There is always marketing. Someone with tango dance skills communicates that knowledge in teaching, and the student pays for the instruction. This is not crime, it is capitalism at a very basic level - small business, something that has existed for thousands of years, perhaps longer.
Some important issues are whether there is truth in advertising with respect to the talents and background of the instructor, and whether the product offered is accurately portrayed. In today's marketing, every tango instructor is the best, or even better and has a resume longer than a roll of toilet paper. There are no bad instructors. The same can be said for laundry detergent. Ask your friends whether a tango instructor is really good or whether their laundry detergent really gets out those tough stains. They will be more truthful than the ads. The accurate portrayal issue in tango is something else. If one reads the announcements of touring tango instructors on Tango-A, these days the majority are for instruction in nuevo. There are even numerous tango festivals where all of the instructors teach nuevo. There are numerous milongas at these tango weekends and festivals where nuevo is taught. Since a 'milonga' is a social tango event, this raises the question of whether nuevo is social tango. Since I don't take classes in nuevo, I cannot say whether nuevo is being portrayed as social tango in these classes, either explicitly or implicitly. I cannot say that I've seen this in any of the announcements or web pages advertising nuevo workshops, unless one gets into the gray area of 'volcadas for the social dance floor', 'back sacadas in close embrace' and the like, which are often advertised under the banner of 'nuevo milonguero' which implies, by the use of the term 'milonguero', that it is somehow related to 'tango milonguero', which is used to describe a variant of social tango. Others can perhaps cite explicit examples of nuevo being advertised as social tango. The implicit portrayal of nuevo is social tango is another issue. Except for the often cited tango oases of Villa Malcolm and Practica X, the rest of the Buenos Aires tango desert is overpopulated with social tango typically called 'tango de salon' by porten~os. Tango de salon varies along several dimensions in the angle and degree of offset of the embrace, placement of the head and arms in relation to the partner, the characteristics of the walk, among other things. However, it is almost inevitably characterized by some close embrace. Of course, nuevo is more often taught where it is truly popular, outside Argentina where, in some communities, it has become the de facto representation of social tango. One could argue that nuevo instructors are teaching social tango because that is what is danced at milongas in the communities where they teach. Inaccurate portrayal occurs when it is advertised as social tango in Buenos Aires, unless one defines Buenos Aires tango as what happens at Villa Malcolm and Practica X. I suggest that if you have doubts about truth in advertising in tango that you go to Buenos Aires and go to milongas where tourists are rare. The source of social tango is what the porten~os dance in the milongas. In my own observations, what is taught as social tango by instructors who specialize in social tango may or may not be danced by porten~os in the milongas of Buenos Aires. To some degree, all of them teach some Tango de Salon. Some stay very close to the core. Some spend more time on the unusual things that may be used occasionally at milongas in Buenos Aires (e.g., certain types of embellishments or interpretations of the music); this often produces dancers whose dancing style emphasizes the fringes rather than the core, e.g., constant embellishment, lengthy pauses, or dancing an entire milonga in traspie rhythm. Then there are some instructors of social tango who invent their own things. To some extent that is OK as long as it fits in with the general characteristics of movement and musicality in social tango. What is questionable is when something is taught that is not characteristic of social tango but presented as such, e.g, volcadas in close embrace. Despite the oft repeated statement that volcadas are based on social tango, I would say, "only by accident, not by design". You can't expect accurate evaluations of instructor competence in tango advertising. No one is going to advertise their limitations. However, it would be beneficial in the transmission of tango culture to have an accurate representation of the source of the culture. Otherwise, we are just ugly Americans, Europeans et al. adapting a foreign culture to our own tastes and stealing its name for supposed legitimacy. Ron _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
