This past December, Exploring Tango reached the hundred-post milestone. At the start of this new year, I thought that it might be interesting to look back at nearly three years of posts to see how they stack up against my original vision and expectations for the blog.
In The Beginning...
I had two main concerns initially.
1. Would my insights and ideas be helpful and useful to the readers?
2. Would I be able to come up with enough ideas to keep a blog going for the long term?
Luckily, I never came close to running out of ideas. My original list of nine topics was enough to get me started. Every time I finished a post, I had ideas for additional topics. Some of those topics were complex, so I needed to spread them across multiple posts (e.g. the Argentine Tango Best Practices series).
When I speak with people about their tango experiences, I get even more ideas. During our conversations, I think of things that I want to express on the blog. The real danger isn't running short of ideas, but rather ensuring that I am prioritizing the best ones. And that I don't forget some good ones along the way.
A number of folks have given me wonderful feedback on the blog, both online and in person. They have tole me that they enjoy reading the articles and that they have come away with some useful ideas. A few readers told me that when they discovered the blog, they went back to the beginning and read through all of the posts. That's a pretty amazing compliment. I'm thrilled when someone reads the current post let alone several years worth.
The positive response to the blog has been amazing and humbling. I want these pages to be useful and helpful to the tango community.
Objectives and Guidelines
I expressed my initial concerns above. I also established a list of guidelines that I try to follow as I plan and write each new article.
1. Be Useful
I want Exploring Tango to be an asset and a resource for the tango community. I want it to provide insights in technique, creativity, musicality, and other tango topics. I want to offer clarity on topics that can cause confusion or frustration. I want readers to be inspired to try new things or to see traditional techniques in a new light.
2. Be Encouraging
Learning to dance is challenging. Improving over time is even more challenging. I want to offer a voice of encouragement. I want to lift people's spirits when they're feeling humbled by the challenge. I want to help them to understand why they're facing adversity and how to overcome those challenges in an effective manner.
3. Be Inspiring
I called my blog Exploring Tango because I wanted to focus on the possibilities of this uniquely creative medium. There are many reasons to love the Argentine tango. I have long been enamored with the creative and expressive freedom of tango. I hope to inspire others to explore and enjoy the creative potential of the dance.
4. Be Organized
As we learn to dance, we are exposed to a large amount of information. In my early years, I struggled to catalog everything that I was learning, filtering out the most important concepts and principles in hopes of having instant access to them as I was improvising. In my posts, as in my classes, I try to organize information in meaningful and accessible ways. I try to give the reader some benefit from the organizational systems that I needed to develop as I was learning.
5. Be Open-Minded
Over the years, I have seen a lot of different ways to dance tango. I have seen a lot of different ways to teach tango. As a student, I struggled with apparent contradictions between teachers. One person would teach something that seemed to contradict what I had learned elsewhere.
Over time, I learned to accept each approach on its own merits and appreciate the diversity of ideas that flow in the tango community. By studying a variety of techniques without judgment, I became a more capable dancer and teacher. I try to express this open-minded perspective in my writing, because I understand how confusing it can be when one is presented with an idea that goes against what we have come to accept as "the right way."
6. Be Positive
I never criticize the way that people conduct themselves at the milonga.
I never criticize the way that people dance unless they are doing something that makes their partner uncomfortable or puts someone in the room in danger.
I never criticize the way that people ask each other to dance. (I can't believe the big deal that some people make over this utterly unimportant topic. It's ridiculous. If people are dancing and they're happy, what difference does it make how he invited her onto the floor? If you feel a need to disparage others simply because they don't employ some secret code of etiquette, you might want to take a look in a mirror and ask yourself why a false sense of superiority appeals to you.)
I never criticize the musical choices of DJs.
I never criticize any style of tango (salon, milonguero, nuevo, etc.). I word my comments so that they are neutral and applicable to dancers of all styles.
I never make dogmatic pronouncements about technique. ("It MUST be done this way!" See #5 above.) Comments of this nature come across as sophomoric and uninformed, not the image that I want to project.
I never, ever, ever disparage the way that another teacher presents material of leads their classes. Occasionally, I hear someone recounting a classroom experience that sounds difficult to believe. However, if I wasn't in the room at the time, I don't know what that teacher was trying to accomplish in that moment. Perhaps they were attempting to correct a particular problem with a particular individual. Perhaps their comment wasn't meant to be taken as a general approach to learning tango.
Unless I'm certain that the teacher's suggestion is likely to cause physical harm, I'm not going to comment one way or another. Contact that teacher if you need clarification. If is seems confusing to you, it's probably the result of incomplete communication.
Well, that's the story of the first hundred posts. Anybody ready to double down? ;-)
¡Buena suerte amigos, y muchas gracias!
Daniel
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