Dear Jack, > Aron, can you give us some reasons why you don't want to see separate > milongas, other than the one above, which makes no sense, unless you > think that Nuevo couldn't exist on its own. > You are absolutely right. Nuevo is not a dance. It is tango. Separating it would make it a separate dance after a while. I think you have visually identified something that you call nuevo around you which even I would not classify tango. I dance TANGO using nuevo technique. > Separate milongas/practicas work in BsAs, why not elsewhere? > Umm. We are continuously talking about different things. Nuevo does not separate. You can see all those 'nuevo' dancers in all the milongas (of course they tend to frequent certain places more, but that tells you more about the mood of the place than the style danced). Actually I was taken around by a bunch of nuevo dancers in the trad milongas too. I see no difference. But they still frequent schools like DNI.
As for nuevo dancers are teachers in Europe. Most European countries have a smaller population than your average US county or even medium cities. Even the big ones are fragmented by ethnic, traditional or language boundaries. Obviously, many communities are small, so most dancers who know what they do start to teach. I've seen this in many cities. Also, most places (notable exceptions are the large metropolises) have only one milonga on the same evening and it is NOT normal to have milongas each day (in Hungary it is still considered a major diplomatic offense to launch a new milonga when there is one on the same day). In Budapest, there are 2M people, with over 3M if you include the agglomeration zone. The second largest city in Hungary has barely 300.000 people., the third half that much. Entire population is less than 10M. Nevertheless, we have 4 regular milongas, maybe a bit more during the summer (because of the open air stuff) in Budapest, and only one city has a milonga - which is really only for one club there with a dozen or so people. Simply, the community is not large enough to support separate traditional/nuevo milongas. Also, for an average milonga attendance of 40-60 people (Budapest), there are over a dozen people who do teach. Of course, they aren't teaching that 60 people. Simply, the amount of activity and overall tango population numbers are different: the mailing list for tango has over 300 members, tango courses usually churn out an average of a 1000 people per year. The problem is that most Hungarians are simply not interested in going to milongas, only learning 'some tango' (long story - has to do with danceschool tradition: people are led to believe for decades, that they only need 8-lesson courses and they have the basics in any dance). So milongas became the meeting point for the fanatics, the elite, a large percent of them with enough knowledge to teach (this is something we are trying to change desperately - especially the nuevo folks...). Also, most of Eastern Europe is nuevo land. Traditional teachers were considered lame by the general population, because dancing is/was mostly a stage phenomenon (after 40 years of state sponsored cheap elitist dance education and performances - along with the Soviet-Russian influence - it is a normal attitude) for the older people, for the younger ones, the freedom (and the youth of teachers) in nuevo was/is more appealing. That's about it, I guess. But nuevo folks dance to traditional tango, in close embrace, even if sometimes (when they have the space and the chance) to fancy stuff as well. For us it is completely organic to show characteristics of nuevo, salón, even canyuengue within the same dance... purists may cry now. Cheers, Aron -- Ecsedy Áron *********** Aron ECSEDY Tel: +36 20 66-36-006 http://www.milonga.hu/ http://www.holgyvalasz.hu/ _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
