Tango and Chaos (rebuilt)

Beginnings and Endings La Cumparsita  has been played so much that it’s almost a cliché. It’s the one tango that even the most remote non-tango foreigner will recognize. There must be more versions of it than almost any other piece of music, and many people probably associate it with funny movie images of strutting tango dancers like Rudolf Valentino, or Laurel and Hardy. But for the people in the clubs,  La Cumparsita  is a very powerful and important tango. Sometimes they use it to open the milonga, but it's almost never played during the normal dancing. They save it for the end. It's the last tango they put on, and when you hear it late in the evening, it means the party's over. That’s all there is. This has become so much a part of  La Cumparsita  for me, that I can no longer hear it without getting a bitter-sweet feeling that something is about to end. The first time this really hit home was in 2001 when everything changed in Argentina. Ric...

Pocho & Alejandra   Dancing Without Fear Here’s a short clip of Pocho and Alej that shows some of the technical aspects of women’s tango we’ve been discussing. Pocho is a well-known milonguero who dances and teaches on Argentine television all the time—but you’ll notice that he isn’t trying to show what he can do. He waits for the music, and Alej waits with him. She has plenty of time to add decorations with her feet—but she doesn’t. It’s not really a conscious decision. She just doesn’t feel any impulse to do it. She does however, step in a very precise way. Her feet accelerate and decelerate smoothly, and they caress the floor with subtlety and control. The result is a beautiful combination of calmness and confidence. When someone like Pocho or Alej dances, people watch. They set a standard for other dancers: Women might want to notice how patient Alej is. She stays over her feet, absorbs the music, and waits. Then, when it's time to go, she totally co...

Cats and Horses I’m not a good photographer. In fact, before I bought a video camera to shoot the milongueros, I never even owned a camera. But when I began to capture still pictures from the video, I think I started to develop an eye for photographs. I first saw Tom’s picture, “ The Cabeceo ” [ Page 6 of this chapter ] on the internet. It was posted with a couple of dozen other pictures that had been entered in a tango photography contest. Most of the entries were the usual dreary stuff—fishnet stockings, high heels, blurred legs, and performers gazing into each other's eyes as they wrapped themselves around each other to display the raging sexual passion of tango. But for me Tom’s picture was different. It had scale and balance. The milonguero’s shoulder and head is in the foreground, taking up the right third of the picture, and setting off the row of milongueras across the floor. And there is the preoccupied bartender going about his busi...

Style Points A Review of Women's Technique  I forgot to say there are two  El Gallegos  (well, actually I think there are three). We’ve shown about a million pictures of Jorge Garcia, the  El Gallego  from  Devoto , but we haven’t included another very good milonguero, Roberto Calaza, the  El Gallego  from  Avellaneda . So we’ll make up for it here. Early one afternoon at  Leonesa  when the floor wasn’t’ crowded I shot some video of  El Gallego de Avellaneda  dancing with Myriam Pincen, and also with Alej. All three of them have excellent technique, and comparing Alej and Myriam is a good way to compare and review the way the best women dance. All of these pictures show the balanced, upright posture and relaxed connection of the great social dancers of Buenos Aires. Notice how similarly Alej and Myriam move, and how  El Gallego  displays the characteristics of the great milongueros we ...

The Advanced Class Movement and Touch  What sets the very best tango dancers apart? When people in the milongas talk about a great male dancer they almost always mention the way he uses the music. I hesitate to say this here, but the ability to feel and dance to the music is so important that there are men who are considered great dancers even though their technique isn’t especially good. Some of the older milongueros from the barrios don’t really pay a lot of attention to posture, or to the discipline required to step and move elegantly, but they are still respected and admired for the creative way they express each piece of music. It’s not always easy to see past technical flaws—it usually takes several trips through a piece of video to find the art in the cadence and movement that lies beneath. While a certain amount of technical sloppiness is forgiven in the best and most creative of the men, women are judged more strictly. The importance of post...

Women's Technique  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Continued)     Good tango is in the details. Tonino (left) , Alfredo “El Gordo” & Lequi (right). Nelida and Carlos are two of the best dancers of  vals . Note Nelida’s posture and how she keeps her feet close to the floor. Strict technical discipline means freedom on the floor of the milonga. (Nelida and Carlos are the dancers pictured on the title page of this site.) The Bad and the Ugly  Street performers entertaining tourists in  Boca . Ignoring the details of basic technique results in bad tango. Five things for women to avoid: 1. Don’t wiggle your hips when you walk. The man will feel it, and it will throw him off the music. This is a popular fad some places, but it doesn’t look good in Buenos Aires, and everybody will notice it. 2. Don’t bend or flex at the waist. It causes the same problems as hip wiggling, but it’s not even a fad. It’s j...