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

[Tom Stermitz <stermitz @TANGO.ORG>]

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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