[Tango-L] Invoking BA

[TangoDC.com]

The recent discussion of gender roles vs. dance roles has been following 
a pattern I've noticed behind many a debate in TangoLand: the invocation 
of Buenos Aires as an authority where tango matters are concerned.

This is something that has been pissing me off as long as I've been dancing.

I've heard teacher after teacher (none of them Argentine) pontificate 
about "the way they dance in the BA milongas," placing particular and 
repeated emphasis on close embrace, small movements, smaller 
vocabularies, and Being Very Serious. Oftentimes this has occurred in a 
room with people in three-piece gym suits and ample space, located well 
north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

Now, I take issue with this deference to BA, but not simply (a) because 
I live in DC, or (b) because we don't have the crowded-floor 
contingencies that make close-embrace dancing the only viable option. 
There's more to it than that. Even if I lived in Buenos Aires itself, I 
would still spare myself the kow-tow because, in point of fact, there 
has always been dispute, conflict, and competition over dancing styles 
there. If the city is definitively anything, it is definitively divided.

Neighborhoods, and the dancers from them, have always been at each 
other's throats over who's got the "real" style. (Even if this weren't a 
well known part of tango history, there are plenty of lyrics about it-- 
so many, it's not even interesting.) Likewise, aficionados have always 
bickered about which bandleaders ruined everything and which ones laid 
the most golden eggs. The old guard has always shut down the innovators, 
and the innovators have always fought back.

There never has been, and there most likely never shall be, an 
authoritative way to dance the tango-- nor even a reference to turn to 
if you'd like to find one. Teachers are notorious for contradicting each 
other and also themselves. Since the whole damn thing is an art, I don't 
know where so many people got the impression that it Should be or even 
Could be so boneheadedly orthodox, so risibly bureaucratic, so 
coweringly in search of validation. If a dance can have content, then 
the tango's content would probably be subversion anyway, whether of 
bodily momentum, bourgeois ideals, normal sleeping schedules, or, yes, 
Authority.

Aha, but there's "tradition"... Fine. Tell me about tradition. Tell me 
which barrio's tradition you're talking about, and then which dancer in 
that barrio, and then which year of that dancer, and with what partner, 
and to what song, played by which dead orchestra in what torn-down 
bailongo, way back then during The Traditional Age. And if you're going 
to talk about the value and authenticity of such tradition, then let's 
not half-ass it: let's only dance to live ensembles, invite the mafia 
over, and drink a lot, lot more.

Further, the tango as a dance (though not as a cultural image, a musical 
genre, or a body of popular literature) has probably died in Buenos 
Aires more times than it was ever born there. It never even rose into 
prominence among Argentines, or approached anything resembling a popular 
identity, until it came back from Paris with a stamp of approval-- and 
BA at that time kissed Paris' ass even more zealously than some tango 
dancers now turn sycophant over BA. If Buenos Aires is the mother 
country of the tango, she certainly needed a lot of help raising the 
miscreant after she left it to perish on the stoop of a whorehouse.

All of us (I presume) despise ballroom tango and its Hollywood 
caricature; but those aberrations kept the dance alive-- albeit in 
horrendously distorted form-- during those decades (the '30s, the '70s) 
when Buenos Aires, for various reasons, did not. If we're somehow in 
debt to BA, what do we owe Those mannequins?

And finally... Every visiting Argentine teacher I've met in the U.S.-- 
without exception-- has gently parried my peers' knee-jerk questions 
about authenticity, and has shifted the emphasis to individual style-- 
not theirs, mind you, but Yours. Why so many people in America still 
persist-- still-- in deferring to the (imaginary) authority of a distant 
city, historically fraught with bickering, whose name two-thirds of us 
can't even pronounce, is beyond my feeble powers of comprehension.

Lest I be misunderstood: I am not criticizing BA, Argentina, or its 
people. (Read Borges if you want that.) I am criticizing those who 
invoke BA to stifle others' creativity, and to broadcast their own 
complacency and third-hand opinions. They give the milongas a lingering 
scent of formaldehyde, sheep, and dust.

Buenos Aires is not the Vatican. If it were, most of today's best 
dancers would be (if they're not already) Jewish. Many a good dancer has 
gone there on pilgrimage, eager to surrender their common sense in 
exchange for "the real thing," and come back both condescending and 
Worse. If someone can patch the holes in my ignorance-- without adopting 
the role of an enthusiastic Tourist-- and explain why BA deserves the 
bow of our obedient little heads, I would really appreciate it. In the 
meantime, I'll continue to treat its invocation as the uncreative 
bigot's attempt to pass off the Funny Money he got suckered into buying 
for the hard cash of Talent.

As for women leading at milongas, practicas, performances, or anywhere 
else, I and a lot of other people hereby declare it to be perfectly 
fine. (If I lived in BA, I'd probably assemble a crack team of 
point-women, borrow a skirt, and raid some fuddy old grampa milonga, 
just to get thrown out in style.) I've heard many comments, from many 
non-leading followers, that certain women leaders have Way more 
interesting footwork than most of us men. I would advise many of the 
learning ones, however, to pay more attention to navigation and 
floorcraft, since in that regard they're no better than we are, and 
offer us nothing to aspire to.

Jake Spatz
Washington, DC