell them to dance like you, like a teacher, to enact some figure, to twist your body this way or that, to put your hand here, your foot there, to think about your posture, to stop listening to the music?  That doesn't sound like much of a dance to me.  If you find someone you like to dance with and listen to what their body tells you, why would you break that spell?

Besides, people who can really dance can't, I notice actually tell you what they do. They can show you, that's all and then you find your own way.