Somewhat sad words from Javier Rodríguez and Andrea Missé: this is also from El Tangauta.
JR: Eight years ago, Europe was the place to be. For a long time tango dance celebrities outside Argentina were to be found in Germany, Italy and France. Today the old continent still offers very good milongas and organises the best festivals. However, the level of the dancers has lowered compared to those in Asia... To dance tango men and women need to feel and think about the partner they dance with. Today there is a lot of hidden resentment, repressed relationships and there is fear. People are attracted by tango because of its embrace, they search for it, but once they come to class they prefer a more open position where each dancer is in his own axis, maintaining his feeling of independence. They want to dance with each other, they are dying to be embraced, they need each other, but they neither show nor accept it. In the end they get tired of it...
AM: Whereas for us to learn how to dance was like a game which we played with brothers, uncles, fathers and mothers: therefore we don't have such a complicated attitude towards it.
2 comments:
Well there are so many ways of looking at the same thing. Ricardo used to say (sometimes) how much he preferred to be in tango communities in Europe because, although of course the standard of dancing was lower, most people were in it simply for the love of tango. He contrasted that with the growing commercialism of tango in BsAs in which some milongas can feel like a market place. But I'm sure he didn't always feel like that, and somehow I doubt Andrea and Javier do either. Maybe they just came back from a particularly good tour in Asia.
I'd like to see the dancers he's talking about in Asia. & I was a bit puzzled because I've always assumed that close embrace was relatively normal in Europe, and that people 'prefer a more open position' only in the UK. Possibly Javier and Andrea don't get invited to teach at milongas where close embrace is normal. He also says: 'Asians are better disposed to tango: they copy and reproduce cultural activities they are interested in with great skill.' I think it's still normal in Asia to do what the teacher tells you as exactly as possible. I wonder if they find that students in Europe tend to want to rewrite what they are taught, and even ignore it altogether (eg., go to the bar when walking is being taught!)
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