1458  Don't call it tango...

Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 22:48:38 +0000
From: Jay Rabe <jayrabe@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Don't call it tango...

Point 1:
We've been taught that tango arose around the turn of the century in a
culture that had several key characteristics:
There were a lot of men and few women.
Few of the men were native-born, almost all were immigrants, with a
significant population of freed slaves.
The immigrants had been lured to Argentina by promises of work and
opportunity that largely were unfulfilled.
They were frustrated, disappointed, and deeply lonely, thousands of
miles away from their homeland and loved ones.
In this scenario, the music and songs that evolved had a character of
sadness, of loss, of lonliness.

Point 2:
Still, it was possible for a man to share a moment of warmth, of
connection, of intimacy, with a woman, at least on the dancefloor.
And in the poor districts where tango originated, early dance halls
were often synonymous with houses of prostitution. The moments of dance
floor connection were frequently preludes or foreplay to more physically
initmate encounters off the dance floor. This was one of the driving forces
that formed the foundation of tango, and was the reason it was shunned by
"proper" Argentines.
To this day a lot of tango is a "courting" ritual. A famous Argentine
tanguera who gave a workshop in Portland several years ago commented that
her minimum "equipment" when going to a milonga was cab fare, lipstick, and
condums. Certainly not all tangueras are so liberal, yet ...

Point 3:
... it seems the height of denial to say that "real" tango is all about
the Music. Have we forgotten the partner? I thought the essence of tango was
all about the connection to your partner.
I remember a comment Clay Nelson made to me some years ago when
describing how he felt when he first discovered Argentine Tango. He had been
teaching ballroom, where the focus was on performance for the
audience/judges. When he saw a couple doing Argentine Tango, cheeks and
chests together, facing and focusing on each other, oblivious to onlookers,
dancing in synch without being choreographed, it was obvious that something
"different" was going on here.

And finally,
If you watch a video, without sound, of a couple doing Argentine Tango
steps, and you can see they are obviously connected, in synch, and
spontaneously interpreting whatever music they're hearing, yet you can't
hear what they're dancing to, will you insist you must hear the music in
order to determine that they are dancing Argentine Tango? Can't you tell
just by seeing their steps and their obvious connection?

J
Portland, OR