My Tango Diaries

The battle rages once again on Tango-L and Dance-Forums about the ownership and identity of tango. For better or worse, I'm jumping into the fray. With stories like these: - Unesco grants tango World Heritage status: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2009/01/25/tango-unesco.html - Remains Found of Cafe de Hansen -- Famed Birthplace of Argentine Tango: http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=324238&CategoryId=14093 # all eyes turn to the Rio de la Plata. Such attention is great for tango in both countries - and for the tango communities all over the world, but it also sparks the usual debates. Is there an "authentic" tango? If there is, what is it? Who dances it? There are also other specific questions that divide participants in these discussions. To be a good dancer/teacher of Argentine tango, do you have to study in Buenos Aires? Can milongas outside of Argentina and Uruguay ever be anything like the milongas of BsAs and Montevideo? Questions like those can...

Reprinted from Goodreads.com "Because I have no answers to my questions, I tango. I tango because I have to move in the midst of these uncertainties. . . . My first steps in tango taught me about both overwhelming domination and stubborn resistance." The main criticism with the author's style is that she does seem to enjoy her prose a little too much. However, there are few treatments of Tango that are this comprensive (in English, anyway.) She does warn the reader early on that her style may be challenging: "For this reason I speak in bursts, splashes, and puddles, opening windows to what I have expected to be major controversial knots engendered by the justaposition of tango and decolonization." She's not kidding - that's a very accurate description of her style. There were many moments of, "wait, weren't we just discussing something else a paragraph ago?" It leaves the reader wondering if he or she is the intended audience, of if the au...