Teaching both roles to beginners - a game changer...? -- A comprehensive assessment with Melina Sedó

Melina Sedó is one of the most well-spoken guests I've had on my channel, with a concise, yet comprehensive, and an also logically structured way of expressing herself that makes me quite happy as an interviewer. It's a skill set that is probably not unrelated to her two+ decades of being a tango teacher, and a rather high-profile one at that. So, it was natural to me to invite Melina for a third round, this time about a topic that arose quite spontaneously during one of our previous exchanges and that she's a good fit to talk about with certain authority. For about 6 years now, Melina and her teaching partner Detlef have been teaching classes for beginners in their hometown of Saarbrücken (after more than 15 years of not doing that locally), but in these classes, the participants actually learn both roles, regardless of their gender. In this video, Melina talks about the many advantages of organizing classes this way and how the mixing of roles has solved long-standing issues at the milongas she runs. In this interview, you'll get to hear the whole backstory of Melina's changing attitudes towards double role dancing, how and why she decided that she would implement this way of looking at tango in her local classes (and international workshops too, in fact...), and we also talk about some of the challenges or disadvantages that may be a part of this philosophy, as with anything in life, really. I think this video offers a rather complete and balanced assessment of what the trend of double role dancing means in tango, by a guest who really knows what she's talking about and who has put a lot of thought into the way she decides to do things as a tango teacher. This interview also sheds some light on some questions and discussion points regarding gender and identity in tango, actually also in some ways I really wasn't expecting. I strongly recommend you to watch this episode for exactly that reason - it may actually catch you off guard regarding some of your own assumptions about tango, but... in a good way. -- 0:00 Past & present: a structural change 10:47 The advantages of a double-role setup 23:47 Double role dancing: differences between men and women 38:02 Encouraging it elsewhere, and possible disadvantages of this setup -- Previous videos with Melina: -Teacher training in tango https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gRsOhtNRDk -Ageism in tango from a woman's perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJa5g1qJCKk -- NOTE: We recorded this video a while ago, and the registration for the double role event we mention at the end has since been closed. I apologize if the video gave you any false excitement, or as we say in Dutch, "I made you happy with a dead sparrow''...