3093  Whoever you are, you probably often dance "Nuevo Tango"

Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 19:05:06 -0700
From: Brian Dunn <brianpdunn@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Whoever you are, you probably often dance "Nuevo Tango"

Dear List,

I have been doing some research on the origins of "Nuevo Tango" which some
may find interesting. I have restricted the following to things I have
learned from primary sources, i.e, people who were "there" when the
historical events took place. I've used either published quotes from
interviews with these primary sources, or questions I posed to them
directly. In other words, no hearsay, no "I read it on the internet", no
matters of opinion from those who weren't there, including me (with one
exception noted below). My original sources include Gustavo Naveira, Fabian
Salas, Tomas Howlin, and Luciana Valle.

In 1980-1981, Gustavo took his first tango lesson at the University of
Buenos Aires, where he was studying economics. Gustavo's first maestro was
Rodolfo Dinzel. After a few months he began dancing with Olga Besio, with
whom he began a long tango partnership. When his friend Pepito Avellaneda
began to travel extensively in Europe, Pepito gave responsibility for his
practica at Cochabamba 444 in San Telmo to Gustavo. It was in this
unassuming little bar/dance hall location in the shadow of the overhead
autopista that much of the language now used to teach tango originated.

Fabian started working with Gustavo "sometime before 1990". He says that
Gustavo was the dancer who impressed him the most in tango. At one point,
they were discussing the dying-off of the milongueros, the teachers,
"sometimes three or four in one year", and Fabian said "Gustavo, we are on
our own. There is hardly anybody anymore and if there is, we can't do much
about it because it's hard to talk to these people." Here, Fabian refers to
the tendency of many old milongueros to hide one's steps from other leaders,
"protecting the family jewels", and in that way slowing down the group
effort Gustavo and Fabian were proposing to analyze the possibilities of the
dance. "Gustavo, the only ones here speaking the same language are me and
you. Why don't we just do it on our own? Get together and practice in a
serious way. Analyze...We started doing it several hours per day, every day.
I mean, we couldn't sleep. Talking; we spent hours every day playing
billiards and talking; coffees - they'd throw us out from one coffee shop
and we'd have to go to another and another all night long - talking and
talking. For years."

Some years later, in pursuit of an underlying structure that could account
for all the possibilities in tango, they came upon the idea that the
"fundamental structure" of the tango was the turn. "We always looked for
structure - for things that you could say, you know, this is organized this
way and that is organized that way...It's not like for one boleo; we were
looking for: how many boleos were possible in tango dancing; how many
different ganchos there are; things like that."

During a recent class with Gustavo, he was leading a discussion of the
historical development of tango, and I asked him when the idea of parallel
and crossed system came into vogue. He said, "Twenty years ago - from me
and my brother Salas...and I have the arrows in my back to prove it."

Fabian said that they themselves call what they do "Argentine tango", not
Nuevo Tango.

Fabian reports that one day Gustavo came up with "this idea of calling the
Ocho Cortado. Or the cut ocho. It was a mistake - the concept was a
mistake. He invented it, the Milongueros are using it, and they don't even
know where it came from. And Gustavo is saying, I created a name that
people are now calling Ocho Milonguero. Ocho Cortado is a mistake - really,
the cut ocho is a cut turn...a reverse of direction, because you go front,
open, and then you go to the other side. It's not that you are cutting the
ocho anywhere, it's just you are making a turn to one side and then you
start to the other side....But after years, somebody grabbed that...for
example Susana Miller, because she was taking classes with Gustavo, and she
came up with his terminology, ocho cortado, and she taught this all over the
world. And now the greater community of dancers has a concept that we
brought out, that is wrong <chuckle>."

Gustavo and Fabian did not see themselves as inventing a new tango, but as
developing an inventory of the possibilities of existing tango by looking
for underlying structure, analyzing the possible choices of tango dancers in
terms of that structure, and in the process identifying through experiment
the unexplored or little-used possibilities.

< Opinion mode ON >
If you think of your walk in terms of parallel and crossed system, or if
your tango milonguero technique includes "ocho cortados," then you are
dancing "Nuevo Tango".
< Opinion mode OFF >

Tremendous thanks to Keith Elshaw for his inestimable service to the larger
tango community by hosting a fascinating interview with Fabian Salas, which
provided much source material for this message. Read the rest of the
inteview at

https://www.totango.net/salas.html

All the best,
Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
Boulder, CO 80302
www.danceoftheheart.com