자료원: http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/default.asp
Written by David Turner with massive help from Mike Rose, this book is based very strongly on the ideas and teaching of Argentinian, Rodolfo "el Chino" Aguerrodi. It is written in a very easy to follow style and is now available in paperback at £12.99 from Amazon and all major bookshops.
You may order a copy by sending a cheque (payable to "Dingley Press") for £12.99 to this address
DINGLEY PRESSPlease remember to add your name and address,including postcode and add a further £3.00 if the book must be posted overseas. Postage and packing is free within the UK
For International buyers there are always generously discounted books for sale at Amazon and eBay both of whom take care of the currency problems. Shipping is on the very day of payment, by airmail
Further details about this book may be gained from the author, David at:
Dcturner2 (adding the "@aol.com" to the end of this to get the full email address)
" First I want to say that, although the history of tango is fascinating in its own way, it contributes only a little, in a practical sense, to the dance you are about to learn. You could leave this whole chapter out completely and still tango satisfactorily. That would be a great shame, however, because it is fun to incorporate some of the flavour of tango"s earlier days in our dancing today. I believe that tango is as much a language as speech. In the same way as many of us love the poetry of Shakespeare even though we don"t communicate with each other in Tudor English, we are perfectly able to grasp the subtleties of tango without necessarily copying those who danced it in the past.
I dare to go one step further. I am eager to dispel the myth that there is some sort of "authentic" tango that can and must be copied and is set in concrete for all time. I know a number of people who choose to believe this, and that"s fine for them, though I wonder what they get out of that feeling. I just worry that, if we focus too much on the past, we may lose the joy of the present and - worse still - discover that there is no one to tango with in the future.
No one actually owns tango or can forbid anyone from connecting with it for any reason. It is a genuine, basically earthy dance of the proletariat; a dance created by the people, for the people. Tango did not evolve because people wanted to do only that which had been done before. It was new and fresh and dangerous. It pushed at the boundaries of human contact and was not subservient to form. I read somewhere that one lover of tango thought that, when Osvaldo Pugliese, a great bandleader, died in 1995, so did tango. That is exactly the attitude I feel we must fight against. While, at the moment of writing, there is no doubt a strong rise in the popularity of tango - both the music and the dance - it still needs all the friends it can get. "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/schools.asp
" It may not be apparent to those beginning to learn to tango, but there are quite a wide variety of teaching styles and philosophies used. This should not surprise us when we consider the origins of tango and the influences of the dancing on the teachers, the teachers on the dancing and the music on the entire thing. We think of tango as a single entity but, even now, it is not. The perceptions of what tango is vary from place to place and from time to time.
In the beginning, Buenos Aires was small and quite distant in real terms from all those areas we now merely consider to be its suburbs. In each of these locations tango had its own style. The dancers moved little from place to place but the bands certainly travelled to make a living and brought back different things from their gigs. Those bands were like bees, pollinating as they collect nectar. As those smaller satellite townships were subsumed into the sprawling city over the first 30 years of the 20th century, what resulted was a cocktail of styles, all perfectly ?legitimate? within the remit of tango. The differences were immense. Just think about it. Different dance floors ? both floor surface and dimensions ? led to different needs. Different dance floor traffic led to different embraces, as did individuals? desires for closeness and intimacy of embrace or, on the other hand, for more genteel distancing. None of these styles was weak and easily subservient to any other and they all survived because they were legitimate and valuable. Who could criticise the orillero style of the docklands areas of San Telmo or La Boca because it differed from the styles of those dancers from Mataderos or Villa Urquiza? The same must be true for the teaching that both led the styles and, at the same time, was formed by them. I think it is reasonable, however, for us all to judge for ourselves which style of dancing we like and which style of teaching is most likely to allow us to dance as we want. I propose to nail my colours to the mast here and now on this issue in the hope that it will help "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/leadingfollowing.asp
" When a man dances with a man it is simply not the same as dancing with a woman, although I am prepared to consider that if both men are gay then maybe it is very similar. Given that when tango began it was about male-female contact, not to mention the sublimation of sexual desires, then we should not be too surprised that many of the modern-day needs for tango demand the same sort of body shapes and ‘chemistry’ to work fully.
