[Tango-L] Round 2 of Milongueros del Mundo en Buenos Aires on Friday

[Shahrukh Merchant]

Today is Sunday and in a few hours, the finals will have been held and 
the "King and Queen of non-Argentine Tango couples in Buenos Aires" will 
have been coronated. "Non-Argentine" as in the couple, that is--the 
Tango is indeed required to be Argentine.

And I will be at home in my pajamas watching a movie tonight, so someone 
else will have to report on it (and on the third qualifying round last 
night at Sunderland too); as I had predicted, I reached saturation on 
this event after the second round!

Hence, I am a couple of days behind since this is a recap of the second 
day of qualifying rounds held 2 days ago (Friday) at Salon Canning. 
Rather than the rather dry recap of the first qualifying round that I 
posted a couple of days ago, I'll try to add some of my own insights and 
observations here.

Salon Canning was filled to overflowing--I'm pretty sure it had nothing 
to do with the competition, since there were only 21 couples for this 
second qualifying round (compared to 28 at La Viruta the night before).

There was a completely different set of three judges from those at the 
first qualifying round, none of whom I had heard of, though one I did 
recognize by sight. The emcee made a point of saying (as he had the 
night before) that they were all members of the Asociación de Maestros, 
Bailarines y Coreógrafos de Tango Argentino (suggesting that you 
couldn't be a judge if you weren't one of the 696 members but one does 
wonder how they were selected). Want to check who's on the list of 
members? See http://bailarinesdetango.org.ar/home_socios.php ... but I 
digress.

The emcee also went through the same motions of (pretending to be) 
asking the crowd whether he could speak only in Spanish. It was more 
obvious seeing this the second time that he had already determined the 
answer ("yes") and was trying to make some sort of point. This entire 
event seemed to be full of such contradictions (not surprising 
considering the history but interesting to watch it anyway). On the 
other hand, it wasn't clear which other language he would have used or 
whether there were even suitable interpreters on hand--many in the 
audience might have benefitted from an English translation but not the 
contestants, who again seemed to be mostly from elsewhere in Latin 
America, Italy and Japan.

The three pieces chosen this time were:

El Once (Di Sarli)
Milongueando en El 40 (Troilo)
Este es El Rey (D'Arienzo)

Our friend the emcee, who apparently was not much of a tangophile, 
mis-stated the name of the Troilo piece (I didn't catch what he said 
exactly but it was perhaps something like "Milonga del 40"). A murmur of 
disapproval went through the crowd and he hastily double-checked the 
name and corrected himself, trying to make some light-hearted comment 
about how "exigente" the tanguero crowd was!

The last piece (Este es El Rey) I thought was a simply terrible choice 
for a Salon Style tango competition. It is an over-the-top stage 
performance piece (with more of a Paso Doble marching band feel than 
Tango IMHO), and it's practically impossible to interpret the music in 
ones dancing and dance anything resembling a responsible Salon Tango at 
the same time to this music. Maybe that was the (mischievous) point, 
though that might be giving too much credit ... :-).

I had 0 people in my private "Excellent" list this time, 14 in the 
"Good" and 7 in the "Eliminate" and the judges picked 4 of the 21 (none 
from my "Eliminate" list this time ...) to advance to the finals. They 
didn't announce the countries of the contestants this time. At least two 
of the couples were repeat attempts from the previous night, so I guess 
you got three shots at the finals if you wanted or needed it.

The article I would really like to see written about this event, 
however, is a truly factual account of how it came to be and the 
behind-the-scenes manoeuvering that had it take its present form. So 
far, everything I've seen written about it has been biased on one side 
or the other (fine for those stating opinions but hardly for supposedly 
journalistic attempts at publishing a factual story in a mainstream 
publication).

The Argentine woman sitting in front of me (we were exchanging notes on 
whom we would have voted for) kind of summed it up when I asked whether 
she knew the history of this event. "I read some stuff about it," she 
replied. "This is the sort of thing that happens when egos come into Tango!"

Shahrukh