Ballroom and Argentine Tango
A good many, from what I know of them, have little or no experience of the BR world. They are not shy about sharing strong views (and they are usually not complimentary of the style or its practitioners). They tend to have strong views about every separate style of tango too, and seemingly, would wish to be considered knowledgeable about all of them. Hmm...
Then there are those who were once BR dancers, but who have now ‘seen the light’. Like most converts, too many of them exhibit rather more zeal than discernment in their views, and it is not hard to guess that they were probably never very good BR dancers, who didn’t progress much beyond the stage of novices, and never discovered how rewarding and endlessly challenging BR dancing can be. Many of this group have danced AT for many years, and for all I know, they may be very good at it.
For someone who seems able to take offence very easily,
this is pretty scathing about people you don't know.
I actually quite liked ballroom - after all I learned and danced it socially
for quite a few years. I was choosy, not liking Paso or Ballroom Tango
and the same in Latin, choosing not to Ballroom Jive (preferred the swing
dances) nor Samba. It didn't matter because I was only interested in
dancing socially but the social ballroom dance scene isn't great.
But AT is different in so many ways. Its lack of "rules" is advantageous
to its promoters, possibly disconcerting and confusing to newcomers.
My AT experience started with a form of fantasia taught by a teacher
intent on choreographing and performing shows using his students
though his website was all about lead and follow social tango.
Then by travelling three times as far in the other direction I learned
about the embrace, a so-called dynamic embrace and social tango.
Based on the knowledge gained and a resultant ability to dance in all
the various "holds", concentrating on tango within the embrace was
the key to improvement, and abandoning ballroom for the moment.
On that basis Ballroom frame and the Tango embrace are very different.
Edit for clarification as a result of UKDancer's comment later:
The basis meant is the knowledge of the various dance styles and
the comparison is between the ballroom dances of Waltz, Foxtrot etc
(excluding the Latin open hold pattern dances of Cha Cha and Rumba)
and the close embrace of Milonguero/Apilado form of Salon Tango.
Once you start considering show style tango, nuevo and the now named
VU style of Salon then such comparisons are not practicable as they
all require some sort of frame (meaning arm tone) and varying holds.
