On Jan 21, 2008, at 12:56 PM, Tango For Her wrote: > I say that tango is a dance of collections or pivots > rather than a walking dance. I say this to change to > focus of the dance to where the real tango takes > place.
I disagree that this technical explanation gets at the "real tango". Music and feel are more important than technique. You can do a spectacular "real" tango by dropping one or any number of these technical elements. > I use the term pivot to indicate the point in a step > where the feet are collected. You are describing a staccato form of pivoting. This is a perfect example of repeating what teachers SAY instead of looking at what they ACTUALLY DO. Normally, when walking or doing ochos, you want to "pass-by-close" or "pass-by-while-pivoting" or "pass-by-then-pivot" or "pivot-then-pass- by", not "snap to the collect, pivot, & snap to the reach". The default movement for walking or ochos should be a flowing, not a staccato. Staccato is an interesting decoration, but flowing is a better foundation for walking and ochos. Women who have been taught the staccato "collect-pivot-reach" have a hard time doing the flowing "pass-by-while-pivoting" motion. It disables boleos, which are more commonly accomplished with flowing motions, rather than staccato ones. Even the word itself "COLLECT" causes a lot of problems by making women (men also) think they need to snap to the middle of each step. The sultry quality of movement is better evoked using the words: "PASS BY CLOSE". And if you look at the actual dancers, from nuevo to milonguero, you see that 95% of the time they are passing by close, not "collecting". Tom Stermitz http://www.tango.org 2525 Birch St Denver, CO 80207 _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l