The average age of DNI’s clientele appears to be under thirty. The women — many of them — dance pretty well. A lot of them have obviously been trained in dance since childhood and so have the basics for the intent, graceful movement, exquisite balance, sense, and sophistication that tango requires.
The men, however, missed out on all this. In Europe and North America, there are countless young men who dance Playground. It features a lot of muscular, quick movement that is graceless - like eight-year-olds in a game of Tag. The fundamentals of fine tango movement are treated as though they are of no consequence. There is a complicated attempt to do variations on many of the older tango dance steps and sequences (sacadas, molinetes, boleos, volcadas), all of great age and developed with intense finesse by superb dancers over a century and a half.
The trouble is, these new fellows don’t know how to do those steps. Their efforts at innovating new variations are comic and dunderheaded. They stumble. They trip. They make aggressively mean-spirited moves that appear, in the end, purposeless. Skateboarding seems more important here than tango.
All this would simply be funny-looking if what they were doing were not so clearly indifferent to the safety of and respect for their partners. These men look like they’re wrestling with the women or perhaps boxing with them. Although it’s obvious to me that a lot of the women want to appear hip and current and on the cutting edge, they are also clearly hurting when it comes to what their partners are doing to them.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The women with whom these fellows dance appear to be of no importance to them. If you can make your partner — who has at least some chops as a tango dancer — look bad, then you’ve failed.
I witnessed a couple of “advanced” lessons at DNI, and found this style of dance is actually being taught there - in Buenos Aires, of all places. It was obvious there was little learning in it, so it was difficult for me to tell what wisdom was being imparted, and I left.
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.