Tango is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful

Sunday, August 29th, 2004 | Uncategorized

I am sitting in my bed at 5AM and I can’t go to sleep because I am still dancing in my head…
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In every learning process there are stages. I have never found this to be as true, or pronounced and clear as when learning a dance.

First, you SUCK. You are uncomfortable, you feel like you don’t know what you are doing. You aren’t really getting a lot of positive feedback and you ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. Teachers are critical of you, you are more critical of yourself. It’s hard and EVERYONE is better than you (not really but you are convinced this is true)

And then there is TheTippingPoint, the point where it starts to click, and starts to become fun. Suddenly, you don’t need other reasons to go dance, it becomes it’s own self sustaining lifeform. Very few people make it to this point, and it is in different places depending on the dance, on the other dancers, on the city, culture, etc. In the states, not many people make it this far with partner dances, mostly I think because there have to be a lot of forces that make getting through the first stage possible. If EVERYONE is doing it, if a bunch of your friends take classes with you, if your girlfriend makes you… – these all help.

For tango in Buenos Aires, I feel like TheTippingPoint is pretty damn high, but I reached it yesterday, and today…oh my god is tango fun I don’t feel like I suck anymore (though I can almost taste so much of what I DON’T know, it almost hurts). And I have had some AMAZING dances dancing with follows that are actually good, really good, and they seemed like they genuinely shared my take of the dance.

It’s kind of funny, but I can tell that in a couple weeks my swing will have totally integrated my tango and it’s going to feel really, really good. I can’t wait to go dance blues with someone that does tango…luckily I think this happens in Portland on Friday, if not in San Francisco on Thursday.

I can’t believe I only get 3 more days of this, damnit

1 Comment to Tango is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful

John Perkins
August 29, 2004

Hey man! My vicarious vacation is ending? What up with that?!? ;)

To the later stages to the learning process, I would add would be these…

Option 1: You continue to improve (via talent and/or practice) until you become world class.

Option 2: You start to realize your limits (in talent, time you can devote, etc.)

If you don’t experience 1 or 2 eventually, you ain’t payin’ attention.

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