{"product_id":"tango-isbn-9781400095797","title":"Tango","description":"In this generously illustrated book, world-renowned Yale art historian Robert Farris Thompson gives us the definitive account of tango, \"\u003ci\u003ethe\u003c\/i\u003e fabulous dance of the past hundred years–and the most beautiful, in the opinion of Martha Graham.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThompson traces tango’s evolution in the nineteenth century under European, Andalusian-Gaucho, and African influences through its representations by Hollywood and dramatizations in dance halls throughout the world. He shows us tango not only as brilliant choreography but also as text, music, art, and philosophy of life. Passionately argued and unparalleled in its research, its synthesis, and its depth of understanding, \u003ci\u003eTango: The Art History of Love\u003c\/i\u003e is a monumental achievement.“Thompson . . . inflames us with his reverence for the form.” –Mikhail Baryshnikov\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Thompson helps us understand the way artistry and ancestry combine to make an art form of the body.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Elegant. . . . Uplifting and timely. . . . Thompson rescues tango from a one-dimensional tristesse, mining in its working-class origins emotions of defiance, freedom, self-control, humor, love, and redemption.\" –\u003ci\u003eForeign Affairs\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[Thompso treats tango as narrative art, literature and way of life. . . .  By extensively tracing the lines of this 'rich suite of moves,' Thompson's work gives a dance started in the early 1900s the weight of a centuries-old form.\" –\u003ci\u003eNewsweek\u003c\/i\u003eRobert Farris Thompson is the author of, among other works, \u003cb\u003eBlack Gods and Kings\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cb\u003eAfrican Art in Motion\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003cb\u003eFlash of the Spirit\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e. \u003c\/i\u003eHe has been a Ford Foundation Fellow and has mounted major exhibitions of African art at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. He is Col. John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, where he is also Master of Timothy Dwight College. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    1.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    TANGO IN HOLLYWOOD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I hear the echo of those tangos\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    of Arolas and Greco\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    danced upon the sidewalk,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    an instant distilled that remains\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    without before, or hereafter, an anti-oblivion,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    having the taste of everything lost,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    and everything regained.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    —jorge luis borges, “El tango,” in El otro, el mismo (1969)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In order to recognize a symbol by its sign observe\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    how it is used with a sense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    —ludwig wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The history of tango tangles with Hollywood. Tango on film is a   chronicle of its own, lurid and strange, mixing dreams and deceptions.   Often a tango augments a star—Rudolph Valentino, Marlon Brando,   Madonna, Al Pacino—not for its sake but for theirs. And the accord with   the tango is always with stereotype: sadness, sex, violence, and doom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This sounds ridiculous and was. But thankfully, in the 1990s, with Adam   Boucher’s Tango, the Obsession (1998) and Carlos Saura’s Tango, no me   dejes nunca (Tango, Never Leave Me, 1998), truer versions have appeared   on the screen. By then the authenticity of Claudio Segovia and Héctor   Orezzoli’s stage extravaganza, Tango Argentino, had cleared the way for   genuine footwork, sizzling like a Pollock on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The trend toward the real article includes the conversion of a major   star of film, Robert Duvall, who makes pilgrimages to Buenos Aires and   frequents traditional dance halls. He takes lessons from masters like   the late Lampazo, Danel and Maria Bastone of New York, and Juan Carlos   Copes, the latter described by Duvall as a “Rolls-Royce without a   speedometer.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A Buenos Aires television special cuts to a dance floor where Duvall   sits enthralled with his girlfriend, studying the moves. Early in 2000   Duvall danced tango for President Bill Clinton and the president of   Argentina in the White House—at the express request of the Argentine   ambassador.On March 28, 2003, Duvall released his own tango film,   Assassination Tango. It had cameo appearances by major tango dancers   like María Nieves, Milena Plebs, Los Hermanos Macana, Pablo Verón, and   Gerardo Portalea. We’ve come a long way from Valentino.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Valentino was the first man to tango on the screens of North America.   His tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) is a celebrated   sequence. Measured against Argentine barrio reality, his moves were a   travesty, but his charm and self-confidence made people notice him. Rex   Ingram, the director of Horsemen, tells us why:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I was attracted at once by Valentino’s face. It was obvious that he was   the exact type for the young tango-hero of the story . . . Rehearsing   the tango Rudy did so well I made up my mind to expand this phase of   the story. I [used] a sequence in a Universal picture I had made years   ago. The sequence showed an adventurous youth going into a Bowery dive   and taking the dancer, after he had floored her partner. I transposed   this action to South America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The account is revealing: Ingram was not interested in tango—he just   wanted to build up his star.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Valentino was no stranger to tango. He had danced it at Bustanoby’s   Domino Room, on 39th and Broadway in Manhattan, around 1913.  Mirrors   around the room magnified his every action. There he learned the style   of the “tango pirate”—ostentatious dipping, holding tight, and above   all bending the woman back, way back, building an image of conquest.  Valentino was fluent in dips and bends, and that caught the eye of Rex   Ingram.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Four Horsemen was the Titanic of its time. Like the Leonardo DiCaprio   film, it had an Italianate lead, and a huge cast and budget. Not since   Birth of a Nation (1917) had Hollywood seen anything like it.  But the   scene the world remembered was Valentino’s tango. John Seitz, the   cameraman, photographed the action on a set filled with smoke and   tough-looking extras, meant to set off the beauty of the stars.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Valentino appears, you see his face laughing; thin lips, hard eyes,   tough jaw. His eyes slit with interest. There is a woman on the dance   floor, Beatrice Domínguez, dancing with a man. Rising in his incredible\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    gaucho\/flamenco attire, Valentino ambles over. He asks for a dance.   Close-up of Domínguez’s face: dancing eyes, moist trembling lips. Her   partner says no. Valentino sends him flying into a table.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then Valentino and Domínguez start to dance. Their costumes are so   heavy—tassels, shawl, dress, carnations, hat, shirt, chaps, whip,   boots, spurs—that initially their motion reads like a ballet between   the Monitor and the Merrimack. Valentino tangos on. Sometimes he holds   out a stiff arm in the fashion of the tango of Europe, sometimes not.   He looms over Domínguez, bending her back, tango-pirate fashion, with a   devastating downward gaze. He is making the world look at him. He and   Domínguez dip and dip again, in a parody of quebradas, Argentine   torsions of the hips on bended knees. A black drinks maté and coldly   regards them. They sway. Another black sips a beer. They dip. Close-up:   their feet in a crossover, Valentino’s spurs flashing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    His features ride the motion like a mask. He is dancing his face, not   the tango. And Domínguez dances her lips and her flowers. Before the   finale, when their mouths almost meet, the gaucho vaunts his full   strength. He picks up Domínguez bodily and brings her back down to the   floor. The bar erupts. They like that. He does it again. Now everyone’s   standing and shouting. Cut.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Valentino conquered the world with that scene. One tango deserved   another: he stalked the floor again in Blood and Sand (1922). His   faux-tango image would linger in films for some time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Argentine dancers are bemused. “When we see someone tango, stiff arms   and long steps, we laugh and call that dancing à la Valentino,” Roberto   “El Alemán” Tonet, a star of the Broadway stage hit Tango Forever, told   me in 1998. Still and all, a distinguished Argentine critic, Sergio   Pujol, admits that “in spite of the fallacy, Valentino as Buenos Aires   type, the success of this dancer-turned-actor is a reality impossible   to ignore.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Gilda (1946), a movie about love and gambling in 1940s Buenos Aires,   was Rita Hayworth’s greatest role. Somewhere in a casino we hear a   bandoneón, but that’s about it for the tango. In 1946 barrio dancers   were creating new steps, but Gilda gives no hint of this. Buenos Aires   is a stage set, midtown Manhattan with signs in Spanish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Valentino haunts Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, the classic 1950   film. Gloria Swanson, in the role of a passé star of silent film,   throws a tango party for just herself and William Holden. The scene is   handsome: two dancers and a tango orchestra, in rich black and white.   It was shot by John Seitz, the cameraman who had filmed Valentino.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Swanson, keeping Holden under the pretense of hiring him as a writer,   hopes to seduce him with the dance music of her era. She will be his   Domínguez; he will be her Valentino. She hires a tango orchestra to   play, endlessly, just for the two of them, in her Beverly Hills mansion   on New Year’s Eve.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Holden appears in a tux. The excitement of his looks and the savor of   the tango overcome her. She tears off her tiara, like a pirate raising   the Jolly Roger, and hurls it to the floor. The camera follows it.   Swanson’s butler (Eric von Stroheim) retrieves it in white gloves. She   rests her head on Holden’s shoulder. Getting the point, Holden looks   worried.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Swanson tells Holden, “Valentino told me: get rid of my wood floor,   replace it with tile.” The camera pulls back, revealing a tiled floor   in octagonal patterning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Holden, the hard-boiled screenwriter, abruptly breaks off and heads for   another party, where he knows a young girl awaits him. Swanson,   irreparably hurt, retires to her bedroom. She slits both her wrists.   