Well, it's been a few day since I blogged. Since Thursday I've worked out twice, had a high carbohydrate day, practiced with a tango and Lindy practice partner, attended three dances and a friend's Army retirement ceremony, and realized the bottleneck in my learning has shifted dramatically.
For a while now I've felt very frustrated with my ability to get good information on new techniques. As mentioned in my previous blogs, I was seeing the video analysis was taking care of that. By attending the three dances this weekend, I really got how my new bottleneck is integrating the information. I tried a lot of the new moves during the dances with limited success. I practiced some of the new material with practice partners. We made progress. It's also clear to me my ability to generate data on new technique is much greater than my current ability to make them functional on the dance floor. That's fine with me. The urge I've been feeling to tear apart moves is dissipating. I'm not going to quit. I'm going to slow down. This is fine. There are other things that have been waiting in the wings.
These things include learning more about business planning so I can move forward with a few ideas, doing my taxes, sleeping a bit more, perhaps doing more solo practice of the material I want to learn, and, oh well, lots of other things not related to chaining myself to a computer with dance videos. Jeez, that was a long sentence.
As for the dances, I attended UWMBDA, a Dando Mambo social event, and JumpTown's monthly dance. They were all good in their own ways. I had a lot of fun at UWMBDA playing with my new material across several dances. I also spoke with the DJs about using the UWMBDA library as a resource for finding more Tango music. They're long time friends and were kind enough to give me a compressed copy of the UWMBDA library. The quality of sound is much lower than mp3, and I have to delete it when I'm done sifting through the songs. I'm now going through it looking for New Tango songs. There are a lot. Let's just say that once I get all the songs I like from their lists, I'm probably going to have the best Neo Tango library in the country or world. This might sound a little pompous, but I've seen the most extensive on-line list of neo-tangos. It numbers about 200 total songs across Tango, Vals and Milonga. Given the tempo ranges neo tango dancers will dance, most of the songs in Bolero, Rumba, Fox Trot, Samba, Waltz and Viennese Waltz will work. Some of the slow Night Club 2-Steps, West Coast Swings and Swings will also work. That should give me over 1000 neo tangos. This, of course, pales in comparison to the amount of classic tango music available. For instance, some sources estimate Canaro wrote over 9,000 tangos in his career.
The Dando Mambo event was a lot of fun. I taught an introductory Argentine Tango class. Hallie and Edgar do a very good job of promoting their classes and it was full. It was biggest Argentine Tango class I've taught. At the suggestion of one of my practice partners, I taught in a different manner. Basically, I talked less and had them move more. It's been an on-going balancing act between giving a sufficient level of detail so that people can begin to connect and move together (this slows things down a lot because there are so many details) and teaching patterns and then adding the details later. I usually opt for slow with more connection and detail. This time I opted for less detail and more of a pattern orientation. This stayed more with the Salsa and Merengue teaching models, which I think is what people were expecting, but I'm not sure many people got a good feel Argentine Tango movement. Oh well, if they're attracted to the dance, they'll eventually get the details and feel.
And finally the JumpTown event. This was the same night as Dando Mambo. I split my time between the events. JumpTown was relatively small. The larger rooms in Union South were busy with other events. JumpTown was given a small room on the third floor. The dances was populated mostly by beginners and people that have been dancing Lindy since last September. It's always fun seeing how much I can lead with newer follows. I also spoke with the DJ Coordinator and asked to be put on the DJ list. Hopefully I'll get a chance to DJ this semester.
Practicing with one of my Tango partners wrapped up this weekend's movement activities. It was a good weekend. I'm glad to have made the shift from wanting information to wanting to make it functional. It should free up some time.
I guess that's about it. Monday is around the corner, and I need to go to sleep soon.
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