Hi everybody, Fran here with your Tango Tip of the Week. Today I want to make a few general statements about American "ballroom" dancing, and compare it a bit to the "golden-age" Argentine tradition. When Argentine dancers and teachers today disdainfully criticize American "ballroom" dancing for being the antithesis of their own far more creative manner of dancing, what they're referring to in my judgment is what I'd call the new American tradition, not the old -- which, I will assert, was actually very much akin to their own, although in contemporary times very few people remember anything about it.

During the years when I was first learning how to dance (early 1950s), there was still a very robust dance community in this country. In New York City, this community consisted largely of people who had spent much of their lives, dancing as a social pastime at venues such as Roseland, the Savoy, and the New York Palladium. These were not people who only went out dancing once in a while. They were in the dance halls several times a week, if not everyday. And they were very serious about constantly working on perfecting their expertise -- not by taking dance lessons, and not by focusing on such goals as performance (which at that time was looked down upon by "insiders" as precisely the opposite of acceptable dance practice), but rather continually striving as individuals to be the best they could be at the major skill of social dancing.

If this seems reminiscent of the traditional, "golden-age" based social dance community in Argentina, it is because there was indeed a time, when the ambiance of the two communities would have felt absolutely interchangeable to any dance aficionado, visiting either country. Without doubt, the content of Tango was quite different from that of a dance such as American Foxtrot; but the manner of dancing -- the primary focus on lead/follow and improvisation rather than memorization -- was exactly the same.

However, starting in the mid 1950s, the American tradition literally fell apart. In fact, it was quite abruptly usurped by a paradigm, which included rigid adherence to a single model of excellence, along with a severely truncated repertoire of cookie-cutter, memorized "steps" as opposed to creative, improvised movement. Why this happened might be an interesting subject for another time, but for now, I will simply maintain that it did indeed happen -- and the American dance tradition was (in my opinion, at least) fatally altered for the worse.

It is in this specific context that I offer my "Ten Commandments" of American ballroom dance. This is my way of delineating what I think ballroom dance in this country has ultimately become -- not what it once was, and not what it could have continued to be, but what it unfortunately devolved into.

Next week, I'll get back to discussing the individual "commandments" of contemporary American ballroom dancing. In the meantime, if you're curious about the way our dancing used to be, find yourself a teacher who remembers the old tradition, and can compare it with the new. If you're a real student of social dance, I think you'll be fascinated to begin exploring the difference.

The following folks helped set up, break down and clean up before and after the milonga. Without them, there would be no Firehouse Tango.

• ​​​Henry Kim - Rolled Cookie
  
• George Ngo - Pita & Corn Chips
  

• Barbara Lombardi
  
• Bill Auer
  
• George Ngo
  
• Mary Pagano
  
• Bill Krukovsky
  
• Al & Lilian Ko
  
• Richard & Phoebe Abrahamsen
  
• Bob Brillo
  
• Francis & Marie
  
• Eduardo Campos