[Tango-L] Tango styles and labeling

[Alexis Cousein]

Anton Stanley wrote:
> I would like the assistance of list members to help me become a Tango
> pacifist. But first I need to understand why we don't include "Tango"
> which most of us in the tango community label Ballroom Tango, on our
> list of tango styles. We have "Argentine Tango", "Traditional or
> Classic" and of course "Nuevo". Why is the Tango danced in ballrooms
> around the world not included by us. Is it too different?

Yes. It's not an improvisational social dance. /begin{rant}Not to mention the
music's often horrible and just seen as a backdrop, but I digress/end{rant}.

> tango? Or is it simply too controlled? Which one is Tango? Are they all
> tango. Is Ballroom Tango too Nuevo? Or not Nuevo enough?

It's not Nuevo or Viejo, it's a "version" of Argentine Tango
made to fit a certain mould that was deemed necessary (and whose
frame of reference was so very different from that of Argentine
tango that it only bears a superficial resemblance). Not that
I dispute people's right to dance it, but its origins mean it's
been much more brutally severed from its ancestors.

> If Nuevo Tango
> is tango evolution why retain the classic tango? 

You're under the impression there's a great arbiter deciding to retain
or discard styles. There isn't. Styles arise, are used, flourish or die,
and there is natural selection yielding a selection of the fittest styles.

As long as people will dance "classic", it will be retained.

 > Should Classic Tango
> reflect the culture and tastes of today's Buenos Aires?

By definition it *does* to some degree. If it would stop reflecting
the taste of living people, it would become something akin to a dead
language - to be studied by scholars, not "spoken" in public.

> Should we then
> call it Nuevo?

We should stop pigeon-holing everything we come across. Categories are
useful to discuss things, but let's stop pretending they're Platonic
universals.

> Or is tango simply a reflection of individuals' taste.

Oh yes. At least partly.

-- 
Alexis Cousein                                  al at sgi.com
Senior Systems Engineer/Solutions Architect     SGI/Silicon Graphics
--
<If I have seen further, it is by standing on reference manuals>