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

[Sandhill Crane]

--- On Thu, 11/19/09, Trini y Sean (PATangoS) <patangos at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Thank you, Joe, for posting this.  This is precisely what
> I've been looking for.  An acknowledgement by a "nuevo" teacher
> that tango shouldn't be "anything goes" as it evolves.  That
> there's an essence to tango, or else the dance becomes
> something else.

I wonder why there seems to be a disconnect between this
teacher's personal concept of tango and what the people
who comprise his school of dance, broadly speaking, seem
to express. Tango nuevo is entirely about acrobatics from
what I can tell, not that there's anything inherently wrong
with that. But Chicho hints that there is something more
about tango. What is that, and why do the people who
claim to be influenced by him seem to miss it?

To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps his feelings
about tango are so fundamental that he forgets to talk about
it when he teaches others; maybe he's assuming (incorrectly)
that everyone shares his deeply-held basic assumptions.
What are those assumptions, and how could he (or any other
teacher) pass them on to his students?

This interview is about Chicho, but I have the same
questions about Gustavo or Homer or any other widely-known
tango nuevo teacher.