Paradiso"for the love of tango" "a milonga every Friday evening in its 16th year!!!!: Milena Plebs

Remarkable dancer and choreographer analyzes the current scene and talks about the need to explore new tango dance possibilities, to avoid crystallization.
(Publ. 03-07-2007)

By Laura Falcoff

“It would be good for tango to continue evolving, so that it could stay alive and avoid crystallization of forms,” says Milena Plebs, who, as dancer, choreographer and also as a qualified observer, is interested in how this dance shows itself and changes.
Her view is particularly appreciated in a milieu that recognizes her as the great renovator of the tango dance scene alongisde Miguel Angel Zotto, starting with the creation of the Tango x 2 company – which they shared until 1997.
¿How do you think the development of the tango dance is possible? Along what tracks? I am thinking of how I can do it, or how I can get others do to it through what I write. Wishing tango to keep on evolving, to foster new forms, is not a fanciful wish. What usually happens is that when something new crops up, it soon crystallizes and you can see clones repeating the same sequences, dancing couples who copy each other, perhaps to different music but with the same forms.
In what way? By increasing the value of improvisation as a unique moment from which new forms can arise. What’s your opinion of the tango you see at milongas and the tango you see on stage? Let’s leave aside tango at dance houses, which perhaps is not worth mentioning. Just like it’s not worth mentioning championships, either. As to the question, I think, firstly, that instructors should take a longer time and more effort to explore the many possibilities each dance instance opens up.
Tango is made up of certain elements, certain steps, which can be combined in different forms. Students, and dancers in general –some people know about this, but very few- should be taught that the end of each step leaves the door open to different possibilities. And to those countless possible combinations which your proposal aims at. Usually, dancers are taught blocks of sequences which become very difficult to break up later. You will see dancers, both at milongas and on stage, who, when starting a sequence, do not stop until they end it. That sequence may be formed by, let’s say, ten steps, and each of them gives you the chance to break up the sequence with maybe two or three different alternatives.
A more active approach should be taken when learning to dance tango, rather than a passive one, taking what the instructor gives me or what I copy from a video.
Improvisation is an action in the present continuous, choreography is in the past. Could you expand on this idea? Choreography is present the moment you create it with your partner during rehearsals, when you are searching for steps. Once it becomes settled and is repeated, it is no longer present, it is past. Do you consider, then, that improvisation could, or should, be taken on stage? I do not have an answer to that today. I only speak about things I think about; let debate take place among everybody. What I can say is that dancers who prepare their choreographies must take pains so that their creation will not look too automatic, too fixed…too boring. A very basic and obvious piece of advice to prevent this is to keep your mark, to have the man keep marking movements on stage because the dynamics that arise from this are totally different. I think it’s all about looking for the way to shorten distances between choreography dancing and spontaneous dancing. I’m not saying that you should do away with choreography, but that it should preserve the freshness and organic spirit of improvised dancing.

Interview with Graciela and Susana

Two daring women,Graciela González and Susana Miller in exclusive interview with Carlos Bevilacqua for El Tangauta.

Graciela González and Susana Miller, pioneers in their specialties, share the pride of having developed solid systems to teach to dance and to improve the level of those who have already been initiated. In an environment not used to successful women, both had the courage to get in front of a class and have been for years traveling around the world carrying their ideas. These are not the only things they have in common, as became apparent during the chat they had with El Tangauta about teaching, the female role, the milonguero style and the current tendencies in social dance.
What are the main challenges that you face as dance teachers?

SM: Standing in front of a class is already a challenge. At times there are people that you already know, other times some people are new and you always have to propose something that can unfold in the available physical space and that will be interesting for the ones that know more and feasible for the ones that know less. On the other hand, you have to handle your own expectations as teacher. Before I used to think that people had to learn as in a transfer of terms. If the other person did not it learn it was because I did not teach well. The truth is that each person has a certain psychological and physical structure, which means that he is going to receive information in a different way that others do. Today I believe that one is an agent of information, someone that has to transfer that information without pushing the student.

