Much more now has been written but, because of time limitation,
I will confine myself to this:
I simply will add or iterate that poor posture has nothing to do with the style of dance which one does. If your posture is poor in general, it will tend to find its way into your dance at some point. Be very leery and weary of labels. Adults tend to way...WAY... over-categorize things (the absurdity is that this often overly complicates the very thing that they are trying to simplify). An example is mentioned above when Suzanna used the term 'milonguero' to simply mean 'the way the milongueros danced', non-Argentines (mostly Americans) turned it into a categorized and labeled dance style.
Susana Miller seems to have done the milonguero labelling herself,
wasn't the name exactly because they wanted a name, a label,
to describe what they were teaching? Indeed Cacho Dante's
rather rigid style became the yardstick rather as Gavito's extreme
style became unfortunately perceived as apilado in general. Even
when teachers toned it down with less lean, the lean was still more
than you would see in Buenos Aires. And dangerous to people with
back defects and/or poor core strength.
Lastly, forgive me for assuming your level of newness, and for iterating previous posts, but, again, in the vein of being careful of labels..... Know that in the early days of the modern resurgence of AT, the term chest-to-chest was also a misunderstood or miscategorized labwl. The Argentines said this, but it is not what they meant. Perhaps, it was as simple as just the difference in translation, but what they meant when they said to lead from the chest was to lead from the center.
How do you know this? Argentines even today talk about chest connection
or the lack of it when it comes to foreigners. Surely all successful partner dancers
of any genre should move from the centre, the question then becomes about
how that centre is engaged or influenced.
My partner has individual lessons with a professional performance dancer,
ex Tango Fire in fact, but he is teaching core dance principles and an
emphasis on the chest is emphatically what he insists upon. He dances
socially differently to me (he likes the milonga Parakultural at Canning
and I do not) but my partner finds herself hearing the same things from
both of us, sometimes simultaneously. But her learning has brought
something to me too, and it is all about the chest, posture and projection.
So let's go back to the centre/core etc. The centre is at the core of it
but the centre/core is used to make the movement which is amplified
by being transmitted chest to chest, whether it's forward, sideways
or circular. If you have no core you can't transmit up through your body
to the chest. While the connection is different you surely have to agree
that any open hold dancer, swing, latin, even nuevo tango, needs a core
to keep all the body, leader or follower, centered and moving in unison.
And let's be clear about this, tango is not the only dance effectively lead
from way up the body: arguably all the open latin dances are lead from
an even higher position, at the shoulder, even though the physical
connection is quite different.
Adults, again, being ignorant of how words and/or concepts do not always translate literally, and misunderstanding what they were seeing in the dance, took this to literally mean to push the partner around with chest. Of course, we know today that even in the so-called close-embrace, the lead is from a core center movement (regardless of lean), and not from shoving the lady around with one's chest.
Shoving? No.
Moving from the chest? Most definitely, yes.
But like any successful partnership, it's a partnership
of the willing and the more experienced the better.
It's most definitely a skill gained best by much practice.
If I have to shove anyone, or hold them up, they won't
be danced with again. But there are argentine men who are
more brutal than me and some women happily dance with them,
so they have the skills to do so. I am sure there are limits though.
Before leaving this topic for now, let's talk about the consequences
of Gavito. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't intend this
as indeed some the quotations here and elsewhere seem to confirm.
If someone excessively leans (in so-called "full" apilado) I find that
they are indeed pushing quite hard and it is very limiting of free
movement especially in any direction other than forward and backwards.
In Gavito's videos, his partner's lean can be so excessive that
you can see the constraint expressed in staccato circular movements.
Performance is visual so it works for that, it doesn't work socially.
......As a leader sometimes this is a source of frustration for me - some followers are so tuned to wanting that lead to come from the chest than from the core. They will try to lean harder against the leader or not follow properly. Yes I can adjust to that, by leaning in a bit more and making a movement upper torso a bit more pronounced, but that is not something I enjoy dancing. The good thing about leading with the core is that it doesn't matter whether the embrace is open or close (and that's not just for Tango, but applies to almost all other dances).
