[Tango-L] Fame and photos and building communities

[Lois Donnay]

When I brought Susana here, "close embrace" was still a fairly controversial 
way to dance tango, if you can believe that. (She had not opened El Beso in 
BsAs yet)  As in so many communities, we had learned tango from videos or 
from stage dancers, because that is who came to the U.S. to dance tango. (I 
guess it was kind of like asking someone who had starred in Broadway's 
"Swing!" to teach you lindy-hop.) So we knew molinetes and ganchos, but not 
the embrace or how to walk.

Back then I was traveling quite a bit, and I got to dance with some people 
from San Fransisco, Denver, etc.  It was an eyeopener, to say the least! I 
went on a personal crusade to get the tango here a little more authentic. 
Believe me, it was quite a struggle to convince people that what they were 
seeing on stage was not how tango was danced on the pista. Susana Miller was 
an incredibly important influence in that regard, I believe, and not just 
for us but for the whole country.

Trini said "I suspect those newbies teaching have no idea of the work that 
goes into building a sizable community from the ground up - work that many 
others have put in before them" Is that ever true!!

Lois Donnay
Minneapolis, MN


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Crrtango at aol.com>
To: <Tango-L at mit.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 2:33 PM
Subject: [Tango-L] Fame and photos


> Lois Donnay wrote:
>
> < As I prepare to go in for my photo shoot today, I am reminded of the 
> time I
> brought Susana Miller here for a weekend of workshops. In order to create 
> a
> brochure, I asked her to send me a photo. She said she didn't have one. I
> thought that surprising coming from one of the best known and most
> influential Argentine teachers.>
>
> This will probably get some sparks flying but I'm used to that.   :-)
>
> Not that I disagree with Susana's sentiment of tango being something felt,
> not seen, but not having pictures shouldn't really be a surprise. Perhaps 
> she
> didn't have photos because maybe she wasn't as known or as influential as 
> she
> was touted to be. "Best known and most influential" is a matter of opinion 
> and
> relative to one's experience (or lack thereof) in tango.   Susana Miller 
> was
> hyped and touted here as an influential teacher by certain people who 
> somehow
> consider "close embrace" as a separate and unique style of tango.  Because 
> so
> many people in the U.S. teach performance and stage tango (i.e. open 
> embrace)
> instead of traditional social tango, which is what "close embrace" is 
> basically,
> she seemed like a novelty. Older dancers here and especially milongueros 
> and
> milongueras in Buenos Aires saw that she was just teaching what they had 
> been
> doing all their lives. I and some others here in New York were also not
> impressed, either by her execution or her style. She just seemed like 
> another
> typical social dancer. Not bad, but not great and her execution and 
> technique left a
> lot to be desired.
> This is not a reflection on her because she was rather humble and pleasant 
> to
> dance with but she may have not had photos because she really didn't 
> consider
> herself that important down there. It doesn't take much to impress
> aficionados of tango here in the states. Although there are certainly good 
> dancers and
> teachers here, we have mediocre (or even worse) dancers from Buenos Aires 
> come
> through New York all the time who manage to impress people and sell 
> classes
> and start milongas. Some of them didn't even learn it until they came 
> here!
> Some still haven't learned it!   We have a handful of them here right now.
> I don't mean to disrespect Lois' regard for Susana but I wanted to put a
> little perspective on why she may have not had photos.
> cheers
> Charles
>
>
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