20. Tango Pt. 3: Vintage

If ice dance tangos can be ballroom and Argentine, compulsory, short-form or freestyle, they can also take their cues from a wholly other source: history. More than seems to be the case with other styles, like waltz or the Latin dances, tango seems to inspire choreographers and skaters to a vintage tribute.

Our source today is the tango that first developed in North America and Western Europe in the 1910s and '20s. In the wake of its introduction by Vernon and Irene Castle, it would be popularized through Rudolph Valentino's performance of an extremely stylized and less-than-authentic tango in 1921's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, set here to that utmost staple of tango, 1917's "La Cumparsita" by Uruguayan musician Gerardo Matos Rodriguez:


Some have observed that this performance is really more of an apache dance, but the identification of it as a tango, as performed by rising star Valentino, was sufficient to raise the dance’s profile further. And so the tango continued along its merry standardized way as a social dance, one performed to contemporary popular music, one increasingly-distanced from its Argentinian roots -- as suggested by this quite staid 1928 film, courtesy of British Pathé:


As demonstrated by Valentino and partner, the dance can have those slinky, staccato steps, but can also take on a livelier, more flirtatious character. It's like the early stage behavior cheekily ascribed to the American Tango style: happy, romantic, and only vaguely uneasy around the other. (Worth noting that the prospect of revisiting a Charleston-era version of tango is not alien to the ballroom world, as demonstrated in this show dance.)

But it's this ur-version of the tango that informed Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir's 2010-11 short dance. The two each described the piece as having a “Great Gatsby era feel.” But here's another twist from the other tangos we've discussed: the program, as required for that season's short dance, was actually constructed around the Golden Waltz pattern.

So with that bit of technical exposition out of the way, let’s get to the root of those “Gatsby era” allusions:


The tango music is indeed of era -- 1928's "Schenkst Du Beim Tango Mir Dein Herz" -- and while we've seen other takes on tango from Virtue and Moir, they have typically come in the form of something more closely related to the Argentine tango, with the force and passion associated. And this is key: we know that they knew, and that choreographer Marina Zoueva knew, how to craft a tango. The choices made here, avoiding much in the way of traditional enganches and boleos, is intentional. Instead, they've taken things in a rather more unusual direction, one which offers up a stagier sort of styling. Where the waltz is a true moment of connection, the tango framing is a narrative device which shares some of the propriety of that 1928 interpretation; there is a self-consciousness that's deliberate, and it feels in line with a sense of embodying a sort of play-acting old-fashioned tango dance: it's an imported, vaguely exotic style adapted for American (and European) society, popularized by an actor. The program's point of reference is a novel. It's far easier to see a reflection of that old British film footage than, say, some demonstration from a South American club.

But Virtue and Moir weren't the only couple to take up the vintage-imbued wango challenge that year, nor even the only Canadians. And this aesthetically vintage tango for Alexandra Paul and Mitch Islam offers up quite a reverse interpretation; instead of setting apart tango as a form of dance-driven plot device, it instead functions as dominant theme, with the waltz itself subsumed by the other dance's character courtesy of a 3/4-time arrangement of "La Cumparsita":


"A Los Amigos," the primary music selection, is a contemporary tango composition, but one that blends well with the traditional piece; tango movement at 1:18 and 2:26 is used to transition into and out of the Golden Waltz and obviously comprises the in-hold segments that sandwich that Golden Waltz. The dance itself is more familiarly Argentine than Virtue and Moir's, but neither was this an entirely foreign notion even in the Gatsby era:


The 1920s rendition may lack the more complex footplay of the style's later twentieth century re-emergence, but there are still elements worth noting for comparison here, like a demonstrably dramatic opening and an early form of the assisted leap Paul executes at 3:26 in the skating performance, seen here at 1:23 -- while the skated leap could also be considered a more refined and foot-intricate form of the salto at 1:06 in Valentino's dance.

And this past season, though music selection ("Con Buena Onda") was entirely modern, costuming -- reminiscent of this 1930 Louise Brooks clip -- suggested another spin on a mid-century sort of vintage for Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier in a tango free dance:


There are nods as expected to Argentine tango movement, such as the pasadas at 2:21 and 2:51 and the sequence from 3:18-3:25, but more central in connecting this dance to vintage tango is its dramatic nature. Tricks like Gilles' pass through Poirier's legs at 2:00 are not tango-traditional, but do contribute to a theatrical conceit, while the opening sequence could remind one of the highly stylized nature of the apache approach.

Given the recent welcome announcement of Tango Romantica- and Argentine Tango-based short dances for the 2018-19 season, our series on skated tango should offer a few relevant previews of routes teams will take; should the secondary rhythm be (as presently indicated) even more wide-ranging than those on offer for couples in that 2010-11 Golden Waltz season, the chance of a more creative take -- tango as story, tango as historical artifact -- is even more likely. But the most pressing question of all: will that bold couple, too, be Canadian? The season will tell.

19. Tango, Pt. 2: Freestyle

For this second entry in our tango series, we'll move away from the structure of the compulsory -- Argentine and Romantica -- tango and move ahead into its looser, choreographed free dance interpretations, along with a quick nod or two to the now-departed original dance.