To this end, then, in tango, generally speaking, there is a man’s role and a woman’s role. Those who dispute this might try following without wearing high heels or lifting their heels up. It feels very odd. Similarly, try to lead with high heels. It is very difficult. I have seen female tango professionals dance the woman’s role with low heels, and it either looks strange or they raise their heels off the floor. Interestingly, put a man in high heels and he is able to follow quite elegantly because the high heel changes the body posture, most significantly by encouraging a ‘weight forward’ posture even when you walk backwards.
Commonly in tango, in Europe and the United States at least, the two roles are referred to as ‘leader’ and ‘follower’. These two terms more accurately describe the roles of the individual members of the couple than the gender, but I think this convention has yet to find much favour in Argentina. More recently, a concept has arisen that is referred to as ‘shaping’, to attempt to refine even more accurately what the man does in the dance. It is an attractive notion and attempts to get away from the image of a man ‘leading’ an animal on a halter or a small child by the hand. As far as I know, this has not caught on as a term yet, and I cannot guess what a ‘shaper’s’ partner might be called that would be suitable. I dread to think of the reaction from some quarters if it became ‘shaper’ and ‘plasticine’! To be serious, the notion of shaping is that it is the shape of the dance each couple does that the leader is responsible for; he is not responsible for the shape his partner is in! And I promised to be serious, too. For the moment, then, I propose to use the terms ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ because they have become well established. "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/walk.asp
" I find walking backwards elegantly is quite difficult and I practise it a lot in odd moments of my day. If I am obliged to stand and wait anywhere for a length of time I will often take a step backwards trying to keep my weight forward. Lord alone knows what people think, but I simply don't care. Over the years this silly little habit has paid off. I find that it helps if the knee of the weight-bearing leg bends a little, but there is no leaning forward to balance out this stretching back movement. By referring to a "bend" I just mean to the extent of being soft and not locked out; not necessarily a bend that could be seen by an observer. Once the leg has gone as far back as it can with comfort (for the average person this is about 20 cm), with the toes in contact with the ground the weight bearing leg carries the whole body with its extended leg backwards, again maintaining an upright upper body posture. On the beat, the follower ought to find herself collected on the new spot with knees and ankles together. Her weight has been transferred to the leg that just a moment beforehand was doing the stretching backwards, and the process repeats with the opposite leg. This movement is nothing like any other movement in life. Normally, if we walk backwards, we lead with the top half of the body and the legs follow. It is very common for a person backing away from something disagreeable to overbalance and fall backwards. "
Movie: walking parallel cross system (the author and his partner!)
Movie: walking to the side
Movie: walking to the side and changing tracks
Movie: lots of cross system walking
Movie: rhythmical walking and weight change
Note: these are Windows Media 9.0 Player Movies, so if one does not play for you then you will need to download the move by right clicking on the link below and selecting "save target as":
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/embrace.asp
" George Bernard Shaw famously wrote in 1962, in an article in the Spectator magazine, that dancing was "the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire". El Chino tells me that the great tango teacher Carlos Copes said this many times too, but Shaw gets the credit in the Dictionary of Quotations. I wonder who said it first? Whatever the truth, there is no doubt that tango and sex have long been linked. It is salutary to remember, however, how aggressive the pope of the day was when the waltz first saw the light of day. This was because, for the first time, members of polite society danced in an embrace. Peasants had been enjoying such things long before that; the waltz was born of the l䮤ler, an Austrian folk dance. History is funny like that. Some things have to be acceptable to the ruling classes before they seem to matter much. I’m told that in 1816, when the waltz was first aired in polite society at Carlton House in London, it caused quite a sensation. The assembled company included the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Wellington, but history does not record what they thought of it. I would guess that their very presence stamped a seal of approval on the dance. Other notables were less accepting of the new fashion. Lord Byron, for example, was outraged at the sight of people dancing in an embrace. He wrote that it was like watching "two cockchafers spitted on the one bodkin"! I would love to see a discussion between Byron and Billy Connelly, who said: "Dancin’ is foreplay!"
