Tango Renaissance

Christine Denniston is author of Dancing Tango - Unlocking the
Mysteries and Secrets of the Tango - 1914

The fall of the military junta in Argentina in 1983 began a
spectacular Tango Renaissance in Buenos Aires. Friends of mine who
were in Buenos Aires at that time tell me the atmosphere was
extraordinary. Suddenly everyone wanted to move. It was as though a
physical weight had been lifted from them. Yoga classes were full.
Martial arts classes were full. Dance classes of all kinds were full.
And suddenly people wanted to learn to dance Tango, the ultimate
symbol of Argentina to the rest of the world, because suddenly it felt
all right to be proud to be Argentine again.

The problem with the Tango was that there had never been beginners'
Tango classes in the Golden Age, and there was no tradition of
teaching Tango. The prácticas had gone. There were no Tango teachers
in Buenos Aires. There was a vacuum that needed to be filled.


A dear friend of mine, and a wonderful dancer, told me a story about
how he started to teach Tango. He was a student, and there was this
girl... He wanted to find a way to get closer to her, and he saw a
notice for a Tango class aimed at people training to be professional
stage dancers, to prepare them to dance in shows. The turnout had been
low, so they had opened the class up to other students. He suggested
to the girl that they go to the class together, and she agreed. After
the second class her schedule changed and she couldn't make it to the
Tango class any more, so he suggested that he carry on going and then
show her what they had learned afterwards.


After about three months of classes things were going well, and she
suggested that as he was doing so well teaching her, perhaps they
should start a class. She had some contacts in a local Arts Centre and
got their class put into the programme. It happened that this was
exactly at the moment that the junta fell and everyone suddenly wanted
to move. They came to teach their first ever Tango class and there
were 200 people there.


Everywhere in the world that Tango has begun since 1983 the story has
been more or less the same. I taught my first Tango class in London
when I had been dancing seriously for four months, not because I
thought I knew everything, but because people asked me to teach,
because I had taken as many classes with visiting teachers or by
travelling myself to Europe as I could, and knew a little. Very few
Tango scenes anywhere in the world were begun by experienced dancers.


Even in Buenos Aires, when the Tango Renaissance began, it was mostly
young dancers who knew a little who were the first teachers. In 1983
many of the people who had been dancing in the Golden Age were not
dancing, and those that were would still have been suspicious of
strangers. After all, there had been a brief flirtation with democracy
in the 1970s, but in the background the Dirty War was already
beginning.


So the first people to start dancing again in Buenos Aires would
probably never have danced with someone who had danced in the Golden
Age. A friend of mine tells me that she went to milongas and sat and
waited and went home and didn't dance for years before people began to
believe that she might be able to dance and started to ask her.
Another friend of mine went to Tango classes for almost two years,
eventually becoming the teacher's assistant, before she decided to go
to a milonga for the first time. She took one look at the people
dancing and suddenly realised that what she had been doing for such a
long time had nothing to do with Tango, and was something that her
"teacher" had made up.


Gradually the people who had been dancing in the Golden Age, and who
might not have danced for thirty years began to dance again. Some of
them developed a passionate desire to pass on to the younger
generation the dance that they loved.


One of the most important couples in the early years of the Tango
Renaissance were Miguel and Nelly. Miguel tragically died at a
relatively early age, before I had the chance to meet him, though I
did meet and dance with Nelly. They organised their beginners' classes
to be as close as possible to the traditional way of learning.
Students were only allowed to dance with the teachers until they were
considered to be ready, only doing the most basic steps.


A friend of mine tells me that she went to Miguel and Nelly's classes
with her boyfriend of the time. After a few months he said to Miguel,
"When are you going to teach us some steps?" Miguel said, "When you're
ready. You're not ready." The boyfriend protested and picked up my
friend to show some of the steps another teacher had already taught
him. Miguel threw him out of the class.


Many of the most important professional dancers of the Tango
Renaissance trained with Miguel and Nelly.


The early period of the Tango Renaissance was dominated by complex
steps. There can be a tremendous excitement to doing complicated
steps, especially if they are done with the technique used by those
who learned Tango in the traditional way - native speakers of Tango,
if you like. When done in this way, steps are part of the emotional
connection that defines the essence of Tango. I began dancing when
this fashion was still dominant in the new Tango scene. I always loved
dancing with complicated movements, and still do. But even as a
relative beginner I started to feel that some people in the new
generation of dancers were dancing differently, and using steps to
keep an emotional distance from their partners.

