With a different music a different dance.
- Thread starter Mario7
- Start date
The funny thing at some places I go to, it's sometimes a few of the highly skilled people who the things you listed would apply to. To be honest, whenever me (or my follower) have been kicked, it was by someone I would describe as highly skilled (much more than me). With blocking, it doesn't seem to matter what the skill level is, as both advanced and beginners I've seen doing this.
jennyisdancing
Active Member
To my view, if those people are blocking the line of dance and kicking people, then, by definition, they are not highly skilled, at least not in every sense. They might be skilled at performing various steps, but are apparently not skilled in dancefloor navigation and etiquette - or worse, maybe they're just too rude to care.
Peaches
Well-Known Member
Rude idgits != inadequate dancing ability.
Inadequate social skills, an underveloped understanding of etiquette, an inflated sense of self-importantance...sure. But it speaks nothing of their ability to execute the dance with skill.
And rude idgits happen regardless of the style being danced.
ETA: And, furthermore, it has absolutely no bearing on what to call what it is they're dancing.
Inadequate social skills, an underveloped understanding of etiquette, an inflated sense of self-importantance...sure. But it speaks nothing of their ability to execute the dance with skill.
And rude idgits happen regardless of the style being danced.
ETA: And, furthermore, it has absolutely no bearing on what to call what it is they're dancing.
Subliminal
Well-Known Member
You know what? This thread makes me love my teacher more. She very much falls in the traditional camp as far as tango goes. But she is also the least pretentious person I know. The other day she showed me a clip from the old Tango Argentino show to demonstrate something. And it was very obviously performance tango. But she told me to look at the connection and musicality of the dancers, not the moves. And I got it.
Connection. Musicality. Grace. Beauty. You can find these things in "traditional" tango, performance tango, and nuevo tango. Just because you refuse to see it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Connection. Musicality. Grace. Beauty. You can find these things in "traditional" tango, performance tango, and nuevo tango. Just because you refuse to see it doesn't mean it isn't there.
Removing the qualifiers brings Jenny's statement in line with my own opinion.
And, I'm pretty sure that it's been around a lot longer than that. Any time I point out that so and so did such and such say, in the 20s, the nay sayers will say, "Well, it was a preformance." Apparently in bygone decades people did not attempt to do things they saw in performances or on film, unlike today; which is absurd.
spectator
Member
bringing together my response to a lot of threads recently:
why is there such an obsession with giving things labels?
does it really matter? words are not the meaning they are descriptive toggles, entirely arbitrary -well yes obviously romance languages and a lot of English etc has roots in latin and a fair bit of greek for nouns and adjectives but how did the latin/greek arise?
words have a lot of power, but only the power we invest in them ourselves in the context of experience and our personal understanding. Tango is a word, it describes a dance done to a genre of music and the genre of music itself (even the use of tango describe such a specific genre is possibly suspect in the grand scheme of things).
the music of canaro, pugliese and piazzolla are pretty different, but they are all still tango, so why if we allow freedom in music, can't we have freedom in dance?
Fom now on I shall only refer to what you call "tango" as yufcurd. It makes as much sense to me and the confusion of me trying to define yufcurd will be exactly the same.
why is there such an obsession with giving things labels?
does it really matter? words are not the meaning they are descriptive toggles, entirely arbitrary -well yes obviously romance languages and a lot of English etc has roots in latin and a fair bit of greek for nouns and adjectives but how did the latin/greek arise?
words have a lot of power, but only the power we invest in them ourselves in the context of experience and our personal understanding. Tango is a word, it describes a dance done to a genre of music and the genre of music itself (even the use of tango describe such a specific genre is possibly suspect in the grand scheme of things).
the music of canaro, pugliese and piazzolla are pretty different, but they are all still tango, so why if we allow freedom in music, can't we have freedom in dance?
Fom now on I shall only refer to what you call "tango" as yufcurd. It makes as much sense to me and the confusion of me trying to define yufcurd will be exactly the same.
Angel HI
Well-Known Member
As seems to be the case lately (and, I really don't know why), this thread slips in and out of superfluous retorts, and loses its point. IMHO, Mario has, in one sense, a point. All he really wants to know is if there is a way for persons to better label what they are teaching/dancing so that one would better know what to expect from them.
The answer is, "No. Because AT has evolved/is evolving like everything else in life. There are purists who believe that it shouldn't much like all of our parents have said to us, "Well, back in my day......" And, it is all tango."
There is also a really great argument for....
The answer is, "No. Because AT has evolved/is evolving like everything else in life. There are purists who believe that it shouldn't much like all of our parents have said to us, "Well, back in my day......" And, it is all tango."
There is also a really great argument for....
My ongoing complaint.
Something else to keep in mind is that when tango had to compete with newer music such as rock n roll (yes, even in Argentina) in the fifties, young people began to stay away.
