[Tango-L] Alternative in Buenos Aires

[Igor Polk]

Andres, Brian,

I am not the person to tell about ratio of alternative music to classical in
the milongas of San Francisco. I do not go to places where they play
alternative a lot. Only sometimes.

One has to be a very very good dancer of tango to dance tango to alternative
music. Mostly because most of this music is undanceable for the correct
tango styles. To the contrary there is a lot of modern music which is very
danceable: it carries simplified, but correct rhythm and rhythmical patterns
suitable for tango. I call in "non-tango tango" in contrast to "alternative"
which is.. well ... something else than tango... I love dancing to good
alternative music, because I make my dance suitable for music - I draw ideas
for improvisation from music, based, of course, on my tango experience, and
abilities of the partner, but this is not tango - it is something else.

So this is in the quality of DJs, their understanding of real tango dance,
even assumuing that sometimes they experiment. It should be room for
experiment, of course, somewhere.

Tango music is very special. I have a friend, a professional modern dancer.
He says: "I love dancing to tango music - when I dance to other music, I
work, I have to create a dance, while with tango music I am relaxing: music
cares about me, it creates a dance for me, I am just following it."

Culture is very important too. Old American music like blues or foxtrots are
very danceable - perfect for a little of classical tango and milonga. One
time, on the alternative milonga I have asked a young American lady to dance
to this music. She said: "Not to this music, I hate it !!!!" Hmm...... That
is cultural. Being a foreigner, I do not understand why, though.

Frankly, I do not see any need for any non-tango tango, if our musicians (
again we are coming to this topic ) would understand tango and started to
play it right, so we could have a modern sound with the correct structure.
But they do not ! They even tried to teach us, us who have listened and
danced, knew and felt from very within the greatest tango pieces for
thousands times !!!!!!! ...

So far, thanks to your letters, I understand that one can safely say that
there is no alternative music in milongas of Buenos Aries.

And more.. From you I conclude that there is a very little of "Alternative
Tango" as well. This is not Argentinean, this is something brought from
outside and is not popular there. This is much more important than a
discussion of alternative music.

Igor Polk.



-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Dunn [mailto:brian at danceoftheheart.com]
Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2006 12:39 AM
To: 'Igor Polk'
Cc: tango-l at mit.edu
Subject: RE: [Tango-L] Alternative in Buenos Aires


Igor, you wrote:
>>>
So you mentioned about how many? 3-4 alternative milongas? About the same
like in San Francisco.
Out of 140 weekly?
Aha.
<<<

No, actually I said, "At the Monday and Thursday practicas run by El Motivo
Tango...the music from 8pm - 11:15pm or so was entirely classical tango (Di
Sarli, D'Arienzo, Biagi, Pugliese, etc.).  From 11:15pm until midnight, the
music shifted toward what many would consider alternative."

A milonga with 3 hrs 15 min of classical tango and 45 min of "what many
would consider alternative" (maybe not Jackie, though ;) ) is...an
"alternative milonga"??  Under the circumstances I'm not sure if that's a
useful designation. That's more than 80% classical tango music at an
"alternative milonga".  What are the ratios at typical "alternative
milongas" in San Francisco?

All the best,
Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
Boulder, Colorado USA
www.danceoftheheart.com
"Building a Better World, One Tango at a Time"