Media Luna (Half Moon)

[v22TTC]

Clive: As you suggest, the only disagreement is a fairly subtle - though extremely important - one, involving intent and feeling rather than observable results.

The best analogy that I can come up with is chess: observers will see patterns; the players will have learned them as patterns; the patterns will have names; etc: But, neither player can afford to view them as patterns, even while, apparently, predictably, using them exactly as stated in their manuals - the one who does is the inferior player, who will lose.

If art is largely about exploring and 'capturing' essences, then the essence of TA-as-art fills that seemingly-nit-picking distinction (for those attracted to such 'deep' things).

[I read a thread started by Dave Bailey asking for advice about how to teach ochos... the problem being avoiding the students thinking of them as complete things-in-themselves, that once put into motion follow a linear path to completion, rather than the led-pivot-then (if both partners agree to do so, there and then, at precisely that point) led-step-then... that it actually is: that's the spirit!]

Again though, it's not disastrous (for most people, though certainly is for some!) either way - if you get in the habit early on of agreeing with a practice-partner that now and then you will randomly lead something unexpected (mid-sequence), and she will randomly refuse to follow something that is the next bit of a sequence (though will follow something else that can flow from her current state) - then you can avoid the most perilous traps.

So you get all the benefits of learning sequences plus heightened communication and awareness of each other and other possible options and permutations, all the way through.

Ramble, ramble....

 

[Clive]

No, we still don't disagree, but then you are assuming that my thinking is pattern-led: it isn't. It's a useful way to learn concepts, quickly, but then it is essential to take apart those building blocks again, and use them creatively. Otherwise everything you do looks like it's made of Lego (if you see what I mean). This is emphatically NOT only true in AT, although, in this style it perhaps necessary, rather than an advanced dancer's goal.

The idea of the leader signalling an intention, inviting a follower's movement, and waiting for the follower, before following them, is 100% high-level ballroom technique in action. The technique that we have today, has its developmental roots decades before the AT golden age - it isn't the other way around. Again, this is nothing that the AT dancer needs feel defensive about.

Lots of dance styles can happily co-exist. They will, whatever we feel about them, anyway. Much of the critical comment levelled at ballroom dancers is a paper tiger, anyway. It is perfectly plain, reading the same nonsenses being trotted out, again and again, that the 'critics' know next to nothing about that which they dismiss. I'd like to see them, on the dance floor, with the sort of AT 'hours' I've got on the clock, in, say, Slow Foxtrot, and see how they get on with some fundamental movements like a simple Feather Step, Reverse Turn, Three Step and Natural Turn. Professional World Champions never tire of working hour after hour on these basics, but they're just 'patterns' and performing monkeys could do as well. Oh? I'd like to see that...

 

[Steve Pastor]

Current Argentine Tango may have appeared in the 80s with an emphasis on improvisation, but I would like to remind everyone that Argentine Tango was all the rage in the early 1900s in the United States, as well as France, England, etc.

Here is one account I found quickly

"The worldwide spread of the tango came in the early 1900s when wealthy sons of Argentine society families made their way to Paris and introduced the tango into a society eager for innovation and not entirely averse to the risqué nature of the dance or dancing with young, wealthy Latin men. By 1913, the tango had become an international phenomenon in Paris, London and New York. There were tango teas, tango train excursions and even tango colors—most notably orange. The Argentine elite who had shunned the tango were now forced into accepting it with national pride. The tango spread worldwide throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The dance appeared in movies and tango singers traveled the world. By the 1930s, the Golden Age of Argentina was beginning. The country became one of the ten richest nations in the world and music, poetry and culture flourished. The tango came to be a fundamental expression of Argentine culture, and the Golden Age lasted through the 1940s and 1950s." http://www.tejastango.com/tango_history.html

The dance that is danced now in Argentina is similar, but certainly not the same as the dance that left Argentina, then came back to it in those early years, any more than "swing" is the same as the dance that was danced in Harlem in the 1930s. (Even there the dance continued to change over time.)