Also keep in mind that "tango" as music changed dramatically over the first century it's been around. (Someone argued recently that tango hasn't evolved becuas no one had been moving the music forward for decades.)
I've been going to the same practica for darn near 10 years now. Except... The music played is pretty much the same. OK. But by now I know it so well, that there are things in it that I want to express. But, I have a problem in finding women who share my "vision" of tango to this music. People come and go fairly regularly.
I recently watched a short film about famous "jazz dancers" Frankie Manning in which he says something to the effect that when I hear something in the music, I want to go ...... .
In AT you are tethered to a partner, and a lot of times they don't want to, or can't, go there with you.
I also believe increasingly that the tanda format is self defeating in our culture.
Maybe it's hard to believe, but the same music year after year, the same "high stakes" do I want to dance 3 - 4 songs with this person... Even a changing of style within the embrace...
Quiet rant, I guess, that's hopefully a bit pertinent.
Ok, this is somewhat over the top, but i think this is deep down the core of all the "true tango" debates:
It is a leaders obsession because dancing with followers who dance differently, with a different baseline technique is not fun. And she decides what she does with my marks - i can neither force her into apilodo nor can i force her to be off-axis suspended. So i will adjust my vocabulary and embrace and dance things that i don't like to dance, and even worse that i am not good at. And she will tell all her friends that i am an awful and unpleasant tango dancer. So its essentially a ego thing.
And in a way it is somewhat unsatisfying that as a leader the route to having fun at milongas and being able to dance with more than just one or two other people is to learn how to fake all the styles that i don't enjoy dancing instead of spending time on developing deeper and more subtle techinque in the style i actually like dancing.
Gssh
Mario7
Member
EXACTLY!!! I am with the same realization and so I have now chosen to develope exclusively thru practice partners (more than one) ...I love the music and what is possible in the style of my choice (see below) and that is enough for me..way far, enough!!! So, if I have a couple of dancers at the milonga that fly with me...I will have two to dance with..and maybe chance a third if someone looks good.. I advertise almost every week for practice partners, and dance every day, below is my ad.
Argentine Tango..looking to dance everyday and won't give up in SMA
I'm looking for a second woman who wants to practice dancing the authentic Argentine Tango more than once a week.
Please have some experience and a matching physical stature; She should be over 5'3" and weigh under 155lbs.
I will teach a beginner if she is VERY interested and will practice twice a week 1 1/2 hrs ea. time.
Here are some videos of the dance.
This first link is a site dedicated to what the social dance is all about.
http://www.tangoandchaos.org/chapt_5video/25miguel.htm
The link below is a video of my favorite dancer Eduardo Masci
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKizat-nfMo
Here's another video of master dancers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if8NaP5bKGo
Reply if interested, posted by Mario.
Hmm - "EXACTLY" was not really the reaction i was aiming for - because that leads in the end to fragmented communities where we have different sets of dancers that are no longer able and willing to dance with each other, and the width and variety of tango, and its community is what makes this dance so interesting.
I was more wondering about how to get the whole ego thing in check - i am at the moment working on dancing with followers whose styles i don't enjoy, and adapt to them, and find good dances there - and it is not easy. There is a whole continuum of approaches, and i think that i over time became a bit of an extremist - i figured out what i liked, and i went more and more into that direction. I don't think this is a good thing - with every step to the extreme i lost part of the community
. So now i am thinking a lot about how to navigate this - because for me tango is a social dance, and having a permanent partner, or a few permanent partners who do exactly the same thing as me is not very social.
Gssh
I was more wondering about how to get the whole ego thing in check - i am at the moment working on dancing with followers whose styles i don't enjoy, and adapt to them, and find good dances there - and it is not easy. There is a whole continuum of approaches, and i think that i over time became a bit of an extremist - i figured out what i liked, and i went more and more into that direction. I don't think this is a good thing - with every step to the extreme i lost part of the community
. So now i am thinking a lot about how to navigate this - because for me tango is a social dance, and having a permanent partner, or a few permanent partners who do exactly the same thing as me is not very social.Gssh
Mario7
Member
Well, you have a point there but I'm not in this to adjust to other people's cultural timidity and that's what I call it when a class is taught close embrace dancing (according to the teacher) and then no one dances really close embrace...I may just go to BsAs and stay there if this continues.:doh:
Agreed, that this can be an issue, but there are a few things that can be done to help deal with this.
1) Be a little more like JanTango and go for quality, over the quantity of the dances. Don't hesitate to sit out some tandas that don't fit your style.
2) Work on expanding (a little) what your comfort level is.
3) Get good enough at your style, that more people enjoy dancing it with you. (Although remember: No matter how good you get, there will always be some people who won't like your dance.)