[Tango-L] Nuevo lead and follow and repressed teaching

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

>From the woman's perspective, I agree with David.  One of the reasons women have trouble with volcadas and colgadas is a lack of a good core.  Having a good core is something most women have to work at moreso than men.

I used to think like Jack - that the woman needed to know the figure.  But a few years ago, an Argentine friend who has been a professional tango dancer (salon) for over 30 years led me into a small colgada, and I said "Hey, that was a colgada" and he said "what's that?"  And I realized that we had been dancing colgadas for years but neither of us new the name of it until I took some nuevo workshops.  

And he wasn't the only one doing that particular move.  I recalled other salon dancers making comments during practicas like "turns seem to be easier if you lean back" long before neuvo came to my part of the country.  So I've concluded that the techniques in nuevo can arise organically from experimentation or accident and that what we now see as a "nuevo" figure merely uses an exaggeration of something already present in classic tango figures.  A purposeful exaggeration can then lead to developing other techniques.

So a related question, then, is "if these techniques can arise organically, why don't they arise more often?".  I believe the answer to that is because people will suppress these discoveries unless they are validated by a credible teacher.  Because if someone didn't teach it, then it couldn't be right.  This way of thinking goes against the entire grain of how tango developed in the first place.

Trini de Pittsburgh

--- On Fri, 7/25/08, David Thorn <thorn-inside at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: David Thorn <thorn-inside at hotmail.com>
> Subject: [Tango-L] Nuevo lead and follow
> To: "tango-l" <tango-l at mit.edu>
> Date: Friday, July 25, 2008, 2:45 PM
> Jack Dylan wrote
> >But they appear to be figures that both of the couple
> must know. If the lady
> >doesn't know how to dance Volcadas and Colgadas,
> they cannot be led by the man.
> 
> Related to my point about nuevo consisting of
> "elements", if a follow doesn't understand
> being tipped even while
> being lead (supported with suspension) to do so, she
> won't get it.  If she doesn't understand how to
> follow the energy
> of the lead, she will miss the sweep, as well as linear
> boleos, etc....  Nuevo follows don't have to know any
> figures, but
> they do need the technique that allows them to hear and
> respond to the tiny elements that are part of nuevo.  How
> is
> this any different from expecting your follow to wait, to
> not shuffle her feet unlead, etc.?
> 
> Yes it does require the both the lead and follow have a
> whole additional set of skills, but it does not require
> that they
> have any figures in common.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> David