[Tango-L] Practical Implications

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

Hello all,

The question, for me, of what defines tango or nuevo tango is not simply an intellectual one.  I’m a teacher and organizer.  What I do or say influences others, sets standards, etc.  It’s a responsibility I take seriously.  

Last week, a local DJ announced that his monthly milonga was going to be all alternative music.  He indicated that it was the younger (2-3 year dancers) that were requesting such music.  My initial reaction was not to go because 1) I can only take so much of alternative music for Argentine Tango, 2) There are few leaders that I like dancing alternative to, 3) It’s painful for me to watch Argentine tango brutalized.

Yet I do want to be supportive of the milonga.  Not everyone, such as those younger dancers, can appreciate the Golden Age as I do.  The space is certainly big enough to accommodate big movements.  Through these discussions, though, it’s clear to me that while mainstream nuevo is still Argentine Tango, I can see the day when extreme nuevo may no longer be recognizable as a the same animal.  If we take the concept of radial categories with a cluster category and other categories orbiting around like the planets, then Nuevo might just go further away into outer orbit.  Ultimately, it’s the nuevo dancers who will decide this.

But what will they decide?  The current mantra of “anything goes” is something early nuevo dancers used to justify their developments.  However, that mantra has really lived out its usefulness if nuevo dancers still want to be considered Argentine Tango.  I think nuevo dancers need to define the style more clearly or simply recognize that it may one day become something completely different.  Salon and milonguero styles are still the prototypical styles and, I suspect, will be for a long time.  The rise of alternative milongas have served to meet needs of those dancers.  As someone said, it is when nuevo dancers try to force their views on traditionalists that causes the problems nowadays.  Used to be the other way around. 

So I’ve decided to go to the alternative milonga and to think of nuevo as now developing in tandem with the other styles, not as an extension of them.  In fact, I will encourage people to go and stretch themselves.  Incorporate salsa, swing, bellydancing, whatever suits their fancy, but also let them know that by doing so, they might be creating something that gets farther away from Argentine Tango.  And that’s okay.  As long as they know that they may be doing something that’s not Argentine Tango.  Maybe it’s just becomes Pittsburgh Tango.  I think that I will have a pretty good time.

Trini de Pittsburgh

P.S.  Bravo, Sergio.