The Greatest Maestro of Tango in The World - Page 4

Gustavo leads the way, and Giselle Anne adds to it significantly, especially with her advice to followers. A gancho for a woman is a very different adventure than that for a man, and women need to know how to accept the gancho as well as to initiate their own. Giselle Anne gives the woman's point of view in as considered a way as Gustavo advises the men, and their dancing in demonstration clearly astonishes the people watching.

The overall effect is one of careful consideration of the traditions of tango, and the way in which these traditions fuel new creativity.

With another young maestro named Fabian Salas, Gustavo is credited with having introduced the concept of "nuevo tango" to the world, "new tango". It features a very inventive manner of doing tango, in which dancers will move from a very steady axis of balance to an off-balance mode that requires different thinking than that in so-called "traditional" tango. There are also, famously, changes of direction that seem to defy explanation. All this has accompanied similar changes in tango music, especially since the ascendancy of the great Astor Piazzolla to world prominence. Piazzolla, who died in 1992, turned tango music on its ear by introducing elements to the form that had previously never been used. Counterpoint. Fugue. Extraordinary poly-rhythms. Jazz. The dance has followed a similar pattern, mostly because of Gustavo, who indeed recently choreographed, directed and starred in Fracanapa, a dance spectacle based on the music of Piazzolla.

Interestingly, when he speaks of this, he talks about how he learned of all these "revolutionary" moves by watching old-style tangueros in the 'milongas' (dance-hall parties) and 'boliches' (little neighborhood clubs) of Buenos Aires. In a 2001 interview, Fabian Salas asked "What did we invent? Nothing. Yes, we came up with . . . 'boleos' and 'ganchos' like this, but everything was already there. Even what in the beginning we called 'alterations' and then, later, 'changes in direction'. But we didn't invent them. They were there."

What they brought to the process was a way of explaining what the milongueros had been doing for years. Of course there was significant creativity on the part of Gustavo and Fabian themselves, inventive re-workings of the movements. But their respect for the older milonguero tradition is obvious and very plainly stated by Gustavo himself.

Article Author: Terence Clarke

Terence Clarke is a San Francisco novelist, journalist, and film maker who writes about the arts.

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