[Tango-L] Women leading IV

[TangoDC.com]

Sergio,

First off, you're issuing forth an idealized, Star Trek version of 
gender roles (minus Captain Kirk, I might add), and asking us to believe 
that this pipe-dream of equality is not only behind the brothel-born 
tango, but a uniquely Argentine phenomenon, which the rest of the 
cement-headed world has never even heard of.

Secondly, you haven't done Squat to describe what those roles actually 
are, besides assigning (tautologically) the man's role to the man, and 
the woman's role to the woman. You give us a threadbare generalization, 
but halt on the doorstep of what it truly is: mere stereotype, an 
old-fashioned melodrama which the huddled masses take delight in 
swallowing, one three-minute dose at a time. It is and has always been 
as shallow as a soap opera, which is exactly what makes it (a) a fantasy 
largely *at odds* with the reality of gender relations, and (b) possible 
for an intelligent person to enjoy *as a charade.* If the tango has an 
essence of sorrow, the sorrow is that real life's neither that easy nor 
that beautiful.

Thirdly, you seem to have reached your conclusion about the place a 
leading woman has in the tango world Well Before posing the question to 
anyone here, so I don't understand how you can even maintain the 
pretense of presiding over an open discussion. Like many a pedant before 
you, you arrange the available evidence (or the portion of it you find 
attractive) so that it seems to support your prefabricated conclusion, 
sweep the rest under the carpet, and voila-- Thou Art the Very 
Mouthpiece of The Trumpet of the Tango. Meanwhile, voices dissenting 
from yours get the spit-valve concession of being perfectly acceptable 
if they squeak, but no longer "Argentine," because they depart from this 
walking caricature you insist on equating with real life.

To your credit, you reverse your statements in light of contrary 
evidence, as you did when reminded of the charming story, "Rudolpho Goes 
to the Wrong Neighborhood," which paints Buenos Aires in a 
less-than-heavenly light. The details of that little expose' showed me a 
city that has gutters as well as statues, and I continue to appreciate 
it for the way it smacks of first-hand experience. To your great 
discredit, you don't do this enough, either because you fear 
misinterpretation, or because you feel some necessity to promote your 
own views. In the end, it's just patronizing.

The simple fact is that there is a wide variety of opinion as to the 
woman's role in tango, and that a lot of this variety has come from 
people posting IN Buenos Aires. They've spoken for themselves, and your 
simplistic summaries will not smother them out. Neither, for that 
matter, will appeals to Buenos Aires as the tabernacle of authenticity. 
By the time we're done sorting out tango propaganda from tango history, 
we've still got the great variety of how people actually dance, and the 
everlasting plurality of styles-- plus the innovative dancers known as 
artists, who set fire to all these useless blanket statements and modify 
tradition by the presence of their own blazing originality.

Jake Spatz
Washington, DC

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
-- Oscar Wilde



Sergio Vandekier wrote:
> When I mentioned the way women and men are in Argentina (described as 
> platitude by Jake and as something existent all over the world by 
> Ilene, and as not true by Jak ) I was giving  and ideal reflection of 
> the concept that exists in Argentine society of what a man and a woman 
> should be.