Jack, you wrote: >>>>> > Practica X is the best example. And the > average age at these venues is substantially lower than the age at traditional > milongas. Also, as Brian Dunn just pointed out (12/17 posts), that´s where the > best dancers are. > >
To clarify, I assume Brian meant the best dancers of Nuevo. Brian, please correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't been to Practica X for a few years. <<<<< Well, there are certainly wide variations among these practica dancers of course, so the last thing I'd want to suggest is that everything one sees at Practica X is worth my time to emulate, or meets my own standards of quality. But aside from the purely fun youthful-social-scene aspects, I'm generally paying the entrada in order to see "good" dancing, to learn some things by watching better dancers closely, and to try some things myself at the edge of my abilities without the constraints of milonga codes. I mean, come on, it IS a practica, and if you're going to improve you have to be willing to suck for awhile! ;) ;) My main point is that people tend to go to classic milongas to RELAX, and people tend to go to practicas to GET BETTER - often the SAME people having different kinds of tango fun, that's all. But, actually, I more or less avoided using "nuevo" as a descriptive term in those two messages, since these dancers don't use it to refer to their dance. I did say that some on this list might call what they do "nuevo", because they are making, for example, more use of the available space at times than those dancers who immediately go for "dense-ronda-on-the-outer-edge" dancing even when there is plenty of room. Once you dance with these people, you see that the term "nuevo" maybe isn't very useful in describing them. Among the best of them, the connection in their dance is so heartbreakingly intense and emotionally committed, they demonstrate such superb technique, balance and musicality, REGARDLESS of the specific vocabulary they are using, or the "distance in their embrace" at any given moment, that it doesn't seem useful to pigeonhole this wide-ranging, flexible, adaptable, nuanced, sensitive, expressive, ADVANCED level of dance into a particular "style". It's just good high-level dancing by talented, well-trained dancers who have worked hard on their tango. We can talk about "styles", but at some point maybe we also can acknowledge that some dancers are just more skilled than others in commonly valued qualities: visible emotional connection between partners, gracefully fluid, rhythmically satisfying execution of intricately nuanced improvised solutions to available navigation problems, all while remaining very musical in their expression, and without disturbing those around them. That's just a high artistic level of social dance, right? - with no need to refer to style to explain what we're seeing. Whether or not somebody does a colgada is not telling us much about the most interesting and valuable things that may be going on in their dance. Eventually it may not be in our own best interests to try to isolate these high-level dancers into a "style" of their own, different from "ours", as if we are attempting to "extrude" something we don't identify with. If we don't want to feel pressured to work so hard, we will always have classic milongas in BsAs (and elsewhere) where people just want to relax and enjoy themselves without focusing much on high-level dancing. We'll see these high-level dancers there, too, when THEY want to just relax! (Or, as suggested in my earlier post, at "mixed-mode" events where you can choose either to "relax" or "improve"!) But I suggest that, in general, people who want to work to become better dancers (in the commonly valued terms described above) are investing in themselves, their partners and their communities in ways which are potentially good for all of us. Those hard workers (especially the young entrants into tango) need to have inspiring role models to emulate. The best of the young high-level dancers in BsAs can, in my experience, offer them those role models, and can challenge all of us to make the most of our own gifts, no matter how we choose to dance at any given moment. Can't we just say they're "talented tango dancers", they've worked hard on their gifts (typically in the practicas!), their partners love them for it, and maybe all of us can learn something from the best of them? 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
