[Tango-L] Most teachers aren't that important

[Charles Roques]

Tango had always been danced close except for stage performances and displays at milongas by featured dancers.  Open-frame dancing was for beginners to help them learn posture, technique, etc until they were comfortable enough to dance close.  Open-frame dancing and the resultant "performance-style" dancing seen at milongas today came to be prominent mainly because of the nuevo influence that came from the generation of dancers that had dismissed social tango as the dancing of their "old-fashioned'" parents.  They were totally uninterested and were dancing rock and roll and swing instead until it became fashionable again in the mid 1980s to dance tango, so they jumped on the bandwagon of the new hip craze.  So they brought the style and influence of swing on to the milonga floor.  In other words nuevo not come from the tango social dance tradition.  This includes even icons like Carlos Gavito who grew up dancing swing to rock and roll music and danced in Las Vegas style revues (even topless!) around the world before eventually coming back to more traditional tango, to his credit.  Before then dancing open was often derided and mocked by classic salon dancers as "bailando a metro y medio"  (dancing 3 feet apart.)  Traditional close embrace never went away and was never reinvented by anyone, unless you aren't aware of its history — it just became overshadowed by the nuevo tango craze.
It is important to have a good teacher for a while to learn the fundamentals, but too many teachers and too many workshops are counter-productve.  It is important to just dance as much as possible but start with a solid foundation, and if you are a beginner, never learn from videos or DVDs.

Cheers,
Charles