Uh-oh, Neotango exposed to mainstream America on Wall St. Journal's front page, 8/29/05:

The New Tango Trades Cheek to Cheek  For Hot, Fast Moves
Heavy Beat, Lots of Twisting Draw a Young Crowd; Mr. Ladas's All-Nighters

By KIM-MAI CUTLER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 29, 2005; Page A1

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 porteño, 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 like Baltimore, 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.
-------------------------------------------------------

Even during Saturday night's "practica," while perfecting spins, turns and leg hooks, participants at Baltimarathon, a weekend of Argentine tango lessons, dances and workshops, surrendered to the dance's alluring cues.

A crew to tango
The sultry Argentine dance draws a crowd to a weekend marathon where the moves are being adapted to new music.
By Stephanie Shapiro/Sun Staff - September 13, 2004

The lights had not yet dimmed; men and women had not yet changed into their sultry tango finery for the all-night milonga - or social dance - that would follow. Already, though, couples, transported by the music's mounting intensity, were gliding across the floor - the women with their eyes closed - intuiting one another's most subtle dance desires.

Oleg Gnedin, an astronomer who recently moved from Baltimore to Columbus, Ohio, returned for the marathon. He had studied other forms of partner dancing, but it was tango that captured his mind and emotions. "It was the most exciting and the most passionate dance I experienced," says Gnedin, 32, who met his girlfriend, attorney Nicole Papa, at a Baltimore Tango practica.

Tango is a tempest with manners, a controlled way of moving simmered down to its sensual essentials. Today, the dance form, which first emerged in 19th century Argentina, is blazing a trail through dance communities around the world, borrowing from musical genres and styles of movement as it does.

Like other resilient art forms, tango has reinvented itself while remaining true to its origins. Called "alternative," "found" or "neo" tango, this edgier new style can be performed to world music, Led Zeppelin, electronica, disco, even Eminem, if the beat is right.

Tango's changing dynamics parallel social changes at large, says Sharna Fabiano, who runs NeoTango Productions, a dance school and tango clearinghouse in Washington. In traditional tango, men lead and women follow. Clasped in what is called a "close embrace," followers had little room to express themselves on the dance floor. Today, as women enjoy more egalitarian status off the dance floor, tango has adopted the "open embrace," which allows for broader movement and greater creative choices for both dancers.

"Now it's the beautiful idea of partnership - with a different idea of partnership," says Fabiano, who, as the practica's chosen DJ is busy mixing traditional and adventurous new sounds.

Established two years ago, Baltimore Tango has swiftly become a community of ardent dancers who are known to hold impromptu "guerrilla" milongas in unlikely spaces, such as piers and church halls, throughout the city. With little or no notice, they slap down a portable dance floor, flick on the boombox and tango to their hearts' and minds' content.

Under the instruction of Tova and Carlos Moreno, a young couple who came to Baltimore from Seattle, the group not only learned how to dance the tango, but how to survive after the couple moved to Boston last year.

"They studied tango communities in other cities and avoided their hierarchical snobby [attitude] by making a network of people who would do different jobs - dances, practice session, bring in teachers, Web site, and it worked," Baltimore Tango member Marty Katz says.

The Morenos presented Baltimore's first tango marathon last year, and returned for this year's event, held in conjunction with Baltimore Tango on the Catonsville campus of the Community College of Baltimore County. There, about 150 dancers converged for workshops such as "Elasticity and Looseness" and "Poses, Pauses and Reflexes," a tango garment and shoe swap and three milongas, one of which lasted until 4 a.m.

Carlos, a burly former wrestler, and Tova, a 27-year-old costume designer, are sticklers for style in a dance of infinite variations performed to a "walking beat." But they also love to "tell tango jokes on the dance floor," in the form of an unexpected move, or by "breaking the rules" with a wiggle of the shoulder or behind, says Carlos, a 26-year-old doctoral student in biology at Harvard.

"A good dance follows like a conversation, rather than a monologue or a dictatorship," says Tova, who has a ballerina's lithe carriage.

During the practica, the Morenos move from dancer to dancer, adjusting a stance, demonstrating a dance element. Here and there, a couple stops to discuss their progress. Some couples take minuscule, perfectly carved steps and scarcely appear to move. Others sweep dramatically across the entire floor under the lead's invisible guidance. Those in a close embrace assume a timeless, dignified posture, while dancers in an open embrace occasionally favor some moves common in swing dance. A woman, prompted by her partner, wraps her leg around his. And when the music stops, a tango sixth sense allows them to finish in a beautifully arranged pose.

"In tango, it's all about connection," Gnedin says. "You can lead your partner without touching her at all. ... It's physical and also mental. You have to be interested, not necessarily in your partner, but interested in dancing with your partner. You feel that connection through your brain, also."

The weekend marathon drew scientists, acupuncturists, bankers, teachers, doctors, artists and others who readily admitted that most of their free time was spent in the pursuit of tango nirvana. Several had just returned from a field trip to Buenos Aires led by the Morenos, where they also danced day and night.

When Beth Weber, an actress and legal secretary who lives in Baltimore, first saw a television ad for the dance troupe Tango Argentine years ago, she was transfixed. "I had to do it," she says. People often assume that the tango is popular because "it's sexy," says Weber, 43. "That's not it. It's beautiful. It's creative. The music is beautiful and in a way [dancing the tango] can be almost like a little game. You don't know what the lead is going to get you to do."

The event also brought Boston instructor Hsueh-tze Lee, who was a biology professor at Wellesley College when she gave it all up to teach tango. Tango's best qualities - its spirit of improvisation and its insistence on communication between dancers - are what's best about life itself, she says.

As the practica draws to a close, Fabiano and Homer Ladas, a San Francisco practitioner known for his "organic tango" philosophy, take to the dance floor.

Fabiano and Ladas move fluidly. With his support, she pivots endlessly on the toe of one red high heel shoe. Taking wide, backward slides around the floor, their moves are elegant and leave no wake, like those of divers who slip into the water without a ripple. Tango is "another deep exploration that you can take to infinity," Ladas says. "That's what we've done. It's become our lives."