Some new year’s resolutions
Just a quick note to myself:
Some resolutions for 2009, tango-wise.
- Work on consistency.
- Develop an even more “reassuring” embrace and dance calmly.
- Work on milonga.
- Improve self-confidence!
Well, as a start, I did work up the courage to ask Milena Plebs to dance at a New Year’s Eve milonga, past the stroke of midnight. So, I guess you can say that it was a good start to the new year!
Wishes for 2009
Note: Here are some of my thoughts, drafted a few hours before the start of 2009.
As we count down towards 2009, what are your wishes tango-wise, wherever you are?
Well, here are some of my thoughts.
On the milonga front, in 2009 we will see a revived (and hopefully sustainable) milonga on Tuesday nights, DJ’ed by yours truly. 🙂 At the same time, it seems that Thursday nights at Bobby’s is at least shaping up to be a monthly affair. This then brings us to the end of week, with consecutive milongas on Friday and Saturday nights. This means that we will have a curious situation where there will be a maximum of 4 milongas(!) for 1 week in each month. This is quite a big increase from what it was like for most of 2007 until start of 2008, when there was a maximum of only 3 milongas in a week every fortnight (with 2 milongas happening on the same night in those weeks).
Seems a bit worrying, no, especially when we have not seen a corresponding increase in the number of dancers?
The look and feel
“It’s not how it looks, but how it feels.”
Over dinner tonight, this phrase popped into my head suddenly.
I guess it may have something to do with the conversation I had with a friend after the milonga on the previous night?
Basically he was commenting on the quality of the performances he witnessed at a milonga. While the Asian performers were impeccable in their execution and timing, the Argentinian couple which followed the first performance committed some errors here and there. Nevertheless he still preferred the number by the Argentinian couple because they danced with feelings and had more emotional “content”.
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.