I feel I’ve been writing the same blogpost since 2012. To trigger the latest iteration, our collaborator Cédric Tellier, with whom we made WARRIOR, writes to ask if I think there is some value in commercializing classes in neotango? This question arises from his students’ insistence that “neotango” is “more creative”, “fun”, and “connected”, and that they prefer to dance in open embrace.
I have written before, and I believe decisively, that neotango has nothing to do with the dancing, and indicates only innovations in the environment of a milonga: ‘wave’ style DJing and the use of video projections.
Yet the question persists persistently, and so to answer Cédric and respect the perceptions of those who persist in seeing (or even feeling) something they call ‘neotango dancing’, I will here attempt to address the growing rift between two camps of tango. I will call these camps ‘neonuevo’ and ‘newclassic’.
I begin with a three crucial preliminary statements:
- Argentine Tango has always been an evolving fusion. It began as a mix of African candombé, Polish mazurka, English/French contradanse, and ballet, rapidly adding Viennese waltz, and later elements of salsa and contemporary dance to music fused from West African habanera, gaucho rap battles (payador), and all the music of Europe brought by sailors and their instruments from the German Bandoneón to violins and flutes. That tango should continue to evolve as a fusion should neither surprise nor offend.
- The term ‘style’ with regard to partner dances is a consequential determination. It is not just a difference of aesthetics or mood. It indicates a level of cleavage in the structure of the dance to the extent that people of different styles cannot dance together. Such cleavages exist in salsa and in swing (please click those links to understand what constitutes a difference in ‘style’). Such styles do not exist in Argentine Tango. It is true that we have ended up in two acrimonious CAMPS, but not two STYLES. I fervently hope that tango will never cleave into styles. It is a beautiful and precious thing that all Argentine Tango dancers can dance together. The differences we have are about aesthetic and social preferences, not differences of communication or movements. Our shared technique and vocabulary enables dancers to move freely between events.
- I trained in heavily Buenos Aires-influenced Los Angeles from 2006-2008 and Buenos Aires from 2008-2012. During this period I also danced in Boston and New York. In all four cities, I danced at every milonga I could find, studied at a variety of schools, took private lessons with visiting Argentines, and danced with every dancer who would dance with me, which was, during that period, most of the experienced dancers in the room. On the basis of this experience I assert that ‘newclassic’ is not a faithful continuation of something that existed before, but a devolution.
What are the differences between ‘neonuevo’ and ‘newclassic’ Argentine tango?
I start by describing what people are seeing, and then I will explain what I think is causing these differences of perception.
Neonuevo seems openminded and inclusive. We hear a whole lot of different kinds of music. We see a lot of different ways of moving. Some people are dancing close and taking small steps while others are taking big steps, using open embrace or even breaking out of the embrace. Some dancers are moving their whole bodies with a sense of freedom. On a social level, we see people entering and leaving the dance floor all the time, not waiting for a cortina, and from anywhere along the edge. We see what seems like a more casual attitude about roles. Lots of women are leading, lots of men are following, lots of same-sex couples are visible, and lots of verbal invitations are accepted rather than only using the cabeceo. We also see people wearing all kinds of shoes, or no shoes. We see big smiles, we hear laughter. Sometimes we even see playful interactions between couples on the dance floor.
Newclassic aims to be so formal and elegant that it may seem rigid and limited. The music seems to be all the same. We also see a conformity and limitation about sizes of steps and motion of the body. Looking across the dance floor, we don’t see a lot of diversity; most of the couples are using a fixed embrace whose distance doesn’t change, most are moving in similar ways and doing similar movements. Their bodies use very little range of motion so that it seems the only movement is below the knees, and the emotional expression is uniform and unchanging. The feet don’t go far from the floor, the spine is kept motionless, and smiling is much more restrained. The faces and mood could even be described as heavy and humorless at times. The etiquette is more uniform, with most dancers returning to their seats or changing partners at each cortina, even entering and exiting the dance floor in only a few places. And the social atmosphere is more cold, with many dancers behaving in an aloof manner and more use of the cabeceo. While we see a few women leaders and same sex couples, they are rare. Mostly we see a more traditional gender performance and almost all of the women are wearing skirts and high heels. We rarely see play between couples, and we often hear complaints or conflicts about “floorcraft” or couples who “take up too much space”.
