[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >>>>>Who is a milonguero?
>>>A few weekends ago, my teacher Florencia Taccetti was telling me about the days when she was going out every night dancing in BA, about her favorite partners, who was going to the same places and where they were going. The current generation of name brands all went out dancing *socially* every night for years, on top of full days of lessons, performances, practice and/or teaching. There was no incentive to dance in a way that would attract impressionable foreigners for lessons, because there weren't enough of them for anyone to make a living from. El Beso wasn't owned by Susanna Miller, it was called Regine's. Susanna Miller wasn't even on the map as a teacher. So, if they were living and breathing tango, making it a part of their who they were, are they or are they not milonguero?<<<<< Al and I had the same experience as Florencia in the late '80s and early '90s, when many of today's top professional dancers did go to the milongas every night, I mean every night, Geraldine and her generation (the Misses, ets) with their parents, the Zottos, Milena Plebs, Carlos Copello, Guillermina Quiroga, Diego DiFalco & Natalia Hills, etc. They did not do exhibition moves in the milonga (except when doing an exhibition, of course!), they just danced beautifully with many partners no matter how crowded the floor. So even those who were already performing on stage were considered milongueros. Obviously many more show dancers are professionals only, never danced socially. These were not considered by anyone to be authentic tango dancers; the distinction was clear. Lots of them are teaching now and some are terrific teachers as they understand technical aspects of dance. Others impart nothing but choreography. Let the buyer beware. I believe that there are two definitions of milonguero, one made up and promoted by those who live the "milonguero lifestyle", using the clubs like singles bars and capitalizing on what Susana Miller (who I never saw at a milonga that she didn't organize) began selling in 1994 as the only authentic tango with huge success as evidenced on this List. Some are now having the time of their lives impressing tango tourists. Some are even pretty good dancers :-) Meanwhile in the neighborhoods like Villa Urquiza, Mataderos etc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >>>>>>Finito, Pepito, Pupi, Gerardo Portalea, Petroleo and all the other greats that don't fit >> into your neat little"tango milonguero" box.<<<< were in their time regarded as the best dancers by everyone, including those who now identify themselves as the "true milongueros". Every Argentine dictionary and book about tango I've read (many dozens, in Spanish) defines a milonguero as someone who goes to the dancehalls regularly and whose life is defined by tango. Until the mid-'90s no one ever insisted that it was required to be an underemployed womanizer, dance in only one style and have a sleazy reputation to be considered a milonguero. (The term "milonguera" has a much dicier conotation going back to the late 19th century.) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >>>>>There are many reasons you don't see these elements in common use by the old farts in BA: * no room for things that take up a lot of space * lack of physical talent * advancing physical decrepitude<<<<<< And of course all of those who were considered good dancers by the newly labeled "old milongueros", those precious few are now gone. Many of the youngsters who learned from them are able to make a living (of sorts)from tango as their mentors almost never did. So maybe the bottom line is that the current crop of "milongueros" is so called by default, with the generation of creativity and elegance diminished by time and death, by distance from the "Golden Age". Meanwhile there are still a few of us who knew them and experienced the excitement of the early years of the tango revival. We try to keep history accurate and their memory from being erased or trashed. Just because most of the folks on this list came to tango a little later doesn't mean that a rich individualistic strictly social tango didn't exist before 1994 when it was redefined by Susana Miller. Barbara _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
