1590 Revival of Tango in North America / Pellicoro Book
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:21:22 EDT
From: Leonardo De Leon <TangoLeon@AOL.COM>
Subject: Revival of Tango in North America / Pellicoro Book
A colleague of mine recently handed me a book "Paul Pellicoro on Tango",
asking me for my opinion on it, as well as what I knew about the author. The book
has some good parts, but what gave me an overall negative opinion was the
self-promotion of Pellicoro and his DanceSport Ballroom and Latin Dance Studios.
Written in conjunction with his colleagues, this book places Pellicoro at the
forefront of the revival of tango argentino in North America, primarily through
his association with the stars of the show Tango Argentino. The book notes
that such tango stars as Juan Carlos Copes, Carlos Gavito, Pablo Veron, etc.
have taught at Pellicoro's studio, and that in the beginning in NYC, DanceSport
was the center of tango activity and growth.
Now maybe I've been missing something because I wasn't a tanguero yet in the
mid-80's when tango was reborn in the US, but I have to admit that prior to
seeing this book, I had not heard of Pellicoro. Now he may be, as the book
states, a fabulous tango dancer and teacher and an important person in devoloping
the New York tango community, but neither my colleague or I had heard of him.
My impressions, perhaps based on incomplete information, are that the first
tango communities in North America during the revival were San Francisco, New
York, and Montreal. The only names of North Americans I can remember being
associated with this early growth were Daniel Trenner and Rebecca Shulman. (All of
the rest were Argentinians.)
I'm calling on the oldtime North American milongueros who were there in the
early days of the revival to provide some accurate information on this.
Leonardo
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:34:20 -0600
From: Tom Stermitz <Stermitz@RAGTIME.ORG>
Subject: Re: Revival of Tango in North America / Pellicoro Book
>A colleague of mine recently handed me a book "Paul Pellicoro on Tango",
>asking me for my opinion on it, as well as what I knew about the
>author. The book
>has some good parts, but what gave me an overall negative opinion was the
>self-promotion of Pellicoro and his DanceSport Ballroom and Latin
>Dance Studios.
>...
>tango communities in North America during the revival were San Francisco, New
>York, and Montreal. The only names of North Americans I can remember being
>associated with this early growth were Daniel Trenner and Rebecca
>Shulman. (All of
>the rest were Argentinians.)
>
>I'm calling on the oldtime North American milongueros who were there in the
>early days of the revival to provide some accurate information on this.
>
>Leonardo
I've seen the book, and was reasonably impressed by the objective
summary of different tango styles. If a non-tango person (say a
ballroom dancer) were to pick up this book, they would actually
receive some decent information. For example, I don't think Paul is
particularly associated with milonguero style, but he validates it as
one of the strong currents.
Self-promotion?...well, certainly no worse than anyone else.
As to early influences in North American tango.
Not much was going on in the early 1990s outside of New York, San
Francisco, LA...maybe a little in Seattle, Chicago & Cincinnatti or
occasional workshops here & there.
At the time, tango instruction primarily consisted of the 8 Count
Basic and fantasy/stage choreographies.
Daniel Trenner's claim to fame is that he focused on an
IMPROVISATIONAL SOCIAL concept of tango and he had a methodology and
entertainment skill that successfully convinced many people they
could achieve this dance. His main influences were Gustavo Naveira
& Mingo Pugliese, and maybe some of the European teachers like
Brigitta Winkler of Berlin. He also studied at the Center for
Mind-Body Centering, and had a background in Tap and Contact Improv.
(Incidently, Brigitta was the first student and teacher of the tango
revival in Europe...24 years ago! No one came before her except for
the older generation of Argentines.)
Daniel travelled widely, and was instrumental in the foundation or
initial growth of a number of communities in the mid-nineties. He
instigated and rode the wave of growth during the last half of the
1990s.
If Daniel Trenner was the pied piper or Johnny Appleseed of tango, we
also have to give a lot of credit to the individual organizers and
local fanatics who watered the seeds he planted (to mix a metaphor).
Denver was one community where Daniel was particularly inspirational.
In 1995 he did a 10 week series in Denver, Boulder & Ft Collins with
70-90 people in attendance. Six months later 15 of us went on his
Bridge to the Tango tour to Buenos Aires, where learned a thing or
two (like, maybe we need to practice a bit more). We returned to form
Tango Colorado with the modest purpose of organizing a practice.
