| A
parade of instructors from Argentina go from town to town promising
to help the novice quench his or her thirst for the real thing-the
essence, the utter joy of true tango. But often these novices
find that their efforts are fruitless. Upon the dance floor
all the complicated patterns they worked so hard to learn in
class are utterly forgotten. In the moment of action all these
theories are useless. The body just doesn't know what to do.
So the
quest continues. Maybe the next workshop with a more renowned
and advanced dancer will be the answer. But still no results.
After a period of time frustration sets in and the person
quits tango. "It's too hard to learn. It is too difficult
to do." Does that scenario sound familiar? Many of us have
either had that experience ourselves or know somebody who
has experienced this when trying to learn tango. It is very
common.
This article
is to help the novice Milonguero understand the different
types of tango that are being offered in the tango marketplace
today. This is a tango "buyers guide" for getting what you
want from tango.
To understand
what you want you must know what the choices are.
1.
The Milonguero and the True Tango.
Many people
want to dance the tango at the many milongas in North America,
South America and Europe. They dream of immersing themselves
in the music and with their partner experiencing the feeling
of losing themselves in the flow of all that is around them.
They want to be a milongueros-the kind of people who dance
tango in the clubs and salons in Buenos Aires today.
Are you
a milonguero? Do you feel the music? Do you dance for the
personal enjoyment of dancing spontaneously, not doing mechanical
steps? Has the music and the feeling of tango affected you
so deeply that you consider tango to be not a dance but a
way of living? Do you want your steps to come from the feelings
that arise in you because of the music? Do you want to be
able to go to a milonga and dance socially with many different
partners easily and effortlessly?
If you
answered yes to one or more of these questions you have the
potential to become a milonguero. The tango practiced by the
milonguero is an art. It is not just a hobby. It is not another
dance where you learn the steps and dance them mechanically
with someone who knows the same steps.
Tango Music Is Very Special
Tango music
is very special to the milonguero. Tango stirs up all the
feelings you have inside your soul. You might be happy your
job is going well, but at the same time sad because you had
a fight with someone you love. You might feel hopeful about
the future but feel compassion because someone close to you
is ill. Tango will make you feel reverence for life, yearning
for something more, nostalgia for the past, regret for the
present and hope for the future, all at the same time. It
is music that is specifically designed to make you feel-intimate,
romantic, tender, sad, passionate, angry, and peaceful all
in one song.
Tango musicians
are different from other musicians. One milongero said that
to her the tango musicians disappear and what is left is only
the music. In other conventional forms of music it is the
musician who is visibly expressing himself, not allowing the
music to flow through him like the tango musician.
The true
tango danced by milongueros is what is called club style or
apilado style tango. It is easily learned by mastering
some basic elements of embracing, walking, pivoting, weight
distribution and cadence. These elements are challenging and
require a lot of time and detailed attention. But the movements
required by this style of dance are within the capability
of most people. It can't be too hard because tens of thousands
of ordinary people in Buenos Aires do it easily and with great
enjoyment.
By learning
true tango you are learning how to dance, from your heart.
You are not just doing mechanical steps, which come from your
head. After a while these movements become second nature and
you feel like really dancing and creating on the dance floor.
That is why it is so much fun and is so addictive!
Milonquero-Styler Tango is:
1) Tango that comes from the heart.
2) Subjective, man and women, very personal.
3) Danced by all age groups and does not require exceptional
athletic ability or training, i.e. Ballet is not a pre-requisite.
4) Danced primarily for your partner, the music, the for the
joy of the dance, with little concern for those who are watching.
5) Danced in close embrace and the position of the body is
used to lead, not the arms.
6) Taught by milongueros not professional dancers and entertainers.
Some milongueros perform, but are milongueros first.
7) Teaching is motivated by the love of the dance. Financial
gain is secondary.
8) Danced socially by ordinary people in Buenos Aires.
9) The primary sense used is the kinesthetic sense, sense
of touch. You feel what your partner is doing through
your body.
The True Tango: Gachi and Sergio
2. The New "Athletic" Tango.
People
with exceptional flexibility, agility and athletic ability
may want the challenge of doing more demanding and complicated
patterns. To serve these people a new form of athletic tango
called new tango has been devised by professional dancers
and performers from Buenos Aires to market to the American
public. But this form of tango requires great skill, conditioning
and training similar to ballet, figure skating or gymnastics.
