Tango identifications, imitations and fotocopies

edited by Elisabetta Muraca

There’s no doubt that Tango evokes each kind of fantasy for both, it’s dancers, it’s singers or the players too but also for who listens to it or looks at its performing. It’s an artistic expression that doesn’t leave indifferent who’s involved. You can like it or not, it can be mocked as an obsolete cultural product (as a matter of fact it passed a century of existence!), or you can like it till that point to confuse it with your own life… The Tango provokes strong passions in the human heart. Just think about the plenty of Tango Friends lists which populate the web. There are linings up, discussions, taking up of stands, being in favour or against of an event, a style or behaviour… I found myself in a similar situation too: with the article “The new masters”, an article of several years ago, I expressed an opinion about the phenomenon regarding the plentiful blooming of persons (in Italy and Argentina) which proposed themselves as “tango masters”. And better not to mention the favourable or opposite diatribes generated about a dance style. Who knows the background of the milongas porteñas, knows also for sure what does it mean when some milongueros point out “cutting remarks” in case of cocky persons on the dance floor.

We also know the meaning of that hypercritical glances in front of the plenty of exibitions of younger and less young dance couples. Even when someone declares to be a “humble” tango dancer, it’s possible to notice a start of hypocrisy. As soon as you get intimate with someone you can notice how from that same mouth (belonging to that “humble” tango dancer) come out various critics toward the master, the professional dancer or toward another milonguero who dances “only with foreign women for an interest”, or also toward another one who dances without listening to the music and so on …

To a superficial glance it could appear that everyone knows everythimg about Tango and whoever gives an opinion about something is the holder of the “tango-true”. But if we dwell on analizing that emotional reactions, we’ll notice that they’re not much different from a verbal strife between fanatical soccer supporters or from politicians in political spheres, between members belonging to opposite political positions. I mean that the Tango is like a lover or in other words, it’s something or someone that passionates us. And to protect the image which everyone of us has of Tango, we are willing to arouse more or less lighted conflicts. But let’s go back to the emotions that Tango provokes.

Hands up those (budding dancers or simple spectators during a tango performance) who at least for a moment never desired to be the protagonist of that marvellous alchemy of embraced bodies. Who’s the one that never dreamed of being the mainstay of that perfect turn or a light butterfly which rises in the arms of that known dancer; who’s the one who never gave breakneck speed at it’s own imaginary believing to be the protagonist of a tango show on tour…

If this inner visions remain just a fantasy and don’t create frustrations and discontents, we can consider them as a natural nourishment of that healthy narcissism that lodges in each of us. In the matter of what said before, I think it concerned dance-show. But there’s another identification level that becomes more real and possible when we touch the ground (with our feet but in other ways too) and we learn dancing from a teacher who puts us in a condition permitting us not only to “take the field” but also to be able to converse with the partner’s body. In this case it’s obvious that if we start to feel pleasure on the dance floor, we will also want to improve our dance and we’ll be thankful to our mentor for having us taught the abc of this body language. So it’s hardly surprising that initially we want to dance like “she/he”. Subsequently, after having covered innumerable kilometres of dance floor, arrives the moment of pleasure when we create our own style. The process of identification with the teacher is known also in the artistic sphere. It belongs to an experience that touches various dimentions of a person and that in outline we could define as “the learning of life”.

Remaining in the tango sphere, I must admit not to know what happens beween the musicians. Anyway I suppose that something similar happens there too.Just listen to some contemporary formations and you’ll notice that often their style resembles to D’Arienzo or to Di Sarli, or also to Pugliese or to Piazzolla.

There’s no need to marvel, in fact some orchestras a priori declare that their music follows the style of a particular master of the past. And now let’s leave for a while the dance and the music and let’s have a look at the written language. Writing a book about the Tango is another dream of many persons but it’s hard to write newness about that dance as it’s hard to create a new dance-style or music-style. In Argentina it’s been already written a lot about Tango and in Italy is shyly starting to appear a tango-literature. In my case, up till I got in touch with the publisher for writing a pocketbook, I didn’t believe I could be able to do it. Well, I wasn’t conscious of the fact that somewhere in my tango-soul there was the possibility to express with words and to contribute the spreading of Tango in Italy. So, almost for fun or just to venture into a language which I learned as an adult (italian) and whose grammar and syntax I didn’t know, I decided to write that book (see: The Tango. Emotion and life philosophy. Xenia Editions, Milan, January 2000). Writing this book brought me many satisfactions (not economic of course, as I’m not the owner of the royalties). It permitted me most of the times to do interesting encounters (journalists, other writers, dancers, etc…). But it permitted me also to be reached from various persons: like that woman for example, who phoned to my office and fixed an appointment for a psychological problem (which she didn’t mention per phone) and when I met her she told me aggressively: “I wanted to face up the person who wrote the book that I had in mind”. Or it happend also that I had to do with tango organizers who worked on conferences, concerts, festivals, etc asking me to partecipate but after countless contacts and loss of time they got into thin air in the same way they appeared (maybe also in the sphere of organizations of tango events there’s present the contagion of “tango-fever”, with omnipotence fantasy, hallucinations and the belief of having understood everything about Tango).

Unfortunately, in the last period I head a quite bad experience suchlike when you enter your apartment and you find out that thieves came in before you did. Anger, powerlessness; perhaps someone seized dear personal objects! So, thanks to a phonecall of a friend of mine, I found out that I’ve been robbed of the most part of my book about tango! There’s a young woman who roams in the tango-circle, who wrote and also published her degree thesis on an aspect of the Tango (it concerns the geography of tango). About 26 pages of her book are a copy or better to say a photocopy of my pocketbook. And the rest that she didn’t copy from my book, she did it from the books of Meri Lao (maybe one of the few real tango writers currently in Italy). As I said before, it’s difficult to invent new things about Tango. The origins are always the same as well as tango texts. In my opinion, the only valid contribution is the personal revision of the already existing material, a report of one’s own experience or an expression of one’s technical point of view on the different aspects of tango. In my case, considering my profession, more than once I used a psychological lens to comment some tango-texts or to notice behavioural codes of some Milongas. Other persons, according to their professional resources for example, will be able to express a technical opinion regarding tango music, dance or poetry. The “writer” in matter hasn’t only photocopied titles, examples, elaborations and my personal translations, she even seized the descriptions of my experiences as if she did them. You will agree with me that this fact isn’t just a natural process of identification or of imitation but rather a downright abuse. But the girl in question didn’t have psychological skills and she wasn’t able to copy a whole paragraph without to twist its meaning.

The whole thing is made worse because the girl doesn’t even mention my name or the sources (maybe to not denounce herself). She limits herself to mention my name just in the bibliography. Obviously I denounced the matter to my Publisher and to her lawyer. For the moment, after two months that followed the discovering, we managed to get the promise from her Publisher that all the unsold copies are going to be withdrawed. The biggest bother is to ascertain that the Tango is wasted at that superficial levels where there’s a careful skipping out of effort, of constancy, of that slow and sometimes boring work inherent the learning of an art or a technic. In the case of my book, I’m so bewildered of what happened that still today I wonder if the maiden in question mistaked because of extreme naivety (seeing that anyone could compare the two texts) or because of extreme cunning. My poor Maricla, a bit of respect for other people’s work wouldn’t spoil, as it wouldn’t spoil a good dose of sincere humility in those who approach to this rich and generous cultural phenomenon. But thinking well, maybe the Tango survives really because it evokes arrogantly each human passion and lets itself consume from everyone, including the one who take its possesion as it would be their creature.

Elisabetta Muraca, October 2004