Review: lesson with Andreas Wichter
27th October 2009
Class date: Saturday 24th October 2009 (all day)
Class Type: Technique.
Location: The Room, Tottenham
Teacher: Andreas Wichter.
Introduction
It was an interesting workshop, held over the course of a day. Andreas has clearly worked out a solution to the problem "How do you actually dance Salon tango by basically just walking musically, in a manner which is safe, courteous and doesn't bore either the leader or the follower?" Perhaps more importantly, he's also worked out a clear way of explaining it.
Interestingly on reflection, probably only 5% of it was new to me. However I've recently reached a point where I want to consolidate what I know and start working on incorporating more musicality into it.
This is where Andreas' workshop really paid off. Rather than my having to sort through my notes and memories and make sense of it all, he's done the work for me. He's taken simple things that work and put them in an order such that not only do they organically build onto each other, but there's no need for "lies to children" at any point. Quite simply, it works.
Topics covered
He covered posture, embrace, weight changes, walking, the salida (both for practice and for actual use in salon), the cross, ocho cortado and musicality using the above. Which if you think about it is less than most beginner's courses.
The difference is that I think almost all of what he taught me was not only useful, but will be directly applicable to my social dancing for the rest of my life. Take a moment and think about that. When's the last time you did a workshop that accomplished that?
Also by working through everything systematically with a fixed partner it made more sense and my dancing noticeably improved throughout the day. The normal drawback with this approach is that you can end up compensating for each other's weaknesses. However because there were only three couples, Andreas was able to give constant physical and verbal feedback, preventing this from happening and also making the experience far richer than my simply re-reading my old notes.
Caveats
Downsides?
It's one solution, there are others.
For a start Andreas is an ardent believer in only dancing in close embrace. For another he fundamentally disagrees with Nuevo. But he's quite up-front about it. If you want to learn flying linear boleos, look elsewhere.
The one thing that was surprisingly missing was floorcraft, particularly given Andreas' strong views on its value. I think it's probably fair to say that the people attending already understood the concept. Certainly there were no collisions or even near collisions throughout the entire day.
General impressions
If you want to consolidate what you know, I'd definitely recommend it. If you're struggling with the mentioned topics you might have found parts of it difficult, but you'd also have come away with some good tools and insights on how to improve.
I'd also recommend that you leave your ego at the door. Andreas is teaching his specific solution. If you want to learn something else or reverse engineer it, do so afterwards and somewhere else.
But let's face it, there's very few people who can give you an answer to "How do you actually dance Salon tango by basically just walking musically, in a manner which is safe, courteous and doesn't bore either the leader or the follower?" in a day.
Of course getting to the point where you can actually do it will probably take another 6 months! Incidentally his workshop integrates remarkably well with Joaquin Amenabar's recent book / DVD on musicality if you feel like working on something useful for the next year...
There's a part two workshop (for couples) continuing from the above, covering pivots and giros on Saturday 31st Oct, also at the Room. Andreas can be contacted at andreas@tangokombinat.de
- Christopher O' Shea, 27th October 2009