Jackie and I were super fortunate to be invited to Yale University to give a series of workshops. As part of the event we gave a lecture on concepts of how to make your tango practice more productive and how to grow as a tango dancer. The workshops were held October 15th, 2023. Hope you enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCHSTpIR2wI
What should we look for in an instructor? And as an instructor, what do we need to provide our students to support their growth? Categorizing instruction into the three roles of teacher, trainer, and mentor is useful for answering these questions. A teacher conveys information, getting the student to understand something they did not know before. A trainer helps get information into the student’s body, getting the student to be able to do something they could not do before. And a mentor shows the student a path forward and supports their feelings and emotions along their journey.
A teacher is responsible for the knowledge component of learning. Teachers give us information on what to do and how to do it. Go to a class and most of your interaction with the instructor will be them teaching you information. The mark of a good teacher is that their students have a good mental model of what we need to do to become a better dancer. Learning consists of both knowing what to do and being able to do it. Teachers deal with the knowledge component and are therefore necessary but not sufficient for learning.
A Trainer helps convert knowledge in our head into understanding in our whole body. Training tends to involve less talking and more doing, using a few well-designed drills and well-chosen words to build competency. As a trainer, it is better to say one thing a hundred times than to say a hundred things once, and sometimes the best is to get the point across without saying anything at all. A trainer’s job is to boil down the information given by the teacher into small packets that the student can focus on. The teacher shows the student what they are trying to do, the trainer gives them feedback on when they need to put their focus to achieve this and when they are progressing in the right direction.
A Mentor plays a more infrequent but equally vital role in a student’s development. The job of a mentor is to ensure the components for growth are in place and remove barriers to learning. While the teacher and trainer take care of the student’s day to day growth, a mentor gives broader guidance and encouragement throughout their journey. Broadly speaking, trainers focus on what to do in the next minute, teachers focus on what to do in the next week, and mentors focus on what to do in the next year. Suggesting teachers to study with, guidance on how to structure practice, and pointing the student in the right direction of music to listen to and performers to watch all fall under mentoring.
Mentors help the student process their feelings and emotions; something especially important for newer dancers. Experienced dancers, inoculated to the social dance experience, can easily forget the raw emotions that come with your first dance event. Finding the courage to ask someone to dance. Processing when your cabeceo is not returned. Understanding your emotions when you are not asked to dance for several tandas or when you are thanked after one song. Having support when someone acts inappropriately at the milonga. Strategies for having a positive experience at a festival or marathon. Navigating partner dynamics. Finding a healthy balance between the desire to dance and the needs of other aspects of life. All these moments are the job of a mentor to help the student navigate. Having support during these moments makes the difference between the student becoming a lifelong dancer where tango enriches their life, and the student experiencing emotional damage and finding another hobby.
The three roles of teacher, trainer, and mentor can be played by different people, but can also be played by the same person. As a student, it is helpful to know what role we are looking for in an instructor at a given time, and as an instructor it is useful to know what role will be most helpful to the student in each moment. I believe that knowing which role to play is one of the most important skills of an instructor, more important even than knowing what information to share or how to structure a class.
Say we are working with a student on their forward walk. We may start in teacher mode, discussing and demonstrating the physics concept of equal and opposite reaction to explain how, to go forward, we use our standing leg to push the floor backwards. We summarize with the phrase “drive the floor backwards to step forward.” Once the student has a clear path forward then we go into trainer mode and practice the concept, using the cue ‘drive’ to connect with this concept. We have the student practice with several different movements, giving short corrections and words of encouragement. At the end of practice, we may switch into mentor mode and show the student how to approach filming themselves so that they can practice their walk on their own. The power of separating roles is that it provides clear guidance on the amount and type of information to provide. We can say a single word such as ‘drive’ while the student is in motion, whereas it would make little sense to try and explain Newtonian physics in the middle of a movement. Similarly, repeating a single word would be of little help without the previously teaching what that word refers to.
The instructor categories help us understand how the needs of the student change as they progress. Beginner students primarily need mentors to process their new experiences, which is why what makes a good beginner instructor is often different from what makes a good instructor for intermediate or advanced dancers. As the student grows, teaching and training take center stage. Advanced dancers often require less teaching and more training. Advanced dancers also need more mentoring to help them choose where to focus their attention.