The tango was, of course, also denounced as lewd and unseemly, and I suspect that, human nature being what it is, this must have contributed greatly to its popularity. I would be surprised if very many people nowadays think of waltz in those terms, but tango still has its reputation. When you experience close embrace the reason is abundantly clear, but even in more open embraces the ‘chemistry’ of the dance is obvious. "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/connection.asp
" I have found over the years that, if I am dancing with a new follower, as long as I make my intentions plain she will oblige, more often than not, even when she has not been taught a particular movement. Occasionally, though, things do go wrong. Sometimes the error will have been in the magnitude of the indication, but - more frequently - the message will have been mistimed. No follower, let alone a new follower, can follow a message given so late that she is already committed to acting on the previous message.
So, my feeling is that a leader needs to tune in to the sort of follower he is dancing with to ensure the connection, and this may take a little time to begin with. The wise and thoughtful leader will not freak off into fancy footwork before finding the ‘resonance’ of his follower. Even before the feet move, the leader will try a few weight changes to the music to see how the follower moves and feels in his arms. He is testing the connection.
Similarly, the wise follower focuses on the leader’s chest to be able to gain early signals of intention. Some followers, however, dance with their eyes shut and find that this enables them to feel the indications better using the arm contact as ‘antennae’. This really works only when the leader has learned to keep his arms fairly still in relationship with his upper body. They then act as amplifiers of the chest lead. It is for each dancer to discover how best to tune into their partner; there is no right or wrong way to do it. One fairly universal agreement is, however, that the follower should ‘try not to think’. This is not to be taken too literally, but refers to the fact that it works better in tango when one of you leads, plans and pilots using the brain constantly, and the other reacts spontaneously as an animal does; with the spinal cord. A better motto than ‘try not to think’ would be ‘feel where to move’. ‘Tango heaven’, for me as a leader (dare I suggest), is when I take a woman into my arms who has enough confidence in me and herself that she lets go and just listens to the music. "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/ocho.asp
" One point it is important for us leaders to consider when leading the forward ocho by rotating our upper bodies. The torso rotation works best, as far as I can see, if it does not take place using the centre of the body as the hub of the wheel but uses the opposite shoulder to the side of the ocho. For a moment, imagine that the leader's torso and right shoulder is a door, hinged at the left shoulder. If I want to make my follower feel free to step to my right I need to 'open the door' for her. This may seem a subtle difference but, if you are a follower who is offered a movement to the leader's right then, as you try it, you find his right shoulder in your face, you feel blocked and unable to step into the ocho. If, on the other hand, the leader creates a space for you to step into, you feel you want to go there. I have followed many men who failed to understand this. I have, for example, experienced the forward ocho 'lead', which began with leading me to the cross, then died completely. My leader wrongly assumed that he had done all that was needed to get me to step into the forward ocho. There I was, the good follower, patiently waiting for 'la marca' for something - anything - please! Nothing. Another leader I know thinks that the lead involves tilting his shoulder downwards on the side he invites the ocho. More common would be the 'head lead', which involves the leader looking round to one side or the other. Bizarrely, one person who leads me from time to time accompanies the head lead with the entirely opposite chest lead! By far the worst lead for the forward ocho, however, is the 'head twitch'; the sort of movement you might make to your dog to send it scampering off or that silent gesture one might make to a mate in the pub to suggest we both leave now. When the 'head twitch' fails to produce the desired response it is always repeated, suitably amplified. After all, as most British people are prone to believe, if a foreigner has not understood you, you just say the same thing louder. At least I have never experienced the 'head twitch accompanied by a whistle. "
Movie: forward ocho then back ocho
Note: this is a Windows Media 9.0 Player Movie, so if it does not play for you then you will need to download the move by right clicking on the link below and selecting "save target as":
Movie: forward ocho then back ocho
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/giro.asp
" In the giro, the basic element of the lead is simply the continuing rotation of the leader’s trunk. Therefore it is quite feasible to initiate a giro from a stationary position, but leaders beginning to play with the giro may find it useful to consider the follower in two important ways.