I've suggested before that we should be qualifying "Argentine Tango" with the adjective "comtemporary", at the very least. (but that's kind of clunky, now, isn't it?)

 

[Steve Pastor]

Patterns are

a useful way to learn concepts, quickly, but then it is essential to take apart those building blocks again, and use them creatively.

This is exactly how I was taught to think about the dance, and all of the local Portland teachers had exactly this philosophy while I was taking lessons.
Now, the visiting Argentine teachers? Well, maybe it was a language issue.

(two PM's to Clive re his earlier post. Yes, the quote HMTL tags were the problem.)

 

[AndaBien]

Current Argentine Tango may have appeared in the 80s with an emphasis on improvisation, but I would like to remind everyone that Argentine Tango was all the rage in the early 1900s in the United States, as well as France, England, etc....

The early 1900's were the Ragtime years, when the One-step was immensely popular. According to Richard Powers, some dance teachers began teaching tango, due to demand and profitability, even though they new barely anything about it. They literally taught One-step dancing to tango music, and called it tango.

Although rich young Argentines probably introduced tango to the Parisian high society, I imagine that a more authentic tango was being danced by ship workers in the waterfronts of Paris and Marseilles.

By the time New Yorkers got tango it had been filtered through Parisian high society and dance teachers who knew little about it.

 

[Clive]

It's worth remembering that the dance that 'went around the world' wasn't the AT that we would recognise today. Tango (without the 'A') was the all the rage, and it found different forms in different places. The particular style of the milongueros of the Golden Age still lay in the future, and the rediscovery and renewal of that style in the resurgence of AT from the 1980s onwards was not even dreamed about.

The music was barely recognisable either. Much has changed, but within fairly narrow limits, dictated by a living 'tradition' and the style. There's not much genuine improvisation, in the sense that 'anything goes', but freedom to choose, from the Tango menu, what we lead next. Leading a Pepperpot into Turning Step-Hops just wouldn't work. (Actually, some of my partners wouldn't bat an eyelid, but we'd probably be asked not to come again).

 

[Dave Bailey]

According to Richard Powers, some dance teachers began teaching tango, due to demand and profitability, even though they new barely anything about it.

Of course, such a thing could never happen today.

 

[Captain Jep]

Of course, such a thing could never happen today.

are you getting at those ballroom teachers again ?

 

[v22TTC]

Clive: Just for the record: you've obviously known some pretty cack folks who dance TA, but I don't think the people here have exhibited those attitudes - most of us have backgrounds in other dances too, so we're not being sniffy about patterns; merely offering insights into TA's core, and offering cautionary advice.

From what you said, I didn't assume that your thinking is pattern-led: I have no doubt that you have the experience and subtlety to negotiate the patterns/not-patterns simultaneous duality - it's the others who don't that you have to watch out for (and who make our dancing far less satisfactory than it otherwise would be).

I've been methodically wading through the TA threads here and have yet to find any negativity aimed towards Ballroom: the antipathy and contempt seems to be reserved for those who also dance TA... but a different 'style' of it....

 

[Angel HI]

... but then it is essential to take apart those building blocks again, and use them creatively. Otherwise everything you do looks like it's made of Lego (if you see what I mean). ...

Interesting that you would use this analogy. I have said for years, borrowing from a student who said it to me, "Real dance is like playing with Lego blocks. There are certain pices that one must have. We take those pieces and build a movement. Then, we take apart those pieces, and reuse them to build another movement." The statement was originally made in a class about the importance and/or lack of importance of good basics.

 

[JohnEm]

On a crowded dance floor, certainly the backstep should be stored away in ones attic. However, I see no reason not to use it when there is plenty of space for it. There are also other steps that move backwards, such as molinetes and sometimes an ocho cortado.

Strictly I should have said teaching beginners of course.
A backstep and backwards movements can be used anywhere conditions
allow which means having the necessary awareness, floorcraft and
positional abilities which rules out beginners.

