[Tango-L] Interview with Gustavo Naveira, Part 1

[Keith]

Hi Brian,

This is great; thanks for sharing it with us. Look forward to reading more in the future.

Keith, HK


 On Sat Jun 23 18:19 , "Brian Dunn"  sent:

>Dear List,
>
>The following is the first part of an extensive interview with tango maestro
>Gustavo Naveira (www.gustavoygiselle.com).  The interview is ongoing, and
>I'd like to include some interesting questions from others - if you have
>questions you'd like to ask, please send them to me offline for possible
>inclusion in later segments.
>
>Gustavo Naveira Interview, Part 1
> 
>DOTH: When did tango begin for you?
> 
>GN: I grew up around tango – my father was a tanguero, and we always had
>tango music playing in the house.  But regarding the dance, there was a
>special moment that I remember.
>
>When I was 12, we went with my family to a wedding.  It was nobody we knew
>personally, my mother was the seamstress for the bride, so we didn’t know
>anyone there.  During the reception, someone put on a tango, and a woman at
>the reception, when she heard it, asked in a loud voice,”Is there any man
>here that has what it takes to really dance a tango with me?” Nobody
>answered at the beginning, but my father, a stranger to that group, suddenly
>said, “It would be my pleasure, senora.” A big silence fell over the room.
>My father was on the other side of the room from the woman, and he stood
>there, waiting for her acceptance.   When she said yes, he walked towards
>her & they met in the middle of the ballroom. And they danced. And of
>course, they had never met before. And they danced perfectly well, as if
>they had done it for a long time. This situation was amazing for me & for
>everyone at the party. At that moment, my father became for me a hero. 
>
>As a comment on this culture, I should say that another reason this happened
>was that the women of my family were not there in the room at that moment.
>It was just my papa & me. If my mother had been there, I think my father
>would not have done it. 
>
>When I was sixteen, I wanted to learn to dance tango from my father, but –
>well, it wasn’t very successful.  So when I was in my twenties, about 1981,
>I started studying with Rodolfo Dinzel.  I was one of his best students
>within that course, and he took special notice of me and worked me very
>hard.
> 
>At that time, I had found a practice partner that I met at the University of
>Buenos Aires, in the folklorico ballet.  And that partner was Olga (Besio)
>who afterward was my wife. She began to encourage me to start teaching. I
>first started teaching with her in 1983.
> 
>There was something very important for the development of tango that
>happened at this point, relative to the political situation in Argentina.
>Yes, democracy returned to the government in 1983 – but the military
>dictatorship was not the reason that tango had been dying out as a social
>dance – even in the Golden Age of tango, we had Peron, who was also a
>military dictator!  In Argentina, many people like to blame many things on
>the government, because then it means that they don’t have to do anything
>themselves.  It’s a problem we have.
> 
>No, the important thing for tango at this time was that the new president,
>Raul Alfonsin, took a very significant step.  He created a network of
>cultural centers throughout Buenos Aires, and created a program to hire
>people to give classes in a wide variety of subjects to the people of the
>city, at no cost to the students.  
>
>What they discovered was that, while someone would teach photography and
>have five students, or teach painting and have ten students, or teach guitar
>and have fifteen students, people who taught tango dancing had fifty,
>seventy, a hundred students in their classes.  
> 
>One time, at the cultural center where I was teaching, the class size limit
>was supposed to be one hundred and fifty students.  The administrators were
>supposed to stop taking applications for the class after they reached the
>limit, but someone forgot to do that, and just kept accepting applications.
>When I went to class on the first day, there were five hundred students
>packed in this tiny room!  I could barely get in the door!  I got a chair in
>the middle somehow, stood up on it, and said “All right, everybody to my
>left, stay here - everybody to my right, come back in July!”
> 
>This was very new - a large-scale structure and program that made it really
>easy for anyone to learn how to dance tango.  And all the teachers taught as
>best they could, with no organization to determine who was “right” and who
>was “wrong”.  I know many teachers who are claiming to be "authentic tango"
>teachers, who started dancing tango in my classes!
>  
>Many people in other countries think that it was the show “Tango Argentino”
>that triggered the "rebirth" of tango in Argentina in the 1980’s.  But that
>show didn’t return to Argentina until late in the decade – by that time I
>had had hundreds and hundreds of people in my classes at the cultural
>centers and elsewhere.  That show went to Paris at about the same time as
>the popular interest in tango was unleashed in a flood in Buenos Aires,
>but the flood didn’t start with the show – people just wanted to dance, they
>just wanted to move their bodies.  So people in other countries heard about
>the tango from those shows – but in Argentina it came from inside the
>people.  And this desire to dance, to move - it wasn’t just happening in
>Argentina, with its return to democracy - at that time all over the world,
>you saw the same thing – people became interested in participating in
>sports, running, triathlons, aerobics – health clubs suddenly became very
>successful and popular – anything to be moving!  In Argentina, for many
>people this movement took the form of learning to tango.
> 
>When it was time for me to start teaching my first class, naturally before
>the classes I was busy working on what I would say, how I would teach.  So
>of course I was sitting down with a paper and pencil, designing the
>classes.  Olga and I created extensive notes before the first classes we
>taught, which I still have – yes, here they are. (Notes, charts, tables,
>diagrams, drawings - more than thirty pages worth! –Ed.)  In a way, that is
>what I have been doing ever since - sitting there with that paper and
>pencil, analyzing and synthesizing, looking for the structure underneath the
>social dance that surrounded me.
>=============
>(To be continued)
>
>As part of their visit to Boulder next month, we're planning some roundtable
>discussion format events where we'll get to explore Gustavo & Giselle's
>experiences in more depth.
>
>Abrazos,
>Brian Dunn & Deb Sclar
>Dance of the Heart
>775 Pleasant Street
>Boulder, CO 80302 USA
>303-938-0716
>www.danceoftheheart.com
>“Building a Better World, One Tango at a Time”
>
>
>
>
>
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