[Tango-L] TANGO 2000 ............For DUMMIES

[Brian Dunn]

Sergey, you wrote:
> All dancers in the 'nuevo' lot you mentioned from Arce, Chicho
> etc. consider themselves mainly social dancers

Kung Fu Tanda by Gustavo Naveira comes to mind
http://www.tangoandchaos.org/chapt_6school/36nav3.htm


Sergey, what, no smiley-face after that?  Surely you can see that this is a
joke-page.
I'm sure Rick had a lot of fun making this little video, including the cute
martial-arts sound effects, and the "Kung-Fu Tanda" is an inspired
play-on-words in the best Argentine tradition.  But SOME of the photos that
Rick chooses to use for his joke at Gustavo & Giselle's expense show that
this is not from a milonga at all, but during a performance, on stage, for
an audience.  

The idea of putting social tango on stage into a performance setting is an
old one, using the idea of a "mini-ronda" on stage, and often allows for
whichever couple is front-and-center to respond naturally to the fact that
the audience's attention is now primarily on them. Gustavo and Giselle are
doing no more than this in this video, seem to be causing no disruption
judging from the body language of the other dancers, and take up no more
than their share of the stage when they circulate "out of the spotlight" to
the back of the "stage ronda".  A similar amount of room to what Gustavo
used is then granted to the following couples in the spotlight area.

I have enjoyed Rick McGarrey's blog a lot, and deeply appreciate his
heartfelt work articulating his unique perspective on the world of Buenos
Aires tango. It was fun to see Miguel Angel Balbi again in this video, who
we haven't seen for several years.  But this bit of sleight-of-hand, so
pointedly questioning Gustavo's social dancing skills for the sake of
satire, seems like a pretty cheap shot, and unworthy of the standards set
elsewhere in his very interesting blog. Since he was the editor of the
video, I have to assume Rick knew perfectly well that this was dancing on a
stage for the pleasure of an audience, not social dancing exclusively for
one's partner in a milonga.  It's disappointing that he went to such
enthusiastic lengths to mislead the readers of this page.

All the best,
Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
www.danceoftheheart.com
"Building a Better World, One Tango at a Time"