[Tango-L] Chicken Little

[Deby Novitz]

Janis I do not want to disagree with you publicly, but I too live here, 
and I am out quite a bit in the milongas, especially now that almost all 
my English students are on vacation.  I think sounding the bell that 
"tango nuevo is taking over" is a little bit like Chicken Little yelling 
the sky is falling.

First of all complaining about young dancers moving their hips and 
shoulders.  So do the old ones.  So do the not so young ones.  So do the 
not so old ones.  This is not a new thing.  It is an old thing.  It is 
called bad posture, bad habits.  Especially if they came from salsa.  If 
you don't have a good teacher to correct this, then you continue dancing 
this way.  I came to tango from salsa.  It took me over a year to break 
what I call the "salsa hip." 

Today when Fernando and I were teaching a student from Canada she moved 
her hips and shoulders.  It was how she learned to dance in Canada.  She 
knew it wasn't right when she came here.  In our lesson with her we 
concentrated on her posture and axis.  Where to put her weight.  It was 
the first time anyone had "correctly" addressed these issues with her.  
She and a few of our other students noticed and have commented to us how 
many women dance here with their butt sticking out.  Another form of bad 
posture. I suppose if you didn't know better as one of my students 
didn't, you would think this is how they dance in Buenos Aires. 

As for the plethora of tango nuevo - it makes money with the 
foreigners.  Several teachers who were not such great teachers or 
dancers and a very small few who were/are have started to teach nuevo.  
Big deal.  There are still only 5 or 6 practicas for tango nuevo and the 
majority draw is foreigners.  Who cares?  I certainly don't. I continue 
to dance my salon style tango.  There are plenty of men who dance it and 
plenty more people who want to learn.

When I danced salsa I learned to dance on the "1".  Shortly before I 
started tango dancing on the "2" started to happen. I saw a 
demonstration and thought it was really cool.  I tried a few classes and 
realized that I was going to have to completely learn to dance salsa all 
over again.  After 12 years of dancing on the "1" I decided it would be 
more fun to learn a completely new dance.  For me that was tango.  (ah 
yes, and the rest is history)

Salsa on the "2" became a really hot thing.  Now years later, you still 
have lots of people who dance on the "1" and people who dance on the 
"2".  There never was this sort of mass hysteria that the "2" was taking 
over the world.  "2" dancers never looked their nose down at people 
dancing on the "1".  You danced one of the other or both.  Yes, Yes, I 
know tango has this "history."  But so what?  In the end, it is just a 
dance.  Why can't people just remember this and enjoy it?