4318  Invoking BA

Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 12:54:50 -0400
From: "TangoDC.com" <spatz@tangoDC.com>
Subject: [Tango-L] Invoking BA
To: tango-L@mit.edu

The recent discussion of gender roles vs. dance roles has been following
a pattern I've noticed behind many a debate in TangoLand: the invocation
of Buenos Aires as an authority where tango matters are concerned.

This is something that has been pissing me off as long as I've been dancing.

I've heard teacher after teacher (none of them Argentine) pontificate
about "the way they dance in the BA milongas," placing particular and
repeated emphasis on close embrace, small movements, smaller
vocabularies, and Being Very Serious. Oftentimes this has occurred in a
room with people in three-piece gym suits and ample space, located well
north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

Now, I take issue with this deference to BA, but not simply (a) because
I live in DC, or (b) because we don't have the crowded-floor
contingencies that make close-embrace dancing the only viable option.
There's more to it than that. Even if I lived in Buenos Aires itself, I
would still spare myself the kow-tow because, in point of fact, there
has always been dispute, conflict, and competition over dancing styles
there. If the city is definitively anything, it is definitively divided.

Neighborhoods, and the dancers from them, have always been at each
other's throats over who's got the "real" style. (Even if this weren't a
well known part of tango history, there are plenty of lyrics about it--
so many, it's not even interesting.) Likewise, aficionados have always
bickered about which bandleaders ruined everything and which ones laid
the most golden eggs. The old guard has always shut down the innovators,
and the innovators have always fought back.

There never has been, and there most likely never shall be, an
authoritative way to dance the tango-- nor even a reference to turn to
if you'd like to find one. Teachers are notorious for contradicting each
other and also themselves. Since the whole damn thing is an art, I don't
know where so many people got the impression that it Should be or even
Could be so boneheadedly orthodox, so risibly bureaucratic, so
coweringly in search of validation. If a dance can have content, then
the tango's content would probably be subversion anyway, whether of
bodily momentum, bourgeois ideals, normal sleeping schedules, or, yes,
Authority.

Aha, but there's "tradition"... Fine. Tell me about tradition. Tell me
which barrio's tradition you're talking about, and then which dancer in
that barrio, and then which year of that dancer, and with what partner,
and to what song, played by which dead orchestra in what torn-down
bailongo, way back then during The Traditional Age. And if you're going
to talk about the value and authenticity of such tradition, then let's
not half-ass it: let's only dance to live ensembles, invite the mafia
over, and drink a lot, lot more.

Further, the tango as a dance (though not as a cultural image, a musical
genre, or a body of popular literature) has probably died in Buenos
Aires more times than it was ever born there. It never even rose into
prominence among Argentines, or approached anything resembling a popular
identity, until it came back from Paris with a stamp of approval-- and
BA at that time kissed Paris' ass even more zealously than some tango
dancers now turn sycophant over BA. If Buenos Aires is the mother
country of the tango, she certainly needed a lot of help raising the
miscreant after she left it to perish on the stoop of a whorehouse.

All of us (I presume) despise ballroom tango and its Hollywood
caricature; but those aberrations kept the dance alive-- albeit in
horrendously distorted form-- during those decades (the '30s, the '70s)
when Buenos Aires, for various reasons, did not. If we're somehow in
debt to BA, what do we owe Those mannequins?

And finally... Every visiting Argentine teacher I've met in the U.S.--
without exception-- has gently parried my peers' knee-jerk questions
about authenticity, and has shifted the emphasis to individual style--
not theirs, mind you, but Yours. Why so many people in America still
persist-- still-- in deferring to the (imaginary) authority of a distant
city, historically fraught with bickering, whose name two-thirds of us
can't even pronounce, is beyond my feeble powers of comprehension.

Lest I be misunderstood: I am not criticizing BA, Argentina, or its
people. (Read Borges if you want that.) I am criticizing those who
invoke BA to stifle others' creativity, and to broadcast their own
complacency and third-hand opinions. They give the milongas a lingering
scent of formaldehyde, sheep, and dust.

Buenos Aires is not the Vatican. If it were, most of today's best
dancers would be (if they're not already) Jewish. Many a good dancer has
gone there on pilgrimage, eager to surrender their common sense in
exchange for "the real thing," and come back both condescending and
Worse. If someone can patch the holes in my ignorance-- without adopting
the role of an enthusiastic Tourist-- and explain why BA deserves the
bow of our obedient little heads, I would really appreciate it. In the
meantime, I'll continue to treat its invocation as the uncreative
bigot's attempt to pass off the Funny Money he got suckered into buying
for the hard cash of Talent.

As for women leading at milongas, practicas, performances, or anywhere
else, I and a lot of other people hereby declare it to be perfectly
fine. (If I lived in BA, I'd probably assemble a crack team of
point-women, borrow a skirt, and raid some fuddy old grampa milonga,
just to get thrown out in style.) I've heard many comments, from many
non-leading followers, that certain women leaders have Way more
interesting footwork than most of us men. I would advise many of the
learning ones, however, to pay more attention to navigation and
floorcraft, since in that regard they're no better than we are, and
offer us nothing to aspire to.

Jake Spatz
Washington, DC

Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 16:52:10 +0000
From: "Jay Rabe" <jayrabe@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Invoking BA
To: tango-L@mit.edu

Jake ... well said

[my favorite excerpts]

Even ...in Buenos Aires itself ... there has always been dispute, conflict,
and competition over dancing styles. If the city is definitively anything,
it is definitively divided.

dancers [in BsAs]... have always been at each other's throats over who's got
the "real" style.

The old guard has always shut down the innovators, and the innovators have
always fought back.

Teachers are notorious for contradicting each other and also themselves.

[Tango] never even rose into prominence among Argentines, or approached
anything resembling a popular identity, until it came back from Paris with a
stamp of approval

If Buenos Aires is the mother country of the tango, she certainly needed a
lot of help raising the miscreant after she left it to perish on the stoop
of a whorehouse.

Every visiting Argentine teacher I've met in the U.S. - without exception -
[answers] questions about authenticity, [by shifting] emphasis to individual
style - not theirs, mind you, but Yours.

[and the best one IMO...]

Since the whole damn thing is an *ART* [emphasis added], ... [how can it be]
so boneheadedly orthodox ... so coweringly in search of validation[?]

Since the whole damn thing is an *ART* [emphasis added], ... [how can it be]
so boneheadedly orthodox ... so coweringly in search of validation[?]

J in Portland
www.TangoMoments.com