It is for people who are performance oriented. The steps are
intricate and the follower must know exactly how they work
or she cannot do them. Therefore it is difficult to dance
new tango socially with many different partners. The steps
are mechanical and are done in a prescribed pattern. New tango
is not danced spontaneously with the music. Even the emotional
displays are rehearsed.
The social
form of tango "salon tango" itself requires a great amount
of training. To master the walk, the embrace, the forward
and back ocho, the boleo, the molinete, the enrosque, the
syncopations, the traspie, the various pivots, the ganchos,
and the pencil require months of practice. Multiple this by
five for new tango. Moreover, new tango requires exceptional
flexibility and strength, to achieve the extensions necessary
to do some of these movements. You cannot expect yourself
to do this in one workshop. A new ballet student is not expected
to do a pirouette after her first two-hour class. The difficulty
and complexity of the steps forces the new tango student to
dance mechanically from the head. The sense of freedom and
spontaneity that is the essence of true tango is never achieved.
Often people
mistakenly sign up for these classes before they are ready,
hoping the workshop will prepare then for the dance floor.
I was one of them. I have seen people at new tango workshops
trying to learn complicated and physically demanding forms
of the moliete with sacadas and boleos who could not even
do a back ocho. Sometimes the steps taught are physically
impossible for some people to do just because of the structure
of his or her body, i.e., the man is very tall and the woman
is short or the person does not have the flexibility to twist
his or her body into the position necessary to do a step.
You can waste your time in a new tango workshop learning steps
your body can't do.
You can
choose to do this kind of tango if you want. But be very clear
on one thing: This is not the true tango. It is not the tango
of the heart; it is the tango of the head. It is not the tango
of spontaneity; it is the tango of steps. It is not the tango
of passion; it is the tango of contrived expressions of emotion
staged for dramatic effect. It is not the tango of the people;
it is the tango of professional dancers who train long and
hard to master the physical demands of these invented steps.
The number of available partners who will be able to do these
steps is very small.
New tango
training tends to make the dance more impersonal by shifting
the attention away from the partner to those who are watching.
As Sally Potter complained to Pablo Veron after their big
stage performance in the movie Tango Lesson, "Pablo, I couldn't
find you. You were out there, with them." meaning that his
attention was no longer on pleasing her. It was on pleasing
the audience. This is very unsatisfying to a woman, and reduces
her to the role of a puppet that is pushed around the floor
for the amusement of the audience. A milonguero cherishes
the woman and with loving attention moves with her around
the floor in a tender tango embrace to her great satisfaction.
Click here
for are some insightful commentary about Tango Nuevo
from Ogor Polk, a San Francisco-based tango aficionado.
The New Tango: James and Rachel
The New Tango is:
1) Tango that comes from the head.
2) Objective, leader and follower, impersonal.
3) Athletic, physically demanding, requires training and conditioning.
Not easily learned.
4) Danced on the dance floor, but like show tango, it is done
primarily for those who are watching. The partner and the music
are secondary. (Show tango is a more complicated form of new
tango.) 5) Danced in an open position with a lot of space between
the partners. It requires a spacious dance floor and a trained
partner.
6) Taught by professional dancers and entertainers. In general,
they are not milonqueros and do not dance with people at clubs
in Buenos Aires. They dance mostly with each other on stage.
They are classically trained in ballet, jazz, tap and modern
dance.
7) Oriented toward pre-set steps, not improvisation.
8) Not easily danced in a social situation.
9) Not danced by people in the salons in Buenos Aires.
10) The primary sense used is the sense of sight. You
see what your partner is doing through your eyes.
How to Progress Rapidly in Tango
If you want
to progress rapidly in tango concentrate your learning with
one teacher and one style of tango. It is best to get private
lessons. In a private lesson you get the full attention of
the professional for a full hour. While in a four-hour group
class, you are lucky to have the personal attention of a professional
for five minutes. And a four-hour workshop cost about the
same as a one-hour private lesson and it saves you a lot of
time. Select your Tango teacher carefully. Make sure they
understand what you want to achieve, and make sure they are
qualified to teach this to you. A skilled dancer is not necessarily
a skilled teacher. Ask how long they have been teaching, what
style of tango they teach, and who they learned tango from.
