Ballroom style

At some point in the past, foxtrot and tango origins converge.

Not to much degree as they originate in distinct cultures, unless you mean the very concept of two people dancing together.

At some point after that Tango Argentino and "ballroom" tango split off again. All along the way, all three dances were influenced by other dances and traditions.
More importantly, after Tango was exported to France it, it came within sight of the British teachers of waltz- and foxtrot- like dances, who created a version sharing some of their habitual concepts of how two bodies could closely cooperate. And then the Germans changed the music of Tango in general, and subsequently the character of movement of the ballroom form to match.

Somewhere in there, people wrote stuff down, but not everybody likes what got written down.
More that many people read and even become obsessed with the specifics of what was written down (or alternately, reject them out of hand) but fail to grasp the motivations for writing it and the nature of the greater whole that the written form approximates.
 
to whatever extent "the real/official/original" version is debated, there's an element of superiority in that... just to prove one's case or support one's bias. the tango & salsa threads tend to be rich in that dynamic, so i mostly stay away...

Well, this thread started with the opening salvo of "ballroom argentine tango is the best style" and it was posted smack dab in the middle of the AT forum. LOL. So you can hardly blame us if things got argumentative right off. That's a little unfair Sam. ;)
 
Well, this thread started with the opening salvo of "ballroom argentine tango is the best style" and it was posted smack dab in the middle of the AT forum. LOL. So you can hardly blame us if things got argumentative right off. That's a little unfair Sam. ;)
haha... actually, i think my comments are spot-on-target, then. twas bait for those that Just.Can't.Resist. ;):cool::D
 
God point, sub. :cool: It wasn't exactly the most auspicious beginning, now was it? :lol:

But on the other hand, it got you guys in here, along with a bunch of other people who rarely post in this forum. So that's a plus. You have to stay now!

:friend:
 
But on the other hand, it got you guys in here, along with a bunch of other people who rarely post in this forum. So that's a plus. You have to stay now!

:friend:

:tongue: oh... i'm around.

i also enjoyed her contributions to the thread...not common for an AT discussion. :)
 
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I did not read that intention into the original post....

You could be right, it might not have been intentionally inflamatory. Maybe he was just unaware of the forum history...
 
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Back sort of on topic, one place where the traditional dance and the accompanying ballroom dance didn't diverge too far is East Coast Swing and the jitterbug/lindy community. For the most part, the forms you learn in ballroom will work just fine on the social floor. There may be some stylistic differences, and a few that would require some specialized teaching to get right (the lindy turnout comes to mind) but for the most part you could get on the floor and feel like you're speaking the same language, maybe with a different dialect. I may be generalizing a bit there due to the experiences in my community, but I feel the two are far more closely related than AT and BR AT.
 
..but for the most part you could get on the floor and feel like you're speaking the same language, maybe with a different dialect....

There was a thread in the swing section upon the communication between the ECS/Jive and the Lindy folks, and for me it turned out: the closer you are the more complicated it will be ..

:rolleyes:
 
You don't seem to have quoted anything. I was correcting your mistaken speculation that ballroom tango is the marketed form of AT.

I'm pretty sure UK knows the difference between ballroom tango and AT. I also didn't see anything in his posts on this thread to indicate he thinks the marketed form of AT is ballroom... I believe he is saying that the marketed form of AT is stage/ fantasia AT. That doesn't mean it's ballroom AT.
 
Let's just way that as dancers have become more "educated", the swing dances have become more distinct from each other. At one time the term "Lindy Rhythm" was used in "Western Swing". WCS doesn't use that term anymore, although that 8 count rhythm is still there. Now a days, and since maybe the 80s when Lindy started to be revived, it seems to be about people specializing in one form of swing, at least for lots of people. Dean Collns is quoted as having said, it's all swing, but...

We get some "ballroom" folks at the practica I go to. We can dance together, but vals seems to work best because the fairly familiar and consistent rhythm facilitates it.
 

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