1731  Tango styles at the dancing floors in Buenos Aires

Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 16:51:18 -0300
From: Alberto Gesualdi <clambat2001@YAHOO.COM.AR>
Subject: Tango styles at the dancing floors in Buenos Aires

Dear friends from Tango List

Rick Mc Garrey posted a quite interesting remark concerning tango styles that you may see at dancing floors in Buenos Aires.

The question "where the differences of the tango styles came from ?" could be answered from an historic point of view . Then we may say that "orillero" was danced in such and such way at such and such place ,canyengue in that place ,milonguero on that , and so on.

The fact , as I see it , is the random factor, that actually makes that a dancing floor of Buenos Aires , you may find a random quantity of dancers with random levels of skill.

So let4s imagine this situation , which could be my case, let4s suppose that I learn to dance at a school where tango milonguero is being taught, and I ask a woman to dance whom I do not know . When we embrace , I notice that the woman has a very close embrace When I make the first move , I notice the woman does not follow all the length of the step but keeps embraced and makes a small step. Then I could make three things 1) stop to dance and ask the woman what is she doing, that would be unpolite 2) discreetly use my cell phone while we are dancing talk with my teacher, and ask information of this style of tango , more or less like " Houston, rubber duck here , I have a problem with my dancing partner she is embraced and doing close steps ,what do I do " This is impossible to do in the middle of a dance

and yes , 3) I forget all my books, and try to put myself into the dance, for the best or the poor . When we finished the tanda, I thanked the woman , return to my table and ask my teacher " ruben, what happened with my dancing partner ? she kept a close embrace and do small steps, even when I try to lead longer steps ". And my teacher says" she was dancing apilado and you was dancing Alberto style , but anyway, it was good looking ,there were no body fight but cooperation"


This is what I can say about the different styles . There are schools where you can learn a tango style . but the schools do not run a milonga usually (maybe El beso is an excepction). But even if the school runs a milonga , the place is open. So perhaps at the first hour after the lesson ,.you can find some kind of distintictive stytle. But afterwards, when people keeps arriving randomly , the "styles" begun to mix.

And to dance what you feel , that is an excellent comment . We have at our school , two students from Italy , who pested our teacher to teach them "the authentic tango style, not the artificial one ". We look into a dictionary of italian to see wether we could translate more or less properly , what we wanted to explain

finally we greet them farewell saying "Balli che cosa voi hanno dentro , quello e4 abbastanza"

Dance what you have inside, with that is enough"

Warm regards
Alberto Gesualdi




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