How Useful is the DVIDA Syllabus?

[JohnEm]

What Gustavo said during a workshop in Rome this summer, is that he and two other guys (he did not say who, I guess one was Fabian) sneaked in at a milonga (this was the pre-Gustavo era, when the tango was dying, not many milongas, not publicized) and they saw everybody doing this move. They tried to understand the mechanism and it seemed to them that it was starting like an ocho, and they named it as you know. Later, he said, they understood that they were wrong, but too late, and the name remained. There was no mention of Susana Miller.

Susanah Miller is mentioned here but it's by Fabian Salas, Gustavo's collaborator:
One night 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 now people are 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. So you have a front step and an open step.
That's what an ocho cortado is.
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 (Chuckles).
Extracted from http://web.archive.org/web/20150915032411/http://www.totango.net/salas2.html and it corroborates what you heard.

And of course they didn't invent the movement though a reading, or to be fair
maybe it's actually lazy speaking or quoting, might infer that. The invention was the name.
Actually when I found that interview it amused me as I never understood how it could
be called the Ocho Cortado as there was no Ocho at all. It was a cut forward step,
a turning cut sidestep and reverse rotation into a cross.

Salas in the interview continues:
You know, names are only ... For years, we wanted to use terms that describe what is going on.
Because most of the people want to know what is the name of the step. And they named the steps for the look,
for the idea, they didn't have a structure/form idea. I mean, the ocho is named for how it looked; it doesn't tell you
about the structure. Ocho Cortado is just a name that tells you you are cutting the ocho somewhere,
it doesn't tell you anything about the structure of the step.
He seems here to be talking here about naming movements as a means of communication
in teaching and/or choreography. He confusingly then reverts to talking about cutting
the ocho which previously he has said doesn't happen and is incorrect nomenclature.

I have seen a longer explanation elsewhere about their study of what the milongueros
were doing but cannot find that now.
Is there anywhere an interview with Gustavo Naveira directly referring to this?

 

[Angel HI]

I'm guessing that Angel HI's clarification comes from other source material (including speaking with the same guy?), and that that part of the interview was just simple, old fashioned ambiguity

Though, yes, I have studied/taught/performed with Fabian, and we have discussed this stuff many times, John's post #76 above supports all of what I said.

 

[v22TTC]

Then in that case:-

JohnEm: Thanks for the breakdown.

Angel HI: Thanks for the confirmation.

I've chosen to not get too involved in this side of Tango (ie arguing about such things), but since many others haven't - and this particular misunderstanding/misreading seems to come up a lot - it's worth knowing the actual answer.

Cheers for that!

 

[plugger]

If Gustavo used "ocho cortado" and Susana studied with him it seems OK for her to use it too, but to me the name also sounds descriptive. Gustavo's contrary view is well taken, but an ocho cortado does begin and end much like a forward ocho.
Both start with the follower stepping to the leader's right on her right foot, just as she would do in a turn, and in both she reverses direction and returns to his chest. In that sense, both are "cut" turns.
They differ in how she returns in front of the leader. In a FO she pivots on her RF and steps back on her left. In the OC she shifts weight to her LF and returns to partner on her right. The weight shift adds an extra beat to the ocho cortado, and that pause could also be regarded as a "cut," at least in the flow of the move.