[Tango-L] Nuevo Milonguero

[burak ozkosem]

Does "dancing with same sex" new to Argentine Tango?
We all know the answer to this! If you go back to the developmental
stages of Tango, you see men dancing with other men. After a decade or
so, women were introduced to Tango. Therefore pre-milongueros danced
with each other either to practice, or to show off for status gain in
the brotherhood, or to attract women at "peringundines: a.k.a
academias".  Even later around golden age of Tango, sometimes only
best dancers could get to dance with good followers, if a leader
wasn't that good he frequently would end up trying the moves with
other guys.

Actually there was a thread in sometime last year titled "Early
Dancing in Argentina" on Tango-L, and you can find the whole
discussion from the archives, but here is my post to that thread last
year.
---------------------------------------------------
"Masculination of Women in Tango"

While i was looking for something else i noticed this paragraph from
the book called "Tango and the Political Economy of Passion" by M.
Savigliano (pages 60-61).
" No interpretations entertain the idea that women took pleasure in
dancing with one another. Instead, male authors have reasoned that
woman-with-woman tangoing must be either a preparation or a poor
substitute for tangoing with men. There are also records of few early
episodes of women dancing tango with each other in public. These
performance have been constructed as acts presented for the pleasure
of male spectators. Again, the assumption has been that a woman's
erotic interest was not in her female tango partner but in the men who
gazed at the spectacle.Thus, women's eroticism is constituted as
restricted to a heterosexual money economy [...]. The milongueras
eroticism circulated in a strictly limited way, confined to
illegitimate encounters marked by heterosexism and class."

Another interesting note from E.H. Puccia's book " El Buenos Aires de
An. Villoldo 1860-1919", page 155) newspaper ["El Nacional"
27.01.1881] note about female leaders in the early years of Argentine
Tango  talks about a woman called Carlota Gonzalez who lives in La
Boca at Suarez No 81, she was well known and respected dancer with
masculine energy and her knife...

In Historia del tango, Leon Benaros notes that Diccionario historico
argentino defines  the academies (a.k.a peringundines) as the venues
dancing was between men only.

Uruguayan Historian J.C Puppo in his book, Ese mundo del bajo, pages
29-30, informs us about "Cafe Zunino" in Montevideo, all regulars were
men, also well known tango venue with many popular tango musicians and
dancers visits ( i.e.Orquesta de Arolas played at Cafe Zunino in
1919). Cafe Zunino was a gay-cafe of the time where homosexuals call
it "Conventillo Rosado". Some of the popular dancers were nicknamed
with feminine meanings "El Yesero", "La Lora", "La Loca" Garcia, "La
Vieja".

Tango was a perfect match for "vida mala" those days, Lidia Ferrari
claims that tango is innocent and it shouldn't be labeled, she says
whoever wants to integrate their fantasies into tango, they are the
responsible ones of the negative labeling.

Body-Gender issues in Argentine Tango is a very interesting subject
which remains left behind by "official"  tango history.


Burak
Chicago






On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Jack Dylan <jackdylan007 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> From: Mario <sopelote at yahoo.com>
>>
>> Here, two godesses of the Milonguero cult, introduce a
>> new wrinkle to the dance; one that I, myself and many others, were hoping to
>> never see...Alas, fair Prince...we are no more.
>>     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNcVDHdxCbY
>>
>
> Firstly, this isn't Nuevo and, secondly, it's not a performance. It's clearly
> a demonstration at the end of a class.
>
> But you'd be right to attend their classes. The wonderful Susanna Miller
> and Maria Plazaola are 2 of the very best teachers of milonguero style.
>
> I'm not a big fan of same-sex dances [to put it mildy] but this is, by far,
> the best demonstration I've ever seen by 2 women.
>
> Jack
>
>
>
>
>
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