The first is to begin the lead in such a way as to enable the follower to start her giro with a sidestep in the appropriate direction. As ever, this will necessitate the leader having a full awareness of which foot the follower is standing on. If you want her to sidestep to her right, for pity’s sake, start when her weight is on her left. Secondly, though the follower will want a good, clear indication, she will not appreciate it if you spin with reckless abandon, particularly since her second step is a back step, which needs a substantial pivot before it can be done. Often the giros that feel the sweetest begin quite slowly and accelerate from the back step onwards.
A similar thoughtfulness is required at the resolution of a giro. The good leader already has a clear idea about the purpose of the giro and how far round the follower will go. Sadly, most of us get into a giro and try and fudge our way out of it as best we can. How do we stop it before we are both so dizzy we can barely stand? Ideally, we give our follower notice by slowing down the lead to rotate. If we then come to a halt in a sidestep, the follower simply halts in a fairly useful neutral position in front of us. If, however, we stop dead in this position without warning, she is likely to try to continue as she was and stop halfway on to her next comfortable position. In any event she will feel uncomfortable, and that is the last thing we want our follower to feel.
By far the easiest way to exit from a giro is to realise that the follower is taking sidesteps every other step and grasp the opportunity to accompany her in any one of those. As Stephanie Gögelein, a dear friend and the very first person to show me the true face of tango, puts it, "The follower’s boat is going that way. Get on the boat." This is a good image for the leader. If a boat was moving along a bank and you wished to leap aboard without grief, you would need to plan the leap and time it to perfection, with your own body motion matching that of the boat exactly. "
Movie: giro
Movie: giro with a little bit of baby noise (our son was not so happy without dancing ;-)
Note: these are Windows Media 9.0 Player Movies, so if one does not play for you then you will need to download the move by right clicking on the link below and selecting "save target as":
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/gancho.asp
"A gancho is an interruption of the collection of the legs", says el Chino. This is the simple, elemental truth about the gancho, but, as with so many distillations, it needs explanation and discussion. What, for example, do we mean by "collection of the legs"? Well, when we take a single step we move one leg from one point to another, and as the moving leg passes the weight-bearing leg this is the moment of collection. This moment is the thing that the gancho prevents. If we analyse any gancho we find that the reason it happens is that one dancer tries to bring the moving leg to a point of collection and is unable to do so because of an intrusion by the leg of their partner. Now, this next point is the critical extra requirement. The intrusion that interrupts the collection must be above the knee of the moving, collecting leg. If the intrusion is below the moving knee, it will be impossible for the intruding leg to be 'wrapped' by the collecting leg; but it will most certainly be 'rapped' by it!
Of all the moves in tango, surely the gancho is the one that looks the most exotic and excites the onlooker. When we do it well it feels great too. I am sad to report that the desire to perform the gancho exceeds by far the competence to make it work as it should. We love it to death! Only rarely does it love us. I think of the gancho not just as the cherry on the cake but, perhaps more accurately, as the cream on the chocolate on the icing on the cake. It can make you sick.
Movie: a few circular ganchos on the balcony
Movie: lots of circular ganchos
Movie: simple circular ganchos for the woman
Movie: parada then a bunch of circular barridas
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/sacadas.asp
" I have lost count of the times that, in a class, a mystified student has asked the teacher to explain the difference between the lead for a gancho and a sacada. The confusion is understandable because, of course, both these manoeuvres are interruptions of the follower’s leg movement. Similarly, I have frequently danced with women who read any interruption as a gancho whether there was space for one or not, and cheerfully kicked me. This is one painful reason why I wish to take a little time to explain how both interruptions work. Sadly, many who teach seem to believe that the main difference is the spot in which the leader places his foot for the intrusion. Thus I have been told many times that, for the gancho, the foot is placed near to the follower’s weight-bearing leg and, for the sacada, to the non-weight-bearing leg. While these statements can both be true, up to a point, these foot positions are not enough to ensure that the gancho or the sacada actually happen. It is a bit like telling a learner driver that when the red traffic light turns to green the car goes forward. The two things are connected, but not by direct cause and effect. There are issues that relate to gear levers and throttle and clutch that actually get the job done.