And as the dance proper goes, perhaps the most useful analogy can be found with Tango Nuevo. The definition of what actually constitutes this concept is muddied -- it can also refer to a style of music used for the dance -- and it's blurry, too, how much this notion of a freer method of instruction, focused on improvisation and the "how" more than the "what" to dance, is itself a subgenre of the tango style. But holistically, it's a convenient framework for the idea of a more freeform take on the tango than that offered by the ballroom world or most traditional forms of Argentine tango, so we'll use this as our touchstone, and offer this "Oblivion" tango -- note the music -- from Claudia Miazzo and Jean Paul Padovani:


Non-compulsory tango in ice dance has most often come as an original dance, such as in the 1996-97 season. The form in that era still suggested some hybrid of ballroom tango attitude and crispness with recognizable Argentine foot play, as demonstrated in this program from Angelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsiannikov, including an enganche at 0:47 followed by a few extended sequences featuring high leg wraps, ganchos and boleos:



So in that alternately theatrical and ballroom-driven ice dance era of the late '90s, a dark, subtle free dance tango was its own kind of nuevo; as the product of young choreographer Igor Shpilband for U.S. champions Elizabeth Punsalan and Jerod Swallow, it was also a sort of foreshadowing of the more freely dance-centered era to come with the institution of a new judging system in the mid-2000s.



It is in many ways a dramatic tango. But it's also a tango that pays much proper heed to its off-ice inspiration, in the kind of ways we've established that compulsories simply could not. Importantly, though frequently more open than permissible in even tango nuevo, its more drawn-out qualities tie it far more closely to the feel of an Argentine tango than the ballroom variant.

And as a leading coach in that IJS era, Shpilband would develop something of a reputation as a tango choreographer, the style proving a particular strength in his side of a creative partnership with Marina Zoueva. This fast-paced but highly intricate "Assassination Tango" for new seniors Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir -- a rare original dance in the 2006-07 season to completely bypass the (Tango Nuevo) music of Astor Piazzolla -- highlights some of those shifts away from the prior decade's more ballroom-crisp take on the style, and a general sense of Argentine feel:


And a tango free for students Meryl Davis and Charlie White in 2010-11 showed some strong contrasts with the stylings apparent in predecessor Punsalan and Swallow's own free; while the references to specific footwork and figures remain, this is a true Golden Age of IJS free, with speed and interesting transitions among the program's primary emphases. The free would develop more polish as the season continued, culminating in Davis and White's first world title, but this early outing, though raw, contains a bit more tango content:


In this post-original dance era, tangos have naturally appeared with slightly less frequency than in previous years, but as a free dance it's proven rather popular among top-ranked couples in the 2016-17 season. And one demonstration in particular pairs a fair degree of intricacy with reminders of the more dramatic, less rushed approach of Punsalan and Swallow's take -- choreographed, coincidentally, by Zoueva:


Next time: The Vintage Tango

18. Tango, Pt. 1: The Compulsories

The tango is so ingrained over nine decades of ice dance that in terms of sheer scope, it's too daunting to tackle as a single post. And so we'll begin instead with the fundamentals of tango on ice -- and progress from there.

It's lent its stylings to two senior compulsory patterns, arisen in five seasons for original dance usage -- and once as a secondary short dance rhythm, one of those topics we'll discuss at another time -- and otherwise functioned as the focus of countless more free dances. Of all specific partner dances, none can be more relied upon to appear annually than the tango.

The Argentine Tango compulsory, and its fellow far rarer Tango compulsory, date to that 1930s spell of compulsory development, as the two-decades-long craze for organized partner dance hit the ice. The Argentine tango proper had in fact become something of an international sensation in this period, making this a reasonably timely adaptation -- though, ironically, concurrent with the dance's temporary decline in its actual South American homeland.

The compulsory dance is meant to emulate its counterpart with "sinuous" quality, "skated with strong edges and considerable elan." It's tough to be sure which specific Argentine tango should best inform a skated pattern; certainly distinctions can be noted just between Argentine dance as a genuine street dance and the polished show style presented by professional champions Flavia Cacace and Vincent Simone:



Yet another example would come via the fairly formalized competitive level of Argentine tango, though such examples as available on YouTube are hit and miss in terms of either video quality or video-friendly dynamism as compared with other types. Regardless, what tends to separate street from stage and floor is that more casual quality; the footplay and ganchos are present, but the hold is a bit looser, the pace a bit more spontaneous. This basic tutorial video covers some primary figures and steps; Wikipedia is useful for a more detailed overview of movements you'll easily recognize.

The Argentine compulsory is strikingly different from the dance by immediate means of its frequent open, non-face-to-face hold; a related lack of footwork interplay also signals the distinctions. But in sections like the interdependent steps from 0:54-0:56 and 1:28-1:31 in this skate from Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, there is some sense of tango's footwork:


But it's a very rare Argentine compulsory that includes a touch of in-pattern embellishment to reference the dance's footplay -- and fittingly, it comes in the last-ever skate of the pattern at an elite senior event:


Watch those feet at 0:53 and 1:28; you won't see those motions in other couples' presentations, and it's no accident here.

The other major tango compulsory, the Tango Romantica, was born of Ludmilla Pakhomova and Alexander Gorshkov's 1973-74 original set pattern dance. No video appears to exist of the dance as competed, but this very early 1980 compulsory outing from Natalia Linichuk and Gennedi Karponosov -- coached, as noted by commentator Debbi Wilkes at the top, by Romantica creator Elena Tchaikovskaia -- demonstrates how significantly the formal trappings of '70s and early '80s era ice dance suggests the feel of ballroom tango far more than Argentine:


While a multiple-compulsory-per-event need for versatile costuming helping to preserve this ballroom aspect well into the '90s, as demonstrated in 1992 and 1996, things began to shift in the IJS era. And by the compulsory's final outing at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, here skated by segment leaders Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, we can see how much the Argentine "feel" had slipped in despite no change to the pattern proper:


Next time: The Choreographed Tango