Is Tango Just for Old Folks?

A couple of years ago Alejandra and I were at a dinner party in Tucson when a slightly drunk woman began to lecture the table. She had just returned from a tango nuevo workshop, and she insisted loudly that people who don’t like tango nuevo are dull, conservative, and generally lacking in imagination. In short, she felt that people in tango who don’t want to kick up their heels are, you know, old and not cool. I was around in the 1970’s, so this "generation gap" argument is one I’ve heard before. (Although it was the first time I'd heard it repeated so many times and so forcefully by a middle aged woman).

I guess the question is whether there really is a division in tango between the young and speedy, and the old and sedate. I think there is... although it may not be where you'd expect. I don’t see a real division in age between the people who like to dance stage tango (which includes the "nuevo" or "alternativo" versions of tango), and the people who dance the social tango of the milongas. At least not here in BsAs. What we have seen, including in places like Villa Malcom and La Viruta, which are often cited as centers of new tango styles, is that while many young people begin with exhibition style tango, they often move into the social style of the milongas. Understandably, new dancers who are not addicted to the Golden Age music, might gravitate toward stage tango. I can see how they might find the active moves designed for exhibition to be more interesting—but that's not just limited to young people. My experience, both inside and outside of Argentina, is that there are just as many old dancers as young ones who disrupt the milongas with performance tango. The real tango generation gap is not between social dancers and stage dancers—it's between the people who like the new stage tango, and those who prefer the old stage tango.

In the1990s, Forever Tango introduced tango to the world. Lots of people saw it and decided they wanted to dance tango, so the stage tango that was popularized by people like Todaro, Copes, and the Dinzels, began to be taught all over the place. Today, however, the first generation of traveling Argentines who taught it is shrinking, and a new wave of Argentines with a new set of choregraphy is taking over. Names like Eduardo and Gloria, and Nito and Elba, are being replaced with names like Fabian, Chicho, and El Pulpo. Almost every tango community has some older couples still teaching the front ochos, ganchos, and sentadas they learned in the 1990s—but now they have to compete with younger teachers selling volcadas, colgadas, and piernazos.

And that’s where the generation gap lies—within that large, worldwide community of amateur and professional tango instructors who look for students by performing show tango, and then teaching what they perform. And their continued existence depends on the blurring of the lines between social tango and tango for the stage.

The Style Myth

Argentines know there are really only two styles of tango. There's the showier version used by performers that they call "tango escenario" (“stage tango”), and the social version for the milongas called "tango salon" (“dance hall tango”). It’s simple, and it makes sense. But then it began to get mixed up.

About 10 years ago, some people in BsAs started using the term “tango milonguero” in place of “tango salon” to advertise classes in social tango. They simply replaced the word "salon" with the word "milonguero", because they mean exactly the same thing. Tango salon means tango for dancing socially in a dance salon (which is a milonga), and tango milonguero, means the tango style used in a milonga. They're the same thing. However, tango milonguero does not mean a separate style of tango danced by the old milongueros.

      Tango milonguero = tango for a milonga = tango salon.

      Tango milonguero ≠ a special type of tango danced by the old milongueros.

Old milongueros don't dance differently than any of the other social dancers in BsAs. They are simply the ones who've been dancing the longest. This means they may dance better than most... but they dance the same rhythmic, flowing, tango as everyone else who knows the correct way to dance in a milonga.

The problem is that many people mistakenly assumed that tango milonguero referred to the milongueros. And if it did—if tango milonguero actually was a specific, separate style of tango that milongueros danced—then it was logical to assume that other styles of social tango must also exist... so they began to find them.

There is a new thing in academic circles called “postmodernism”. It goes something like this: there is actually no fixed reality—words mean whatever you think they mean. And if enough people believe the words, then they become a new reality. I’m not sure I really understand it… but look at what happened here:  Without ever talking to anyone in the clubs, some people began to believe there was a special style of tango being danced by the old milongueros called tango milonguero. So when they saw an old man using short steps on a crowded floor, “tango milonguero” began to be a tango style danced with short steps. But there were also people using long steps, and since something different called “tango salon” still existed, then tango salon must be the tango with long steps. Then, they noticed that some people were dancing to quick rhythms (this must also be the milonguero style) and other times people were dancing more slowly (this must be the salon style). But it didn’t stop there. They even assigned people who were simply using poor technique, like dancing on bent legs, to one of the styles... and the perceived styles grew.

