Dance free
The lessons from the most recent classes taken can be condensed into three simple ideas:
- Dance with freedom and embrace in a way (coming from leader’s perspective) that allows the lady to move freely.
- As a leader, “accompany” the lady in every movement that you lead.
- Finally, when moving, always “arrive” completely!
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Deja Vu
During my last week’s stay in Buenos Aires, have been concentrating on private classes and fine-tuning aspects of my dancing. However, when 3 different teachers have commented on the same thing within a 24 hour period, I suppose that means it’s something important and worth paying more attention to… 
ps. I am referring to the “correct” way of doing a rebound or ribote.
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“Superlative” teacher
Over at Arlene’s London Tango pages, the following question was asked: “What makes a superlative teacher”? Basically the original questioner wated to know: what makes a superlative tango teacher as opposed to just a good teacher?
My take on this is a little different from the comments that have already been posted. In fact, I was halfway writing a comment for the post when I realised that it was going to be too long, hence this post that you see.
After having learnt from a number of teachers over the years, I am now of the opinion that there are really no absolutes in how “great” a teacher is. For example, someone whom I used to rate highly may be pegged back over time, whereas someone I did not rate so highly a few years may be near the top of my list now.
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10000-hour rule
Happy 2009 to all who has been following this blog!
As I have mentioned in my main blog, I am currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The story of success”. The central thesis of this book is that, while the impact of some form of innate talent is undeniable, it is still essential for these talented people to put in many hours of hard practic in order to make the next rank of “being someone”. Conversely, an “average” someone who puts in much more time into practicing than another person with more talent but less hard-working. This applies even for the well-recognised prodigy Mozart – for the reasons, go and read the book yourself! 
The magic number? Roughly 10,000 hours.
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