Is Buenos Aires still worth it??!! The perspective of a teacher & advanced dancer - Leonel Chen

[@PhotoBronze]

Thank you Lucas and Leonel for this excellent interview!

[@yuliyapivtorak100]

Thank you, Leonel, for being so thoughtful and careful with words while translating bodily sensations into language. Thank you, Lucas, for the questions! Great interwiev.

[@John1960Video]

I started learning tango in 1995. At this point, my observation as a teacher and at milongas, is this. Compare learning Argentine tango with the long tradition in learning to paint, of copying great works. It’s very helpful. But clearly unless a whole lot of technique is learned, these copies are not artful. The problem I see in tango is that if there is no structure offered, there is no way to practice technique. In the beginning, walking and half-molinetes. If we teach an “academic basic” it is not the real topic of the class; the real topic is the embrace (connection) and how to move together in the elements of that structure. One problem I see is that if teachers don’t emphasize a set of underlying principles (that apply to any figure) that the problem of disconnected memorization becomes endemic. Another problem is that as soon as they can get some dances in the milongas, students stop taking classes from local teachers. Our community is flooded by a parade of very fine dancers - competition dancers, show dancers, famous couples on tour - who if they teach technique at all, each one is different from others in important ways. There is not a single way to dance. So students are not left with a systematic understanding. Their embrace is dysfunctional and even doing a sequence at the same time they are not together. They dance like they are performing for an audience but in an obviously disconnected way. The few who get beyond that stage do so by practicing and / or taking private lessons from people who have felt (as you have commented) and can communicate through doing what is a good embrace and what it means to be listening to each other while sharing the music.