[Tango-L] Respect and love of cultures

[Tango Society of Central Illinois]

On 2/26/07, Deby Novitz <dnovitz at lavidacondeby.com> wrote:

> When  I tell Argentines that I dance tango regardless of their age,
> their test to me as a foreigner dancing their dance is exactly what do I
> dance.  Show tango, tango nuevo to Argentines is not Argentine Tango.
> Most call it tango for foreigners or tango for export.  You can debate
> this, you can try to prove me wrong with all the statistics and articles
> and hearsay you want, but I live here.  Argentine Tango to Argentinians
> is a cultural icon.  Plain and simple.  Why do Americans more than any
> other group of people want to change, deface, this cultural icon?

>From someone on the American side teaching tango, I find that getting
Americans to accept tango as danced in Buenos Aires (close embrace,
with the music, partner rather than audience directed) is a difficult
task. I often wonder why most Americans prefer the exhibitionist
fantasy - nuevo forms of tango. In part, this is our dance culture -
ballroom dance competition & swing dancing in particular - as part of
our Hollywood driven desire for audience approval. We talk of dance as
"learning cool steps". It is deeply ingrained in our cultural. Not to
mention the intimacy of close embrace is somewhat frightening to a
culture with a strong Puritan heritage. It is sometimes amusing to see
how Americans learning close embrace tango fight against getting
close. Or if they are in close embrace, they throw their shoulders
back to avoid a complete connection, despite what we as instructors
tell them repeatedly about "connection, connection, connection". The
Latin Americans and some other foreigners in our classes are
different. They are not afraid to get close. Fortunately, after a
while most people who stay with tango in close embrace enjoy it, and I
believe the connection fulfills a need in a standoffish culture.

However, these people are a minority. Fantasy tango and, more recently
nuevo, are a strong magnet for dancers. So is the loud, bass thumping
noise that passes for dance music in our culture. This fits in more
with our cultural values of exhibitionism being dominant over subtlety
and intimacy.

Almost all milongas in the US are a caricature of milongas in Buenos
Aires, with exhibitionistic antics predominating, at least visually,
if not in numbers. Connection with the music is rare. Moving in
harmony with a partner is rare. This is not news.

Why do US tango dancers prefer exhibitionism, even when it is aberrant
in Buenos Aires? We Americans frequently adopt and change imported
culture to fit our own cultural norms. The Argentine tango of the
early 20th century was imported, sanitized, modified, etc., until the
descendant American ballroom tango is hardly recognizable as tango.
Fantasy tango and nuevo are accepted because they meet our culture
norms of dance as exhibition. When I mention that people in Argentina
do not dance that way at milongas, I have heard a few times "We're not
in Argentina. We're in America". So be it. The ugly truth bares
itself. Many of us do not even care that what we dance as tango
socially is not what is danced socially in Buenos Aires. Why should
we? We are Americans and we have the right to do things our way!!
Don't tell us how to dance tango!! We are free to express ourselves as
we want, why shoul dwe be bound by silly irrelevant tradition? And
besides, we live in a democracy, so don't tell me what to do!

Fortunately, there are a significant number of Americans who break
away from this cultural ignorance. Sometimes it takes a few trips to
Buenos Aires. I had danced fantasy tango for 5.5 years when I first
went to BA in 2003, but meeting this cultural clash between what I was
taught as social tango and the reality of social tango in Buenos Aires
made me angry at my instructors who had deceived me and made me
determined to change. But not every American changes they way they
dance even when faced with that reality. Perhaps it was growing up in
multicultural New York City as the son of European immigrants and
being reasonably fluent in several languages that has enabled me to
appreciate what other cultures have to offer. Maybe it is more
difficult for Americans who only encounter people with similar
cultural becakgrounds. Maybe this criticism of them is to harsh.

However, to really appreciate tango, you need to approach tango for
it, as a part of Argentine culture, has to offer. You need to try to
understand tango on tango's terms, not fit it into your own cultural
preconceptions, modifying it until you fill comfortable with it within
the dimensions of your own cultural frame of reference. Of course, not
being Argentine, we can never understand tango as an Argentine.
However, Americans need to watch and listen more and be objective in
seeing what this part of Argentine culture can offer us and what we
can learn from it and how we can grow from this knowledge, rather than
claiming artistic creativity in adapting tango until it is no longer
recognizable as Argentine.

Ron