So what is really going on and how did we get here? You may want to read my previous posts on the history of nuevo tango c. 1995 and the emergence of Fundamentalist tango c. 2010. The approach I take today is to articulate a series of forces which have created camps and cleavage, but in much more complex ways than people realize. These three forces are:
- exhaustion of the musical genre ‘nuevotango’
- making tango more accessible, easy, popular
- gender roles and desires
FORCE 1: music
Everybody loved electrotango music, but we have run out
In the 2000s, most milongas played –alongside traditional tangos– several tandas per evening of Gotan Project, Narcotango, Otros Aires, and the other early electrotango orquestas. They also played Piazzola, some post-1980 new tango orquestas like Hugo Diaz, and a little bit of “non-tango”, mostly Leonard Cohen waltzes. C. 2007 it seemed that all tango dancers agreed that this was fun and refreshing, bringing contemporary emotions and sounds to expand our tango world. But these irresistable hits were limited in number, and eventually became too familiar.
Composers within the tango genre, both electro and acoustic, continued to develop and make music, but precious little of it matched the appeal of these early songs. Contemporary acoustic tango orquestas made increasingly violent, aggressive, unpredictable compositions, and electrotango orquestas’ beats became too repetitive. DJs either abandoned new music or expanded the repertoire to what is called “non-tango” music.
Today’s neotango DJs challenge dancers to dance on everything from Chopin to Pink Floyd to Ibrahim Maalouf to Lindsey Stirling. One important DJ, Elio Astor of Rome, brought club-style DJing to tango, using professional software to beat-match in order to seamlessly mix any kind of music into a 45 minute wave, replacing the 12-minute tanda and generating one of the only true “innovations” of neotango.
These days the newclassic camp plays about 90% music from 1940-1950 with maybe a couple of tandas of Pugliese later in the night, rarely Piazzola, and some milongas will play one tokenizing tanda with a chaotic mix of modern tango and non-tango, involving one slow Gotan tango, an Otros Aires milonga, and a Leonard Cohen waltz.
The neonuevo camp plays absolutely anything. Some people seem happy to dance on any of it. But I have several friends who refuse to dance to “tango” music (by which they don’t just mean classical tango music, but anything that involves a bandoneón) and they too sometimes sit waiting through an hour of neo music they don’t like. Some neo fans seem to love fast happy jumpy music, and others prefer slow, dramatic music of a genre called “epic”. One of the most important organizers of neotango events has now renamed his event “nuevo tango” and restricted the music to only new music in the tango genre (no non-tango).
Many dancers who liked Gotan and Narcotango have given up on neotango music and only go to newclassic events. I understand this perspective. At a neotango event I sometimes wait more than an hour for music that I want to dance to, something that never happens to me at a neoclassic event. I find newclassic music less moving than the neotango music that I like, but I find a larger percent of it appealing because too much neotango has strong and unrelenting repetitive beats, which gets boring for me. (I prefer slow, melodic music, or strong beats that take breaks, as they do in Dubstep music.)
FORCE 2: popularization
Neoclassic and Neonuevo both seek to ease access to tango, but they go about it in very different ways
It is entirely reasonable to want tango to be easier to learn. We want more people to join in so that we will have more dance partners, so that our communities will grow to sustain more events and more teachers, and to have a sense that there are lots of new people to meet. This desire is often referred to as the effort to “popularize” tango. Tango’s reputation for being “hard”, and the constant refrains that it takes 10 years to learn, or you must spend a year only walking, or learn Lunfardo, or be Argentine… are real disabilities to our desires to grow our community and welcome new people.
There are many different approaches to popularizing tango. Indeed every teacher has their own method of inducting beginners in hope of accelerating their development and securing their commitment. Among this cornucopia, I direct your attention to one approach to beginners, that of Berlin’s Milonga Popular, c. 2017.
The Newclassic camp seeks ease in several distinct ways:
- The general reduction of expectations of women’s skill. The idea here is that if leaders can dance in a way that “anyone” can follow, they can facilitate new (women) dancers to quickly join the community. This attitude causes women to gain confidence quickly and perceive no need for lessons. The reduction of expectations is enforced by active discouragement of “difficult” movements. Some expert leaders have reported to me that women-followers order them not to lead biomechanically demanding moves, like voleos.
- Rhythmic dancing, and falling into the step, rather than expecting the follower to use projection. The abandonment of projection is the most important way that newclassic tango dancing and training differs from the tango technique that was taught universally when I learned. See this interesting encounter with DJ Ismael who verified this point. (Many dancers who come to me now say that they have never learned to lead or follow with projection and complain that it’s “a lot of work”. I am really surprised because I learned this as one of the most fundamental aspects of tango. I must explain that most advanced moves depend on it.)
- A very tight leader’s embrace that does not require (or allow) the follower to control her own body.
- Reduction of the repertoire of tango and the abandonment of ambition. Most men leaders now learn to elegantly do just a few common sequences and they do not feel any pressure to go beyond these. (Several classic movements that have now all but disappeared from newclassic tango are: barrida, sandwichito, and the pivot parada.) Leaders prioritize mastery and elegance over learning new movements or improvising. This becomes self-reinforcing, as women-followers are so habituated to this small repertoire of sequences that they barrel through them even if the leader tries something new – causing leaders to complain that there is no point learning anything new because “no one will follow it”.
