I'm not sure how that could possibly make any sense...
The "dark side" of Tango scene
- Thread starter latinjazz
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I'm not sure how that could possibly make any sense...
Of course it didn't make sense. It was a fashion/style fad
promoted by a teacher/dancer to make money from
the innocent (meaning the unknowing). It never worked
for me and it was my first experience of any kind of tango.
Sometimes these experiences are useful towards eventually
sorting the wheat from the chaff. That was pure chaff!
Incidentally the teacher concerned was indeed a classical male
ballet dancer who spent time in Buenos Aires and promoted
his tango teaching on the strength of that. I had to leave
his class claiming to teach milonguero because it was so bad.
opendoor
Forum Master
Hundred years ago jujutsu stylist Joseph Pilates got a side job as fitness trainer of the opera ballet in my hometown Hamburg. 15 years ago pilates became the basic training method of many tango professionals.
You can learn much from Pilates and the persistent practice
of it (and similar related exercise) has huge postural benefits.
And it has progressed a lot since the days of its originator.
If more Tango professionals practised it there are many teaching
dancers who would be changed/improved. Naming no names
this time (I could) but they are easily recognisable.
Try "The Official Body Control Pilates Manual".
A long time friend (and dancer) is a recognised "Whole Body Pilates"
practitioner to whom our Health Service refers patients.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
Pretty much agree. While I think it certainly helps to be in good physical shape (but could apply to many disciplines and life in general), I don't think there is any particular movement technique that will help become a better tango dancer. The most helpful thing might simply be to practice more and dance more, unless you're planning to be a stage dancer, in which case, you may as well study modern dance first and tango second.
True about ballet. It does give one strength and balance and so on but you are right that it is antithetical to the way of moving in tango. One is gravity defying, the other is earthbound. I have a good friend who was a professional ballet dancer and it took a while for her to make the transition to tango.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
I often feel it's influenced by some flavor of tango nuevo or neo-tango. But they may in turn be influenced by modern dance or something other than tango.
And yes, there are quite a few male dancers around who come from modern dance or ballet backgrounds (or have enough ballet training to influence their movements) and they teach.
Interesting about the manner of walking/stepping and Europe. Any idea why?
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
Wasn't swango primarily a California thing? That was my understanding.
I had the free lesson in Portland at (one of) a "swing" festivals that's been going on for years.
West Coast Swing was being taught in Portland in '53, with it's own "revised" step sheet authored by the AM dance director.
I ask myself why the name LA Swing or California Swing didn't catch on (although some folks in Texas used the California Swing term), and I answer that the dance spread pretty quickly all along the West Coast, just like the bands that would tour the whole coast when they came out here (or started here).
Balboa, New Yorker, and Smooth Swing were all taught here, too, when they were being taught in LA in the early 40s.
AT and WCS are just too different technique wise to go together except for "learned moves."
(Q. How would I lead this? A. You just have to know it.)
I'd say the same for AT and jive.
West Coast Swing was being taught in Portland in '53, with it's own "revised" step sheet authored by the AM dance director.
I ask myself why the name LA Swing or California Swing didn't catch on (although some folks in Texas used the California Swing term), and I answer that the dance spread pretty quickly all along the West Coast, just like the bands that would tour the whole coast when they came out here (or started here).
Balboa, New Yorker, and Smooth Swing were all taught here, too, when they were being taught in LA in the early 40s.
AT and WCS are just too different technique wise to go together except for "learned moves."
(Q. How would I lead this? A. You just have to know it.)
I'd say the same for AT and jive.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
I got told that when I started ... and looked around: ordinary peoply doing their leisure activity, it could not be really hard. My initial plan covered two years - the winter for learning, the summer for resting, maybe dancing a bit.
I finally learned in classes for nine months and did not return, but I suppose the intent to rest, to limit the time frame, was the key to success. Maybe additionally the luck to find a teacher for privates on basics in close embrace.
So did I feel "good enough" for others after two years - all the work I do nowadays is for me (and my SO). I suppose by the way was I somehow simply ignoring possible "dark sides" of the tango scene.
That's a deep question and some of the possible answers
might be regarded as reflecting badly on europeans.
For me, perhaps a rejection of Africans extended to not walking
or moving like Africans. Or maybe the more positive position
of regarding themselves as europeans, definitely "not African".
You can see that in Ballroom Tango, a heel landed stepping
rather than the African influenced Latin front of the foot landing.
And so it goes on.
Europeans were happy enough with ball of the foot and tippy toed
landing, maybe because of the ballet influence. So you see the foxtrot
being a combination of downward heel lead slows and foot-rising
ball-footed fast steps. Very sophisticated!
Some Argentines reacted badly, rather stridently, against
Robert Farris Thompson's treatise "The Art History of Love"
because he claimed an ongoing African influence on Tango.
He would have been on safer ground had he restricted himself
to the early and original African (ex-slave) influences which
continued socially in a milder form throughout the Golden Age
and even later. The Canyengue revival seems to reflect it.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
Hmm. Maybe, although I'm not entirely convinced of the "not African" part for European dancers (some of whom are very good). It's a topic that would require a lot of research and surveying to resolve in even a superficial way. I'm sure there was "not African" sentiment in Argentine as well 150 years ago, especially among those who wished to emphasize their "Creole" roots.
