[Tango-L] Interview: Chicho on tango nuevo, style, new music, and the current direction of tango

[Joe Grohens]

For full interview, see: http://atdrc.com/default.asp?TextDisplay=1&Display=18

Excerpts:

Chicho: To think that ‘Tango Nuevo’ is something that occurred only 10  
years ago is a commercial exploitation that we owe to the festival  
organizers, I don’t think I am doing ‘Tango Nuevo’, I feel that I am  
dancing tango.  Because today there is a new generation that learned  
to dance 2,3 or 5 years ago, who only know how to do the new styles,  
the ganchos, the colgadas, but who are not in contact with everything  
that came before, and I go to the milongas and I see people that know  
how to move but that don’t know how to dance, people don’t breathe  
tango like they did before.
........................

Chicho: For me the style is something you search for with your  
partner, and not something that you find separately.

.................

Chicho: I haven’t heard anything new yet which reflects what a real  
tango can make you feel. The dance of today has adapted itself to that  
kind of music referred to as electronic tango, and it doesn’t fall  
into the same category as a Pugliese or a Troilo.  The tango was  
hidden for almost 30 years and that is the emptiness which is present  
today in the tango.  There are people who have 60 or 70 years of age,  
and now there are those who are 30 years old, which is saying that  
there is a 20 year gap within the tango, because there aren’t really  
that many people in their 40’s and 50’s in the milongas.  I believe  
that that same thing occurred in the music, there was Piazzola and  
then there was a jump to Gotan Project, directly to Narcotango, and  
there hasn’t been a musical process that has accompanied the dance  
through its evolution.  The music hasn’t evolved, it jumped and  
skipped a very important of the creativity that is happening in the  
dance, which continues to grow and evolve creatively.

....

Interviewer: What do you think about the direction the tango is  
beginning to take, socially and artistically?

Chicho:  I think it is a very critical moment, there are many new  
young people who are beginning to dance today and if we as teachers  
can’t transmit what was taught to us as the essence of tango when we  
began, the tango will be lost, because the essence will be lost, and  
therefore losing its foundations. The most important element is to  
remain keep the tanguero essence alive, the style doesn’t matter, but  
that the people are really dancing the tango.  Today the road is  
confusing, it’s in this space where or it either takes a turn towards  
modern dance or it continues being tango.  Today people are dancing  
tango, but they are not living the tanguero essence, they don’t love  
the tango.