Clase Carla Marano

Last night was pretty cool: Carla (from Tango Discovery)'s class [can you do that puntuation with the apostrophe?] at Malabia 1738 went over various types of sacadas. The cool stuff: Carla gives the problem to her students. The first exercise we did was, "alternate sacadas, one for the man, and one for the woman." Then she gave some examples.

Now, it's a pretty great thing to have somebody do something that is NOT a sequence but rather a problem-framing (alternate sacadas, for instance). However, it's not enough at all, and in fact just results in the same sort of lost searching. Sure, at home with your partner (if I only had a fixed partner) you could figure out some combinations with that general framework, but the problem space looks like this: there are three types of normal sacadas (front, side and back where the man takes the woman's place or vice-versa) and one additional type (cuarta sacada) in which the woman and man switch places. Leaving out the cuarta, any of the three can be done while the other person does a forward step (cruce delante), back step (cruce atrás) or a side step (apertura). Now I'm getting lost in the multiplication because if you do all the possible legs you always get four for each (rr rl ll lr), and the man can do it or the man can lead the woman to do it. So I guess that's about 3x3x4x2 or 64. Not to mention the cuarta sacada.

Now, those are a lot of friggin' options to just grab randomly, especially because a lot of them require special attention and twisting and all kinds of shit that, unless you're a real natural, you're not going to figure out on your on.

And then Carla shows us a sequence that none of the leaders got the first time around (one is my friend Katha, who is great, and she made up her own sequence the first time). When are teachers going to learn that it's a waste of individual time to go around and show us the sequence. If the general demonstration of the sequence is clear and repetitive (imagine if you did not understand the sequence: that's what teachers have to do) then you can use the individual time to correct individual errors. Otherwise, as happened with Carla last night, she goes around and shows the sequence to each of us individually. Now I realize that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer as far as picking up sequences goes, but I can get it if you show it to me well several times. Because in the end, you'll have to do that anyway, and then you won't have any time to teach me anything specific to me!

Now, to be honest, Carla is great and she did give me some personal tips anyway, but that's only possible because the group is quite small (5 couples or less). With a larger group, you must demonstrate the sequence clearly.

Alright, I'm off to práctica at Malcom (Tango Motivo), I hope to write up my neat conversations and experiences at the Practica Carla Marano when I get home (assuming I get home).

Happy Tangoing!