Classic Pivot Parada, video from the TangoForge KnowledgeBase
Neonuevo seeks ease with other tools:
- Priority of self-expression over elegance. Neonuevo is more about feeling creative with your partner than looking “elegant” for observers. If dancers do something creative and crash into the wall, the floor, or another couple, they are likely to receive friendly smiles rather than discouraging glares. On what this means for floorcraft, see my post No Crash Trance.
- Even less ambition. Neoneovo discourages any idea of right and wrong or correct technique, or even sticking to your role. If a follower does her own thing the whole time and drags the leader around the floor, that’s ok. And if you are the leader in question it is not cool to indicate your disapproval.
- Open to fusion. Neonuevo events welcome dancers who don’t dance tango, who dance alone, who dance mostly contact improv with an occasional step or two in a tango embrace, who do “fusion” with other dances. It’s ok to block the circulation of the dance floor and it’s not ok to get mad at someone who does so.
One significant result of musical mayhem and technical free-for-all is that the neonuevo scene has lost a category of advanced dancers to the neoclassic scene. These are dancers who have been dancing a long time, and who learned during the “nuevo era” (2000-2010), studying with Chicho, Salas, Naveira et. al. They have excellent technique and could inspire ambitious dancing in their followers and fellow leaders. They are now very likely to be found only at newclassic milongas, indistinguishably dancing like everyone else because there are no followers able to execute the more advanced end of these leaders repertoire. They are there because they like more of the music that is played, even if they miss musical diversity. And because most of the girls, even if they are very limited, are trying to follow tango, not just “expressing themselves”. These leaders rarely find a neoclassic follower able to follow half of what they know how to do, but at neonuevo events the level is even lower and responses more brazenly inaccurate.
Both approaches lead to a dangerous devolution of tango which endangers the heritage.
FORCE 3: feminisms
Perhaps the most profound difference between newclassic and neonuevo is gender in all of its implications.
There is a lot of feminist noise in and around newclassic tango with regard to sexual harassment and chucking the cabeceo. Meanwhile women will be unlikely to be invited to dance at a neoclassic milonga if she is not wearing high heels and competing in either the shortest- or tightest- skirt contests – aspects of tailoring which were considered to be technical impediments to good dancing until 2010, when, conveniently, women’s technique became superfluous to requirements.
The “secret” facebook group Tango Queens whose purpose is to provide sisterhood among neoclassical dancers regarding sexual harassment and other affronts had their moniker printed across the ass of tight skirts. They then go on to complain about floorcraft. This is what we call the comprador class; enforcing the rules in exchange for treats. Feminism as the right to Voluntary Victorianism.
Neonuevo feminism takes another form, refusing boredom. A number of women have explained to me that when the leader is repetitive and boring, they abandon obedience and entertain themselves as they like, throwing out the tango along with the inexpert man. They are right that newclassic tango is boring. {I note again that what it claims to refer to wasn’t. Pre-2010 classical close embrace tango was a charming, delicate, and ambitious mix of pace and mood.}
In my book, Until Forever: The Dark Silences of Argentine Tango, I argue that women’s addiction to obedience and masculinity in tango is a sign of the failures of feminism. In newclassic tango, women lament sexism while strapping on their stilettos. In neonuevo, women lament the lack of improvisational courage and technical fortitude of the men, punishing them by abandoning the technical commitments necessary to enable the men to grow. They manage gender disappointments by “expressing themselves” disobediently, by leading, dancing with other women, and dancing alone.
Feminists are not the only ones opting for obedience when given a choice. Queer dancers were more comfortable in pre-neo “open minded” milongas until around 2016, when they built up the market clout to be taken seriously. Given the choice, they have chosen conventional, serious tango with classical music.
While neonuevo is less gay than ever before, the neonuevo straights are almost all willing to learn a bit of both roles, as well as to dance both, however awkwardly, at a milonga where no one cares if you make it look good or not. This, I would argue is an evolution.
But gender also includes men, who in the context of feminism, have no idea what to do. Throwing out the cabeceo and putting men in the position where they can’t say no seems to be the one thing that newclassic and neonuevo women agree upon. In my experience newclassic women are much more aggressive with verbal demands and reverse cabeceo than neonuevo women, who seem generally less addicted and desperate (perhaps because their strategy for having a good time is not 100% dependent on “good” men-leaders). This is a sad devolution. The cabeceo may be one of tango’s biggest gifts to humanity, enforcing humility, protecting the ego, and ensuring consensual relations all in a flicker of the eyelashes and elevation of an eyebrow.
