The New Tango Trades Cheek to Cheek For Hot, Fast Moves
BERKELEY, Calif. -- It still takes two to tango, but young urban aficionados have added some surprising new twists to the tradition-bound Argentine dance.
For most of a recent Saturday night, Homer Ladas staged what appeared to be a program of traditional tango at a small studio here. Locked in tight embrace, dozens of couples gently swirled on the scuffed wooden floor as the sound of violins from the golden age of tango in the 1940s floated in the air.
But by about 4 a.m., it was time for something quite different on the dance floor. With the traditional crowd gone home to bed, Mr. Ladas dumped the orchestra music and replaced it with the sort of modern, bass-heavy dance music that might be played in a hip nightclub. The dancing was different, too: The people in their twenties who remained switched over to a new kind of tango that had them lifting, twisting and ricocheting around the room.
Tango impresario Homer Ladas with his wife and teaching partner, Cristina Navarro-Ladas. The two met at a tango festival.
This is "neotango," a new millennium version of the dance that was born at the turn of the last century in the brothels of Buenos Aires. It's booming all over the tango world.
For years, the very word tango brought images of sophistication and glamour: tuxedoed, rose-clutching tangueros strutting across the floor with leggy women -- tangueras -- in dresses slit up the thigh. But the tango was withering away. A lot of American milongas, or dance parties, were kitschy affairs patronized by an aging and dwindling cast of die-hards who danced to scratchy records of accordion music.
But now, in city after city across the U.S., a new generation of tango dancers is packing the floor again. They swerve and kick, not to the traditional violins of, say, the great Francisco Canaro's orchestras, but to the dub beats of Massive Attack or wailing guitar lines of Jimi Hendrix. Formal wear is out; sneakers, low-rider jeans and halter tops are in.
And the dance itself is different: faster, more fluid and requiring more floor space. While old-school dancers, enjoying simple steps, might press themselves heart to heart, the new version rotates over swaths of floor at high speed. Actually, there are many competing new versions. Some dancers borrow moves and music from electronica, swing and even martial arts.
One popular neotango DJ played gigs in Beijing, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis this summer. Indeed, at Mr. Ladas's Berkeley milonga studio, there's usually a global assortment of partners on hand -- an architect from Berlin; a Japanese woman who helped found the Edinburgh, Scotland, tango society; college students who fly up from Southern California just to dance; even a porte?o, or native of Buenos Aires, or two.
Mr. Ladas, who hosts all-nighters in the San Francisco area and in other cities across the country, is emblematic of the new generation of dancers. A former mechanical engineer in Tucson, Ariz., he saw a flier for tango when he was 27 years old and became obsessed. He took lessons and, soon, 10 hours of dancing a week became 15 and then 20. At an Amsterdam tango festival, he danced for 26 hours nonstop.
But tango remained just a hobby for Mr. Ladas, now 36, until two cataclysms shook up his life -- his mother's death and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, just a day later. He took a leave of absence from his job to teach tango, and he never returned. At around the same time, neotango was growing increasingly popular in American and European dancing circles. It had its roots in the pounding club music, the experimental stylings of a few prominent Argentine dancers and modern fitness regimes: yoga, Pilates, martial arts and capoeira, a Brazilian art form that combines martial arts with acrobatics.
While the traditional form of tango can be highly structured, neotango's early proponents believed dancers had to be free to experiment, and experiment they have.
Mr. Ladas set out to spread the word about the new tango, teaching classes and hosting milongas around the country. In 2003, he and a group of like-minded San Francisco dancers opened the doors to the city's first large-scale alternative milonga. "There was a group of young people who were frustrated who wanted to have more expressiveness in tango," he said.
But when neotango started picking up steam, the passionate tango community divided into cliques as arguments brewed over which kind of tango is best. Even as Mr. Ladas's neotango events have swelled in popularity, some dancers have branded him a "tango philistine" or have avoided his events. The same rifts have appeared in other communities, too. When new-style dancers first emerged in Denver, they were dubbed the "nuevo brats" for causing collisions on the floor with their flashy and sometimes haphazard moves, said Stephen Brown, founding member of the Dallas tango community who has been a DJ at Denver tango festivals.
