Fine. Tango is big enough to embrace everyone, somewhere.
Closer embrace = free floating hand
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Fine. Tango is big enough to embrace everyone, somewhere.
Indeed, as long as it is tango! Which leads me on to
what actually is Argentine Tango. Forget terms like
real etc., because fundamentally any dancing to tango
music could be called tango (that begs the question
what is it when it isn't to tango music - NotTango?).
What is clear, at least to me, is that through the ages the dance
in Rio Plata has been one of body contact of the partners, a bodily
transmitted dance, one partner to the other dancing together.
That goes all the way back to Canyengue which itself probably
evolved from partners danced together side by side, you have
to have contact for that which you can see in some Lindy Hop.
What some Argentines rather casually but magically developed
was a dance of the music, a transmission of one to another of feeling
the music through bodies combined and moving almost as one.
Also it is a way of dancing enabling an improvised dance of much
other music. For me, nothing else comes remotely close and
I have partners here in the UK who from experience think the same.
Possibly what is also important is that it is not complicated:
why would you expect it to be when it was evolved ad hoc,
no classes, no academia, no dissections, just practise of dancing?
It requires the partners to be able to adopt a few basic principles,
although for some it takes quite some time to perfect them.
Tango Class based learners often find it the most difficult,
good dancers from other partner dances can often find it easier.
Yes. An additional point I was trying to make is that in my experience, there is a "close embrace position" that pretty much negates the "non torso" conduit of shoulders/arms/hands, all of which are in contact with the partner. But, at the same time, there is such light, or even non existent contact between the torsos, that very little information is conveyed or perceived.
Very recently I had a very nice partner who was in that in between place. But, I could have danced more freely, a I would like to think, given both of us a better dance, if a couple of things would have happened, as I mention in the previous paragraph.
Let me note, too, that I am not an absolutist on any of this.
Example: I have had many dances over the years where it was clear that my right arm was "holding the woman in place" because she could not manage it on her own.
Example: I would rather allow my shoulders/arms to deviate from one set position (in a open embrace), allowing my partner to move a bit further around me in a giro as an example, than maintain a rigid frame as described by Julianne Hough (see above?).
Since I'm "in the middle" of my West Coast Swing project, I have noted that while Lindy Hop is widely thought to have the same origin, many, many of the "moves" that were incorporated into the dance were first seen in theaters, danced by people who were making a living as entertainers. Just yesterday I was reading Frankie Manning who wrote that, "Whitey was always trying to add the latest dances into the Lindy to make it more exciting an more marketable." [h...Ambassador of Swing p 114]
There was no Savoy of Argentine Tango, just like there was no Savoy of West Coast Swing. Still, I wonder what we don't know.
And, side bar...
I have a couple of cds in the "Before the Blues" series. The one cover is a "vintage" photograph of a several people with instruments, and one young man in nearly exactly the same position as a figure in one of Thompson's illustrations (Tango: Art History of Love) - legs crossed, knees turned out. that's a position I like to use when the music is lively as in many of the earlier, ragtime era, tangos.
I don't consider this a close embrace position. I consider it bad technique by people who don't know how to dance close embrace. For awhile, I was encountering a number of leaders who danced this way and in many cases, it was because they were collapsing in their chest. Their posture and form were bad, so the connection was bad.
Occasionally I ran into a leader who had decent posture but still managed this non-touching "close embrace". It was as though they were afraid of a woman's breasts touching them, or afraid of causing offense if they pressed their own chest into her breasts. I had to solve it by either opening into a V and making contact along the side or opening into an open embrace. Many of these leaders have developed a better connection as time goes on.
There was one who wanted me to feel his lead on the inside of my left arm (between the elbow and shoulder) against the outside of his right arm. In other words, he wanted me to pin his right arm in exactly the way that almost every other leader hates.