Minima
Tangalia
New faults for
tango dancers
by El Moplo
According to my friend Vattuone the Afflicted
Fakir, the critic first of all has to prevent himself
from knowing anything more than what the author tells him about
the world. In case of the so-called tango nuevo, and
also dynamic in order to encourage the gyms as well
as the boutiques, this is done quickly: in the new world, as
well
as in certain telos in
San Telmo, you find hardly what you take in, except the
girl. In our long history of laurels and spits, we had plenty
of new tangos; this newer one is an euphoric and gesticulating
tango, full of
law-abiding nonconformism, which looks gently incorrect and
seems to please the young people, especially who come
from abroad. In fact, we veterans usually don't go to the updating
workshops in Paris or in Bavaria, and the tango nuevo's
legislatives seldom leave their alimentary exile in Europe
to come here and explain it to us. We have to be quite
happy, then, to see only their reserve troops, their reflected
darkness. In any case, this is a tango that saves its performers
the
trouble of introspection and the hoarseness of technique.
Besides, it dispenses them from wearing the mourning band and
putting on the average tanguero's smart clothes. It
is a tango in quotation marks, in italics, so that the dancers
would like to quote someone else's steps to the letter, or
something they are not sure enough of. Many figures and poses
are taken from the summary repertories of dinner-shows, tv
ballets
and
volos. Numberless are the spiral, rococo-taste sequences
whose centripetal motives swallow up the dancers into the dancefloor's
center, into the hellish circles of the beginners. Their movements
are large and brachymorphous, that is favoring the crosswise
over the lengthwise diameters; the axes are asymmetric, horizontally
pivoted, scalene. While the man posture is relaxed on the dorsals,
in imitation of the domermann, the woman's spills on, chorrea as
we say here - that's where the new word chorreographer comes
from. The embrace is slack, with an impressions of reins; the
frente is careless or clumsy managed: this helps
to strike the density off the dance. These dancers who call
themselves dynamic can't fill their movements: to the violin's
flights, the adagios, the silences, to what's is actually
dynamics, they set up some granular trifles. Their ear
is mostly rhythmic, that is anti-romantic: they love the strong
beats that make the masses walk the line. Whereas they are
abetted by the electrotango, they are gobble up by
the Pugliese's pathos, which catches them in unelegant sneerings
they proptly recover in more appropriate expressions of condolence.
The tango nuevo's pisada is still a theme
of a debate, so much so that several types are suggested, either
for a muddy ford and for stamping on the bugs. Women often
lean their heels on the floor and hardly ever stretch out their
insteps, like the famous wooden puppet. On the other hand,
they sway their hips like vaudeville chanteuses. Marlowe once
said that you can't learn this movement from a nun, but i am
not quite sure of it. In their opinion, the blatant gesture
of raising their left arm over their partner's head and let
it
twist down
on
his shoulder afterwards, like an inflatable cobra, is a moment
of climax. Many tango nuevo dancers think they live
on the firing line, each of them with his own personal style.
They don't realize that, like the postwar cyclists, they are
actually racing behind the front with a tubular tyre brand
printed on
theis shoulders. Notwithstanding a propaganda that's costantly
hinting at seminars, workshops, democratic exchanges of views
between teachers and pupils, the tango nuevo isn't
the outcome of a collective process, in other words it is not
a style, but it's a trademark, a patent business-company
tango by the name of Cosmotango®. It is the direct issueing
of the festival with the same name, or rather of its producers,
since the festival is actually the equivalent of a shunting
station where the travellers dwell just for the time needed
to take another train; and a lot of trains are leaving to
all directions. As far as the patent is concerned, even this
is not a novelty: in the recent past, the tango hold in due
consideration either the Gloria y Eduardo Supermethod® and
the Dinzels System®, by forgetting effortlessly both with their
wobbly epistemologysts. However, they were armies without effectives.
As well as it already happened ten years ago with the Susana
Miller's indigent Tango Milonguero®, which have stuffed the
dancefloors with bovine characters in Europe sooner than in
Argentina,
the Cosmotango® too has been spread abroad sooner than here.
And not only by its patent holders. Evidently, no license and
no
credentials were requested to those salesmen by the naive legions
of dancers who were barely getting by in the primitive phase.
However, not even wearin the tango-show pompous livery, which
knows nothing but several decades of tips, bows and wallops,
the tango nuevo has succeded in giving a thrill to
the well-made hearts. Yet, it has had an effect
which is really older than crime: he has managed to turn all
its critics into as many building-yard loockouts, into those
nostalgic pensioners who always stand near any yard with
men at work. But here there is no yard. Maybe it's the age
that keeps those young people from remembering that the tango
nuevo, even at its best, says worse many things that
have been already said long time ago. Or, paraphrasing Sklovskij,
who is a fakir much more moaning than Vattuone, its
performers are repeating as sobers what we have once
danced as drunks.
© El
Moplo
Buenos Aires, 2006
Minima
Tangalia
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