The San Diego Festival was born out of the Denver Close Embrace Festival. I think Tom’s making a mistake by giving in to the nuevo crowd. A lot of traditional folks stayed away from his festival this year and in the future I think that number could grow. I don’t think there will be enough nuevo dancers willing to travel cross-country to support a San Diego Festival. I don’ t think he can attract enough dancers from the San Diego and Los Angeles areas alone to support a festival. My wife and I have discussed this past festival to no end. One thing that we’ve agreed on is that the nuevo dancers that disrupted the floor only numbered about 10 couples. If Tom would have simply tapped them on the shoulder and pointed out the inappropriate behavior and given them the choice to transfer to one of the alternative floors available or leave, then 150 other couples would have gotten what they paid for. Hopefully, Tom will rethink how to get around this problem thus ensuring that the San Diego Festival will be a success in the future David
In a message dated 1/6/2010 1:18:59 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes: On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 7:47 AM, Tony Rathburn <[email protected]> wrote: > In reading the various comments and criticisms of the San Diego Tango Festival, I make no excuses for poor floor craft and bad navigation skills... regardless of style of dance... > > I am bothered by mis-information however... > > I just took the time to revisit and review their website... > > http://www.sandiegotangofestival.com/ > > Maybe I'm missing something, somewhere... but, I've visited and carefully read each page. I can NOT find the term 'close embrace' used anywhere on the site... You're looking at the "wrong" website, so to speak. The festival organizer is Tom Stermitz, and his website is as follows: http://tango.org/2010sdfest "The San Diego Tango Festivals are a special treat for all tango dancers who love the social tango popular in the milongas of Buenos Aires: close, subtle & romantic." This is exactly the same verbiage Tom uses in his announcements of all the Denver tango festivals. And Tango-L history buffs will tell you that the Denver tango festivals were originally spawned specifically to provide a haven for close embrace dancers tired of going to festivals where fancy nuevo steps were taught, and they featured instructors dedicated to the close embrace style. Huck _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
