[Tango-L] La Viruta (WAS Tango Styles II)

[Shahrukh Merchant]

ECSEDY ?ron <aron at milonga.hu> says:

> I see there is still this misconcept about nuevo being irregular, using 
> large moves and causing greef to regular dancers. Well that is a 
> misconcept fueled by ignorance. Just check out La Viruta any time 
> outside the general 'tourist period' and you'll see that while most of 
> the people are nuevo dancers, they are pretty much able to navigate 
> without problems, collisions in a lot denser crowd than anywhere else on 
> the planet.

La Viruta??!!! Surely you jest. If you want to dispel the myth that 
Argentines have this magic "Tango navigation gene" as some (not recent) 
posts have suggested, La Viruta is the place to do it: the worst 
possible navigators on the planet. Oh, but just for the record, not 
because they are doing "nuevo" per se (even though they are mostly young 
dancers, largely Argentine) but because they are mostly beginners 
dancing the trademark La Viruta style of looking down at their feet 
instead of where they are going. In fact I would sometimes mutter, 
"Viruteros" when such a couple (at a different milonga) would bump into 
me (or into my protectively outstretched arm) after the man took 2 back 
steps in a row against line of dance without looking. And I'd generally 
get a knowing nod and smile from my partner.

I stopped going to La Viruta in large part because of this 
"bump-a-tanguero" phenomenon (the dancers there are good natured, I will 
say, so couples who bump into each other smile rather than glare at each 
other), so I don't have recent experience: perhaps all the good 
navigators were merely waiting for me to leave before they started going 
there? :-)

Shahrukh