I heard that the salida is the beginning of a dance phrase (the going out part). In the middle is the body of the phrase, and it ends with a resolution. The whole concept then begins again. I rather like that idea, and I find it useful for creating an interesting dance.

Well that is how that teacher is describing using it, sounds like a very
pattern based approach to me. It's also one of the reasons used to explain
the 8CB/Basic Eight. It begins with the Salida and ends with the Resolution.
At any appropriate count you can begin an appropriate move returning
either to that count or to the the 6, 7 & 8 of the resolution.

It's more like this:

My 1st teacher used the salida start in beginner lessons. I've heard the paradox of the name explained as that you are exiting the table area. (or something like that)

edited to add, from this link:
http://www.tejastango.com/terminology.html#S

Salida — From salir - to exit; to go out: The first steps of dancing a tango, or a tango pattern, derived from “¿Salimos a bailar?” {Shall we (go out to the dance floor and) dance?}.

Thanks Zoopsia, that makes more sense, I've never understood how dancers
could use a negative of leaving (the tables) as a description of starting
something so positive as beginning any dance, especially tango.

I was given that explanation and I find that it's true for a walking dance. (It is a basic step only). From a leaders view point it has a back step, a side step left, walking outside (the easy side), a cruzada, a forward step (inside), a side step right, and a change of weight in place. Omitting ochos, that's everything that can be done.

Not in my view but never mind.

According to Rudolfo Dinzel's method, each count had appropriate variations that could be inserted.

Well he gathered everything together on great big charts as a visual aid,
mainly for themselves I rather think. It must have looked awfully intimidating
for a beginner to see those charts on the wall.

Danel Bastone told me that he and Maria closed down their ballroom dance studio in NY to tour with Tango Argentino and give lessons to interested people. He used the 8CB.

Reading between the lines he was an entrepreneurial dance teacher
who facilitated the teaching by the show members.
And he saw a more lucrative opportunity than his dance school.

no archive available for danelymaria.com

Being an Argentinian doesn't make him a social dancer and in fact he was
a New York trained dancer steeped in show culture and professional dance teaching.
He was well placed to assist the show cast. But it would have been show,
or at least show influenced, tango being taught both by him and the cast.

Seems we may have to go further back in time for the origins of the 8CB,
perhaps towards the earlier choreographers using it to train dancers from
other disciplines for tango shows.

 

[mshedgehog]

Thanks Zoopsia, that makes more sense, I've never understood how dancers
could use a negative of leaving (the tables) as a description of starting
something so positive as beginning any dance, especially tango.

Maybe "takeoff" would be a better translation?

 

[Steve Pastor]

Since Richard Powers was mentioned...

This is sort of scarey... Came across this in a Google search!

Thanks, Dave, for digging up more info on the clip.

A friend, Steve Pastor, sent me this with a request to send to the list. It's
couple of archived emails concerning a book that Richard Powers referenced on
early Argentine Tango.

> It has to do with Richard Powers interpretation of early
> tango, etc
>
> no backup link for pythia.oregon.edu
>
> no backup for tango-l.com archives
>
> Steve
>

I remember that Powers made two or several posts to TangoL. I can't get to the second url, but remember having a heck of a time finding those posts! (Maybe I dreamt them!)

By the time New Yorkers got tango it had been filtered through Parisian high society and dance teachers who knew little about it.

The same may be said about the tango that came back to Argentina and was accepted by middle and upper class citizens of that birthplace of the "tango" (if you ignore Andelusian tango!). See info in the above link(s).

 

[opendoor]

(if you ignore Andelusian tango!). See info in the above link(s).

Hi Steve, thanks for posting. But, I found no infos on andalusian tango in that link? As far as I know the history of tango in spain is a parallel process to its journey to Paris.

 

[newbie]

As far as I know the history of tango in spain is a parallel process to its journey to Paris.

No. I don't remember the exact words, neither the author or the title but I read in a book written by an argentine about the origins of the argentine tango that one of the three dances that were existing before (and led to) A.T was the andalusian tango.