'Strut your stuff' is an Anglo-American synonym for 'dance': dance = display. Which, of course, dance always has been, on some level.
There was a fascinating piece of research, promoted on the Today programme last year. The professor, an ex-professional dancer, divided dance into categories of big, medium and small movements, combined with simple, medium and complex gestures. He filmed men dancing disco-type individual dance and asked women to evaluate them. Big or small movements? Simple or complex gestures? The overwhelming favourite was a complex dance of small movements.
There's always been display in tango. Dance competitions were common. Then as now people enjoyed watching. Copes realised that this tradition of display tango could be choreographed and performed in shows, resulting in his shows in the 1970s and 80s. His hero was Gene Kelly. In 1984, he managed to arrange a booking for three weeks in Paris. The story is that they couldn't afford the air tickets to Paris but someone had connections with the military, and they were taken on board a military transport, alongside an Exocet missile that had failed to go off during the war over the islands, and was being returned to France for repair. Their three weeks in Paris turned into six months and led straight to Broadway, and Gene Kelly wanted to meet Copes. Tango the display, the stage dance, was suddenly popular. Europeans and Americans wanted to learn it, and its popularity began to revive in Buenos Aires.
But of course in Buenos Aires it wasn't the choreographed stage dance of big gestures that was enjoyed in crowded dance halls, it was the traditional dance, a dance of small movements, its complexity limited only by the improvisational skills of the partners. It wasn't intended to be watched, it was an intimate meeting with a partner and the music, in a space shared on equal terms with many other couples, and regulated quite strictly by the protective social traditions of the milonga.
I like the distinction you've made; it's the essential dichotomy between the flashy "show dance that gets the punters in" version and the actual "dance that creates the connection" version.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at images of Tango, or if you ask beginners why they want to do Tango, it's all about the figures. Planeos, volcadas, lunges. And then - eventually - you realise this is rubbish.
As I see it, a good teacher needs to both keep students hooked with figures, but also follow an underlying ethos that connected dances are the best.
I think Leandro and Romina fit your definition of good teachers. They remind their classes that tango is a close-hold dance, and they teach stuff that can be danced socially, but they like to throw in some flashy moves too (the intermediate class on Wednesday evening).
ReplyDeleteMost of what turns up in 'tango fantasia' developed out of stuff already danced in milongas. I've seen classes in London start with the simpler social version of a volcada, colgada, whatever, and move onto the stage version. But I think stage moves should always be taught with a health warning!
It wasn't the case with me that I saw any figures; it was a show dance that inspired me to choose this dance rather than another, but it was the absorbed and private expressions of the dancers, the very internality in spite of the flashy moves, that made me feel I could do it without feeling like a fake.
ReplyDeleteThe music came to me first and then I saw the dance. Small steps with people dancing close but with lower torso apart.
ReplyDeleteSometimes when we Americans say something about strutting your stuff, it is usually about the way a person walks, usually a woman, and the way her butt moves. Hmmmm!
I'm always interested by people's tango stories! & mine? I visited a friend in Paris in August 1995, and she took me out to a small island on the Marne, where we could eat and drink. She didn't add 'dance', but that's what it was about. She knew all the dances and was surprised I knew practically nothing. On the ferry coming back I thought social dancing: jive, salsa, tango. I hadn't seen tango or heard the music, I just had the impression it was complex and interesting, that it existed in London.
ReplyDeleteJive came first, ceroc then lindy. Lindy's wonderful to swing music, but most DJs play uptempo. I skipped salsa and went to a tango class. I'd certainly seen a BBC programme on tango, but it was walking to that music that grabbed me. Moving to that music felt like something I'd always been missing. It felt like coming home.