Argentine Tango as a dance can look back on a long history (Intangible Cultural Heritage – Weltkulturerbe) and yet it’s still very much alive — and perhaps, no, quite certainly, more vibrant than ever before. Because by now, you can learn it in practically every city around the world, and wherever you travel, you’ll find a Milonga where you can spontaneously dance with complete strangers. Without speaking their language — because Argentine Tango has become its own language, one that transcends borders and nations. I would confidently claim that more people than ever are dancing Argentine Tango today.
However, Argentine Tango has always been more than just a fashionable dance and, above all, a movement that has constantly drawn inspiration from other influences, integrating and absorbing them. In fact, this was the very origin of Tango in Uruguay and Argentina — the merging of a multicultural society in the working-class neighborhoods along the Rio de la Plata into a new music and a new dance.
Inspired by blogger Vio and Yokoito’s attempt to summarize the topic into German with AI assistance (and his announcement that he would also share his own opinion), I too have spent some time reflecting on the future of Tango.
There are two methods for predicting such developments: one is by extrapolating trends and developments that have already begun (e.g. from the “Guardia Vieja” to the “Guardia Nueva”); the other is by envisioning disruptive innovations (like the emergence of Astor Piazzolla’s music). The later prediction method is often driven by personal hopes or fears. I’ll mix both approaches here, though I’ll try to focus more on extrapolating from what already exists. The problem with such forecasts, however, is that they are always shaped by subjective perceptions and opinions. So I’m not claiming to be right — I’m just throwing my two cents into the conversation.
I will discuss music, TJ-ing, aspects of the dance (technique), and the codigo, look into how events might develop and how (I wish) teaching might change and finish with a look into what impact technology might soon have on Tango.
But before I do that, I’d like to disagree with one basic assumption underlying the two aforementioned articles: the claim that the Tango world is divided into two factions camps – the ‘neonuevos’ (aka Neotangos) and the ‘newclassics’ (aka “traditionalists”). Even though both extremes certainly exist out there somewhere, they do not constitute a split running through the Tango community, but rather fringe phenomena within a very broad spectrum of tastes and preferences. From what I can tell, about 80% of the dancers I know move between both worlds, adapting (more or less) to the event at hand. Of the remaining 20%, it feels like 15% are die-hard Newclassics and 5% purist Neonuevos.
When bloggers and other outspoken protagonists claim such a stark polarization, it’s probably because it makes for a better “story.” But it also creates division and unnecessary, unhelpful conflicts that — at least in my experience — have little to do with reality.
And yet, behind this artificial polarization lies a question that is indeed relevant to Tango: namely, what is it that you appreciate in…
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