One of the most influential teachers of this period was Antonio
Todaro, a brilliantly inventive dancer of the older generation. The
intellectual challenge of the steps he created, and danced with the
technique of the Golden Age, was a great inspiration to new dancers.
He taught many of the professional stage dancers, and toured
frequently in Europe. Todaro fell ill late in 1993, and passed away
soon afterwards. It may be coincidence, but the fashion amongst young
dancers in Buenos Aires, and then in the rest of the world, began to
swing away from steps in 1994.


The next style to come into fashion was one based on the style of the
geographical centre of Buenos Aires and the centre of the south of the
city in the early 1950s. This is a style that is choreographically
relatively simple, relying on the connection between the dancers, and
their connection with the music. While it is possible to dance the
other styles of the Golden Age with space between the dancers' bodies
(although this was not done during the Golden Age), this style makes
no sense if it is not done in a close hold.



The great attraction of this style is in the connection within the
couple which is necessary to make it work, and which, when done well,
is tremendously seductive.



One of the most prominent champions of this style, Susanna Miller,
coined for it the term "Estilo Milonguero", milonguero style. The word
milonguero, though it literally means someone who spends a lot of time
in milongas, had come to be used to mean someone who had been a
regular Tango dancer during the Golden Age, before the 1955 coup.
While the choice of the term was obviously inspired by the desire to
distinguish this style from the steps dominated style danced on stage,
the unfortunate and unforeseeable consequence was that it set up the
idea in people's minds that this was the only authentic social Tango
style.

One of the saddest things I ever saw in Buenos Aires was a dear friend
of mine who started dancing in 1945, in the style of the north of
Buenos Aires, which is the most elegant and also the most difficult
style of the Golden Age, on the point of tears - and elderly Argentine
men do not cry in public - because a young dancer had said that he was
not a milonguero because he danced with steps. He was being accused of
lying about an important part of his whole identity, because this
young dancer had misunderstood the term "Estilo Milonguero" and
thought that this was the only true style.

The dancing of the people who were dancing in the Golden Age remained
unchanged, and one could still go to milongas away from the centre of
Buenos Aires and see people doing the most fabulously complicated
steps in a truly authentic and completely social way. But by 1995 the
style variously known as "close hold", "short steps", "Tango club" or
"milonguero" had come to dominate the dancing of the people in Buenos
Aires who were part of the Tango Renaissance.

The problem with this style, lovely as it is, is that it lacks the
fascinating choreographic challenge of all the authentic styles of the
Golden Age, apart from the style of the geographic centre and centre
south in the early 1950s on which is was loosely based. The thing that
makes this style exciting is the connection within the couple and the
musicality of the dancers. Quite quickly I started to notice people
finding ways of manipulating the close embrace in order to maintain an
emotional distance from their partners. Most particularly I noticed
people not dancing directly in front of each other, but with the
follower away to the leader\'s right. This was certainly not my
experience of dancing with people who had danced this style in the
1950s. They always were directly in front of me, as were almost all
the dancers I danced with who had been dancing in the Golden Age,
whatever the style.

So quite quickly people began to get bored with this style, as they
were not getting the emotional connection that made the style work,
but were also not getting the chorographic challenge of the other
styles.
Canyengue, Orillero and Tango de Salon


(c) 2003 Christine Denniston

Christine Dennniston is author of Dancing Tango - Unlocking the Mysteries

 Golden Age, apart from the style of the geographic centre and centre
south in the early 1950s on which is was loosely based. The thing that
makes this style exciting is the connection within the couple and the
musicality of the dancers. Quite quickly I started to notice people
finding ways of manipulating the close embrace in order to maintain an
emotional distance from their partners. Most particularly I noticed
people not dancing directly in front of each other, but with the
follower away to the leader's right. This was certainly not my
experience of dancing with people who had danced this style in the
1950s. They always were directly in front of me, as were almost all
the dancers I danced with who had been dancing in the Golden Age,
whatever the style.

So quite quickly people began to get bored with this style, as they
were not getting the emotional connection that made the style work,
but were also not getting the chorographic challenge of the other
styles.

Canyengue, Orillero and Tango de Salon

(c) 2003 Christine Denniston

Christine Dennniston is author of Dancing Tango - Unlocking the Mysteries