Neotango Pedagogy
This brings us back to Cédric’s question of whether it is sensible to demarcate neo as pedagogy.
What would it mean to do so?
Firstly, it would mean a collective articulation that goes beyond any one teacher’s brand.
Secondly, it must offer a valid distinction from the rest of the tango world.
To give an example of an invalid distinction: Cédric’s students perceive neotango to be more about “connection”. It turns out that every tango dancer, teacher, and advocate will insist that connection is paramount, so it would be silly to claim this as a point of distinction for neo. Perhaps what they mean is that large, slow steps are most likely to keep partners at beginning and intermediate levels synchronized and feeling good. Students associate this way of movement with Cédric, Roberto, and neotango. However, speed and size of the steps could hardly define a new “style”. Moreover, lots of neonuevo music is very fast, and large steps are not used.
When observers say that neonuevo is “more creative”, what they are actually saying is that newclassic is very boring, having abandoned most of tango’s repertoire and variations. Ambition is in freefall rather equally in both camps; such devolution far from constitutes a new “style” in either camp.
Even at its most ambitious, neonuevo is doing voleos with both legs, volcada as a technique rather than just one sequence, rebotes with different dynamics. None of this is new. These possibilities (variations and dynamics) were documented by the Cochabamba Investigation Group in the mid-1990s. A neopedagogy could repopularize the ambitious use of all variations, but this would more accurately be called nuevo tango. Nuevo is a rather academic enterprise of identifying variations and ambitious improvisation within the context of standard tango technique of lead-follow. This is the work we do at TangoForge. It does not really seem to fit neo’s culture which relaxes the “rules” of engagement (cabeceo, lead/follow, technique, and the lexicon of movements).
Since neotango is not a distinctive evolution of tango itself, nor is it an enlightened return to nuevo, a neo pedagogy if there must be one, could systematically elaborate the culture of neotango, as follows:
Neotango’s culture of Musicality:
How to apply tango to various of the neotango genres: classical music, modern tango, piazzolla, electrotango, blues, trip-hop, ballads, dubstep, chillstep, deep house, epic, sufi, yiddish, trance, soundtracks, chillout, indian mantra, musette… (list from Neotango.it.)
- TangoForge’s approach to this is to ensure that students are educated in all 25 Elements of tango. For any type of music, they need the breadth to choose several elements appropriate to the speed, mood, and emotions evoked by the music. They should not dance tango’s “standards” on every music. For example, there is lots of music incompatible with giros, and some which never suggests a voleo. Hard music like dubstep requires linear movements like contra rebotes and linear voleos. Expression to more music also requires depth of mastery of each element. For example, epic music requires far more than one volcada. Fast music requires facility with all possible crosses and milonga projection technique.
Neotango’s culture of Expressivity, mobilizing more of the body, rather than only the free leg.
- My class on adornos includes not only the follower’s free foot, but adornos of the transfer of weight, the hands, head, and eyes. (This class is part of the TangoForge MasterCourse and can be purchased separately from the Elements Store.)
- While tango leading is directed and expressed by the follower’s free leg, zouk leading is directed to and expressed by the follower’s spine. Cédric and I briefly explored the possibility of interpreting a tango lead with the spine as well as the free leg. I believe this could be a very appealing dimension of a neo pedagogy.
Neotango’s culture of Fusion:
Ideas for how to fuse different dances, not only technically, but also spatially, socially, and as a response to musical diversity.
- The fusion scene has already addressed some of this, and there is already an evolved contact-tango scene (see TangOdyssee).
- Talented tangueros who are also experts in other dances, such as Cédric, Sébastian Sery, and Nathalie Mann will be able to creatively propose solutions and explorations.
Neotango’s culture of Evolution of roles:
Ideas about how to manage role changing and role dissolving both technically and socially.
- Queer tango or dual-role teachers have already developed some workshops with sophisticated exploration of the technical possibilities of role changing during the dance.
- It’s also important to address issues of consent. I believe the cabeceo is applicable to all role situations, and can and should be maintained.
• • •
It’s difficult for me to know what to say at the end of this post. I knew that we are among the icons of neoneuvo, and we are grateful for the admiration of our dancing. Yet we are uncomfortable with the chaos of roles and the abandonment of the cabeceo. We are heartbroken and demotivated by the devolution neotango entails, in weird parallel with the devolution of newclassic. More and more dancers I meet are so poorly educated in tango that they doubt the veracity and utility of rather basic things like the 48 sacadas or projection. They are fixed to and by a crude, distorted, and superficial experience of tango. I wait hours at neonuevo events for music I want to dance to or sit in a crazed shock as I realize the plummeting level at newclassic events. This is not to criticize the dancers in either camp. Without a culture that insists upon serious training and celebrates ambition, it is no surprise that the whole scene is cheerfully devolving.