Then try out a few lessons with them before committing to
learning from them. Once you've committed to a teacher, stick
with that teacher. Don't take a few lessons from many different
teachers. In the beginning this will just confuse you.
Many beginners
are often under the misconception that progress in tango is
related to the number and complexity of the patterns you know.
Therefore they go to workshops to try to learn as many steps
as possible. The truth is that there are a finite number of
movements in tango that are repeated in many variations. These
variations are the "steps" you "learn" in workshops. But it
is not necessary to memorize these set steps. It is better
to learn, the "building blocks", the movements that are the
basis of the steps. If you can master these movements then
you can learn as many steps as you want, easily, or invent
your own steps on the dance floor. For example, if you train
your body to perform the molinete correctly, then you have
the mechanical ability to do dozens of variations of the molinete.
And you can learn these variation easily. It is only a matter
of memorization. But if you haven't trained your body to properly
perform the physical moves necessary to do to the moilnete
you'll have great difficulty doing any step based on the molinete.
Workshops focused on steps don't begin to give you the personal
attention necessary for you to learn all the movements that
make up the moliete or any other step.
The Worst Way To Learn Tango
The worst
way to learn tango is to take group lessons from a series
of different teachers. Each teacher has his or her style,
philosophy of dance, vocabulary of steps, and approach to
teaching. In the first stage of any class you must adjust
to the new teacher and mentally incorporate what you are learning
with what you have learned in the past. Usually the teacher
tries to denigrate what you have learned before so that you
can accept his or her way of dancing. It is confusing and
emotionally draining to have to adjust everything you learned
before, in order to accommodate the new teaching. The difficulty
is compounded by the fact that after you've expended all this
energy to adjust to the new teacher, the class is over. The
teacher is gone to a new city and not likely to return for
a long time.
But a few
weeks later you will receive a notice of another great stage
dancer and teacher from Buenos Aires coming to town to teach
a workshop. By attending a series of workshops like this you
must go through this breakdown and readjustment process over
and over. It is good to readjust your dancing from time to
time. It helps you to grow. But it is detrimental to the new
student who doesn't yet understand the basics of the dance
and has no context in which to place the teaching. It is like
planting a flower in a pot by your kitchen window, and then
every day transplanting the flower into a new pot in a new
location in your home. The flower will have a tough time growing
when it has to readjust to a new environment every day.
It is fun
to go to group classes. The social interaction is exciting
and you get to meet famous and exciting stage dancers. It
is fun to do as long as you don't let it confuse you and undermine
your self-confidence. Go every once in a while. You can learn
some interesting new steps. Then go back to your regular teacher
to have the steps cleaned up, adjusted to the capability of
your body, and incorporated into your dance style. Your teacher
might be able to modify some of the steps so that you can
dance them socially at milongas.
The Limitations of Learning Tango in Workshops
Realize the
limitations and drawbacks of learning in groups. A steady
diet of workshops from different people who don't know you
can be hard to digest. If you want to progress rapidly in
tango, concentrate your time learning one style of dance from
one teacher in private lessons. Then practice what you've
learned dancing socially at milongas as much as possible.
If you are
interested in ultimately performing new tango you can start
by taking private lessons in salon tango. Once you have mastered
the basics of the true tango, you will be prepared to take
classes in new tango. If you are interested primarily in being
a miloguero, and want to experience the joy of dancing and
improvising in a social situation, then avoid workshops in
the new tango altogether, for they can only confuse you. Learn
salon tango well, then later, if you want to jazz up your
already solid dancing skills with some athletic movements,
then take some workshops in the new tango.
If you are
confused and frustrated and if you cannot follow different
dance partners at milongas or lead different dance partners
at milongas, it is probably because you are wasting your time
trying to learn steps which are beyond your capability. Tango
must be learned in stages. Start with the basic salon tango
and get on the dance floor as soon as possible. And above
all, have fun!
"Ecstasy
is a state of the soul transmitted through the body"-Deepak
Chopra
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