Tango

January 3, 2009 by Leanne McRae

Adrian Veredice and Alejandra Hobert

Tango is an evolving and innovative dance. The bodies of leader and follower are engaged in a constant dialogue. The conversation that is created between two people energises movement and memory. The literacies of men and women, class and race, inside and outside, same and other are engaged as two people move through the dance space. All is improvised. At any stage the dance can change. The skill and synergy between couples creates a conversation that is intimate and experimental, dynamic and dangerous. This page explores all things tango. It seeks to move beyond the conventional clichés of milonguero modalities and into the innovations of nuevo.

Creative industries and dance
Tango is rarely included within a creative industries dialogue. Dancing outside of raves or nightclubs is often disregarded in the histories of movement and memory. Detached from youth-based narratives, or drug-fuelled rebellions, tango disconnects from popular dance theories. Its relationship to the creative industries is spurious and surprising. TangoCamp embraces a creative industries approach to dance, travel and city-imaging. Evolving separately from government or corporate intervention or interference, TangoCamp is an initiative of dancers seeking to collaborate, explore and explain their embodiment. Held annually in Europe, four cities host four days of tango boot-camp where the best instructors provide workshops, performances and milongas (a social dance) for tango students and fans. There is a vibrant confluence between dance, innovation, creation, city imaging, and creative industries activated at Tango Camp. The cities are showcased as much as the dancers and the dancing. Students and teachers from across the world descend on to Rome, Dusseldorf, Tylosand and Evia to be instructed by the best. They move through cityscapes as they move through the connections and conversations of tango training and teaching. The TangoCamp wesbite provides a rich resource for travellers to cities and through tango. See www.tangocamp.com.

TangoCamp 2008 on You Tube

Practica X
Practica X is a collaborative and creative tango space in Buenos Aires. All the top instructors attend to test, challenge and energise their dancing. It is an honour to be asked to perform and teach at this venue. The history of discipline and rigour in moving the body to beats is activated at Practica X where the ethic of training and collaborating is encoded on the dance floor. At Practica X and practice spaces around the world, dancers dilligently explore their foot-work, embrace and energy in tango. Dancers communicate and connect. They explore new ideas and exchange innovations. Practica X is the most famous and well-regarded of these practice spaces. It provides an important model for tango hubs around the world seeking to instil the elegance, diligence and precision of Argentine tango. The Practica X blog is a virtual representation of this collaboration. Events are organised, guest instructors announced, links to valuable tango resources are supplied. It can be found at www.practicax.blogspot.com. However, it is not an English language site. Videos of Practica X can be found here.

Organic Tango SF
Organic Tango San Fransisco is organised and run by Homer and Christina Ladas. This couple are unique in their approach to making tango fun and accessible. Their courses innovate training concepts and performance paradigms, revealing the importance of pedagogy outside of formalised classroom instruction. The teaching of dance and tango in particular, is filled with nuanced approaches to body mechanics, melodic movement and energy exchange. An exploration of pedagogy is activated as much as tango literacies and languages. The website at www.organictangosf.info provides a comprehensive list of resources for all things tango. It is not limited to specific styles or types of movement and melodies. Homer and Christina encourage radical interpretations and innovative explorations of body mechanics, intimate and open dance dynamics. Homer's dancing philosophy embraces natural body movement and subtle expression. He offers a plethora instructional videos on YouTube that explore a range of innovative tango ideas that demonstrates the significance of teaching tango reflexively.

Photography
Capturing movement provides photographers with unique challenges. In tango the difficulty is pronounced as authors attempt to capture and construct the intimacy of the moment in the movement. Conventional image literacies are not enough to decode the intimate relationship between leader and follower as it is frozen in time and space. Popular imagery of tango poses activating the authentic memories of Argentine origins simulates the subtle and seductive connection between partners. These images cannot communicate the nuanced negotiations as leaders follow and followers lead. Photos attempt to reveal the intimacy and intention in tango. They almost always fail. However, in this failure, they offer opportunities to read the dance anew.

Tango on the Tube
For tango dancers YouTube has revolutionised how the dance is taught and translated. For students isolated from the vibrant tango hubs of Buenos Aires, Paris, Berlin, San Fransisco, and Torino, YouTube brings the best instructors and tango dancers to remote locations. Innovations and experimentations in tango can be explored. Workshops and classes are uploaded so that new ideas percolate via the digital landscape. However, in order to read these videos, a new form of image literacy must be developed and deployed. It is not a simple case of observing and trying to replicate movements, but of developing a close understanding of lead and follow and the consequences of one type of movement on another. New styles of reading are emerging, where bodies are reinscribed and rhythms re-encoded.

Performances

Sebastian Arce and Mariana Montes

Chicho Frumboli and Lucia Mazer

Recent Visitors to Perth
Nick Jones and Tara Fortier

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