Re: [TANGO-L] Tango Nuevo and Argentine Tango. What is the difference?

[Larry Richelli <dancekauai @YAHOO.COM>]

Tom,
I would not argue with you here but I must say that
just watching the difference on the woman s faces. In
milonguero style, there faces look much like a
pleasurable trance...soft and very pretty.
The minute they open up and start the "other tango"
that same face becomes tight and straight, needing to
concentrate on the steps.
I have seen this over and over again.

--- Tom Stermitz <stermitz   @TANGO.ORG> wrote:

> On Jan 7, 2005, at 11:19 AM, Oleh Kovalchuke wrote:
> > Since dance represents music it is my fairly safe
> to predict that as
> > long as
> > traditional music is played at milongas, nuevo
> will remain at the
> > fringes of
> > tango.
>
> I can't really agree with this.
>
> Nuevo tango, that is the "concepts and possibilities
> that came from the
> practice explorations of Gustavo, Salas & others",
> might be thought of
> as a style, teaching methodology or an analysis.
>
> Perhaps Nuevo has suffered a prejudicial reputation
> from a few wild,
> self-defined nuevo dancers flailing around at
> milongas without regard
> to the atmosphere of meditative social dancers. Or
> maybe it has become
> associated with a few tango dancers who hate tango
> music.
>
> Nuevo isn't music dependent, and steps from nuevo
> thinking work fine
> with D'Arienzo.
>
> Also, nuevo helped produce more improvisational
> teaching methodologies
> and freed many teachers from needing to depend on
> the 8-Count basic.
>
> Most usefully, nuevo has enabled tango teachers and
> dancers to use a
> much richer analytic framework.
>
>
> NUEVO STYLE
>
> As a style, maybe we think of the liquid, flowing
> tango of Chicho, but
> Gustavo dances in a very traditional tango embrace,
> and you would be
> hard-pressed to call it anything but traditional,
> salon tango, even if
> the movements are non-traditional.
>
>
> NUEVO METHODOLOGY & ANALYSIS
>
> As methodology or analysis Nuevo is very
> fundamental, and useful to
> practitioners of any style from salon to milonguero.
> I think of nuevo
> as a distillation of tango concepts, which helps us
> become aware of
> more possibilities as well as easier ways to do old
> possibilities.
>
> Specifically, all tango dancers would benefit from
> study or developing
> skills that nuevo practitioners have made more
> visible:
>   - Axis control
>   - Pivoting
>   - Spiralling
>   - Stealing steps/movements from the opposite role
>   - Geometries and logic of movements
>   - Healthy  movements (avoiding injury)
>   - Energetic analysis (momentum & rebound)
>   - Improvisation & lead-follow (even including
> difficult movements)
>
> My teaching of the traditional tango turns with
> sacadas is completely
> founded upon nuevo concepts of movement, axis,
> pivoting and geometry.
> It took me forever to learn and become decent with
> open-embrace turns,
> but with nuevo understanding, I can make it much
> easier for those who
> come after me.
>
>
> TWO COMPLAINTS:
>
> (1) Nuevo has raised the bar in terms of tango
> possibilities and skill,
> much as stage tango has done. I frequently see
> teachers present really
> difficult elements to beginners or people who have
> no hope of ever
> achieving them.
>
> A normal, un-athletic person can easily learn tango,
> but not a version
> of tango that requires superior athleticism or even
> ballet-type skills.
>
> (2) Some nuevo practitioners get sucked ever deeper
> into complex puzzle
> pieces of tango movements, taking attention away
> from more subtle
> communications.
>
> I remember dancing with a skillful nuevo follower
> who followed
> impeccably every big, energetic movement I could
> lead, but was
> incapable of following the "milonguero salida",
> because the ability to
> follow a small step in the crossed-basic was
> completely missing from
> her muscle-memory. She was all-energy/no subtlety.
>
>
>
> Tom Stermitz
> http://www.tango.org
>
>
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