Tango y Cultura Popular ® English Edition TyCP Special | Page 39

It may sound exaggerated or conformist , but the simplicity of a well-danced tango , reveals the “ milonguero ” that has stripped all the superfluous load of adornments out , to display his / her elegance and savoir fair .
Beyond fashion and current musts , those dancers ; free from stereotypes and fireworks ; who know how to walk the dance floor , fuse with their partner , and make their footsteps cohere with the music ; exhibit the beauty of the essential . They are the ones that have learned to discard figure trimmings they used to show off in their early times , to keep the essential : elegance , presence , and music comprehension . Wisdom , basically . Just as there are bandoneón players who make a great display of gestures and get a beautiful result , there are / were others like Maffia , or Troilo , who didn ’ t need to do so , to stir people ’ s emotions with their slight movements . Music can be touching , and make our feelings sound with a higher purity than any other type of art . Borges was capable of describing in 10 lines what other writers would take pages . And even though it is not about dancing , I use him as an example of the creative simplicity that some milongueros ; free form the stigma of being original drawing steps in excess ; now give priority to their fine interpretation of music , drawing instead , prodigiously , pieces of timeless wisdom and emotional accuracy . Because they have learned to mature through the path that leads from the unifying flight to the ascetic stillness , form the hymnal fervor to elegiac cadence . Carlos Gavito was the best example in that sense . After dancing for 50 years , he incorporated the pause into his dance and left us this simple but real quote : “ Tango is in between the steps , a pause is necessary for a good walk . As when we speak , we have to make a pause to think ”. And the great Carlos Copes ; who went through all the milonguero phases before he made it to the stage ; was sharp : “ The most important thing in a dancer is elegance . There are some who care more about drawing steps and lose the elegance . In my times , when a guy was doing many figures , we used to say he wrinkled , he lost the normal position a couple must keep while facing one another ”.
Unfortunately , time makes many things vanish , but I keep in my retinae the gang at the Lontana ( bar ), that knew to display their dance , without making any fuss . El petiso Amador and el gordo Agapito were elegant at any point of the trance and the night , making it always so smooth and simple . Others were trying hard to accumulate steps , figures , drawings , an impulse-
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