[Tango-L] Choreography

[WHITE 95 R]

>Manuel,
>
>I really appreciate what you've written. I'm going to disagree a little bit
>and perhaps my points will make sense, perhaps not but you have made very
>helpful advances in this thread by looking more closely at improvisation.

First of all Jonathan, thank you for the kind response. I said that I waded 
into this with some trepidation. I expected to get "set straight" with lots 
of caps and exclamation points ;-), so I do appreciate kindness.

The reason I wrote as I did is that I get a feeling that this discussion is 
a lot like splitting hairs or discussing semantics. I've noticed that there 
are very few people who dance tango choreographies. AFAIK, only tango dance 
performances make use of choreographies. I've never seen anyone dance a 
choreography in the social dance scene except perhaps in the occasional 
performance break in a milonga. My wife, Ronda, and I have performed tango 
exhibitions many times, and even in those cases, our performances were what 
people call "improvised". We've only worked on a very few choreographies 
which included several dancers and some sort of theme.

I love to dance as much as I can and I can safely say that I never know what 
move I'll lead next (from whatever options I might have at the time) during 
a dance. By definition I guess all my dancing is improvisational, but I do 
think that it's made from a core set of steps, movements or weight changes 
that I do all the time. These small pieces get strung together in various 
forms during any one dance, by it's extremely predictable when and how these 
parts occur. Let me explain. As I'm dancing , the music dictates exactly 
when and how I must move. In reality, I'm pretty much compelled by the music 
to move, stop (briefly), accentuate or de-emphasize a movement, etc.

I'm probably quibbling here, but when I hear "improvised", I imagine some 
sort of wonderful flow or diverse but artfully, smoothly segued movements, 
perhaps not generally seen as tango steps.... Granted, this is just what I 
think, because I really don't think much about the dancing of tango itself. 
For me, the experience is rather simple. I hear music that inspires me to 
move, I take a partner and express my interpretation of the music through 
movement with my partner. The movements I use come from a rather limited 
repertory of steps further constrained by the music.

I often wonder who are these legions of "choreographed tango dances" that so 
many people in these forums are comparing themselves to. I also wonder why 
there is some sort of pejorative tone to the word "choreography".... I just 
don't get the gist or the reason for the discussions. Splitting hairs and 
discussing words is all fine and good. But I don't see the real theme or 
topic, or why there is any need to compare and judge the intrinsic value or 
superiority of "improvisational" vs. "choreographed" tango since one is 
almost exclusively in the realm of performance and the other is what people 
do in the social dance.

With kind regards,

Manuel