[Tango-L] How to lead volcadas

[Carol Shepherd]

Tom, you're just brilliant.  You had me rolling on the floor laughing. 
Until just now, I never understood exactly what I couldn't stand about 
those early tango lessons.  These moves are truly the opera bouffe of 
the Tango Borg.

You reminded me of Milan Kundera's philosophy of kitsch (not just that 
kitschy culture is sentimental and facile but that the prevalence of 
kitsch in art is a form of totalitarianism imposing a sanitized view of 
culture in which all answers are already known before the question is 
asked, and in which complexity, irony and ambiguity are precluded. 
That's an interesting read on the reasons for the development of the 
highly regimented and sanitized 'ballroom' tango (kitschy) out of the 
murky, beautiful, and improvisational Argentine Tango.

Certain community leads know me from those days and they're gonna lead 
that stuff and expect compliance, and unfortunately I can't play dumb 
like some of these sweet younger things.  Now I know what to say, 
"that's so 1995, I really don't even remember it."


> 
> I remember the dreadful parada, sandwich, shoe-shine, gancho scare of  
> the mid 1990s. How kitsch that move looks today, as the woman rubs her  
> shoe with pretend skankiness up his leg.
> 
> A bunch of people will go to Buenos Aires and see a woman with her  
> nose pressed against his cheek, or her left shoulder cranked up with  
> elbow poking up at the ceiling, or her butt sticking way out, and  
> start imitating it.
> 
> Each year it seems like a particular new move is the rage: big  
> sweeping volcadas (2003), or a 45 degree plank (1995).
> 
> 
> Tom Stermitz
> Denver, CO 80207
> 

-- 
Carol Ruth Shepherd
Arborlaw PLC
Ann Arbor MI USA
734 668 4646 v  734 786 1241 f
Arborlaw - a legal blog for entrepreneurs and small business
http://arborlaw.biz/blog