[Tango-L] [SA] RE: San Diego close embrace Festival 2010 and floorcraft

[Tom Stermitz]

On Jan 6, 2010, at 5:40 PM, Have to Tango wrote:
> In reply to Tony's mail about the San Diego festival:
>
>> Maybe I'm missing something, somewhere... but, I've visited and  
>> carefully read each page. I can NOT find the term 'close embrace'  
>> used anywhere on the site...
>
> The website for the upcoming San Diego New Year's festival does not  
> claim that it is close embrace, nor is there any hint of it.  The ad  
> for this past New Year's festival (http://tango.org/festivals/sandiego/2009sdtangofest 
> ) says (and I quote):
>
> "The 3rd Annual San Diego Tango Festival will be a Southern  
> California treat for all tango dancers who love the social tango  
> popular in the milongas of Buenos Aires: close, subtle & romantic."

(1) Isn't ALL tango close-embrace? Not counting stage tango, of  
course. Nuevo and Salon sometimes have a variable embrace, but they  
are also danced very close.

(2) Isn't ALL tango improvisational? Not counting stage tango, again.

(3) At this point 99% of us should agree that good dancing and good  
navigation are the issue, not style.

I've been the organizer of the Denver and San Diego festivals for 10  
years. Most people have a good time, and we get a lot of repeat  
dancers year after year. Dance quality is good but not perfect.  
Setting high aspirations is great, but expecting perfection is a sure  
set-up for failure.

Originally I advertised the festivals as "Milonguero", which was quite  
controversial in 1999 because at the time, 90% of tango teachers were  
stage dancers teaching stage figures. The Tango-L arguments went back  
and forth as to whether "Milonguero Style" even existed, or was just a  
marketing term. I had visited Argentina several times and it was  
obvious that tango AS DANCED IN ARGENTINA, was completely different  
from the stage figures presented in the US. I wanted people to know  
they could find that Buenos Aires experience in the US.

These days, branding the Denver and San Diego festivals as presenting:  
"social tango popular in the milongas of Buenos Aires: close subtle &  
romantic" should be obvious to everyone, and shouldn't be  
controversial. It says nothing about style, but says everything you  
need to know.


THE MILONGA as a TRANSCENDENT DANCE CONTAINER

How do you create the social dance conditions for people to achieve  
transcendent dance experiences? That is a much more interesting  
question than style or advertising verbiage.

I've been talking with a friend who has experience with ritual dance,  
who believes that concepts of ritual and trance are essential for  
understanding the tango dance experience. Most (many? some?) tango  
dancers have experienced the tango high, that "zen" experience where  
time melts away into intuitive music and movement. It is like you are  
dancing consciously and unconsciously with your partner and the whole  
crowd.

In terms from  ritual dance, the milonga is the ritual container, and  
the DJ is the master of the ceremony or leader of the "drum circle".

How does an organizer set it up the right conditions? Can you really  
control things or just encourage them?

(1) Physical space: Separate the dance floor from the sitting area.  
Hotel ballrooms are surprisingly good, with carpeted area for tables  
clearly delineated from the wooden dance floor.

(2) Social space: Keep pedestrians separate from dancers; tables face  
the dance floor on multiple sides; convenient ebb and flow on and off  
the floor; tandas and cortinas to provide consistent social "rules",  
(not rules really, agreed-upon structure?).

(3) Crowd energy: Transcendence is a personal experience, but crowd  
energy is a powerful driver. Achieving an intuitive psychological  
experience comes from having an intuitive interaction with the dancers  
around you. This requires a certain density of dancers on the dance  
floor. Empty floors allow room for people to avoid interacting with  
the other dancers and provides space for some leaders to rocket  
around. Super-crowded conditions require higher skills from the  
leader. Merely very-crowded is good because everybody has to dance  
about the same consistent speed and rhythm.

(4) DJ: The DJ has to know what it means to create the transcendent  
for the participants: Ebb and flow of energy from song-to-song and set- 
to-set; Arc of energy across the evening; psychological feeling of the  
songs chosen;

(5) Expectations: The crowd has to know transcendence is both a  
possibility and be seeking it. That means some high percentage of the  
participants need to be pretty good and they need to have experienced  
tango transcendence.

I think some of the expressions of tango road rage is a valid concern  
about disturbances to the tango dance-trance. These criticisms have  
frequently been directed at practitioners of Nuevo, but in truth, good  
nuevo dancers have the same goal as good milonguero or salon dancers.



Tom Stermitz
http://www.tango.org
Denver, CO 80207