About the foot landing. I've seen dancers (professional and non-) use both methods. I have always tended to land on the front of my foot simply as a default but was never explicitly taught that. In an interview with Carlito and Noelia, Carlito said he steps onto his heel; that's his personal preference and if others do it differently, that's OK, but it's his way of walking.
Thompson's book has gotten pushback from a lot of people not only indignant Argentines. Several scholars have questioned his research (including linguistic sources, such as etymologies) and downplayed the direct influence of Afro-Argentine culture on AT. (As I recall, in one paper, the author says that the etymological foundations of terms like "milonga" and "tango" are all based on a single dictionary of KiKongo but with no supporting documentation. This may or may not be a strong argument against the linguistic origins, however. I'm not sure.) By late 19th century, former African slaves had been integrated into the population or dispersed throughout the countryside and their influence was likely to have been diluted (it would have been stronger in the 17th century, for example). While the influence is there, it may be less immediate than we imagine. A paper I read recently claims that AT evolved as a direct response among porteños (immigrants and locals alike) to "Black" ways of dancing and in contradistinction to it. It was both a challenge and critique of it. You touched upon this in your reply above.
Oh I'm not talking about today but 100 plus years ago.
Consider the ballroom treatment of the Tango which
arrived from Argentina in the early 20th century,
the treatment it received in Paris before that and
the civilizing of it in the south of France.
And consider this painting first shown about 1877
and the embraces you can see:
This is from here:
Bal du moulin de la Galette - Wikipedia
Context, time and place are everything.
Yes indeed but here I'm just attempting to answer your question
in some meaningful way. Carlitos and Noelia are not traditional
tango dancers.
We agree though maybe on different nuances.
However it seems indisputable that the many freed
slaves weren't really absorbed but dispersed and killed
by either being used in the Latin American wars or by disease.
And many apparently left Argentina for more favourable places.
None of this would have been sudden but progressive.
However from 1880 onwards they began to be replaced
by immigration from Europe.
Like you I don't think African influence was particularly strong
but frankly we will never know and as is the norm, pockets
of residual population and influence may have survived for
some time. La Boca could well have been such a barrio.
But it is all guesswork . . . . all we have is the evidence of our
own eyes and feeling of the dance to know that maybe,
just maybe, some black influence remains. Or maybe it is the
remnants of the influence of a fitter time when people didn't
spend their lives sitting on chairs.
Ricardo Vidort's dance did not evolve by someone who spent
his life sat on his posterior when young.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
What are they dancing in the painting I wonder? It predates the arrival of the dance in Paris circa 1910. But yes there are interesting parallels between the painting and photos and prints of early forms of tango. Something to consider, certainly.
True about Carlitos. However, consider the difference in the walk between someone like Osvaldo Carterry and Vidort (or anyone else for that matter). Not all ways of stepping are the same even within the narrow context of that tradition.
I agree about the dispersal and destruction of the slave population in Argentina. Part of the problem is chronological: how far back are we looking, how large was the Black population of Buenos Aires at the time, how extensive was its influence, and so on. For that, one would have to examine contemporary accounts. However, by the time tango is recognized as tango, in the early 20th century, the process of dispersal you describe had been in effect for many years already. (Which is not to say there was no presence and no influence.) There is also some dispute about its direct influence on the dance given the radically different forms found in African dance and the 20th-century tango. I personally see no direct influence.
Again, as for the guesswork, we'd have to examine contemporary sources to look for evidence of influence and interaction. And there's the book by Vicente Rossi, Cosas de negros (which I haven't read), which touches upon the subject. I'd like to get my hands on a copy of the book to see what he has to say.
About the fitness, that would have applied to society as a whole. Vidort? He said he was a businessman in the interview I saw. Of course, many (most) of the early practitioners were laborers, so probably not men who sat before a computer screen all day.
I think there is a somewhat established idea that this is mostly a difference in what the natural walk on hard surfaces is likewhen wearing a hard soled shoe (which allows heel strikes) and when being barefoot/ wearing soft shoes (Daout 2009). The same thing (a preference for a toe strike when doing potentially high impact movements ) is also true for other people wearing soft shoes/being barefoot like medieval reenactors and barefoot runners. (there are actually significant differences in moving/kicking theories between martial arts that assume one is wearing shoes like savate and CQC and ones that assume that one is barefoot like karate. (and for real fun one can look at the footwork of polynesian arts that assume one moves on soft sand). So europeans most likely were mostly walking more toe first, too, before hard soled shoes became the standard, and the use of this kind of movement in ballroom might be a vestige of medieval dance.
(There seems to be some evidence that the widespread wearing of heavily padded athletic style shoes with very soft, cushioning soles is also changing peoples gait again) (and anecdotally i know people who only wear trainers, and they claim to be physically incapable of walking wearing head soled dress shoes - they might not just be teenagers, but have a correct evaluation of their situation)
I personally think that argentine tango gets its heel strike probably from its 19th century origins where people mostly wore shoes, and maybe links with argenting folkloric dance - which are all about wearing boots and having heels and stomping.
(similarly compare hard sole folk dances like chacarera and flamenco with soft sole dances like irish dancing and ballet)
Interestingly enough this suggests that what i am seeing at the moment - that both leaders and followers seem to be moving from hard leather soles on tango shoes to a more ballroom style flexible sole - is probably changing the character of the dance (or this change in preference is a consequence of the character of the dance already having changed).
(is somebody here knowledgeable about country and western dancing? As far as i understand "dance boots" also have very flexible soles - is that also changing the what the dancing looks like there?)
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