GG: I still feel the challenge of people that comes to my class thinking: “You are a woman, let’s see what you can teach me?” Until that anxiety subsides, I find it difficult to determine how to get to them. The last time I went to Russia, for example, at the start I was asking myself with a certain anxiety:
“How do I begin, what is the Achilles heel of these people?” It is the extra pressure that I feel for being a woman.
SM: That has to do with the fact that it used to be that those who taught tango were men, who also explained the female role. The woman as a dancer did not have a say. Being a woman and taking charge of a class is something relatively new.
GG: Therefore we were both branded transgressors then, because we began to stand out, each one in her discipline, as women. We had organized with Martha Antón and Veronica Alvarenga a práctica at La Galería. The women that came because they had read the flyers would say: “Oh, but… there are no men teaching? Then I will not come”.
SM: People that are a little sharper discover that as women we have in our bodies a perception that the guys don’t have. When you have danced with many good dancers, you gain a lot of experience in your body on what is good and what is not. Then, it is not that we know in spite of being women, but because we are women!
GG: All of that we have in our corporal memory and we work with it.
What is the most difficult part of the female role?
GG: Think not (laughter).
SM: I agree. It destroys a cultural guideline of the last decades that established making decisions as part of the female role. The woman arrives to tango with very little innocence. Suddenly, in tango she has to respond instead of acting in the first place.
GG: It is no coincidence that there are so many people dancing tango. It takes you back to an impressive clarity of the roles. Women have essentially a receptive energy. It is only because we have to go to work to pay the bills that we transform ourselves into much more active agents. As the woman accepts her naturally receptive energy, she is going to dance better. What is the origin of the milonguero style?
SM: I did not live it, but protagonists of the tango of the 40’s and 50's say that when they went from the neighborhood clubs the to smaller dance floors they developed a more compact dance, pushed also by the anonymity of places with less family groups. But beyond the name that I called it, I did not invent anything. What I did was to try to understand within a system what the milongueros that danced that style did.
GG: Milonguero is one of the many tango salon styles that have to do with the differences between neighborhoods and spaces. I believe that that name arose like a marketing tool, something that was sold. Because all of us, who dance at milongas, are milongueros. As for the style of dance in itself, in some moment it was promoted like the only one that was danced in Buenos Aires, which is not true either. Today it is already a label and, as such, one must accept it.
SM: But this is what people do to try to understand something complex. I don’t believe either that it has been the only way in which tango was danced in Buenos Aires; I have never believed it. It is true that the denomination is inexact because it does not encompass the guy that goes to a milonga and does not dance the style that I teach. But when I began to teach, I had to differentiate what I did in some way. I could have called it “Josesito” but, who was going to understand that?
GG: Before it was called Tango de Confitería. More than a name, it turned into a fashion and a monster. With this I do not want to be pejorative. On the other hand, some fashionable postures limit the mobility of the two members of the couple. Many times the man has to bear an enormous weight because the woman crosses her left arm in diagonal on his back.
SM: I believe that the form of embrace does not influence the difficulty of moving someone. It is true that in tango many things are done because of fads but I opt for not resisting too much because these are phenomena will affect you anyway. Obviously, you don’t have to accept every new thing but inevitably you will imitate, because in order to preserve a principle you have to keep updating it. When I began, the embrace was not so closed, I closed it more and later people were also creating on their own.
GG: I do not agree at all with that kind of embrace. It bothers me a lot and I suffer each time that I travel, because I imagine how the men that are embraced like this must suffer. In the last World Championship I could not see the number of the competitor on his back because of the embrace of the woman. Besides the elegance in the alignment of the shoulders is lost.
SM: It seems to me that we speak of specificities of different styles. I do tango milonguero and she is more eclectic. She is right in her context but to understand my perspective one must leave that context.
Can being an example to so many students be dangerous?
SM: As children when they grow, students begin their development by copying. If I go to the class of Graciela, first I want to understand her concept to take it and to try to mechanize it. Life later puts you in a different place. To the extent that you dance, you take distance from the paradigm and break with the model that you had.
GG: I believe that being an example is positive during the first phase. It is inevitable to copy, but the attitude you assume while teaching has a lot of influence. I feel that I can teach you to a certain point, from which I tell you: “Go learn with this, and this and this teacher”. Besides, nowadays the time that the student takes to learn is minimal. There are so many teachers that they make themselves dizzy going from one side to the other and they end up not learning any style. At the same time, there are teachers that generate a kind of sect, recommending that their students do not go to other classes. And on the other hand, there are teachers that, because they don’t explain well what they do, generate clones, students that only copy the form but cannot be analytic.
How do you continue learning?
GG: I continue taking classes. The last one was a seminar of technique for women that Milena Plebs gave in Cágliari.
SM: I continue learning in different ways, although I do not usually take classes. I work with one or various milongueros; I film them and study their language. The last class I took was with Carlos Gavito, that turned me inside out and every once in a while I give seminars with certain male dancers, which nurtures me a lot. I think that the study of tango is like that of golf. It is somewhat complex, but so pleasant that one does not regret the difficulty. And it is a road without end.
GG: I agree. Many of the new teachers, on the other hand, print their business card and from then on they do not take any more classes. In the seminars of technique for women that I give at El Beso many times I am the only Argentine. The Argentine does not take classes and is not because of the prices. When I began to dance, I worked in another area and left almost my entire salary to Antonio Todaro to take his classes. I don’t see in the Argentine that effort to improve. There is a minimum effort mentality that says: “I have been dancing for three years, I learned two or three steps, I have a good embrace and a good perfume… I am off to Europe!”.
In what direction is tango evolving? Are there other tendencies?
SM: There is a positive aspect: we lose in depth but win in latitude. 20 years ago we were just a few, today tango is a universal phenomenon. If I do not want a movement to die, I have to allow that a kid that does not have a lot of experience also goes out to dance, although it lowers the average quality of the dance.
GG: Of course massiveness is positive. But one must remember the codes of the dance floor, which are being lost. It depends on all of us (and particularly teachers) that the dance floors become again at least minimally organized. Predicting the future is impossible, but as long as the need of contact, of encounter and of embrace continues, tango will go on existing.
Profiles:
Graciela González was the first to offer a seminar of technique for women, in 1994. At the beginning of her career, she partnered with "Pupi" Castello. Shortly afterwards, she developed her own teaching method and created a network of teachers that became internationally known as the Graciela González Group and that lasted until 2000. She has taught many of the current teachers and well known professional dancers. She is one of the main proponents of tango salón and teaches in Argentina and abroad.
Susana Miller was pioneer in the study and systematic transmission of the close embrace style (or apilado, christened by her as "milonguero"), for which she developed a codification of movements that up till then had only an empirical projection. She is the creator of La Academia, a dance school that today she directs next to María Plazaola. Many of her former students have been teaching for many years while she continues forming new lovers of this style in Argentina and abroad.
•Copyright © El Tangauta 2007

