[Tango-L] rose in the mouth...ouch!

[Crrtango@aol.com]

 <<<
 maybe not ...  seem to remember either Jack lemmon or his partner with the 
rose in mouth in Some Like It Hot, which being within the viewing lifetimes of 
more dancers today than Four Forsemen, probably reinforced the image. what im 
curious about is the genesis of the silly head snap the public seems to 
associate with tango..>>>.

By the time Jack Lemmon did it, it was well entrenched in the public 
perception but its origin is that film, believe it or not. The silly head snap may 
have come from that too but early forms of tango, like canyengue and orillero had 
a more playful posture and the head position has moved around over the years. 
The classic elegant social tango, with little, if any, upper-body movement, 
that many people know is actually a product of the forties and fifties in 
Buenos Aires (tango de salon, often confused with performance tango), more of a 
culmination and refinement of the previous years. I think the issue is more about 
how just a few isolated images of tango (not to mention a few isolated 
musical phrases) evolved tangentially into something else. It is a bit like seeing 
one or two swing steps and basing instruction on that over a period of fifty 
years without checking back to see how it actually continued to evolve in its 
country or culture of origin. In a sense that is how ballroom tango happened. I 
have never been to Finland but would be curious about what tango looks like 
there, since it is the national dance (no kidding!). They were so enamoured of 
the craze that it was completely absorbed into their culture, but whether they 
dance like Argentines is another question.
Any Finnish out there to enlighten us?

Cheers,
Charles


**************
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**************
Start the year off right.  Easy ways to stay in shape.
     
http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489