Another Find From "Tango and Chaos"

From the chapter section: "Cracking the Code"

I finally decided it’s because tango dancers outside of Argentina just aren’t connected to the music. (The milongueros would say they don’t have the music “inside”.) We found that while some of the best foreigners may be dancing to the cadences of tango, they don’t really use the cadences creatively. And more importantly, they tend to do random sequences of patterns and figures. It's as if they're pulling them off the shelf one after another, instead of responding to the music.
The result is that they aren’t really “expressing” the music—at least not in the way of the best Argentines. This poor link between the movement and the music, especially when it’s combined with imprecise technique, makes milongas outside of BsAs feel out of focus. So, ironically, while people outside of Argentina tend to do a lot of big movements and expend a lot of physical energy, their selection of steps has a randomness that tends to cancel out the energy of the milonga. And the result feels chato.


    ME:   So what can we do? Load them is a bus and drive the 5,000 miles?