Comments from Irene Ho

Toronto is very lucky to have the opportunity to learn from world caliber teachers and performers like Elina and Ramiro - there are some spectacular videos on YouTube of their performances. There are some videos of them dancing milonga and tango taken at Salon Canning on YOUTUBE. It is so important for the tango community to support dancers like Elina and Ramiro who are keeping the traditional elegance, connection and musicality of maestros such as Puppy Castello and El Turco Jose alive. They are the real deal.
Thanks Paradiso for bringing DJ Richard Lipkin to Toronto for a special milonga! Milonguero and Maestro Senor Alberto Dassieu, who visited New York over the summer, told us that Richard Lipkin is one of those very rare DJs outside of Argentina (another is DJ Yesim) who can actually recreate authentic Buenos Aires milonga atmosphere with their music. We're really looking forward to these exciting events!

TANGO ETIQUETTE

These interesting blurbs were discovered on a website of one of the tango communities in US. We decided to post it here because, obviously, it is all about how to enhance our tango experience, and when it comes to that, every little bit helps:
Personal Hygiene
“Two to Tango”: everybody heard this expression. But only to us, tango dancers, people who actually engage in this activity, this expression makes sense beyond just a catchy phrase. Tango is a dance famous for its sensuality – because when one dances tango, one has to have all his/hers senses sharpened and refined in order to become the best possible dancer. We talk a lot about musicality (hearing), ability to connect with the partner (touch), ability to navigate on the floor (sight). But it is very rare when people speak about personal hygiene – something that becomes very important when people dance together very closely. At the dawn of the humanity, for our primitive ancestors, sense of smell was just as important as hearing, seeing, touching, etc. Maybe we don’t use it now as much – we don’t need to “smell out” where is the food cooking or from which direction the enemy is approaching. But we still have it and it can still be a source or pleasure or discomfort. Using my own experience, I can say that dancing with somebody who is careless about his/hers personal hygiene is less than satisfying: in fact, it can be overwhelmingly unpleasant. One can have a very personal view on cleanliness but, if this one decides to let somebody into his/hers personal space, one should be a good host and think about what might be pleasurable (or otherwise) for the “guest”. In other words, I don’t care how one smells when going fishing or going shopping – please wear clean clothes and smell nice when I am dancing with you! Anybody can sweat from time to time – from overheating, from heightened physical activity, from nervousness – but try to make it an exception rather than a rule. Being “generally” clean (i.e. “I showered today”) and smelling clean is not the same. So, please use antiperspirant (better than deodorant because it prevents perspiration rather than just masking the odour of sweat)! Wear clean clothes and bring a spare if you worry about getting sweaty. If you come after a long day at work, please consider swinging by your house or the gym to take a shower and change or just bring the antiperspirant with you and apply it in a bathroom. If you want to freshen up, modern facilities are available almost anywhere where people dance or exercise.Ladies! While your partners might greatly appreciate how wonderful you look in that little black dress or a sleeveless top and might not even think of it first – please don’t leave the white antiperspirant residue on their jacket sleeve! Use one of those scientifically advanced “clear” products. If you use some fragrance, please use it sparingly. Some people have a problem getting up close and personal to somebody who is wearing a heavy fragrance. It is especially unpleasant to walk away from a dance floor smelling like a perfume you didn’t like in a first place. While personal preferences should be respected, over-use of any product is a sign of poor taste. While you might not have your tooth paste and tooth brush with you, it is always possible to pick up some gum or breath mints in anticipation of a gallant conversation with your partner between the dances. If you have a cold, flu, or stomach bug, please stay home and get better before coming back to dance! Tango is guaranteed to pass your bug to several other people. Wash your hands or use Purell frequently.