Separating the different roles helps us avoid some common instructor pitfalls. One common pitfall as a teacher is to expect immediate change in our students. Teaching is like planting seeds, where the flowers of understanding may blossom weeks or months after the learning is planted. When inevitably information does not produce immediate change, we give more information and more information, overloading our students and hindering their progress. Worse, we may blame our students, thinking that they are lazy or “they just don’t get it.” Once we separate teacher from trainer, and mentor, we allow for separation from the information we give as a teacher and the progress that comes through training. We also allow separation from the information and the broader structure that enables learning.
In part I, we discussed some possible choices we can make to improve our walk. Next, we need to get our mind and body to do what we want it to do. Now that we picked our target, we need the accuracy to hit it. If we were throwing darts, then we would have the immediate feedback of where the dart lands to begin zeroing in on the bullseye. To improve our tango walk, we need a way to get similar feedback; to see where our metaphorical darts land. If we use feedback in a manner which is healthy and effective, then our tango will quickly improve.
Here is a procedure for approaching feedback I find effective. I’ll call it the four Cs of feedback:
We first choose a specific element to work on. We then capture what we are doing. We next use this information to correct mistakes we notice. Finally, we compare ourselves after the correction with what we did before. For example, say I choose to work on my balance during my walk[1]. We film ourselves walking to capture how our walk looks. After slowing down the film, I see I wobble when I move my weight too far to the outside of the foot. I correct by practicing slowly transferring between feet while keeping my center of balance towards the second toe instead of the pinky toe. Finally, we film ourselves again and compare balance before and after the correction to see if I improved.
Choose the focus before giving yourself or anyone else feedback. This narrows down the corrections to a manageable level. The most common challenge with feedback is that we are too critical about too many things. We think that we can criticize ourselves to improvement, but the truth is that when we are negative towards ourselves, all it accomplishes is this: we no longer seek out feedback. Not getting corrections is easy,meeting unrealistic standards for ourselves is hard. If getting feedback is a negative experience, then you won’t do it; if it is a positive experience then you will do it.
An analogy I think of is that feedback is like learning to box. Your partner throws punches at you so you can practice blocking and dodging, which is helpful and positive. But it would be hurtful and negative if they kicked you because kicking is not part of boxing, so you are not focused on it. The kick itself is not the problem and may be completely appropriate if you were learning kickboxing. The problem is that they struck you with something that was not part of your focus. Similarly, it would be hurtful and negative if someone randomly punched you while walking down the street, because this is not a time when you are focused on practice. When you give feedback, whether it is to yourself or anyone else, always keep in mind the focus of the practice and whether it is a practice space. Throwing punches in the gym is helpful, throwing kicks on the street is hurtful.
To capture what we are doing, an external eye is critical. Internal sensations are essential as well, but we often don’t feel what we don’t have awareness of. External information and corrections train our mind to understand the internal sensations it is receiving, so we need a way to see from the outside what is going on. This can be done with a mirror, with feedback from our partner, by getting corrections from a teacher, or by filming ourselves. I highly recommend filming yourself and slowing down the film. This is one of the most effective means of improving your dance. But please choose what you focus on first and be very gentle with yourself. Remember that kicking yourself over all the things you notice won’t help you, it will just cause you to avoid filming in the future.
When deciding a correction to make or suggest, remember the chosen focus, and give one correction at a time, or even the same correction several times. It is better to give one piece of feedback a hundred times than give a hundred pieces of feedback once. As an example of what not to do, I once had a partner who, when I asked if she could give feedback on a fewer number of topics and provide positive feedback when I was improving, responded with “How can I give positive feedback when everything you are doing is wrong?” I hope none of you will be this blatant to your partner, but many of us say something similar with our internal narrative. It is not the corrections we get that are important, but the corrections we can improve upon that matter.
The final step is to compare yourself before and after to see progress. This step is often overlooked but is critical. For one, the correction may not have solved the problem, in which case you want to iterate with different options. Some corrections may work for some people but not others, or may only solve part of the puzzle. We want to find what works for us and in our body. Even more important though, you want to get the dopamine hit of seeing yourself improve. Take pride and joy in the fact that you are improving yourself and your dance. Instead of the masochistic onslaught of self-critique that we mistakenly think is helpful, mark the improvements that you make and celebrate each one. Make it a practice that every time you practice, you choose a few focused elements to capture and correct, and then celebrate each incremental progress. After all, it is not your current level that matters but your ability to grow that counts. Feedback in a focused and positive manner, as the four Cs hopefully provide, leads to sustainable growth and sustained joy throughout your tango journey.