Traditionalists simply long for the older styles: chest to chest, cheek to cheek, and eyes closed in what is known as the tango trance. "Tango is very close to the heart," dancer Moti Buchboot said. "That makes it really easy for crazy zealots to go in there and say that their style is the style and that's the only right style."
It isn't just the dance moves that are dividing the audience, it's the more beat-oriented music. "Tango requires music with a human breath, and without that it isn't danceable," said longtime Denver teacher Tom Stermitz. But even Mr. Stermitz, who promotes the older, closer style, recently added an alternative milonga to his popular annual festival.
The debate has even come home to Argentina. Tango was repressed there between 1955 and 1983 under regimes that broke up milongas and jailed dancers. Argentine tango went underground. Although it came roaring back to life when several Broadway shows in the 1980s and early '90s, including "Tango Argentino" and "Forever Tango," sparked interest abroad, the music didn't catch up with the times.
When neotango music first emerged, just one club in Buenos Aires would play Carlos Libedinsky's homemade compilation of electronic tangos called "Narcotango." But after spreading it to friends in Europe and North America in 2003, the musician has sold about 20,000 CDs, mostly through word of mouth, and it has become part of standard playlists at several Buenos Aires clubs.
"Many people say that it's not tango. Even I'm not sure -- I don't say that it's traditional tango, of course," Mr. Libedinsky said. "But it's something new, something refreshing. It brings new colors to the music and to the dancing."
It is abroad where the new dance has taken off and gone through endless mutations. Mr. Ladas has been teaching swing dancers to tango. "Swango," anyone? Other East Coast couples are pioneering "liquid tango" and "free tango," among an infinite assortment of names. By whatever name, it proves that, after several decades, Argentina doesn't have a lock on tango anymore.
新探戈时代
探戈还得两个人一起跳，不过热爱探戈的都市青年又给这种传统阿根廷舞蹈添加了一些新的元素。
