2946 Tango Historical Perspective
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 17:33:50 -0600
From: Brian Dunn <brian@DANCEOFTHEHEART.COM>
Subject: Tango Historical Perspective
Dear List,
With the timeline presented in Tom's message, we are provided an invitation
to look at actual documentable historical roots of the tango Diaspora (at
last! tango anthropology resurfaces! So much more satisfying a pursuit than
just invective and opinion, don't you think? relying on potentially
verifiable DATA!? Thank you Tom!!)
Herewith, some further discussion, recollections, evidence:
>>>>
- 1979 - : Tango revival begins in Berlin & Europe: Almost exclusively
Fantasy Tango taught by show dancers (Eduardo & Gloria did a tango
piece during a presentation of Argentine Folk music. Several Berlin
dancers including Brigitte Winkler learned tango several years before
the revival began in Argentina.
<<<
Brigitta would know, of course - the only evidence I have to offer is a
claim from "Tango Metropole Berlin (2001)" that the first revival tango
classes in Berlin were in 1982, the same year as the Horizonte-Festival
featuring Piazzolla, Mosalini, and Susana Rinaldi.
>>>>>
- 1984 - : Tango begins to be taught again in Buenos Aires. Mostly
Fantasy Tango
<<<<<
This date sounds too late, by my information, and perhaps inappropriately
characterized. I know that, according to Gustavo Naveira, around 1984 he
and Fabian Salas were already getting "arrows in the back" from SOMEBODY for
putting forth the now-almost-universally accepted concept of parallel and
crossed systems in teaching the tango walk. Since Gustavo himself didn't
start dancing tango until taking a tango class at the University of Buenos
Aires (about 1980), we can assume that people like Antonio Todaro and Pepito
Avellaneda were in place as teachers well before 1984. Gustavo saw himself
primarily as a teacher, not a performer, and the ideas that eventually
started to be called "Nuevo Tango" didn't really get a place to stretch
their legs(!) until Pepito Avellaneda asked Gustavo to take over the
practica at Cochabamba 444, which would have been around this time (1984).
>>>>>
- 1989 - : Tango begins to be taught in the US. Mostly Fantasy Tango
- 1993 - : Social tango (salon/fantasy) begins to be taught in the US
<<<<<
More accurate dates would be:
- 1985 - : Tango Argentino opens on Broadway; cast members Hector and Elsa
Maria Mayoral start teaching tango to New Yorkers in Queens on their nights
off. "The most notable aspect of their teaching was that they never taught
any of the figures the same way twice. Instead they showed us how the
choreography and timing could be altered and improvised to the musical
phrase playing at the immediate moment." Other cast members follow suit,
with varying results. The USA's longest continually-running practica opens
on Wednesdays at DanceSport in New York.
- 1986 - : DanceSport begins annual tango tours to Buenos Aires
- 1988 - : Nell's Milonga in NYC features regular live tango music with
Pablo Aslan, Horacio Blanc, and bandoneonists Raul Jaurena and Alfredo
Perderna.
>>>
- 1993 - : Explorations of Nuevo ideas begin
<<<
This date is WAY too late...see above.
>>>
- 1996 - : Milonguero tango begins to be taught in the US.
<<<
This sounds about right - By 1995, Daniel Trenner and Rebecca Shulman were
performing Milonguero Style Close-Embrace in Europe after extensive study
with Tete and Maria. Their first instructional tape in close-embrace came
out in 1995 or 1996. Before making their second tape in this style in 1997,
Daniel had studied with Tete's teachers Ricardo and Greta, Tomi and Esther,
and "Tano" Guillermo, and had toured with Elina Roldan in Europe.
Daniel was responsible for popularizing a tango teaching approach almost
universally used in Denver and Boulder by local teachers until about 1999.
Daniel's 1997-era teaching style for beginners emphasized a straight walk,
with parallel shoulders, and lessons taught in an open-embrace practice
frame, frequent changes from parallel to crossed system and back, and
turning vocabulary elements added onto that backbone. We all actively
immersed ourselves in the breaking-news in Tango from Buenos Aires - the
emergence of Gustavo/Fabian/Chicho, riding the waves of Nuevo Tango and "The
Tango Lesson"'s release that year. We worked a lot with the 5- and 10-count
Pugliese turn with sacadas by the leader. Plenty of room in the embrace made
it easy to keep shoulders parallel. Once people learned this, they would
pick up close-embrace before or during a trip to Buenos Aires, in order to
dance socially down there. (My first close-embrace dance with an Argentine
at a milonga was in April 1998, with Luciana Valle, at Glorias Argentinas).
While Daniel would occasionally demonstrate close-embrace in exhibition, he
didn't include it in his beginner class structure until late 1999 or 2000.
I recall it being treated as an intermediate add-on to open-embrace
fundamentals. Local teachers followed his lead in this for several years.
Around this time, visiting Argentine teacher Tomas Howlin argued strongly
with local teachers to pay more attention to dancing in a closer embrace
socially here at home in one of his earliest visits. Brigitta Winkler's
influence was very powerful in redirecting local thinking this way as well.
Cacho Dante partnered Brigitta Winkler in late 1998 for a local class series
that strongly impacted many of us. Soon after, Tom and other Colorado
teachers began to include more and more close-embrace instruction at an
earlier and earlier point in training beginners.
PS: The following sources provided background for the information in this
message:
- the aforementioned "Tango Metropole Berlin (2001)", a book-length
description of the Berlin Tango scene,
- "Paul Pellicoro On Tango" (2002), a history of, among other things,
tango's arrival on the mid-'80's New York scene,
- "The Tango Catalogue" issues from 1997-1999, Daniel Trenner's invaluable
"free encyclopedia" service to the growing international tango community in
the disguise of a retail catalog operation.
- Tango Colorado newsletters from 1997-1999.
- personal conversations with Luciana Valle, Tomas Howlin, and Gustavo
Naveira.
All the best,
Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
Boulder, Colorado USA
www.danceoftheheart.com
