[Tango-L] Nuevo y Viejo

[Huck Kennedy]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 3:28 PM, Laurence Moseley <lgmoseley at aol.com> wrote:
> Ballroom dancing is highly codified. Frequently dancers learn and
> practice with "their" partner, doing "their" figures. Sometimes the
> lady learns more quickly than the man and effectively leads from in
> front. In my experience, for all but the most skilled, such people (I
> used to be one) find it relatively difficult to dance with a stranger.

     You normally don't lead each individual step in ballroom, but you
can certainly lead standard figures with a stranger.  Of course, it's
a lot more pleasant when the floor is empty--compared to a
well-mannered milonga, most ballroom social dances I've seen are
chaos.  :-)

> Of course,Tango Argentino started as a social dance. The basic
> principle is that a competent dancer should be able to go to a Milonga,
> invite another competent dancer on to the floor, and dance comfortably
> with them--even if they have never met before. If that is true of
> Nuevo, then it is Tango Argentino.
>
> If it false, Nuevo may be a dance form (like Ballroom, Latin, Scottish
> Country Dancing, Morris, Serbian, or Welsh - some of my earlier loves),
> but it is not Tango Argentino.

     I not sure that's a very useful criterion.  First of all, one can
lead figures in ballroom, and West Coast Swing dancers routinely have
what they call "Jack and Jill" contests where strangers pick each
other's names out of a hat and then are judged by how well they can
spontaneously lead and follow.

    And secondly, back in the late 90s I saw Fabian Salas and Luren
Belucci do a completely ad-hoc tango nuevo (they had never danced
together before) in the middle of a tango workshop, and it was
breathtaking.  So yes, nuevo can be led and followed brilliantly if
the skill of the dancers is high enough (ah, there's the rub!), but
what Fabian and Luren did that day in class would have been far more
appropriate to the stage than on a crowded social dance floor.

Huck