2232  Step on the crack, break your grandmother's embrace

Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 14:47:43 -0800
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Step on the crack, break your grandmother's embrace

This time no need to back track several weeks ...

Now there is one more problem (at least the 43rd) of which I was blissfully
and dangerously unaware before reading about it in the tango-L. OPENING UP
FROM AN EMBRACE! You must be kidding!

I have encountered in the tango-L (and been saved from, just in the nick of
time) so many horrible things ... I wonder what my tango life would have
been, if I actually encountered all these problems directly on the dance
floors, utterly unwarned and unprepared. It is not as easy as it seems to
have fun while dancing the tango. Danger lurks from the far side of every
giro.

Far side, there's a thought.

People just THINK they are having fun; but it is all a Classical Greek
tragedy steeped in pathos. Tango pleasure is a perverse kind, which one
realises through suffering: bad leaders, crummy music, not enough espace, too
much espace, shoes that bust your feet, dancers who cannot tell show tango
from what isn't (I am one of these poor sods), people wearing jeans, It'S a
JunglE OuT TherE!!

Anyway, in case my past experience with busted embraces might help save some
unfortunate soul ... In my (surely twisted) experience, there is one approach
to tango-for-fun, very old, very well established in tradition, very well
represented, and very well documented, according to which one dances as close
as the girl's jackknife wielding brother will allow, or the requirements of
one's personal style require at the moment, whichever is less close. There is
no embrace to break, only some fancy management of a connection that is not
established by a tango variety of body Epoxy (T), though it may reach a moral
equivalent to that, for effect, a great deal of the time. (Most importantly,
no one-sided, off kilter, crush-the-lass's-left-breast until it hurts, body
epoxy is condoned by tradition.)

There is also the regular epoxy approach. It is not quite as old as the
other, as fashions go, but old enough for classical music; it is well
established in tradition (it is about as old as a fashion as I am as a
person, and that is not young), very well represented and documented. In this
approach, it is said, every "OpeninG UP", however slight, is another nail in
a milonguero's coffin. You do what you can under the circumstances. If you
are very famous, you can be given some leeway, you can straddle the fence, or
engage in newer varieties of contortionism. Come to think of it, even if you
are not famous: why, I see it done every tango day, and no one is complaining
about it around here.

One can discern in the horizon another way, not old, not yet well established
in tradition, but well represented and documented; a way that, my friends, is
here to stay, and can be extremely beautiful ... though it is rather more
often ugly as the Devil help me. The wave of the future, like it or not. (I
like it, because I am all for the future, but for the salvation of my own
soul, my tango heaven, I pass ... for now.) Here the fixation with
"closeness" tends to give way to creative freedom. Not that there is not
still an a priori doctrinal preference for "closeness". However, trouble for
this virtuous preference(well, now, not in 1945) raises its ugly head no
later than the first attempt to execute a fully fledged (man's or woman's)
back sacada while maintaining exact nipple to nipple contact throughout, or
just a "close embrace", if you will. This is just the beginning, we would not
really be doing anything newfangled yet; and there is nothing but more
trouble for "closeness" down the pike.

By the way, you need not recognise these differences, in this or any other
terms. Many people think it is a sin. It is like knowing too much, or
something, gets you bitten by vipers. You are also perfectly justified to be
upset at me for even alluding to them, or at anyone who engages in this kind
of mechanistic outlook on tango. Though it beats me 100% why you should be
upset. You can also express your disapproval at the very occurrence of these
kinds of considerations among tango aficionados, and your surprise at such
kinds of discussions occurring on the tango-L, by posting your own lengthy
discussion of your reasons why the discussion should not take place to begin
with.

There is, by the way, one more way. It is called "close embrace", as in "I
dance close embrace". (Or in "I also teach close embrace" or "only teach
close embrace".) It is also becoming well established everywhere; alas,
widespread, since no one wants to be accused of dancing forbidden "styles"
("fantasia" goodness, whatnot), and since dancing definite traditions (or
trends) is so much hard work. I will just say, it tastes like slop to me.

OK, this is all I know about stepping on the crack and breaking something. By
the way, I have also read comments on other topics, posted on the tango-L
over the last couple of weeks. It occurred to me that sociologists might
consider using the tango-L as a laboratory to study the genesis of ideologies
and the development of religious thought. At least as to making simple things
complicated, and making ... ideas ... feed on themselves, we are getting up
there with ancient Egypt and XIX century German political philosophy.

Cheers,