一个周六的夜晚，何默?拉达斯(Homer Ladas)在一个小型舞厅里举办了一场看似传统的探戈表演。在久经岁月的斑驳木地板上，十几对舞者紧紧相拥，摆出探戈的开场姿势。随著20世纪40年代经典的探戈小提琴舞曲响起，他们舒展开来，翩翩起舞。
然而，到□晨4点钟，轮到新鲜节目上场了。随著普通探戈爱好者的离场，拉达斯关掉交响乐队演奏的舞乐，换成在夜总会常听到的那种重低音强劲的现代音乐。探戈舞蹈也变得截然不同：留下的都是二十多岁的年轻人，他们扭动身体，不时在空中跃起，演绎著一种全新的舞步。
这种舞步叫做"新探戈"，诞生于20世纪末阿根廷首都布宜诺赛勒斯的风月场所，并迅速在探戈界传播，成为新千年的探戈潮流。
多年来，一提到探戈，人们脑海中就会浮现一个经典浪漫的场景：一位身著盛装、嘴叼玫瑰的绅士与一位体态修长、长裙飘飘的女士在舞场上昂首阔步，翩翩起舞。然而，探戈艺术正在不断衰退，参加美国许多探戈舞会的人的年纪越来越大，人数也越来越少，他们舞技 熟但却缺乏艺术深度，在混杂的手风琴音乐伴奏下自得其乐。
现在，新一代探戈的爱好者开始在美国各个城市涌现出来。他们的舞步有踢腿，有旋转，伴奏音乐也不是法兰西斯科?卡奈罗(Francisco Canaro)指挥的交响乐队所演奏的传统小提琴舞曲，而是Massive Attack乐队的动感节奏，或是吉米?亨德瑞斯(Jimi Hendrix)的忧伤吉他乐曲。新探戈也不再身著正装，运动鞋、低腰牛仔裤和短上装成为主流。
探戈舞本身也发生了变化：节奏更快，动作更流畅，也要求更多的舒展空间。传统的探戈舞者喜欢简单的舞步，贴身的姿态；而新探戈舞者喜欢在场地中快速旋转。事实上，新探戈也有很多版本，互比高下。有些舞者从电子音乐、摇摆舞，甚至功夫中寻找舞步和音乐上的灵感。 现年36岁的拉达斯在旧金山等美国城市主持通宵舞会，是新一代探戈爱好者的代表。他以前是亚利桑那州的一名机械技师，自从27岁时看到一张探戈海报后，就不由自主地迷上了这种舞蹈。他报名参加了探戈练习班，一开始每周练习10小时，后来到15小时，20小时。在阿姆斯特丹的一次探戈节上，他曾连续跳探戈26小时不停歇。
不过当时探戈对拉达斯来说只是爱好而已，直到两起灾难改变了他的生活方式--他母亲的去世和随后一天发生的911恐怖袭击。事情发生后，拉达斯请了个长假去教探戈，后来就再也没回去上班。与此同时，新探戈也正在欧美舞蹈界风头日盛。它的灵感来自于迪士高音乐、一些阿根廷著名舞者的实验性舞步，以及现代健身方式：如瑜伽、普拉提、功夫和卡泼卫勒舞(一种把杂技和武术结合在一起的巴西舞蹈)。
虽然传统探戈有非常严格的规则，但新探戈早期的倡导者认为，舞者应有尝试新舞步的自由，他们也正是这么做的。
拉达斯到处传播新探戈的理念，在美国各地传授新舞步，举办探戈舞会。2003年，拉达斯和一些志同道合的旧金山舞者一起举办了该市第一个新探戈大型舞会。"有不少爱好探戈的年轻人感到很困惑，他们希望在探戈中更多地表现自己。"拉达斯说道。
然而，正当新探戈开始蒸蒸日上的时候，其内部阵营也发生了分化，人们形成不同派别争论哪种新探戈才是最好的。甚至当拉达斯的新探戈舞会大受欢迎之际，一些舞者也抨击他是"探戈外行"，或是抵制他举办的活动。其他地方的新探戈社团也遇到类似的问题。达拉斯探戈舞社团创办人斯蒂芬?布朗(Stephen Brown)称，新探戈最初在丹佛市出现的时候，由于其眩目、又颇为随意的舞步有时让舞者摔倒，有人就把新探戈舞者叫做"毛头孩子"。
传统探戈的倡导者依然锺情以往的舞步：胸靠胸，脸贴脸，眼睛微闭。"探戈是一种非常贴近人内心的舞蹈，"舞者默迪?布希布特(Moti Buchboot)说，"这使人很容易疑迷于自己的舞步，并认为那才是正宗的探戈。"
决定探戈流派的不仅是舞步，还有节奏突出的音乐。"探戈需要那种仿佛呼吸一样的音乐，否则无法跳舞，"丹佛的资深探戈教练汤姆?斯特密兹(Tom Stermitz)说。不过，就连倡导传统探戈的斯特密兹，也在他最近举办的年度探戈盛会中加入了新探戈音乐。
这种流派之争甚至蔓延到探戈的故乡阿根廷。1955到1983年期间，探戈被当时的阿根廷政府禁止，舞蹈协会被查封，舞者被囚禁。阿根廷探戈被迫转入地下。虽然20世纪80年代和90年代初几部百老汇舞台剧（如"阿根廷探戈"和"永恒的探戈"等）风靡全球，将探戈风潮重新带回阿根廷，但探戈音乐始终没有追上时代的潮流。
新探戈音乐最初在阿根廷出现时，布宜诺斯艾利斯只有一家探戈俱乐部愿意演奏卡洛斯?里贝丁斯基(Carlos Libedinsky)自创的电子探戈音乐"Narcotango"。2003年卡洛斯将这首曲子交给欧美的朋友传播后，其CD卖出约20万张，大多是通过口口相传。现在，这首曲子已成为布宜诺斯艾利斯几家俱乐部的固定演奏曲目。
"很多人说这不是探戈音乐，我也不是很肯定，因为它肯定不是传统探戈所使用的音乐。"里贝丁斯基说，"不过这种音乐更新鲜，更吸引人，它给探戈音乐和探戈舞蹈注入了新的活力。"
新探戈是在探戈故乡之外萌芽并不断演化的。拉达斯正在教跳过摇摆舞的人如何跳新探戈，并把这种新舞步叫做"摇摆探戈"。一些美国东海岸的舞者也正在尝试"液体探戈"和"自由探戈"，各种新名词层出不穷。但不管名字如何，事实证明，经过几十年的演变，阿根廷不再能够限制探戈的自由成长了。
