[Tango-L] Expanding social dancing to exhibition level?

[Barbara Garvey]

ceverett at ceverett.com wrote:

>>>>>Who is a milonguero?

>>>A few weekends ago, my teacher Florencia Taccetti was 
telling me about the days when she was going out every 
night dancing in BA, about her favorite partners, who 
was going to the same places and where they were going.

The current generation of name brands all went out 
dancing *socially* every night for years, on top of 
full days of lessons, performances, practice and/or 
teaching.  There was no incentive to dance in a way
that would attract impressionable foreigners for 
lessons, because there weren't enough of them for 
anyone to make a living from.

El Beso wasn't owned by Susanna Miller, it was called 
Regine's. Susanna Miller wasn't even on the map as a 
teacher.

So, if they were living and breathing tango, making it a 
part of their who they were, are they or are they not 
milonguero?<<<<<

Al and I had the same experience as Florencia  in the late
'80s and early '90s, when many of today's top professional dancers did go
to the milongas every night, I mean every night, Geraldine and her 
generation
(the Misses, ets) with their parents, the Zottos, Milena Plebs, Carlos 
Copello, Guillermina
Quiroga, Diego DiFalco & Natalia Hills, etc. They did not do exhibition 
moves
in the milonga (except when doing an exhibition, of course!), they just 
danced
beautifully with many partners no matter how crowded the floor. So even
those who were already performing on stage were considered milongueros.

Obviously many more show dancers are professionals
only, never danced socially. These were not considered by anyone to be
authentic tango dancers; the distinction was clear. Lots of them are 
teaching
now and some are terrific teachers as they understand technical aspects of
dance. Others impart nothing but choreography. Let the buyer beware.

I believe that there are two definitions of milonguero, one made up and
promoted by those who live the "milonguero lifestyle", using the clubs like
singles bars and capitalizing on what Susana Miller (who I never saw at 
a milonga
that she didn't organize) began selling in 1994 as the only authentic tango
with huge success as evidenced on this List. Some are now having the 
time of
their lives impressing tango tourists. Some are even pretty good dancers :-)

Meanwhile in the neighborhoods like Villa Urquiza, Mataderos etc.

ceverett at ceverett.com wrote:
 >>>>>>Finito, Pepito, Pupi, Gerardo Portalea, Petroleo and all the 
other greats
that don't fit >> into your neat little"tango milonguero" box.<<<<

were in their time regarded as the  best dancers by everyone, including 
those
who now identify themselves as the "true milongueros". Every Argentine 
dictionary
and book about tango I've read (many dozens, in Spanish) defines a 
milonguero as
someone who goes to the dancehalls regularly and whose life is defined 
by tango.
Until the mid-'90s no one ever insisted that it was required to be an 
underemployed
womanizer, dance in only one style and have a sleazy reputation to be 
considered
a milonguero. (The term "milonguera" has a much dicier conotation going 
back to
the late 19th century.)

ceverett at ceverett.com wrote:

>>>>>There are many reasons you don't see these elements in 
common use by the old farts in BA:  

* no room for things that take up a lot of space
* lack of physical talent
* advancing physical decrepitude<<<<<<

And of course all of those who were considered good dancers by 
the newly labeled "old milongueros", those precious few are now 
gone. Many of the youngsters who learned from them are able to 
make a living (of sorts)from tango as their mentors almost 
never did. 

So maybe the bottom line is that the current crop of "milongueros" 
is so called by default, with the generation of creativity and 
elegance diminished by time and death, by distance from the 
"Golden Age". Meanwhile there are still a few of us who knew 
them and experienced the excitement of the early years of the 
tango revival. We try to keep history accurate and their memory 
from being erased or trashed. Just because most of the folks on 
this list came to tango a little later doesn't mean that a rich 
individualistic strictly social tango didn't exist before 1994 
when it was redefined by Susana Miller. 

Barbara