[Tango-L] Community Expansion Brainwashing

[Nina Pesochinsky]

Jake,  THANK YOU!

Your post proves exactly the point! Ideas like yours are the ones 
that demand a loud and clear voice like Neil's in defense of tango.

Once again, THANK YOU!

Nina


At 01:48 PM 11/28/2006, Jake Spatz (TangoDC.com) wrote:
>Bravo to Robert for spitting on the unfounded arguments recently put
>forward. I have only a few points to add...
>
>(1) If you're talking about community building as a spectator, you had
>better be getting your ass on the floor and giving people good dances.
>To cast aspersions on teachers, organizers, performers, or even DJs,
>without having first shut up and done your part to be a good community
>member, is poop.
>
>(2) This home-town crap (tango in BA, bop in NYC) is ludicrous. Tango
>and jazz both went abroad to find their first audiences and devotees on
>the world stage. Thanks be to the greater aesthetic sensibilities of
>Europe for that (and to the erstwhile cheap rents of Paris). Many of the
>great jazz musicians (like many in tango) lived in and on Europe. Only
>when these arts had risen to glory (and commercial promise) did their
>home countries accept them back, and make a big ruckus about national
>treasures, which is pure hogwash.
>
>(3) America isn't the country that came up with tango electronica, and
>it wasn't Americans living in Paris either. Also, there's more to the
>good stuff (as opposed to the crud) than a bass beat and a bandoneon,
>which should be readily apparent to anyone with a keen ear for music.
>
>(4) The "BA milonga experience," to the best of my knowledge, consists
>of overcrowded floors (which eliminate the possibility of dancing
>fantasia, which appears to have been a social form before it was taken
>to the stage in the rock n' roll era), of tourists aplenty, and of
>inexpensive but good quality beef in large, lean cuts. If anyone wants
>to introduce a good, cheap steak to the DC milongas, you have my full
>support.
>
>(5) Saying that everyone has to go to Buenos Aires is like saying
>everyone in BA has to go to La Viruta. Are these people in advertising?
>
>(6) There continue to be plenty of Argentine dancers living and teaching
>in Europe and the US. I wonder how much they want to re-create BA abroad.
>
>(7) I know plenty of musicians who are fine dancers, and it's too early
>in the game to decree that they must become mediocre tango musicians.
>This type of binary thinking (I hesitate to call it thinking) is really
>becoming an epidemic, here and elsewhere. Either/or is for switchboards,
>not the alert human mind.
>
>Spatz
>DC
>
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