[Tango-L] Line of dance and respect

[Alexis Cousein]

On 05/10/2010 19:58, HBBOOGIE1 at aol.com wrote:
>
> Welcome to Kung Fu Tango. This is the person  that started the whole Nuevo
> craze and then years later apologized for it. Here  is step by step
> instruction on how to dominate and disrupt the traditional  floor.
> Now you might understand why real tango dancers tend to get  a  little
> upset and frustrated.
> http://www.tangoandchaos.org/chapt_6school/36nav3.htm

[Before I come over as an apologist for Gustavo Naveira, let me
point out that at a local tango festival in which everyone
was enamoured with Gustavo Naveira's teaching of that afternoon,
I failed to get many dances one evening for being not-Gustavo-enough 
(I kid you not, that was actually *said* to me).]

Well, no matter what you think of Gustavo, it's also a bit of
creative editing. The "U-turn" that supposedly starts the sequence
of bad moves has been edited out; there's only the end frame
left to "support" the point (my guess is that an unedited
video would not have appeared to support the points made by the
editor in quite the same way, but we shall never know).

In fact, I could easily extract a frame from the second
video showing the (*very* considerate) couple behind Gustavo,
add a creative U-turn red arrow, and make the same point about
them (but I would certainly be lying, whereas Gustavo
*could* indeed have misbehaved).

The loose foot as #2 in the first video is a definite no-no;
this is not your normal dance floor, but Gustavo should have
adapted, and on a larger dancefloor he would still have
crossed lanes. I'm sure that digging up some dirt, you can find
many of these things for almost any dancer [perhaps we
should invent "Tango Big Brother" and an institute to
eradicate "thought crimes"?]

There's a second sequence in which Gustavo is in a corner and
*looks* to be doing something dangerous but which in the
end, when he does move, turns out to be strictly LOD
(at that point others move the space made available, too,
an indication that those following him aren't *too* worried
he doesn't know where they are, although to be honest,
they would probably be more worried if it hadn't been
Gustavo).

Some of the other "crimes" need audio support edited in to make
any point (even though I personally find some of the small kicks
not that graceful, some of them are rather harmless, unlike some
linear boleos I see launched in suicide attacks), and wouldn't
seem that egregious in practice (and some, frankly, are just
character assassination. The couple supposedly "intimidated to
go back" at one point simply does a turn and doesn't even go
back one millimetre, and seems perfectly unfazed).

And then we have a piece of character assassination that has
nothing to do with the ronda.

Yes, I would consider Gustavo's dancing in that video more than
a little inappropriate for the space available, but was it
indeed a pure social context? No one knows.

You still need a few tons of hyperbole (and some creative editing)
to make it into a *system* designed to destroy the ronda.

But the site is indeed very instructive (especially the apolitical
pages before "kung fu tanda" are *really good*.)

It may be a parody and assassinate characters at the very end
(I suspect the author has an axe to grind with people who aren't
Gustavo but claim to have received tablets of stone from him),
there's a grain of truth in every parody.

And though he probably lacks some "famous" really egregious
examples of bad behaviour, they do exist (although they get filmed
less often, fortunately for the perpetrators).

And the acerbic writing style is indeed very entertaining.