[Tango-L] Respect and love of cultures

[AJ Azure]

As a musician and someone putting together a stage show involving live music
and dance I ask you this, do you think that trad. tango makes for good stage
performance? I am asking sincerely. it's something i am currently wrestling
with in deciding the content of said show, which will also feature lindy and
swing styles. Aside from being a pro musician my family lineage is from
Argentina and I respect my roots although I believe to survive newness must
also be injected in to nostalgia. The answer is if you really want tango to
live on, support the live music so that it can keep some sort of freshness.
get musicians old music so that we have access to it. Work with musicians to
tell us you want but, also keep an open mind AND for goodness sakes stop the
elitism, snobbery and judgmental attitude (not specific tot his e-mail just
in general) it's seen in many circles and ultimately it poisons the
environment

-A

> From: Tango Society of Central Illinois <tango.society at gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:49:43 -0600
> To: Deby Novitz <dnovitz at lavidacondeby.com>
> Cc: <tango-l at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Respect and love of cultures
> 
> 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
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