The biggest breakthrough for me was to finally understand the timing of the interaction between the two legs: the intruder and the interrupted leg. Let me use the model of tango as a language again. If we are chatting and I want to interrupt you in a sentence I must do it after you have started and before you have stopped. I have a range of choices of timing my interruption from during the first word to within the last one. My success of getting a word in edgeways will depend on my timing. So it is with the successful sacada. "
Movie: simple sacada with invasion of space in close embrace
Movie: steph and mike back sacada fun then a forwards sacada for Steph
Movie: sacada in cross system from back ocho
Movie: sacadas without invasion of space
Movie: couple of little sacadas in back ocho
Movie: back sacadas for woman and man with a few barridas
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/sandwich.asp
" I like to think of the sandwich as a form of ‘playing footsie’, as you might with the object of your affection under a dining table at a dinner party. I have always fantasised that the original purpose of this gesture was to test out the response of the lady in your arms while in the thicket of the dance floor. The benefit would have been that, if she was under the critical scrutiny of her chaperone (perhaps a beefy brother), he would not be able to see that you were being suggestive. She for her part would have the freedom to respond in kind if she fancied you and ignore it if she did not. "
Movie: planeo for the woman
Movie: planeo for the woman followed by a boleo
Movie: ridiculously long planeo for the man
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/boleos.asp
" I was being led by Mike Rose last night. We were working on the illustrations for this book and he was showing me some gancho variations. Without warning, he led a boleo with some force. It was an amazing and slightly shocking experience, but it worked. The reason it did so was partly because he is such a great leader and I was feeling confident. I am sure that this meant that I was relaxed and balanced, so that, as he arrested my body movement and reversed the lead, my free leg was able to swing naturally. I had little sense, however, that I had contributed much to the movement. It had happened not because I did something in particular but more because I allowed it to happen. If I had stiffened my free leg it could not have flown at all unless it had been subjected to extreme force. As I write this, it occurs to me that if had Mike said to me: "Hey, let’s try a boleo!" it might well not have worked as well as it did, because I would have felt the need to do something different. "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/movement.asp
" Just as a language has a vocabulary, so does tango. When we talk we can use stock phrases and even complete sentences ‘off the peg’, for our convenience. We use clichès from time to time because we feel lazy or we want to free our minds for more interesting things to come. These common patterns of language permit us to speak about one thing while actually thinking ahead and planning the next topic. So it is with tango. If we continue this analogy, we can think of ochos, sacadas and ganchos as phrases, even as clichè. We might consider a complete giro as a sentence. So, what are the most basic building blocks, the words? However complex tango looks, most of what we do breaks down into two hugely significant ‘words’. They are the step and the pivot.
The step is a way to move the body mass from place to place without necessarily changing the way we face.
The pivot is a change of directional facing without any shift of mass away from the point of balance. The mass is rotated. Almost everything we do in tango is a planned mixture of steps and pivots to attempt to travel around a dance floor in a way that entertains us while staying connected, chest to chest, with each other. "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/milongavals.asp
" To begin with, most of us will manage to enjoy vals in social dancing by listening to the music and using all the usual tango elements that fit into the character of the tune. Some things fit in better than others. I find that the more ‘spiky’ things we do in tango don’t work for me; nor do those elements that tend to be essentially static, such as manoeuvres that involve the sandwich or paradas. I think this is because the tendency is for the music to power us forward in a flowing style. If most couples feel they want to go with the flow, other couples coming to a halt for some play somehow doesn’t seem to work too well, unless they are in one corner of the room. It seems to me that when a vals such as ‘Desde el Alma’ is played the flow around the dance floor becomes easier. It is as if the music moves us all so similarly that, as a room full of moving people, we gel as a group, much as a shoal of fish or a flock of birds do. As we dance, it is not as if we are marching to the same tune. Perhaps it is that the music is freer? Or could it be that the insistence of the rhythm obliges us all to dance similarly? Whichever it is, it seems to me that, in tango vals, we all allow each other more freedom. More than in tango, for me, I feel that the music ‘plays us’ as much as we play the music.
