Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Why Achaval and Tangomeet for me?


Roxana and Sebastian have always been among my top favorite performers, but it was for a time ago when I decided to develop my enrosques - at last - I started to pay even more serious attention to them. I am dancing as a leader and Sebastian's skill and art of turning, his skill to coil his spine and body was mindblowing to me. I had found my high rising goal and it inspired me to work hard to get better, growing in that direction!

Youtube

I started to save youtube clips for future homework and saved them in my online library to manage the growing collection. From these videos you get the form, the shape of a figure and if you pay attention and are working carefully you can perform them reasonably well after some time. I had earlier noticed that when I work on 20-30 figures of a specific teacher I could hit some basic principles in their style and many times that is enough, that is what I want to achieve. Though in this case I knew that there were deeper-lying details which I could not even imagine and therefore not develop on my own!

Workshop

When Roxana and Sebastian visited the town giving workshops I was there for sure! They were very professional and had an unusual well build structure on the course material. They were also circulating around well but with that number of students what could they do? I was surprised that they managed to give us personal feedback so I could lead one of the figures with Roxana and my follower was lead by her too! But in these situations the whole room is filled with excitement so really deep learning is hardly possible.

Tangomeet

My third try was an online course! During the closedown autumn I bought two sections of Sebastian and Roxana classes on Tangomeet and that has been the best thing I have done for my long-term learning. The content of the classes is put together with great care and understanding of what a student needs to know in order to reach the goal. Through the years I have become extremely sensitive to power unbalance between the teachers but here we have just a clear focus on the students and cooperation to help them forward. Both are seamlessly adding information and advice helping me to proceed! Systematic video watching is the core of my learning method and therefore I really need content that I can watch over and over again and after that repeat it once more!

Local teachers

To learn from youtube, DVD, an education channel or from visiting teachers is kind of unsynchronized learning and it is not enough for me. I need also local regular courses as well as privates to reach the dance I am looking for. I need to combine the INFORMATION on how to do things and the FEEDBACK how am I doing, how does it feel for a follower. When we are back to couple dancing and private lessons I will go to my local teachers for feedback about how comfortable my lead is and how to improve my performance so it will be comfortable for tandas in the future!

Some comments on the Tangomeet courses I work on

I have been working on enrosques earlier with other teachers but his section gave me the exact timing of the steps as well as other details. Grateful for that! The biggest surprise was though that this section gave me so much more to learn - boleos sacadas and other goodies!
https://tangomeet.com/sebastian-achaval-roxana-suarez/the-traces-you-leave-lapiz-enrosque-sacadas-and-boleos

The second group of courses included the baridas on a *second level*! At the first level I could stop the follower, do a barida and continue the dance. This I knew already! Here I learn to do the barida as a skillful cooperation/shared decoration during the flow of the dance. No stops anywhere and that is much more complicated than I thought!
https://tangomeet.com/sebastian-achaval-roxana-suarez/captivated-by-a-beautiful-moment-barrida-and-rebote