[Tango-L] Let's save the social dance!

Mario sopelote at yahoo.com
Mon Jun 8 14:36:41 EDT 2009


I've been following the debates on Tango-L for a year and a half.
Most dramatic for me, has been the clash between Nuevo and Traditional styles of dance.
The topic becomes even more confused when one observes the similarities
between the two approaches..Nuevo is based on Traditional (so it says) and
most of it's moves have already been seen in Traditional Tango at some time or other (in demos).
The real clash, however, is on the dance floor. I have seen a small dancefloor that easily holds more than a dozen couples during a traditional social dance shrink to only able to 
hold 4 couples doing Nuevo...what's it all about?
Well, for my part, I am finally seeing that THE clash is not between Viejo y Nuevo
but rather between Social and Performance dancing..(yes, it's been said here before but I am finally 'getting' it myself, thank you.) Performance tango borrows from the Milonguero tradition and uses it as a point of departure to morph into modern dance , ballet, you name it.
It uses as much of the floor as possible so as to be able to dance in the round, as it were,
and please as much of the surrounding audience as possible.
It is sometimes even called 'Milonguero' when in a demo performance
OK, if we are in agreement on the above...it follows that;
 WHY is Show Tango taught at all???( there are reasons for it besides greed.)
 Why isn't it called Performance Tango?
 How can we help the class-goer distinguish between what is appropriate
when dancing alone or with lot's of floor space and what is suitable for close quarters?
 How can we get the two (Social + Show) under the same roof and co operating with each other????????  
 ALL INPUT GRACIOUSLY LISTENED TO
 




      


More information about the Tango-L mailing list