[Dance] I dance Argentine Tango, West Coast Swing, Salsa and party Latin, Ballroom and others for over 20 years. I want this world to have more good dances. I authored a how-to book: "Beginning Argentine Tango (2012)". I’ll write something useful about dancing. [Science] I am a scientist with a PhD. I study genomic instability in the body, involved in cancer, aging, and Alzheimer's. I'll write about what I do. [Life] I’ll write about what I learned.
AACR annual meeting for 2019 is coming up on 3/29-4/3 in Atlanta, GA. Although I am not going to the meeting, a postdoc fellow will be presenting a poster on my behalf. We sent a PDF to our University's printing service on Tuesday. Now they offer fabric poster, instead of paper. Fabric is supposed to be tougher (tear-resistant) and fold-compatible (leaves no crease), thus has no need to be carried around in cumbersome poster tube during travel. An improvement. The printing was done in a few hours, and the poster was ready by yesterday (Wednesday). We as a group have four posters. We had a little presentation practice-mock question session for preparation. I'm sure the Dr. Postdoc fellow will do well. (No pressure) There are a few people going from our group. On their return they will report this year's trend and notable presentation relevant to our work. I wonder if something new that I have been overlooking is coming up. Link to annual meeting outline: https://www.aacr.org/Meetings/Pages/MeetingDetail.aspx?EventItemID=174&DetailItemID=942
[AACR logo]
An internal grant application requesting $45k is about to be submitted. Once it is done, a revision of a manuscript, then revising the poster-related work (concerning cancer-immune interaction), await. There are always things to do. It is not bad.
Here I'll write something short for your Tango choreography. The trick is simple. Use YouTube. (1) Choose a song that you like or want to dance. Let's say, "Poema".
[1925 original by Canaro]
(disclaimer: I don't own these videos and all rights belong to them)
(2) Go to YouTube and search "Poema tango dance". The search will bring up hundreds of results. (3) Watch 20 of them from the top. It would take 70 minutes or so (3.5 minutes x 20). With 20 repetition, you'll get used to the song (not to say bored). You now know how this song goes, where the tone of the song changes ("Poema" is a mix of sweet vocal phrase and energetic instruments, creating interesting mixture of "sweet and sour"), overall structure and refrains of the song, and so on. (4) Now, you have 20 references to choreograph the song in 20 different ways. You know how other dancers started the dance, how they danced to the first vocal introduction, to the violin phrase or to the piano arpeggio, and how they ended the dance. Some of them you may like, some of them you may see as not so effective. (5) Pick up the moves and musical interpretations you like. Use the reference in your next dance with "Poema". There is no patent in dance moves. (6) Continue on watching and keep adding (optional). You are not going to get a Ph.D out of this research. For practicality's sake, input from 20-30 videos are plenty for your output. You might want to consider research input/output ratio. (7) Pick up another song and do the same. Each song is different in the mood and contents. Some moves that look nice with "Poema" may not sit well with "Libertango". You figure out what works for the song. Tango is a traditional art, and the songs have been around for decades. The same songs were danced by many different dancers. You can use this referencing trick. Salsa songs are used in more metronome-ish ways, and contemporary songs (for WCS for example) may not have so many videos yet. Yet, referencing can work in the same manner. Creativity is coming from existing body of knowledge (references). Imitation is the first thing you do in dancing. Later you remix them. It becomes your creation. With this method you are basically "crowd-sourcing" your choreography. Since there are so many references for dancing, for free, why not use them?
I went to OU (University of Oklahoma) Salsa ball on Saturday 3/9/2019. OU Latin dance club has been organizing the party annually for students and others, and 2019 is the 11th year. The music was standard salsa/party Latin songs; mix of Salsa, Bachata, Merengue and Kizomba. There were about 100 people at least. Around 11:30, three Salsa teams showed demonstrations. Overall, the Salsa ball was fun. I enjoyed it. Thank you for dancers who danced with me.
