Why all tango teachers tell you different things

Veronica Toumanova, original text is here

Sometimes at the end of a workshop a student would say to me: "You teach basic things that make a lot of sense. Some of them are so essential that I wonder: why no one has told me this before?" Another remark I get sometimes is: "You know, I took classes with various teachers and they were all telling me different things, sometimes radically opposed. I feel like every time I had to change completely. I am confused and feel that I have wasted so much time. Why does this happen?"

There is a simple answer to these questions. If tango dancers needed to have their competence certified by a diploma from an officially recognised institution before being allowed to teach, the above situations would become exceptions. The complex answer is that, although tango is slowly moving in the direction of a fairly unified approach to teaching, so far it was exactly the absence of institutionalized education that has given us a dance so incredibly rich in forms, styles and techniques. Each person that has come to tango has shaped it in his or her own way, each beginner has in the long run defined tango just as much as any professional by choosing from whom and what to learn, how to dance, which events to support. All the professionals you admire have developed their skills much more by researching and practicing than by learning it from someone else, they often have literally invented what they are teaching. Differences in approaches and techniques are inevitable.

Tango is an organically growing phenomenon and so far has been quite resistant to the attempts to define it or limit it to a particular form. To me, this is what makes tango fascinating, powerful and intensely alive. This also makes tango confusing, especially for new dancers. Tango is a self-educating community in which professionals are not necessarily those who have studied to become one, but those who manage to make a living from it. It means that everywhere the dancers with most motivation and experience become teachers and/or event organisers. They do it for various reasons: passion, personal development, financial motives, public recognition and so on. The only community in which we see some kind of "institutionalized education" is Buenos Aires. There we find schools, companies and competitions that can provide, if not a diploma, then at least some kind of credits.

So, anyone in tango can call himself/herself a tango teacher. The biggest advantage of this situation is that it allows a powerful growth of the tango community, for each new teacher brings in new students. The biggest disadvantage is that there is no guarantee of quality teaching. Especially in small and isolated tango communities there are often no other options than to learn from those who have been dancing the longest and those who simply want to teach.

Dancers that decide to become tango teachers often start by giving beginner classes. It is easier to create a new group of students that to convince the already experienced dancers to take classes with a brand new teacher. This means that beginners in tango are exposed to teaching of all kinds: from very good to very poor. As people progress, they sometimes navigate to teachers who offer better quality, but at that point they have often acquired inefficient movement habits that are hard to replace. This is the number one problem many dancers face at some point in their development. This is a frequent issue I encounter when new intermediate or advanced students come to study with me.

Ideally, one might say, beginners should get the best teachers. But if beginners get the best teachers, who then will teach the advanced? In reality, the most well-known and respected maestros travel, they do not have their own regular classes and rarely teach beginners. This is a task for the local teachers. Unfortunately, beginners tend to be nonchalant in their choice of teachers. We usually assume than anyone calling himself a professional has solid credits, but we have to understand that in tango this is not the case. People running the tango school closest to your home, the one you would choose out of convenience, might be very skilled or completely ignorant. They might even have studied with the greatest maestros and not have learnt a thing, because, you see, a teacher cannot make you dance tango, a teacher can only help.

Besides, great performers are not necessarily excellent teachers and excellent teachers are not necessarily top performers. This is true for any artistic field, teaching and being an artist are two distinct skills. If a dancer is considered good enough to teach others, it does not yet automatically make him able to transmit his or knowledge effectively. Learning how to teach movement is a process in itself. On the other hand, the fact that someone has a talent for teaching, or the wish to become a teacher, does not relieve him or her of the responsibility to build a solid basis as a DANCER first. A dancer's most important teaching tool remains his own dance. To teach literature you do not need to be a writer, but to teach dance you need to be a dancer first and foremost.

If you are in the beginning of your tango study and in your community there is a variety of teachers available, I suggest you choose wisely. It might save you a lot of trouble later. When looking for a teacher, look for the dancer first. If you are a beginner and have friends who already dance, let them take you to a milonga (or a class) and have a look at how the teachers dance. (You can also watch them on video, but it's not the same). Talk about what you see with people who have experience, but also make your own judgement. Try to notice those who are really dancing, with ease and flow, in harmony with the partner. They might be the most spectacular dancers in the room or they might be the quiet couple walking around the floor, barely attracting attention. Social tango is an introvert dance. If all you have ever seen of tango are stage shows, remember that in a class you will be learning a very different kind of tango. This is why you should look for trustworthy sources of information. I can assure you, however, that in a milonga you will notice the truly excellent dancers in a blink of an eye. You will not necessarily like their style, but you will be immediately aware of their quality.

Once you know that certain teachers are expert dancers, how do you know if they are also good teachers? "Look at their students", you might say. Unfortunately the matter is trickier. A teacher is not a factory. The most competent teachers cannot do anything for you if you are not making an effort to learn or other things are blocking you from improving your dance. The important thing to realise is that it is not about finding a hypothetically "good" teacher, it is about finding one that can teach you WHAT YOU WANT. There are many directions in which you could grow in tango, choose one that inspires you right now. If you know what you want, you are bound to find someone able to teach you that. When you find a compatible and competent teacher, stick to him/her for a while and try to get the most out of it.

There are three signs that your teacher/student relationship is working. First, you progress in the desired direction, provided you are making efforts to learn and your teacher is making efforts to teach. Second, you gain more and more clarity about what you are doing, understanding the dance in greater detail every time. Third, you are enjoying your growth and your dance, you are inspired and enthusiast about what you learn, even if the way there is challenging and sometimes you feel like nothing is working. If the above is not your case, then either your teacher is not right for you or you are not really learning.

Next to local teachers there is also a large buffet of traveling maestros who give workshops at tango events. They are often more accomplished than the local teachers but not necessarily. If you are only in your first or second year of tango study, try not to eat the whole buffet at once. In the beginning it might become very confusing trying to learn with too many different teachers, especially as you never know how competent they will turn out to be. Even if all the teachers are excellent, they will inevitably put the emphasis on what they like, what they do best, what makes THEM passionate about tango. If you do not yet have a global view of the dance as a logical system of movement in which all those variables have their place, it might overwhelm and confuse you. Try them out, but again, choose wisely.

The more experience you get, the faster you become in assessing whether a teacher is right for you, the easier it also becomes to separate the competent from the incompetent. Always remember that you, the student, are the most important factor in the learning process. A good teacher will be able to assess your level of skill, understand how fast and in which direction you can grow and then help you take ONE STEP FORWARD each time. But you will be the one taking the step.

Back