11 ways watching videos negatively influences your dancing

Watching videos of demo dances and performances can and should be part of the learning process, but we should always be aware that it influences our dancing. It influences us even if we don’t want to: our mirror neurons are helping our brain to sometimes learn just by watching… and they make no difference between good or bad – their job is to just imitate.

“What happened? You changed your dancing. Do you take classes with different teachers?”, she asked me after the first dance.

We haven’t meet for a while and this encuentro was first time we danced in maybe two years. I didn’t had new teachers and I was surprised by her remark. Than I remembered why: few weeks before that I was watching and analyzing videos of some of the show dancers, trying to discover what is the biggest difference between show dancing and milonguero.

Yes, watching videos influenced my dancing so much that my partners started noticing the difference…. Even with my resistance to learn from them.

The ways videos influence your dancing can’t be sharply separated. Dancing tango is a system and changing one element changes all the rest. Some of these points are connected, but I separated them in order to make them more clear and help you discover how what you watch influences what you do.

1. You make your choice of steps

You can sometimes just watch the dancers on any milonga and guess who is their Youtube tango idol. People tend to chose the steps they use influenced by what their admired stars are doing. They take classes, workshops and work their asses off to learn how to do those steps, so they can do the same on the dance floor.

2. It influences your technique

Different people dance with different technique. There is no one uber-prototype of what good technique should be. Tango si not a standard dance where people dance in the same way. There is no an international tango association which decides what is the right way. But, if you watch closely, people tend to adopt the technique from their idols they watch on videos and the whole thing is moving towards some kind of standardization.

3. You get ideas how to interpret the music

You listen to D’Arienzos “Mandria” and the image of Carlitos and Noelia comes to your mind… and then you try to dance to it the same way. You try to match the same moves to the same parts of the music and interpret the same accents with same steps.

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4. It changes your taste

You see a video of your favorite star and you like the music, but you have no idea what song or what orchestra is it. And then, the milonga comes and the DJ plays the same song… “Yes!” you jump of your seat… “I want to dance to this!” – and this is how we often choose our favorite tango songs.

5. You try unnatural posture

Let’s talk about body shapes. You see your Youtube idol and he has good posture (you think) and then you go to practica and see yourself in the mirror and it looks nothing like that. Not even close. And then you get dissapointed. You put effort to learn it and spend hours and hours, but you can’t quite achieve it. There is always something missing. Well, it’s not about learning – it’s often about genetics. We all have different bodies and we should dance the way we are, not the way our idols are.

6. Gets you ideas about your dress code

I understand. It’s not just tango thing. We all want to look like our idols. Only thing I have to say here is – we don’t have to. We will dance just fine if we dress up like we feel comfortable. Of course, don’t even think showing up on the dance floor with flip-flops 🙂 Just don’t choose silver or golden shiny suit or some crazy short dress.

7. You limit tango to the movements

You see what you see! Only trained eye can see the subtle levels in the dance. Most of the watchers of videos will only notice the outer layers, the shiny moves and “loud” acrobatics. I often notice that people who watch too much videos, tend to see dance as just a movement to the music… Some, unfortunately, don’t even try to get to the deeper levels of human connection.

8. Looking good becomes priority

The previous point goes even deeper. Monkey see, monkey do! People who focus on the movement also forget that tango should feel good. Looking good is just an extra and it’s not necessary to be good dancer. When you watch too much videos, you consider good a tango that looks good, instead of tango that feels good – for you and for your partner in the same time. Those are often connected, but are sometimes opposed: you have to sacrifice one for the other. Tango videos aficionados often sacrifice feeling good for looking good.

9. The legs became more important than the embrace

I wrote about this. Of course, you dance with your whole body, but in crowded milongas, in social context, the embrace is much more important than the legs. Legs are there to just support the embrace.

Dance with your heart, not with your feet

10. You tend to show off more

Let’s face it, even old milongueros are performing on those videos on Youtube. That is act and acting by definition is not the real thing, just a superficial substitute. The goal of acting is to look like the real thing, not to be the real thing. That is also the definition of performance. Yes, we need less exhibitionists and more people with genuine sensitivity.

11. Dance floor often becomes too small

When you watch show dancers and you try to imitate what they do suddenly there is no enough space on the dance floor. Milonga is not a stage and the dance floor belongs to other dancers as well.

What do you think?