[Tango-L] Choreography

[Huck Kennedy]

Jake writes:
> As for choreography, I'm still interested in what everyone thinks.

     About what?  It's definition?  Whether we like
it?  Whether we have plans for a career on Broadway?
What?

Trini de Pittsburgh writes:

> For "choreography" in the way I prefer to use it, I think
> of it simply as how one combines vocabulary,

     Leaving the dance notation part out of it,
choreography is the arranging of which steps are to
be done at precisely which point in the pre-determined
music in a dance performance, be it pure dance
performance or dance performance embedded in some other
medium, like a Broadway musical or an opera.  A typical
question might be, "Who did the choreography for that
show?," and it would mean, "Who told the dancers where
to go on the stage when and dance what steps?"

> but it doesn't mean following a preset formula

     Well usually it does.
     
> a way, any two-step pattern (rock step, ocho), can be
> called a choreography, right?  If one has favorite ways
> to enter or exit a particular movement (or habits),
> doesn't that become a choreography?
     
     First of all, only performance tango has choreography
per se.  Sometimes people derisively say social tango
has choreography if a leader is trying to execute long
pre-determined dance sequences at a milonga regardless of
the current conditions on the floor.

     Now I think what you (Trini) are getting at is, can
we pejoratively label anything more than a bicameral-mind
instinctive one-step reaction by the leader to current
conditions on the floor "choreography," because the
second and perhaps even third steps are part of
a pre-determined pattern rather than strictly
improvisational on the spot, one step at a time?

     I would say that's a bit unfair.  I think it's
more realistic to think of the allowable improvisational
building blocks to be a bit more than a single step.
If after determining it should be perfectly safe to do
so, a leader decides to lead a simple little right-turn
giro in place, should he be accused of doing choreography?
I don't think so.

     How about someone who just got out of a class
teaching a 15-step nuevo sequence, and who then goes
straight to the milonga and holds up the ronda behind him
in an attempt to let 10 yards of space open up in front
of him so he can try to do the new 12-step sequence?
Yeah, you bet that's choreography.

Huck