Getting beginners into tango is CRUCIAL - Robin Thomas on the challenge of retaining beginners скачать в хорошем качестве

Getting beginners into tango is CRUCIAL - Robin Thomas on the challenge of retaining beginners

Robin Thomas is a teacher (based in New York) who mostly teaches at universities, where there are a lot of young beginners trying to make their first steps into the tango world. (in case you missed it, here's our prequel video about Robin teaching at universities:    • Robin Thomas on teaching tango at universi...  ) There's a lot of tango teachers competing for the tiny market of people who can already dance tango, but Robin argues that we have no choice but to work harder trying to bring new people in. According to Robin, the tango community needs a constant influx of beginners to replenish its "losses" (of existing dancers dropping out for various reasons) and survive, and the "missing generation" of COVID has interrupted this pattern, leading to considerable damage already. In tango beginner classes, there's an enormous rate of attrition, and unfortunately only the 'fittest' survive. Robin, who teaches huge groups of beginners at US universities, thinks we should ideally create as much community as possible to be able to retain more of these newbies. Robin's teaching method is aimed at trying to retain as many people as possible by not scaring them away with things they don't really need to know at this stage and instead, get them to dance socially as quickly as possible. 0:00 Why tango needs constant replenishment 4:25 Creating community is key 5:50 The teaching message matters 10:46 Why the COVID gap is so significant 15:12 How the tango community can seem unwelcoming