What Makes a Tango Teacher

05 Nov 2017 - by Graham

In my last post I wrote about how I accidentally became a tango teacher and turned Jivebeat from being a Modern Jive club into a Modern Jive and Argentine Tango club. But there has to be more to becoming a tango teacher than standing up and teaching your first class, doesn't there? There must surely be a process to follow or an exam to take? Or is there?

Unike LeRoc which has a recognised path to training as a teacher and obtaining a teaching qualification, there is no equivalent qualification available in the UK for Argentine Tango. You can train and qualify as a ballroom tango teacher through the IDTA or other similar bodies, but ballroom tango is not the same as Argentine Tango, and as there are more differences than there are similarities between the two dances a qualification in ballroom tango would be of no real use. So how do people make that jump from learning the dance to teaching it, and how do they know they are ready to do so?

This was a question that I spent some time trying to answer when I first realised that I would be teaching Tango on a regular basis. I asked around a few of the dance teachers that I knew, spoke to my accrediting body for LeRoc (the UKA), and hunted high and low across the internet, and the only answer that I could come up with was... you are ready to teach Tango when you think you are ready.

Wait... so the only person who gets to decide if I'm ready to be a tango teacher is me? That can't be right. There has to be more to it than that!

Before I try to answer that question, let's take a look at what we really mean by "Argentine Tango". This dance we think of as Tango has many different styles - Salon, Villa Urquiza, Milonguero, Club, Nuevo, Show, to name but a few - and yet they are all still Tango. They are defined by the approach of the person teaching them and the places where they are likely to be danced, and although they can look very different at first glance, they all use basically the same steps determined by the same lead and follow techniques expressed in slightly different ways. Tango is constantly evolving with new teaching styles and more scientific approaches to teaching being introduced, so the Tango world is already starting to move away from the traditional "do what I do" method of instruction, particularly here in Europe. So with all these styles and all these teaching methods, what is the 'correct' way to teach?

It turns out that the only way you can really say if a teaching method is 'correct' or not is whether your class enjoys the lessons and shows improvement or progression in their dancing after coming for a while. And the only way to find that out is to start teaching.

This has some advantages and disadvantages over a formal teaching qualification process. On the one hand it does mean that teaching styles and approaches can be very variable with no guarantee of quality, or that anything they teach you would be recognised as Tango outside of their classes. On the other hand it does mean that if you don't like a class or feel that you want a change, you can simply go to the next Tango teacher you can find, and the chances are that they will do things a little differently. You might prefer it... or you might prefer your original class... but either way you get the choice.

So whilst I would rather have done some sort of training or qualification before calling myself a Tango teacher, it turns out that things don't work that way in the world of Argentine Tango. I have started teaching Tango, therefore I am now a Tango teacher, and I am just as qualified to be one as 95% of all the other Tango teachers out there.

I continue to learn as much and as often as I can, attending regular weekly classes and going to milongas whenever possible. Tango is not a dance that you learn once and then just dance socially; it is an ongoing learning experience where no matter how good you get you will always meet someone inspirational and better. My aim therefore is to continue to learn and to continue to improve for as long as possible, and hopefully I can pass some of that on to my students.