Posted: Aug 16, 2008, 10:22 PM CST
In reading the above posts, it seems that most would like the dance( never given a specific name but a generic 'slow-dance' what ever that is...), seems that many would like some sexual excitement; some suggestive 'machismo' indecent proposal on the dance floor to entice the woman's interests off the floor and onto a bed wherein the excited couple can attack each other in gleeful abandon; does anyone do, or even understand the Tango???
The simple bottom line is that the Tango, (from Argentina), is a dance of gender as both male and female parity are expressed in both it's primal and sophisticated emotions. It is a public show of total eroticism.
But if the Tango is a dance of love(sexual hunger), it is also a dance of death. Perhaps the most frequent image of it is that of a sexual duel---open to love but susceptible to death, in which resolution is never quite achieved in the course of the dance.
Starting with even the very film ever devoted to the Tango was called El Tango de la muerta, in 1917, and even Bernado Bertolucci's metaphor for loving and yielding to death in Paris, was Last Tango In Paris, 1972. The ever present concept of a dance macabre fits well with the Tango's ardour. It is seen by many as a near- religious ritual in which fears---even death can be overcome.
The traditional explanation of the tango is that it epitomizes male power in that the steps of the male and female partner are identical and there are no flourishes or caprices given solely to the woman. It is like mutual lust...The female shows no will of her own. Though they may be technically difficult for her,her steps must be performed to give the appearance that they are due solely to her partner's masterful guidance. She is never allowed to to escape the man's embrace and must execute the most complex figures of the legs with her upper body immobile in a stylized, tense embrace, totally overpowered by the male...and yet, the very equality of the steps is , in fact liberating for the woman. The intervention of the woman's legs into the man's stride(especially in any culture prizing phallic masculinity) is a bold departure from the previous pattern of the male's determination of all mobility. The abutting of bodies and forward gesture of the woman's leg also constitute a significant intrusion into the male precent. Even the man's upper body strength and superior height can be compromised by the dance's glides and the parallelism of the male and female body.
The rather blatant sexual themes of the tango as a dance may seem to contradict those of tango as poetry in motion. The man, active to the point of being both physically aggressive and aroused; the woman completely passive at first seems the opposites of the roles designated to the sexes in the tango lyrics and in real life for the most part, but the images of the relationships between the sexes may both be forms of denying fear and timidity in the face of a threat of total failure; a philosophy of bitterness, resentment and pessimism are oriented toward the same liberating goal as that of a danced statement of mutual machismo, confidence in and with each other and most assuredly, that of sexual optimism....I've always loved the Tango.
apologies for the lenth...bored...%)
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