[Tango-L] What Argentine Tango is, and what it is not.

[Floyd Baker]

On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 14:28:23 -0800 (PST), you wrote:

>My posts haven't been getting through, so this a final test before I maybe
>  unsubscribe.

I hope you don't...   You come through very well...  ;-)
   
Floyd

>  My experience has been that ballroom teachers emphasize doing the pattern
>  as taught. If you deviate you are scolded, either by the teacher or your 
>  partner for not dancing what is being taught.
>  Although this also happens in AT, there is an order of magnitude of difference.
>  And many AT teachers teach patterns while talking about, and even teaching,
>  variations and improvisation.
>  There is a similar difference between being able to point to a few "crossed foot"
>  patterns in non AT dances, and teaching being in "crossed system" as an 
>  integral part of the dance.
>   
>  Steve
>
>Tom Stermitz <stermitz at tango.org> wrote:
>  On Mar 7, 2008, at 4:17 AM, Alexis Cousein wrote:
>
>> Floyd Baker wrote:
>>> I believe and have been told by people here that it is very much what
>>> Tango is.., and what it is not. Tango, imho, is such an entirely
>>> separate entitity from ballroom that I do not even consider it a 
>>> dance
>>> at all.
>>>
>> I don't consider ballroom a dance, but a sport much like figure 
>> skating is ;).
>
>I'm not sure I understand this discussion. It doesn't correspond to my 
>experiences with ballroom.
>
>I learned ballroom dancing (not learn in a studio) before I learned 
>AT: Foxtrot, One-step, Peabody, Half-and-Half, Waltz, Tango. These are 
>all improvised social dances, not choreographies. Before that, I 
>danced a little country western, two-step and things that were 
>basically improvised foxtro
>
>In the United States, ballroom dancing has a social tradition that 
>goes back to the 1910s. Country Western pretty much has an unbroken 
>lineage back to the 1940s. In the Western US there were working CW 
>bands and multiple dance venues even in small towns up through the 
>1980s. This sort of collapsed in the 1990s to a handful of venues in 
>bigger cities after Nashville got a hold of CW and turned it into a 
>rockified genre with sappy red-neck ballads, big hats and bigger hair.
>
>Ballroom did get really messed up with the studio system and their 
>Bronze, Silver, Gold marketing, but even there, the studios always 
>held, and still hold, social dances every Saturday. Most of the 
>clientele consists of married couples or Dance Widows hiring a 
>professional to dance her at the occasional showcases.
>
>I think you guys are discussing International Style Competition 
>Ballroom. That is it's own sub genre, that doesn't have much to do 
>with social ballroom dancing. But again, I would expect any decent 
>International Ballroom dancer to be able to dance socially with 
>improvised movements.
>
>Argentine Tango also has its choreographed side, the stage tango that 
>may have been more popular during certain decades.
>
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