> This movement, sometimes called 'el puente' (bridge) can be seen now > and then in Buenos Aires milongas, but one may have to wait an hour or > so scanning the floor to see it. However, in this movement, the woman > is not displaced from her position, i.e., her feet do not change > position. It is not a 'volcada' (fall) as used in nuevo, where the > off axis tilt is so extreme it causes the woman to fall off her axis > and step forward. > IMHO It is the same thing technically. The difference is only in the amount (which I believe is the question of personal preference = style).
I believe that 'nuevo' became a term that doesn't describe a form of dancing. It doesn't really mean any type or style of dancing that could be identified without doubt just by looking. The few things that nuevo DOES mean is: - a structured way of building up your dancing (which rather a method of teaching of philosophy of learning) vs. building it up by imitation of sequences or moves only that was devised by the teacher (which probably never existed in a pure form in the first place) - a free, open way of thinking about tango as a dance, which means there is a POSSIBILITY of doing all moves possible by a couple in embrace to tango music vs. doing only a set of moves, form, or extent of moves and not doing others, as it is not in the tradition (of a certain teacher, style, area, community etc.) - goal in the structure of nuevo is to identify the simplest and smallest common technical elements that forms the basis of all and every tango style, that are intercompatible on a very wide domain of moves - another goal is to identify the ways to increase internal body awareness of these technical elements, to devise methods that make connection, communication between couple understandable for those who do not understand it yet In simple terms: using the scientific method to analyse, teach or 'build' (improvise) tango. It is the result of the same process that happened to all folklore dances around the world which required a teacher (vs. was learned in its natural environment by imitation only). There are thousands of pages of research on the subject. If you use the results on tango, it yields only this: tango as it was danced does not exists anymore, as ALL the original social factors, institutions, locations, cultural background has changed, disappeared or was replaced by other forms. The present tango has teachers, instead of self-teaching societies, present tango has milongas organized by a subculture of dancers for a subculture of dancers, instead of mainstream business to the general population, present tango has choreographed shows, which did not exist before, present tango is mostly danced by non-porteno people, outside BsAs/Montevideo barrios, mostly whom are upper middle class intellectuals with university degrees, openness to the world, sometimes speaking several languages, vs. the uneducated porteno lower class workers, later on mostly middle class non-intellectual professionals with still a lot less education, present tango is danced by people conditioned for the present day perception of personal freedom, goals, rights, way of life, social rules, sexual roles, vs. something that existed quite a few large political, social, technical and cultural revolutions before. Face it: what is NOT 'nuevo' is really just an attempt to imitated the form of a dance that was danced a very long time ago in a different era. A historical dance. It is the same thing as if you would try to recreate the 80s style in pop. The 80s pop is still pop, the same way 2009's popular music is called pop. Are the two the same? Surely not. Are they called the same? Most definitely yes. Are the former still current? No, unless you specifically play it at a retro-party. (We still have balls where we dance a late 18th century dance - waltz - onto late 19th/early 20th century music, in usually mid-20th century clothing, but those are not your everyday life are they?) Of course some forms of music do change so much that they get a new name after a certain time, but that's not the issue here. If the time distance in this example is not 'big' enough, then take classical styles. There are huge differences between styles: baroque spanned two hundred years. Vivaldi is a literally power metal compared to Monteverdi, but it is still the same style. (NB: the actual naming of 'baroque' style in music was invented almost 50 years AFTER tango appeared, and was not generally used until the later era of the golden age of tango...so, names do not mean anything) Cheers, Aron -- Ecsedy Áron *********** Aron ECSEDY Tel: +36 20 66-36-006 http://www.milonga.hu/ http://www.holgyvalasz.hu/ __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4479 (20091004) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
