[Tango-L] Argentine Tango on Dancing with the Stars

[Kace]

Lucia wrote
>    In my response I thought that you refered to authenticity of the technical dance.
>   But you are refering to the "authenticity" of the dancer, which is even better. 
>   
> .........
> Nina Pesochinsky <nina at earthnet.net> escribió:
>   Authenticity is simple.  Do you pretend or do you 
> live the role?  

Since we are splitting hairs on words, I'm going to state my own definitions
of what attracted me to Tango in the first place were:

1. Authenticity -- tango is not a "made-up" dance, springing from the 
mind of
   one dance "authority".  Many years ago, after passing my ballroom samba
   Gold Medal test, I naively thought I have "mastered" the samba.  Imagine
   how flabbergasted I was when I saw an authentic Brazilian samba dancers
   for the first time.  Tango has an authenticity that allows anyone 
from anywhere
   to learn the same dance as in Buenos Aires.

2. Honesty -- tango needs much less "role-playing" and "pretending to be
    someone-else".  All dances have a cultural context which needs to be
    embraced, but many will consume the dancers e.g. role of ghetto gangsta
    for hip hop dancers, role of hepcat for the lindy dancers, role of gypsy
    for flamenco dancer. You can be more yourself in tango.

3. Freedom -- from early on you learn to adapt tango to yourself and not 
the
   other way round.  How you embrace, walk, turn are all influenced by how
   it feel inside more than how it look outside.  As long as we stay within
   certain tango paradigms (not losing the embrace, not doing solo 
shines, etc)
   the dancer has the freedom to create steps.

4. Emotion -- tango is the only dance I know that projects a  healthy 
range of
    moods within an evening of dancing.  Most other dances are set to 
one fixed
    temperature -- cha cha (cheeky), paso doble (proud), salsa 
(carnival).  I can
    do a few songs of each, but I cannot sustain an entire evening of 
such extremes.

5. Nostalgia -- tango is a mirror to an earlier, more romantic era.  In 
the "good
   old days" gender roles were clearly defined, people went out to 
ballroom to
   socialise instead of  watching the television, and musicians 
connected at
   close distance to their audiences.  Tango lets us break out of our 
political
   correctness and return temporarily to a more macho and sensual age when
   men and women know how to treat each other with respect.

6. Purity -- accomplished dancers pushing the envelope in "new tango" have
   achieved a theory of pure tango -- they reduced the thousands of 
steps into
   logical combinations of a few weight-shifting movement that are 
results of
   energy transfer from lead to follow (and back again).  Reduced to a
   mechanical energy system, tango can be danced to any music (or no
   music).  This is an intellectual purity that I have only known in ballet
   and mathematics, and it appeals to the right-brain in me.

Kace
tangosingapore.com