Much gets written about Nuevo Tango, possibly because it is easier to write about the new than find fertile thought in well trod ground, the literary equivalent of cut and burn.
But what exactly is nuevo tango? I’m beginning to get the funny suspicion that I haven’t the foggiest notion as to what it is. I’m even more worried that I may not be the only one. You see there is stage tango, tango fantasia, nuevo tango and performance tango all occupying pieces common ground. All the lines are blurred. I have no image of what a non-showy nuevo tango dance should look like. I’ve never seen a couple dancing nuevo tango in a social setting that didn’t look like a miss-placed performance piece. This is key because if I am to form a proper opinion of nuevo tango I must compare like with like. It is all too easy to criticise nuevo tango if all you’ve ever seen are poor examples.
Another issue is that many of the supposed innovations of nuevo tango already exist in vanilla tango. Furthermore in the time since nuevo tangos inception tango itself has evolved, making up some of the ground that separates it from nuevo tango. Perhaps some of that evolution was inspired by nuevo tango, perhaps it was happening anyway. Either way the newness of nuevo is being chipped away day by day and I’m still left wondering what was it anyway and what was all the bother about.
I think of it as a classification of music rather than of dance. If it sounds electronic or has a loud, explicit, regular beat so it ends up sounding like clubbers’ lounge, I tend to think of it as Nuevo. I also think of it as Nuevo if it just doesn’t seem to make any sense to dance milonguero style to it – true of a lot of Piazzolla, and not only the Piazzolla that gets remixed with a beat.
That makes sense to me, but it’s clearly not how most people think of it, and so it doesn’t help me make sense of the arguments. I think when people shout at each other about it they must have particular moves in mind. For example, I don’t know how they would classify any of Gustavo & Giselle’s performances (other than as ‘show’). And they use mainly traditional music.
Certainly musical styles were a factor in the genesis of nuevo tango. More tango-nuevo than tango-chill (my own classification for electro tango), though. Those Piazzolla and jazz influenced pieces where the dancer gets stranded on the dance floor while the bandoneon wanders off on a five minute solo.
Interestingly, Gustavo Naveira
http://tinyurl.com/5d2rza
& Fabián Salas
http://www.totango.net/salas2.html
both disown the term “Nuevo Tango”.
It’s just Tango or Argentine Tango – it evolves, so last year’s “new” is next year’s “old”.
What was new was an attempt to analyse it into small movements and dynamics, rather than teach an 8-beat basic pattern ?
Musically, Hikona sound quite progressive …
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvg6_ztj_f4
?)