What if a dance is an intolerable ordeal?

Once you accept an invitation to dance, it is your responsibility to grin and bear it for the duration of the dance even if your partner tries your patience. Your options are to drop your partner (politely) before the end of the tanda or to tolerate the situation with grace. Whatever you do, try not to frown too obviously and by all means don’t roll your eyes or make faces at your friends. Other potential partners will notice your behaviour and are sure to wonder if you do the same thing while dancing with them. Try closing your eyes or putting on your patient face until the ordeal is over. One of the pet peeves on a dance floor is the “improvised tango lesson”: it usually happens when a more experienced dancer is dancing with a relative beginner and is trying to quickly “upgrade” his/hers skills to make their own dance more pleasurable and less taxing. This is an unacceptable behaviour: accepting an invitation to dance or inviting somebody means that you want to dance with this person – no more, and no less. If you are so concerned about your potential partner’s proficiency in tango make sure you don’t make any rush decisions. Any self-respecting tango dancer will look around the floor first, making an observation of how people dance and assessing their potential compatibility as dance partners before asking somebody or accepting an invitation to dance. If you want to dance with people for any other reason – because somebody is cute/handsome/blonde/brunette/has a mustache/has a low cleavage etc. – you surely don’t not care if this person can dance tango well. So, don’t try to teach anybody on a dance floor: there are teachers who try to do that on your behalf in class. (Also, you might not be so qualified to teach yourself...) Teaching somebody during the milonga impacts the traffic and flow on a dance floor. This type of behaviour is considered downright rude by milonga standards.

Comments from the tango list by a follower in Buenos Aires about shoes

"No we don't wear lower heels because we know everyone. We wear them because that is what is best to dance in. Dance sneakers? Not on our feet. Do you think Argentines making 1200 - 1500 pesos a month rush down to Comme il Faut to buy 350 peso shoes? Guess again. Who is buying all those shoes? Not people who live here. Somehow there is this ideal that in Buenos Aires the women all dance in Comme il Faut or Neo Tango shoes wearing tango clothes. What are tango clothes anyway? We dress nicely. We dress simply. We dance simply. No 12 inch strappy heels, fishnets, cocktail dresses or slit up to thigh skirts. No boleos, no volcadas. Walking, giros, ochos. Less stress. More fun."

Paradiso"for the love of tango"

"a milonga every Friday evening in its 16th year!!!!

PARADISO-in its 16th year of Friday Evening Milongas
"for the love of tango"

Toronto tangueros and tangueras thank

MILENA PLEBS

for an outstanding workshop and

a marvellous performance with

PABLO PUGLIESE!

THANKS TO 2 GREATS OF TANGO!

Brief Explanation of Salon Tango & Milonguero Tango from the Tango List

Milena Plebs Analyzes Current Scene

Susana Miller & Graciela Gonzalez

Interview with Graciela and Susana

Comments from Irene Ho

Ana Padron & Diego Blanco

Ana & Diego perform in Italy

Tango Links of Interest

TANGO ETIQUETTE

Blog Archive

Comments from the tango list by a follower in Buenos Aires about shoes

About Me

Paradiso"for the love of tango" "a milonga every Friday evening in its 16th year!!!!

PARADISO-in its 16th year of Friday Evening Milongas"for the love of tango"

Toronto tangueros and tangueras thank

MILENA PLEBS

for an outstanding workshop and

a marvellous performance with

PABLO PUGLIESE!

THANKS TO 2 GREATS OF TANGO!

Brief Explanation of Salon Tango & Milonguero Tango from the Tango List

Milena Plebs Analyzes Current Scene

Susana Miller & Graciela Gonzalez

Interview with Graciela and Susana

Comments from Irene Ho

Ana Padron & Diego Blanco

Ana & Diego perform in Italy

Tango Links of Interest

TANGO ETIQUETTE

Blog Archive

Comments from the tango list by a follower in Buenos Aires about shoes

About Me

Paradiso"for the love of tango"

"a milonga every Friday evening in its 16th year!!!!

PARADISO-in its 16th year of Friday Evening Milongas
"for the love of tango"