[Tango-L] Women leading IV

[Derik Rawson]

Dear Jake:

We US Americans come to the Argentines to ask them why
Argentine Tango is so beautiful and why is the
male-female relationship in tango so wonderful.  The
Argentines, like Sergio, are kind enough to tell us
the secret of Argentine Tango, which is that "the man
leads and the woman follows". What part of that do you
not understand...lol.  If you do not like the idea,
then go dance another dance.

Would all the people here in the USA, especially the 
self appointed Argentine Tango teachers, please stop
telling the Argentines how to dance Argentine tango. 
They know how to dance the dance.  We do not.  We need
to learn, not teach.  We are wrong. The Argentines are
right.  Period.

Derik
d.rawson at rawsonweb.com


--- "TangoDC.com" <spatz at tangoDC.com> wrote:

> 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.
> _______________________________________________
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> 
> 


Derik Rawson
d.rawson at rawsonweb.com
http://www.rawsonweb.com
713-522-0888 USA Landline Direct to Portable Cell Phone
281-754-4315 USA Landline Voice/Fax
d.rawson at cal.berkeley.edu
d.rawson at haas.alum.berkeley.edu
rawsonweb at yahoo.com
Europe/Asia
rawsonweb at compuserve.com
Paris, France
 
 


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