As they say, the rest is history.
You might say that running a practice isn't a big thing, but Tango
Colorado has always provided a neutral territory, a community center,
and a social critical mass. Denver is different from most communities
in that it has relatively few milongas/practices for it's size, and
the major ones are community-wide, not teacher associated.
--
Tom Stermitz
https://www.tango.org/
stermitz@tango.org
303-388-2560
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 10:16:51 -0700
From: Barbara Garvey <barbara@TANGOBAR-PRODUCTIONS.COM>
Subject: Re: Revival of Tango in North America
My recollections of the North American tango scene begin in 1985 when Tango
Argentino played in New York before touring the rest of the country. A
number of people (including Robert Duvall) took classes from various cast
members there. A ballroom dancer in San Francisco who was also a flight
attendant for TWA flew to NY once a week and took classes from cast members,
then taught what she had learned to a group of us, before anyone except me
had even seen the show. Talk about the blind leading the blind. The only
tango music available besides the cassette of TA consisted of the Tango
Project and Placido Domingo.
Danel and Maria Bastone were also teaching Argentine tango in New York at
that time, Orlando Paiva in Los Angeles and on a small scale Jorge and Rosa
Ledesma in San Francisco -- I am not aware of anyone else teaching in the US
before the show went on the road. Members of the cast taught in LA and San
Francisco during the run (6 weeks here). In SF those teaching were Nelson,
Mayoral and Elsa Maria and Los Dinzel -- none of them social dancers. I have
personal experience of post TA developments only in LA and SF. In LA a
pretty big community developed quite quickly around Orlando and a few other
teachers, however there was a lot of rivalry between the teachers (which
Orlando didn't participate in, but there was a certain fragmentation which
persisted for years). People went to Nora's Place in North Hollywood (? my
LA geography is sketchy) to dance.
In San Francisco we had Jorge and Rosa, and Nora and Raul Dinzelbacher
arrived about that time. Others who had taken classes with the TA cast also
started teaching (!!). Meanwhile Hector Villalba (now the proprietor of
Dandy in BA) was running occasional dances at the Sheraton Airport Hotel and
that became a tango venue. All of us who had had our 6 weeks of classes used
to perform at these events as well as dance socially. After a while Pepe
Hernandez took over the dances at the Sheraton, and Nora and Raul among
others started milongas.
After Al and I went to Argentina for the first time in March 1987 we
realized the distinction between exhibition and social dancing and searched
for a teacher for what we had seen milongueros doing in Villa Urquiza. Our
friends Jean and Charlie Stewart heard of Orlando Paiva -- we started going
down there and then began organizing workshops for him in the Bay Area. From
then on most dancing in San Francisco moved toward social style. When
Orlando returned to Argentina Danel and Maria and Michael and Luren came to
SF regularly and as time went by more local folks began to teach. Al and I
didn't begin teaching until the late '90s, prefering to concentrate on
helping the community grow.
I'm not sure about what was happening in other cities, although I believe
that Daniel Trenner began teaching in New York in the late '80s.
A major development was Richard Powers' Stanford Tango Week beginning in
1991 which in the beginning presented an assortment of historical and
contemporary tango styles but which gravitated over the first few years more
and more toward social dancing.
Daniel Trenner's group trips to Buenos Aires also were very influential as
well as his traveling and teaching in emphasizing social dancing, and it was
he who introduced what is called "milonguero style" in about 1995.
Meanwhile the community in San Francisco was growing very fast and with a
strictly social flavor -- almost no teachers here taught fantasia unless a
student insisted, and the level of dancing in the milongas improved
accordingly. There were many teachers who with very few exceptions got along
well, everyone was welcome at all the milongas. I was keeping a mailing list
which I clearly remember grew from about 400 to 1400 in the first 6 months
of 1994 (pre Forever Tango's 22-month run here), and the number of milongas
grew from 3 a month to 30. I still can't figure out what precipitated this
tremendous growth spurt at that particular time. I guess that's what is
called the critical mass.
I would be very interested in more stories about tango in not only North
America but Europe and other continents as well, and as always any
corrections that anyone might have to my account.
Abrazos to all,
Barbara