Some people leaned into each other when they danced (milonguero?). Others leaned a lot, while some leaned less (Close-embrace style? Urquiza style?). Others didn’t lean at all. It was noticed that some landed more on the front of their foot, and others landed more on the heel, and people even noted slight differences in the relative chest positions of the partners—were they exactly chest to chest, or was the woman an inch to the side? Sub-categories began to appear. Was that Milonguero... or a subcategory called Apilado? Maybe it depended on where people danced, or how they stepped. Sometimes people picked up their feet more, or separated a little, and came back together. Was this a subcategory or a different style? Maybe it was the Club Style, or the Orillero Style. Very confusing. Dancers seemed to switch between the styles, depending on the music, or who they were dancing with—and sometimes they even changed in the same dance, with the same partner.

A misunderstanding over the meaning of two words began to create a new reality, and a confusing mix of tango styles came into being. Which of course is a wonderful thing… for the people who are in the business of selling tango lessons. It can take a lot of teachers and many years for a student to sort it all out. Especially when the only difference that matters—the one between stage and social tango—isn't made clear in the first place.

So, whenever I hear someone claiming there are separate, distinct styles of social tango with different names, I know right away where they're from. They're part of the academic-performing world—because people in the milongas would never do it.

Neotango and All That

There used to be a program on TV in the U.S. called the “Lawrence Welk Show”—and if you really want to understand the meaning of “generation gap”, that’s where you should look. The show was ground zero in the war between children and their parents in the 1960s. It was a line drawn in the sand between everybody over 30 (who loved the show), and everybody under 30 (who hated it). It was aired on Sunday nights, and my elderly aunts and uncles actually scheduled their day around it. But I couldn’t even stand to be in the room when it was on. For me it was absolutely the most unhip, uncool, kitschy piece of trash that was ever created. But I’ve mellowed a little since then. Today, I think of it as being something like tango nuevo.

“Lawrence Welk” was a variety show where they played popular music, and people would sing and do dance routines. One secret to its success was that no matter where the music came from, it was always cleaned up and arranged in a way that was comfortable and familiar. Whether the music was from Africa, Asia, Latin America, or New Orleans, it all came out sounding very… “Middle-American”. Same with the dancing. The wholesome young couple that performed on the show might dress up like gypsies or gauchos or Cossacks, but they kept smiling and dancing like the polite boy and girl next door. And even though they sometimes danced around in in calypso outfits or hula skirts, they were careful to avoid sexy hip movements.

The man who danced on the show was named Bobby, and he started out as a Mouseketeer on "The Mickey Mouse Club". There's a funny video of him teaching the Chicken Dance on YouTube—and it includes a move that was very popular in tango nuevo a few years back! It's the one where the couple puts their feet very close together, leans back, and spins around. These back-leaning, spinning giros seemed to be showing up everywhere in tango a few years ago, but I haven't seen them lately:

 

Lawrence Welk's music was popular, but it wasn't very good. And I feel the same way about neotango. Take a tangoish theme and rearrange it in a way that the current global youth culture finds comfortable and familiar, and you've got tango nuevo. Add a techno-trance sound, and you have perfect background music for a free form volcada-piernazo workout. (I may be risking the scorn of that woman from the dinner party by writing this, but it doesn’t really matter. I think she found a boyfriend and got bored with tango, so she'll never read it anyway.)

I look at it this way: Most of the original old tango music still sounds pretty good—but I wonder how the new tango music will sound in a few years. Hard to say, but if it's anything like those tangos Lawrence Welk used to play on his accordion, or those spinning giros the cool people were doing a couple of years ago, it will probably fade fast. Of course, as bad as some of this stuff is, it could be a lot worse. The latest tango boom started about 15 years ago, so we're currently seeing tango reinvented as techno-club. But imagine if tango had happened to catch the worlds attention 15 years earlier. If that had happened, people outside of Argentina would have begun to reinvent tango around 1980... and you know what that means: Disco Tango!

I shudder to think of the possibilities. But maybe we can get an idea. Years ago, Adios Muchachos was rewritten for gringo ears, and given the name I Get Ideas. It was recorded by a lot of different people, and it happens that there was a version recorded right smack in the middle of the disco era. For those brave souls who want to find out how much cultural modification tango can stand, check out Adios Muchachos morphed into I Get Ideas, and sung by Tony Orlando and Dawn. I'm not kidding. You can listen to it on the internet.