[Tango-L] Tango-L Digest, Vol 6, Issue 21

[Jocelyn Paine]

On Saturday, September 23, 2006, at 08:09 AM, tango-l-request at mit.edu 
wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 08:06:31 +0800
> From: Kace <kace at pacific.net.sg>
> Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Argentine Tango on Dancing with the Stars
> To: TANGO-L at mit.edu
> Cc: Lucia <curvasreales at yahoo.com.ar>, Nina Pesochinsky
> 	<nina at earthnet.net>
> Message-ID: <45147A87.4040200 at pacific.net.sg>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> 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> escribi?:
>>   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
>