Prácticas – learning through the body

[photo from picperdaychadk.blogspot.com/]

People with little knowledge of the history of Tango tend to assume that to learn to dance the Tango (or any other dance), the thing to do is to go to a beginners’ class. At that beginners’ class they assume that they will learn a step, which they will try to do with another beginner who has just learned the step, and that then they will go to a dance and try and repeat that step with someone else who already knows it. Learning technique is not something many novices give much thought to, unless they are told that it is what they need to do.

At a beginners’ class, and probably at a dance that follows it, they will be surrounded by other beginners. They rely on the teacher, and perhaps a small group of more advanced students, to give them the information they need about the dance, and put their faith in the assumption that the teacher must know what they are talking about, or they would not be teaching a class.

One of fundamental differences between a class and a práctica as a way of passing on the dance is that in a group class the student generally receives the bulk of their information through the eyes and ears, and processes that information mentally in an attempt to communicate it to the body, while in a práctica the person learning receives information through the body, directly from the body of the more experienced dancer. In a class the student relies on the teacher having two skills – skill in the dance itself, plus the ability to communicate that skill in a way the student can comprehend. It was rare to find people who learned to dance in the prácticas of the Golden Age who had the ability to articulate and explain the highly developed skills in the dance they possessed. Conversely, sometimes people who were skilled communicators, able to teach a class with conviction and confidence, did not have been recognized by the dancers of the Golden Age – the dancers who represented the continuous, living tradition of Tango – as being Tango at all. It is a very fortunate student who finds a teacher who has true knowledge and understanding of the dance, as well as the skills to communicate that knowledge.

(from “The Meaning of Tango: The Story of the Argentinian Dance” by Christine Denniston)