Next to acting the Tango is my second most obsessive passion. Although this blog is about finding Athena, wisdom and strength, through acting and the travails of daily life in Los Angeles, I would be painting a very incomplete picture if I didn’t at least devote one blog entry to this most moody and complex of dances. Athena herself, I am dead sure, must adore it!
The tango scene in Hollywood is small but very active. I am finding niches all over. It is hard to get to without a car but its comforting to know its out there…
Tango was the first couple dance ever seen in Europe that involved improvisation. Of course terribly frowned upon, but it was the arrival of Tango that defined the beginning of couple dance as we know it today.
In Buenos Aires, where it all originated from, the dance was still completely unacceptable in polite society around 1900. But young guys from good families have always had a tendency to spend time in places they are not supposed to visit, and with girls that their mothers would rather they did not marry, and as a consequence several of these young men were quite good Tango dancers. These very same guys traveled to Paris and Tango took Europe by storm!
There is a myth that women in Paris were the first to abandon their corsets in order to dance the Tango with more hip movement and sensuality. (The official color for the tango was orange.. which is extremely weird no?!!)
I wondered how the young boys in Buenos Aires learnt the dance. Because there seems to be a uniform thing among Argentineans that they would never take a class except if they wanted to go professional. Lessons are for sissies.. But if a young guy were to go to a Tango bar and not know the steps… that would be social suicide! The women are among the harshest critics I have ever heard when discussing the competence of each dancer. I was asked to dance by a shy boy once and when I came back my Argentinean friend rolled her eyes and said that she hoped I wouldn’t waste another dance on a skill-less dancer!
So what I found was the following:
“The young man who was starting to notice the attractions of young women had little option but to learn to dance the Tango. He would go to a men only practice dance, or práctica, and, after he had watched for a little while one of the older men would start to teach him how to follow, that is to say he would learn to dance the woman’s part. Once he was considered to be good enough at dancing the woman’s part he would be allowed to try leading another young man who had been dancing about as long as he had, and start to learn to dance the man’s part. I have asked many elderly men, from many different parts of the city, how long this process took (baring in mind that the men I speak to for my research are generally the outstanding ones, who would not have been the slowest members of their group), and I have never been told that it took less than nine months to learn to dance the woman’s part well enough to be allowed to start learning to lead.
They would then continue to learn, dancing both parts, gradually leading more, until one night one of the more experienced men would tell them to put on a suit on Saturday because they were going to a dance, or milonga. I have asked many elderly men how long that whole process took, and not one has told me that it took less than three years.”
3 years!!!!! Intimidated to learn at all? I sure was! Uhm.. typo.. I sure AM!
If the tango is danced as it should be… it is a theatrical masterpiece. All the elements of good acting is present. You have your set of movements (your lines) and you have a partner with whom you need to connect. You must communicate with intention, intuition and heart. You must listen… and if all these elements are present the dance becomes a masterpiece!
