Responses to the interview questions are still filtering in and I find that some of my original assumptions (some of which I wasn't even aware of) have needed adjustment.
The original questionaire can be found here.
The biggest assumption I had made was that those people who credit their tango experience with improving their physical health would attribute that improvement *only* with tango. In fact about a third of the respondents said that they got just as much benefit from other forms of dance. Tango may even be their favorite form of dance at the moment, but those respondents cited that it was dance itself, physical activity and connection to the music, that brought the benefit.
Other observations:
- Very few of the respondents have cited strong connection to tango music itself (I am referring here to traditional tango music) as part of the experience of health improvement. Any music that makes you dance seems to be the important thing. Of those participants who did find particular benefit in the music, they were very specific in what composers were the easiest/least stressful to dance to.
- Only a third of the respondents who credit AT with health benefits dance close embrace most of the time. This data is probably skewed however since the followers who responded will tend to dance what their leaders lead. Women are told that they choose the embrace, but that really is something of a negotiation rather than a strict choice. Many communities are simply "open embrace" communities with few teachers teaching close embrace.
- Less than 10% of the respondents discuss dancing and health with their doctors.
One observation that was not a surprise:
- Two thirds of the dancers practice yoga, Pilates and/or Alexander Technique. - Half are getting concurrent massage and/or physical therapy for their injury/health condition.
The original questionaire can be found here.
The biggest assumption I had made was that those people who credit their tango experience with improving their physical health would attribute that improvement *only* with tango. In fact about a third of the respondents said that they got just as much benefit from other forms of dance. Tango may even be their favorite form of dance at the moment, but those respondents cited that it was dance itself, physical activity and connection to the music, that brought the benefit.
Other observations:
- Very few of the respondents have cited strong connection to tango music itself (I am referring here to traditional tango music) as part of the experience of health improvement. Any music that makes you dance seems to be the important thing. Of those participants who did find particular benefit in the music, they were very specific in what composers were the easiest/least stressful to dance to.
- Only a third of the respondents who credit AT with health benefits dance close embrace most of the time. This data is probably skewed however since the followers who responded will tend to dance what their leaders lead. Women are told that they choose the embrace, but that really is something of a negotiation rather than a strict choice. Many communities are simply "open embrace" communities with few teachers teaching close embrace.
- Less than 10% of the respondents discuss dancing and health with their doctors.
One observation that was not a surprise:
- Two thirds of the dancers practice yoga, Pilates and/or Alexander Technique. - Half are getting concurrent massage and/or physical therapy for their injury/health condition.
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I hope y'all saw that post from Zoopsia about how hard it is to go from a true closed to fully open. Most people I know who go from "closed" to "open" and back aren't really doing the kind of closed in the vid above. It's just really hard to do that mid dance.