The Greatest Maestro of Tango in The World - Page 5

This causes some unintended comedy when you encounter the breed of nuevo tango practitioners in the United States and Europe who believe they are teaching some variation of the things Gustavo and Fabian developed in the dance. But they do it without the basis in traditional tango that Gustavo and Fabian feel is so important. This results in hilarious combinations of missteps, bumblings, and foolishness that have little to do with tango. It's a new kind of dance that is athletic but not sensuous, excited but not thoughtful, self-congratulatory but not tango. Dull.

Just after World War I, Vernon and Irene Castle developed a dance that they somehow thought was based on Argentine tango. They were fearful of the more sensual dangers of real tango, and attempted to clean it up, to make it more palatable to the church-going puritan consciousness of young couples dancing in the United States at the time who did not wish to upset their parents. That dance became the American ballroom tango that we must now all suffer through when watching the dance contest shows so popular on television. The nuevo tango that is being taught in the United States reminds me of the Castles. It demonstrates the same problems that their tango had, one of which was that there was no sensuousness in it.

A very well-known Argentine maestro who has taught extensively in this country once said to me, "Terry, you know that in the United States, with the Americans, there are beginning students, intermediate students, and teachers." It's quite true. People not very capable of dancing tango at all take on for themselves the mantle of tango expertise — without knowing much about Argentina or, more particularly, Buenos Aires. They know nothing of the history of that country, history all-important to understanding what tango is. They are not aware of the swollen tide of immigration over three centuries — to Argentina from everywhere else in the world — a movement essential to the development of tango music. They know almost nothing about the music itself beyond the tape loop of the few dozen numbers that they play ad infinitum at almost every tango event you attend. They have not taken the trouble to learn how to speak or read Spanish, so that, among other very important things, the entire vast literature of tango lyrics is lost on them. They hold festivals at which tango is taught by ... well, each other! They infer that their "organic" tango or their "alternative" tango has become the real tango. They collect money from a gulled public, while in the meantime the great Argentine maestros, old and new, traditional and revolutionary, are teaching, dancing and creating in Buenos Aires — and, if you're lucky, elsewhere in the world — basically unacknowledged by these intermediate Americans.

Article Author: Terence Clarke

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

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