If you go to specific dance event (like Salsa congress, Tango festival, or West Coast Swing events), people (usually) know how to dance the dance. But for college parties filled with no experience- and entry-level dancers, you can see variety of dancers at different stages. You can also see how people may progress and evolve in their dance skills. (i) There are clueless people. They may or may not have dance in them (you can tell), but generally they just do not know the basics of the partner dance. What they need is knowledge. (ii) Then there are awkward people. They may have learned basic steps, but their bodies do not move smoothly nor with gracefulness. What they need is drill and practice (and more knowledge). (iii) There are OK/fine dancers. They look ...well, OK or fine. They are good enough to enjoy the dance in any social setting. Good for them. At this time, I do not "teach" these OK/fine dancers, unless directly asked to. If they are happy, why bother? There comes another "gap", between OK/fine and Great. (iv) There are great dancers. Here I mean "great" as dancers who can entertain audience and get paid, like dancers on Broadway. Dancers whose dance have appeal to general audience, which is hard to achieve. These people are rare breed. You do not expect them to be in college parties, though. The gap between social "fine" dancers and great dancers may be filled by (a) a drastic change in mindset (from self-centered to audience-centered; or from your-own-fun-oriented to audience-entertainment-oriented), (b) by having "right" physical body/appearance, (c) by training to move "right", and (d) by good choreography (which can supplement the "knowledge" part). Dance by great dancers not only has to look right, but be appealing to the audience. Great dancers need the "wow" factor seen by others. How can you add the "wow" appeal to your dance? It is something you need to think hard and work diligently to develop. Coaches and choreographers can help, but just so much so without your initiative. This is very personal. I do not think the four "stages" are a part of linear progress, as many people mistakenly believe. There are gaps, different paths and shortcuts. Paths to great dancers are likely different from paths to OK/fine dancers from an early point. What is needed is unique to each dancer. But willingness to learn helps them all.
Do you know anyone who had stroke? This book strikes a personal issue. To be honest, I was afraid to read the book (originally published in 2017) for a while. But once I started reading, I found that the book was a fascinating read. I'll recommend it fully to anyone interested. My father had a bad stroke in 2006. [I wrote about the incident in 2012 with more details.] https://beginningargentinetango.blogspot.com/2012/03/life-my-father-on-st-patricks-day-2012.html
He was hospitalized and stayed on bed, for next 9 years. My mother had been visiting the hospital for almost every day, tending and talking to him. On 2015, he passed away due to pneumonia. In the end, he could never clearly communicate during the 9 years. Now, 3 years and 9 months has passed since his passing, and due to my mother's Alzheimer's disease that started later in 2015, the last years of his seem to be getting lost even from my mother. Everything is slipping away toward the past. I feel some ambivalence, not happy nor unhappy, about current state. In the years, there were nagging questions; is he still there? Are we not doing terribly cruel or anything to him? What happened to him scared me, too. To me it looked terrible way to go. Even if one was alive, to be in such a locked-in state for such a long time looks nothing but terrible. I read some research papers on patients in the "gray zone"; people who lost nearly all bodily functions and in a vegetative state due to severe brain damage (stroke, traumatic incident, heart attack and oxygen deprivation, etc). They say, 15-20% of such "gray zone" patients may still have consciousness, and still recognize surroundings including family's call and care. Striking, isn't it? This book was published in 2017. The author is one of leading neuroscientists who established notion of the consciousness in the "gray zone" through advancing brain scanning technologies (PET, fMRI, etc). Some of research papers I glanced through in scientific journals might have been his group's. Of course, the book cannot give answers to my question. After all, it was only 15-20% of the "gray zone" patients they could "confirm" consciousness (or, "find the patient"). Even when they got scanned, 80-85% of them may have been lost, or too injured/damaged to be confirmed. There have been much greater number of vegetative state patients who never got scanned. We will never know about them. But scanned or not, people raise hopes. Each patient is unique. Although we can categorize the situations and establish medical and legal guidelines and suggestions, how I (or each of you) feel about it is a different matter.
Science is based on statistics and reproducibility, and do not mix well with miracles. Depending on few champion data (read: miracles) is strictly discouraged in science. Yet, when the issue becomes personal, and when you are not a scientist, applied standards can be different. In my case, I was (and still am) not sure what to hope for back then. To me it looked awfully cruel if my father was still there. But if he was not there, it would have been cruel to my mother. Also, I am still unsure if I would hope to stay or to go if I find myself in such a vegetative "gray zone" state. Tough question indeed.
