[Tango-L] The Show-Tango Crime

[larrynla@juno.com]

One of the biggest offenses commited at milongas is what might be called "the show-tango crime."  It is when a couple do movements during a dance which might have been taken unchanged from a show.  The crime does one or more of four things.

- It takes up space normally used by several couples.
- It blocks la pista, the flow, which anglos unpoetically call the line of dance.
- It races ahead of the flow, endangering others with rear-end collisions.
- It spins like a buzz-saw, endangering others with karate kicks.

Professional tango dancers almost never commit this crime, unless they are new to dancing tango socially.  And they don't do it for long.  At milongas, at least in Buenos Aires, the milonga organizer or some crusty milonguero or milonguera will quickly set them straight.

Or another tango professional.  Pros do not want their privileges endangered.  Normally they are met at the milonga door with smiles and hugs, their fees waived, their food and drinks made free, and given their favored tables.  Organizers know these people serve tango directly and them indirectly.  Or sometimes directly.  If the pros reserve a table the word often will quickly get around and fans may plump up the crowd that night.

Often pro tango dancers will not dance.  They are athletes who spend hours and days each week practicing.  They may be tired of tango, or just tired.  If they've come from a show they may need to let their adrenaline recover.  They may need the company of friends, or to make deals or overtures to deals.

If they dance, likely they will do one of two things.  They may do little more than walk.  Nothing fancy, unless you watch closely and have enough dance sophistication to perceive that they are stepping precisely on (or off) the beat.  Their motions are perfectly controlled, not the control of machines but of easy and unconscious mastery so that dancing is like breathing.  They are perfectly in tune with each other and the music.

Or they may do some very fancy moves but adapted to the flow.  And this shows the true nature of the show-tango crime.  It is not WHAT movements are done that makes them right or wrong.  It is HOW they are done.  The crime is the failure to transform them from tango espectaculo to tango intimo.

One example is lifts.  They can be safely done several ways.  For instance, you position your lady to your right so that you walk side by side, she alongside the edge of the floor.  You bend your knees a few inches, hug her more tightly to you, and stand straight.  She keeps her inside leg straight, just a couple of inches off the floor, and lifts her outside leg a few inches so that her knee projects forward and her heel backward, but by just a few inches.  You keep walking, maybe turning a complete circle while you do it, then let her down gently and recover her to in front of you.

Lifts can also be done which seat a woman on her partner's bended knee or even his hip.  Normally this should be done at the end of a dance because it blocks the flow, but if the floor isn't crowded it can be done in the middle of a dance, the sit held for a few seconds, the woman dismounted, and the flow continued.  On the uncrowded floor she might safely do a high kick on the way down.

What can we do about show-tango crimes?  Maybe nothing.  Direct criticism would likely be met by hurt and anger and defiance and push them to become "hardened criminals."  Example could help, if you are good enough to pull off elegantly tamed show-tango moves.  Workshops and practicas with names like "Show tango at the milonga" or "Stage tango on the dance floor" might also help, as pointed reminders to "criminals" and as a way of heading off potential desperadoes.  Another way would be to ask one of these couples for help adapting what they do to tight spaces.  In teaching you they would have to re-think what they were doing.  They might even become examples themselves.

Larry de Los Angeles

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