Language Classes, 12/20

[game-of-you.livejournal.com]

Written on the blackboard:

LAST CLASS -- Please hand in your final projects

There is a basket on Dream's desk to collect the papers; next to it sits another basket, full of red-and-green wrapped Christmas chocolates. Dream, now free of the plague of balloons, leans against the blackboard with his arms folded. He manages a smile for each student as they hand in their papers.

Comments

Re: Cat, 12/20

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"Look at our tango dancers - they are addicted. There are few of them, but they do it with heart. Tango is life for them. I am tango, tango is me. It looks like Tango is a dangerous thing. It offers the real world of human relations in contrast to fake world of books, ads, media, TV, actors acting like politicians and politicians whose best strategy is acting like clowns," Says Igor Polk, tango and flamenco dancer, on the obsession that is Spanish dance. The two dances are often confused with each other by those outside Spanish culture, but in truth, they are very different.

According to Polk, Flamenco originated from "Greek psalms, Mozarabic dirges, Persian melodies, Gregorian chants, Castillian ballads, Jewish laments, African rhythms", and gypsy (they came from India) dances and music. Tango developed upon Spanish culture, spiced by Italian melodies, German Waltz, African rhythms again, and some American Indian influences.

Flamenco means "Peasant without Land". This is related to the huge amount of Ethnic Andalusians who decided to stay and mix with the Gypsy newcomers in Spain in the eighth century instead of abandoning their lands because of their religious beliefs. It was in this socially and economically difficult situation that the musical cultures of the Moors, Jews and Gitanos started to form the basics of flamenco music: a Moorish singing style expressing their hard life in Andalusia, the different compas (rhythm styles), rhythmic hand clapping and basic dance movements.

Tango, by comparison, originated in Buenos Aires during the late 19th century. The music derived from the fusion of music from Europe, the South American Milonga, and African rhythms. The word Tango seems to have first been used in connection with the dance in the 1890s. Initially it was just one of the many dances, but it soon became popular throughout society, as theatres and street barrel organs spread it from the suburbs to the working-class slums, which were packed with hundreds of thousands of European immigrants. English Tango evolved mainly as a highly competitive competitive dance, while the American Tango evolved as an unjudged social dance with an emphasis on leading and following skills. This has led to some principal distinctions in basic technique and style.

So, both dances developed among working and lower classes, and became national and cultural icons within a few decades. Tango is a lead-follow, action-reaction dance, a conversation between pursuer and pursued; flamenco is a single-person show-dance, of steps and rhythm, challenging the audience. Similarities in outlook would be expected, since they have roots in the same music, and the same kinds of sources-- but the dances have very different purposes as means of expression. Just as languages evolve pidgins and creoles, music and dance within a culture also evolve with distance and time.