[Tango-L] Atlanta Tango Festival Video

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

--- Keith <keith at tangohk.com> wrote:

demonstrations - other than to send everyone
> to sleep :-).  I'm not saying they 
> should be dancing choreographed show routines but at
> least they should be of a high level 
> of excellence and difficulty to motivate and inspire
> their students and others. What these 
> demonstrations say to me is ... "learn from us and
> achieve a high level of mediocrity". 

Hi Keith,

I'm not going to flame you because you bring up a good
point - whether demos motivate and inspire.  The Alanta
Festival is specifically close-embrace, which means that
its focus is on social dancing.  Tomas and Brigitta are the
only couple that are also do show tango.  The Ann Arbor
festivals didn't have any demos on that same principle for
a long time.  But I have to say, that I was very glad that
Alex Krebs and Luciana Valle talked the organizers into
letting them do a demo, which was indeed inspiring. 
Perhaps organizers of festivals events should consider
whether demos are appropriate.

The teachers at the Altanta festival are chosen for their
teaching ability. I've studied with most of them and and
found them all to be excellent teachers.  I don't think the
demos showed them at their best, perhaps they were too
conscious of it being a close-embrace festival. (I wish,
though, that they hadn't spread themselves all over that
huge floor).

It seems to me that we may now be at a crossroads.  The
close-embrace "movement" began as an answer to more
show-style teaching methods (complicated patterns,
open-embrace, etc.).  As close-embrace became better
appreciated, taught, and practiced in the U.S., it started
to incorporate some nuevo elements.  Both styles encouraged
vocabulary that was organic.  However, the close-embrace
that I see most of the time is different from the style
that I see the milongueros do.  The milongueros do a lot of
basic steps but add a lot of footwork for musicality.  But
now that close-embrace (in whatever form) has become more
of the norm, are we now interested in it becoming more
showy?  I've noticed that it's the beginning women who want
to do the showy steps (boleos, volcadas, leg wraps), and
the men oblige them.  And I can see it heading back to
where we started - show tango.

A few thoughts.

Trini de Pittsburgh





PATangoS - Pittsburgh Argentine Tango Society
  Our Mission: To make Argentine Tango Pittsburgh’s most popular social dance!
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