[1] my partner chooses what they want to focus on as well.
To get strong, you start with light weights slowly increase to heavier weight. To become a better runner, you progressively increase the speed or distance. To learn a musical instrument, you start with simple scales and songs and progress to more challenging pieces and concepts. In all cases, we learn by progressively increasing difficulty such that the task stays challenging but not too challenging. We build a staircase where each new step is a little bit higher than the next. The same principle applies to learning Tango.
Beginner dancers often feel overwhelmed and lost, and most dancers struggle to integrate moves they learn in class into their dance in the milonga—both symptoms of the difficulty being set too high. At the same time, dancers who have been at it for a few years tend to plateau, reaching what psychology professor Anders Ericsson calls “that level of ‘acceptable’ performance and automaticity [where] the additional years of ‘practice’ don’t lead to improvement.”[1] This stagnation is a symptom of the difficulty being set too low.
The gym has nicely labeled weights that we can add, and we can change variables such as reps, sets, exercises, and recovery time to increase difficulty as we get stronger. But how do we vary the challenge of Tango? What are the variables that we can use to dial up or down the difficulty of the dance?
There are six variables that determine the difficulty of a move, sequence, concept, or really any part of the dance. I’ll call them familiarity, complexity, accuracy, timing, partnering, and navigating. A new movement is more difficult than a familiar movement. A complex pattern is more difficult than a simple pattern. Execution with precision and accuracy is more difficult than ‘just doing the step’. Specific timing and musicality is more difficult than doing a step to the beat or without music. Leading or following a step with a new partner is more difficult than with your regular partner. And finally, navigating a crowded milonga is more difficult than when no one else is around.
Familiarity, complexity, and accuracy are internal variables while timing, partnering, and navigating are external variables.[2] Internal variables are based on our own knowledge and actions—our familiarity with a concept, our choice of movement complexity, and our accuracy as a dancer. External variables depend on the external environment—who asks us to dance, what music is playing, and the amount of space.
Learning depends on being able to progressively vary the difficulty, so learning Tango depends on our ability to vary the difficulty of these six variables. Few if any dancers can accurately execute a new, complex move musically with a new partner in a crowded milonga. Something must give. The challenge is that in the milonga the external variables are not set by us.[3] The milonga dials up the external variables, increasing total difficulty, which often leads to sacrificing the development of internal variables to meet these difficulties. We all know dancers who pull out every complicated move, but without accuracy or grace. We also know dancers who may be musical and have a yummy embrace but just repeat the same few simple steps over and over at every marathon they attend. So many late-night Tango conversations revolve around the merits of fancy moves versus elegant posture versus connections versus musicality. But the truth is we can have it all. We can learn new concepts and dance complicated sequences musically and with connection in a crowded space. We just need to turn down the external dials for a bit.
For many of us, we go straight from learning a new step in a class to trying it out at the milonga. It ends up not working so we go back to our tried and true dance. But of course it doesn’t work. at the milonga all the difficulty dials are all turned up to 11. It’s a recipe for disaster. Instead of trying our new step at the milonga, first go to a quiet space. No music, no navigation, no need to perform, no distractions. Turn all the dials way down and then build back up. Start with getting familiar with the concept. Then break the movement into small components to reduce complexity. Drill each component and film ourselves to work on accuracy. Then start combining and adding back in the external variables. Play with different variations to work the lead and follow. Practice to different music to work on musicality. Start controlling the spacing, see how big and how small you can make the same movement. Ask for help and feedback along the way. Finally, test it out at a milonga. Soon enough you will have a new move to play with, dance and enjoy. By controlling your dials instead of being controlled by them, you build your staircase to become a more expressive and enjoyable dancer.
[1] Anders Ericsson spent much of his career studying what makes experts experts. I highly recommend checking out his research and writings. Quote comes from the book Peak: Secrets from the new Science of Expertise
[2] With a little word smithing, I was able to get the internal variables to end with ‘y’ and the external variables to end with ‘ing’, which can be helpful for identifying each.
[3] Granted, we can choose who we dance with and the songs we dance to. But the fact remains that it is generally frowned upon in the milonga to do things like trying the same move several times in a row paying no attention to the music or space.