[Tango-L] Videos and criticism, the right arm lead

[Huck Kennedy]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 1:19 PM, Sergio Vandekier
<sergiovandekier990 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Notice that Jean-Pierre not only moves his left arm, he places it on his chest and at waist level.

     The placing of the left hand on the chest to me seems both
authentic and a perfectly normal reaction to being in a very crowded
milonga.  As far as the waist thing goes, I would put that in the
category of personal style, with one caveat:  It involves sticking out
the elbow, which would make it acceptable for a performance, but
something I for one would consider to be rude behavior in a crowded
milonga.

     I remain committed to my opinion that the up and down movement of
the left hand exemplified in 0:17 to 0:36 is just plain poor
technique.

> As a general rule of ballroom dancing, we do not move the left arm but as I just said this is a "re-discovered" "re-invented" style. This gives lots of latitude for individual interpretation.

     But does it really?  It's not like the old timers haven't danced
this style of milonga before.  They have, and they still do.  And they
don't wag their arms.

> As to the movement of the right arm to lead front ochos or whatever,(this is another example of
>
> *** (prejudice" based in ignorance of the different styles of tango).***
>
> Most people that dance in open embrace will use the right arm to lead, the ones that use "only" the chest are those that "only" dance close embrace.
>
> Notice : I could have omitted the ***() paragraph in parenthesis with the same final result, by not having omitted it, I run the risk of offending Huck, which is totally unnecessary. I did it on purpose to show an example. I sincerely apologize to Huck before hand.

     As though we don't already have enough examples.  This strikes me
as you just cynically trying to get away with pretending to not be
insulting by playing cutesy games.  You're also just plain off target,
because I happen to dance in both open and close embrace, and more to
the point, clearly stated that I have no problem whatsoever with
Omar's move.

     I also think you're overgeneralizing by attempting to divide
everything up into an open vs. apilado war.  With regard to the
specific arm movement being discussed, to wit, the movement of Omar's
right wrist to aid in the lead of the front ocho, the disagreements I
recall were between various open embrace teachers, not between open
vs. the chest people.  In apilado, your right hand is never even in
the position Omar had in the first place, so why would the subject of
that particular wrist maneuver even come.

Huck