It is true that many milonga tracks played can be faster than dances we are used to. How can we cope with that? The answer is to take smaller steps. When I see people coming unstuck when dancing milonga it is because they have plainly failed to grasp the different way of moving from tango, and find themselves running around the dance floor like bulls in a china shop. No wonder they find it stressful and abandon it altogether. It looks to me as if some people view milonga as a form of aerobics. I once watched an English couple flailing about in a tango bar in the Caf頤e Las Artes, Barcelona. They were a menace to shipping; feet and elbows everywhere. The music sang "miloooon-ga" and they danced "bullfight!" "
Movie: sam and clare dance part of a tango vals
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/music.asp
" One thing that makes tango so different from any other dance is the way the different pieces of music change the way you dance. You would think that, as with waltz or samba, the beat would be all you would need and that, although you might prefer one song to another, the dance would be stay the same. This is not so. For a long while I simply couldn’t grasp why, at times, on the same night I could fly while at others I felt I danced like a brick. I was aware, because I had avidly read interviews, that some older tangueros would say "You can’t dance to Gardel" or "I love to dance to Pugliese", or some such, but I never gave these stories much credit. To tell the truth, I thought it was snobbery and posing, and, I must admit with some sadness, there is a little bit of that in tango. I have, however, learned better as I found myself becoming sufficiently competent to stop thinking about technique and relax into the music. It just hits you after a while. The music is different and it makes you feel different things, so you try to dance to suit. When you first start being moved by the music, certain tunes stand out as old friends. They appear to resonate with your particular mood, and maybe that of your partner. That one dance is bliss; not just fun, not just good enough, but sheer bliss. At the end of the dance you seem to take a breath and laugh as if you had been teetering over some giant chasm and reached the other side. "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/navigation.asp
" I now have to make a confession. One lady I dance with on a regular basis always closes her eyes when she dances. In a moment of devilment one evening I took her a complete clockwise circuit on a packed dance floor. I am proud to say that we had no collisions and, what’s more, she was totally oblivious that we had done it. I admit that she is tiny and so my field of vision was not restricted. It was great fun but I promise I will never do it again.
I love to watch a packed dance floor ebb and flow to the music, like a tide. It is almost spooky to watch, particularly when the floor is full of mature dancers who have danced as a group for years. The music starts and they wait for a few bars, then, as if by a pre-arranged signal, off they go. If the music stomps along, so do they. When the music becomes lyrical and the beat less insistent, the flow slows and the movements of the dancers become more sinuous, not just as individual couples but ‘en masse’. Each couple is moved by the music but also senses the general mood of the crowd. "
http://www.apassionfortango.com/site/adornments.asp
" I think we do well to remember that, when tango began, adornments were the province of male dancers, who used them to show off, both to prospective women partners and to the men about them with whom they were in fierce competition. Perhaps it is an indication of the seriousness of the problem of successful mating in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th century that we see the behaviour of men resembling that of animals and birds, which display instinctually to attract the female. For a woman to adorn in those early days was considered very vulgar. Tango has evolved, as has the relative power of the sexes. In the same way that it is quite acceptable for women to ask men to dance, in Europe at least, it has become more common for women to dance as they wish and to feel more powerful in the relationship. Sometimes I dance with a woman who is an accomplished leader as well as being a great follower. She enhances our joint pleasure by adornments, hesitations and tensions, but - more than that - she occasionally ‘back-leads’. By this I mean that, without any change in our embrace, or her role as a follower in most respects, she senses where I am and makes a move that dictates the way I dance. She has learned to read where my balance is, where I am vulnerable - perhaps even a little predictable - and changes her response so as to give me a little jolt out of my complacency. Dancing with Dr Sam is a true voyage of discovery and immense fun. She and I can have an intellectual, funny and rewarding tango ‘conversation’ just as we might sit and chat over a glass of wine. This sort of relationship may well have been possible even from the very beginnings of tango between some couples, but, when we hear that in present-day Buenos Aires women still have to wait to be asked to dance, I suspect that it was always rare. This is another reason why I feel that the evolution of tango and its modern, international influences are very much in its interest when we think of its survival. "
---------------------
Kiss & Tango by Mariana Palmer
첫댓글 좋은 게시물이네요. 스크랩 해갈게요~^^