> The good “nuevo dancers” dance anything from the > close embrace club style to “nuevo” based on their mood > and available space. I.e., they dance tango.
What do you call someone who can speak, read and write English, Japanese, Swahili, and Russian with clarity, precision and humor in all languages? In other words, they can improvise successfully in all of them? I would call them a "language expert". Here in Colorado, if someone can only ski or snowboard on the groomed, flat slopes, we call them a "beginner". When they can handle steeper slopes, we call them "intermediate", and when they can take on ANYTHING with confidence and grace, we call them "advanced/expert". What do you call someone who can dance "milonguero", "salon", and "nuevo", with connection, expression and musicality, varying how they dance with the partner, the music, and the setting? The excellent young social tango dancers I've met in Buenos Aires can dance social tango to any music under any conditions, with heartbreakingly memorable connection and breathtaking musicality, expressing themselves fully and appropriately within the "boundaries" of the tango environment of the moment. Although I am primarily interested in the man's role, I've had the opportunity of following some of them myself. I have also benefitted from reading evaluations of many of these dancers from their partners in our workshops. The opinions expressed by these very experienced customers, ten- and fifteen-year dancers, when they speak of the dance encounters they have with these leaders, have "raised the bar" in my view when it comes to discussing what is possible in a social tango embrace. I would call them "good social tango dancers". Philosopher-author Ken Wilber spends his time querying the world-class experts in widely varying disciplines, seeking out the kernels of "truth" that their life's work has led them to discover. One of his rules of thumb is "Pay lots of attention to the opinions of world-class experts when they discuss their own area of expertise, and routinely ignore them when they express opinions in areas in which they have no expertise". Lately we've heard lots of critique of the aesthetic choices of some good social tango dancers on "style" grounds, and I fear we are hearing a lot of people speaking outside their area of expertise without taking responsibility for doing so (imagine that! ;) ). One of my tango teachers once said, "If there is something you cannot accomplish with your current skill level, and you tell yourself you are *choosing* not to perform it for *style* reasons, then to be truly honest you are not really making a choice." There have always been good social tango dancers - in crowded milongas, in tango/vals/milonga/whatever, in spacious practicas. We all want good dances, right? The really good dancers are the ones everyone wants to dance with, no matter what the music, no matter what the floor conditions. If we are honest with ourselves, at some level, we envy them a little bit their universal desirability at the milonga, right? I suggest that we all know this is true, and it transcends "style" discussions. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I suggest you probably need to be more honest with yourself, or you probably need to get out more. Similarly, there have always been social tango dancers who will be good someday if they keep working. And there are social tango dancers who don't want to work anymore to be better. There's nothing wrong with this, of course - life is short, and everyone invests their time, energy and money as best they can in pursuit of tango happiness. We're fortunate that we've all chosen a personal art form where there is so much happiness available at every skill level. Yet in this thread we hear so much of "why don't they just stop calling it tango?" as if the point is to eliminate the good social tango dancers because they "speak more languages" than me. In a social art form such as tango, we may well consider that someone's skill level and "language facility" might have significant bearing on the worth of their opinions, especially if they relentlessly and routinely criticize the "style choices" of others. Something along the lines of "If THEY can do what I do, but I can't do what THEY do, maybe I should just shut up and dance". After all, isn't it a lot easier for me to "lower the bar" to my current level, using "style" as a weapon of exclusion to eliminate my rivals, rather than to take on the work of improving my social tango to the point where everyone at the milonga always wants to dance with ME? All the best, Brian Dunn Dance of the Heart www.danceoftheheart.com "Building a Better World, One Tango at a Time" _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
