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