Under the tutelage of such as Gustavo Naveira, Fabian Salas, Geraldine Rojas, Eziquiel Paludi, Federico and Ariadne Naveira, Mariela Franganillo, Pablo Pugliese, and their advanced students — youthful maestros who well understand and respect the traditions of old tango and are adding to those traditions new dance sequences of breath-taking innovation and beauty — the new Argentine tango is a thing to behold. This is terrific, but there is also a broad sweep of unintended hilarity accompanying a lot of the tango being danced now. I had at first thought this was taking place only outside of Argentina.
There is a kind of (for lack of a better term) tribal European dance that many people believe is tango, which is indeed called tango, in which the basic precepts of Argentine tango dance are being ignored, things like a proper lead, following the music, knowing the history of the dance and the music, respecting your partner, dressing well. These are concepts one would think would be the bread and butter of tango, which has traditionally been the most difficult social dance in the world, and one of the most beautiful.
The complications of the dance, as with tango music, have been codified over the years to a remarkable degree, and the proper doing of the dance requires the things mentioned above, especially if you plan to innovate within the form. You must pay attention to these things and master them, so your innovations will have the profound intensity found in the historical dance.
Without this knowledge and attention to detail, the dance becomes a bit of bullet-headed clumsiness, of airy nothing. It is a lot of pointless fooling around, something not Mediterranean, something that looks like it came from a northern German rite of spring or some such.
I call it Playground Tango.
There is a great deal of this in North America and Europe, and it is all quite self-congratulatory. It represents a break from the old. Indeed it looks down its nose at the old as “revolutionary,” “alternative,” and “organic.”
You can see it at DNI Tango at Corrientes 2140 in Buenos Aires. A studio where classes in tango are offered and practices are held, DNI is the current venue of choice in Buenos Aires among the dancers of this, well, new “nuevo tango.” The studio is a wonderful place, a series of high-ceilinged rooms with original appointments in a late 19th century building at one end of the Buenos Aires theater district. Avenida Corrientes is very frequently mentioned in tango lyrics, and there is strong evidence on this street of artistic adventure, show-biz pizazz, and the working theater arts.
Article comments
1 - Geoff
The author seems to have visited a DNI in an alternate reality: what he describes is a travesty of a studio I know quite well.
I have found them to be a remarkably consistent and effective set of teachers. Furthermore their tecnica is both self consistent and effective - and is a totally different matter from style.
I am particularly surprised by the comment that in DNI they didn't concentrate on the lead and the music. My experience has been quite different - in all the classes I have attended there these have been matters of particular concern!
As to the question of dress - well, it's a social dance and the mood is pretty casual now. As a friend, who is a well Tango Teacher put it a couple of years ago when he changed his style "I realised it's not the 1940s any more."
I don't find this article either accurate or helpful.
2 - SSpar
I don't have a lot of experience in dancing, but what I realized after watching and dancing (leading as well as following) Tangos, Salsas, Forros and other latin dances, and watching some incredible Indian Classical dancers is that: One has to dance dance what he or she HEARs in the music. That is what makes a good dance. The styles, tradition are secondary. No matter what you just have to dance your personality, with honesty.
3 - danny israel
Let me get my apology in first. Sorry Terence, but you are wrong. My first point is that tango belongs to Argentines and they can do what they want with it. We, outside Argentina, are privileged to take part. We should keep quiet. My second is that tango, like everything else, must evolve or die. Bleating about a lost elegance, or something, helps nobody, even if it were true that it was lost. My third is that whatever damage tango nuevo might be doing to milonguero or salon tango, if any, it is nothing compared to the damage that we, outside Agentina, have done to tango with ballroom tango, allegedly elegant, but actually insincere, trite and pedestrian.
Last night at Villa Malcolm, the home of tango nuevo in Buenos Aires, I would suggest, I saw some uninteresting and predictable milonguero performances by couples competing in the early rounds of the current BsAs tango competition, and then sat spell bound as nuevo dancers took the floor during the milonga itself. They completely blew me away, the speed, the energy, the elegance, the integrity, the creativity, the strength of connection. It's the ability of nuevo dancers to extend orthodox boleos, ganchos, piernazos, the entire language of tango, into areas of creative expression which we never knew were there, which was so impressive and which left me reeling, and I speak as a veteran of ten years or so. Tango is a living breathing thing always in need of revitalization, and the nuevo dancers are providing the new vitality. I suspect that I will look back on Villa Malcolm with great satisfaction, and that I will be able to say to my grandchildren, I was there. Oh, and I, like Geoff, do not recognize your description of DNI, with which I am also familiar.
4 - jantango
Terrance,
All I can say is BRAVO for accurately describing how this thing called new tango has no resemblance to the original.
I have seen the gradual change taking place because I have lived in Buenos Aires for the past ten years. Schools teach what people will buy as tango. A simple dance by a milonguero may not impress an audience, but then the milonguero isn't dancing for them--he is dancing for himself and his partner. This is missing in the tango of the younger generation who believe it's all about speed, energy, and complicated moves to impress. Who cares about fancy voleos and ganchos? The marketing hype in tango is brain-washing dancers into believing that "nuevo" is the future of tango and it must evolve.
Tango doesn't need revitalizing. It is all it needs to be as a dance. That's why it has lasted so long. The classics never go out of style. We still dance to music that was composed 100 years ago.
I haven't been to DNI but I accept your description of what goes on there. So many are confused about tango because they have never taken the time to learn its history. To do that we all need another lifetime.
Thanks for writing what had to be said about "playground tango." We can only hope that when the children grow up, they will become wiser and find tango's true essence. We know they won't be dancing tango the way they learned it at Villa Malcolm.