[Tango-L] Tango Pedantics

[Joe Grohens]

About Petroleo's dancing....

Charles Roque said:
> [Tango Salon] is stilled danced very much like Virulazo and Petroleo  
> and many of the great ones did in that era.... "

David Thorn responded by citing links to some pages of Rick McGarrey's  
commentary on the video clip of Petroleo dancing and commenting on them.
> Interesting.
> http://tangoandchaos.org/chapt_3search/3petroleo.htm http://tangoandchaos.org/chapt_3search/11petroleofinal.htm
> Is this how we should all look? Hunched over with bent legs? I'm not  
> intending any disrespect,  because, as you all probably know, I am  
> one of those "nearly anything goes dancers." But I do  imagine that  
> a number of regular posters to this list would find much to  
> criticize about this style if it were to appear in their milonga  
> today.
I first saw this clip of Petroleo on a video tape collection that  
Michelangel Zotto produced called, I think, "Perfumes of Tango". It  
also had some archival home video footage of Fino, Virulazo, and  
Todaro dancing with his daughter.

Once after a lesson with Mingo Pugliese, I asked him about this  
dancing of Petroleo on the tape. I described the dancing (I didn't  
have the tape with me), and I demonstrated the movements he was  
making, with the sideways crawl and the dragging of his foot. And the  
hunched over posture. Mingo said that, yes, he knew the video clip I  
was talking about. He was very curious to know how I had managed to  
acquire it. He was surprised I had seen it. I told him it was on  
Zotto's tape, which he was familiar with. I then asked Mingo, "Is this  
really how Petroleo danced?" It seemed to me completely opposite to  
the modern style that, for example, Mingo teaches, and which Mingo  
attributes to some extent to innovations of Petroleo and his cohort.

Mingo said that the clip was showing, not how Petroleo danced, but how  
they used to dance in the old days, _before_ the developments (read  
improvements) that Petroleo and his cohort brought into the tango.  
Petroleo was demonstrating this primitive tango to some people, and  
someone taped him.

This claim of Mingo's is the opposite of Rick McGarrey's conjecture,  
on the pages that David Thorn references, that the video shows  
"Petroleo's style". I have always intended to write to Rick about what  
I was told by Mingo, but I never took the time.

Mingo and Petroleo were part of the same crowd of dancers. Rick, if  
you are reading this, you might compare notes on Petroleo with Mingo  
someday.

Joe Grohens