[Tango-L] How to lead volcadas

[Jake Spatz]

List,

Jack Dylan wrote:

> It's my view that tango is a fast-evolving art form and the meanings
> of words do change due to common usage.

Bear in mind that "common usage" is often Very reductive though. 
Moreover, it is often a reflection of the merely /fashionable/. There's 
too much of that already; and it stems from teachers who recycle each 
other's material, not from the dance floor itself and certainly not from 
insight.

> It just seems to me that it
> would help in communication if we all understand a word to mean the
> same thing and to stop arguing semantics.

Ah, that's just the point, Jack. You want us to agree with /your/ 
meaning, at bottom. I run into this all the time. It's called dogma, and 
it comes directly from dogmatic teaching. You can always tell when it's 
happening because the dogmatist gets defensive about something not even 
worth bothering about, having already misplaced a great deal of 
importance therein.

As Chris has been at pains to point out (thank you, Chris!), these 
move-names are only descriptive: there's no one-to-one correspondence or 
"code" that defines or denotes a movement. They're /nicknames/, not 
technical terms. Only simplistic teaching-- step-purveying, in fact-- 
relies so heavily on these dumb labels so as to convince people that the 
dance is an aggregate of such things.

> We can leave the original,
> actual true meaning of the words to the history books and the
> academics, while we concentrate on the dancing.

/We/ collectively ARE the "history books and the academics." No one else 
is talking about these things but tango dancers.

> I had one teacher who
> described Front and Back Volcadas, depending on the final position of
> the moving foot.

I know people who call them "milonguero ochos" (I call them crosses) and 
in the end it doesn't matter how you pigeonhole it. The names are just 
descriptions, and the description isn't the important part. More often 
than not, it's actually a big distraction.

Chris, UK wrote:
> I think you'll find that interpretation exists only in
> people who've learned from teachers that define "volcada" as the
> label for the particular combination you identify. People who don't
> learn in such lessons don't acquire such labels.

This is the salient point. And it's much the same point as was made 
during the "change of direction" discussion. Somewhere along the line, 
people started believing in classroom jargon as though it were some kind 
of Tango scripture.

Is all this merely semantic? I don't believe so. They reveal the values 
and the expectations of the dancer.

Certain Argentines, I've noticed, steer away from the terms "leader and 
follower" while teaching in English, and say "man and woman" instead. 
It's a tacit shibboleth. It declares their understanding and their 
priorities, to those who have ears to hear it. It is not "semantic": it 
is a meaningful gesture. That's all that dancing is, when you get beyond 
the moves.

Jake