Ich habe den Artikel von Thomas Kröter über die Meinungsverschiedenheiten in Bezug auf Tango / Neo-Tango gelesen, and hier kommt mein Kommentar... aber ich muss auf Englisch schreiben :)
If I am reading this right, Elio Astor, the other party in the debate, claims that Neo-Tango takes the movements and bodily expressions of Tango but discards the musical heritage.
Thomas says, I think, that the future of tango is tango, and only tango, meaning, perhaps, that the contemporary popular music genres, be it Rock, Pop, Hip-hop, or Drum-and-Bass, cannot possibly be the future of tango. His claim is that the tango music evolves and can be alive in this epoch, too. That it is not bound to the Golden age era.
I could be wrong about this, given the serious limitations of my German reading comprehension, and encourage Thomas to respond if I am mis-quoting him here.
My - tentative - feeling is that the Neo-Tango community is going too far with their rejection of the classical tango music and that the bodily expressions cannot be divorced from the music and live happily ever after. Ultimately, the non-tango music must provoke and inspire non-tango movements.
Second, music genres are subject to evolution and if we can have contemporary blues, we can have contemporary tango, too. You don't have to read my blog to know that it is, indeed, very much alive.
What I am not objecting to is to what the Neo-Tango people are doing: if they want to dance tango movements to Rock, Pop, or Hip-hop, I totally support that and send them all my love.
Debates like this one are healthy and needed. Whatever the arguments are, the fact that the people involved are willing to make them and listen to each other is encouraging. Let's identify the barriers that are separating us and tear them down! After all, all we want is to have a good dance... and if we differ in how we want to do it and to what music, I think these are merely technicalities.
Right?