21 June 2009

OC lessons

The best teachers are not always the ones who look like the best dancers or at least not until you look closely. I am now back to taking lessons with the C family after having lessons previously with the father I am now having lessons with the son.
OC is a great dancer, not in a showy way but in the essence of all that is tango. There are lots of small details in his dance that the eye doesn't always catch but his partner surely does, loads of variation and energy. As a teacher I like him best for the following three things:
1. Critical eye - he has a nack of finding small (sometimes big) personal elements in my dance that with fine tuning or ajustment improve the whole experience.
2. Telling it straight - if you are not dancing well with OC then you he tells it to you straight. None of the empty 'buenos' or 'muy biens' that some teachers give you even when you know you are not performing. OC will shout out 'NO, NO that was horrible do it again' or 'Don't be a chicken make the step'.
3. Own Style - The simplest and best way to fix the dance based on your own ability/prerequisites. For example, at 190cm tall and almost 100kg I do not really have the physique of a ballet dancer and so planeos and enrosques when in a Giro affect the balance and axis. OC showed a host of variations of 'simpler' but equally or even more effective giros with energy whilst maintaining 100% balance an axis in close embrace, extremely useable.
More about OC and others later!

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