End of tango.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Nearly half a century later Wilder would tell Curtis Hanson, after the   latter’s triumphant L.A. Confidential, “Now I suppose you’ll do a   comedy.”  Hanson did: Wonder Boys. Wilder had, too, following Sunset   nine years later with the hilarious Some Like It Hot (1959). Tango in   this film is pure slapstick: while Tony Curtis romances Marilyn Monroe   on a yacht, using an outrageous Gary Grant accent, the camera   cross-cuts to Jack Lemmon, tangoing in drag (to hide from gangsters)   with Joe E. Brown. “You’re leading!” Brown says.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Lemmon and Brown lock hands and move forward, heads in profile, in   European stiff-arm tango style. They also mirror Valentino, bending   each other backward. Brown has a rose in his mouth. By the end of the   scene Lemmon is striking insane gypsy poses. The orchestra is   blindfolded—this spares them the travesty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The misuse of tradition intensified in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango   in Paris (1972). Forget, if possible, the auteur’s ambition to blur art   into pornography and vend it as revolution, with a world-class actor,   Brando, securing the way. Forget the breakthrough promiscuities that   Bertolucci has Brando commit with a smashing ingenue, Maria Schneider.   Forget, as well, expectations aroused by the strange, sensual tango   danced by Stefania Sandrelli and Dominique Sanda in Bertolucci’s   earlier film The Conformist (1970). Forget, if you can, all of that and   cut to a long, famous scene:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Interior: bar, dancing; day\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Jeanne is hiding behind dark glasses. Behind them in the room there is   a small tango contest. The jury, in front of a long table, follow with   their eyes the couples dancing with numbers on their backs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    paul [brando]: You know the tango is a rite . . . And you must watch   the legs of the dancers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    So far so good. Norman Mailer loved it: “[a] near mythical species of   tango palace.”And the setting is beautiful. Vittorio Storaro’s   camera distills a golden light in colonnaded spaces, a light that   illumines intent, moving couples. Gato Barbieri wrote the score. In   sum, we savor a tango nirvana.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But not for long. Bertolucci was out to use the tango, not to reveal   it—to use its fame and its glamour, together with Brando’s, to power a   dark vision.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He causes the camera to glide like a serpent through the tango   contestants, transforming their Eden into hell. Pauline Kael declared   the women “bitch-chic mannequin-dancers.” Somewhere a compliment to   their integrity lies buried in that. To Kael the dancers were   “automatons,” posing with “wildly fake head-turns.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Bertolucci—and his critics—had misunderstood tango hauteur, which, as   the gifted Julie Taylor reminds us, consists of the following: “dancers   demonstrate their skill by perform[ing] like somber automatons,   providing [themselves with] psychic space.”  The root of all this is   black cool. But by 1972 the Afro-Argentine shaping of the frozen face   in tango had long since been forgotten, even among most tangueros.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Bertolucci, in any event, definitely reduced dancers to mannikins. He   turned ritual into farce. It gets worse:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    president of the tango jury: Now gentlemen, ladies, all best wishes for   the last tango!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Note the last phrase. For some this suggested the end of the tango as a   world-class tradition. As if to rub that interpretation in, Brando   drunkenly sashays his way across the dance hall, mocking the   seriousness of the contestants, mocking their moves, mocking their   reason for being. He makes fun of their posture. He falls flat on his   back, like a spread-eagled ape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then Schneider tells Brando she’s leaving him. He chases her, corners   her. She pulls out a pistol. She kills him. End of tango.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Critics rose to Bertolucci’s faux-revolutionary bait. Pauline Kael   pronounced Last Tango equal to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring—not the best   call for someone whose judgments were normally brilliant. Another   critic went so far as to denounce the tango judge, as if she were   personally responsible for the Vietnam War. It was dangerous to be   decent in the 1970s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Norman Mailer, alone among critics, felt uneasy: “Did [Brando’s]   defacement of the tango,” he asked, “injure some final nerve of . . .   deportment.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It did. The damage was not virtual—it was real. Copes remembers, “Last   Tango was the climax of films that ridiculed tango.” People the world   over got the impression in the 1970s that tango was “antiquated and   comic.”  Recalling Wittgenstein’s famous axiom “The meaning of a   symbol is its use,” tango had been defined, unfairly, by mis-use.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Argentine military government of 1972 banned Last Tango, so Buenos   Aires was prevented from making up its own mind at the time. The grim   political reality of the proceso, the dictatorship of the military   junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, in many respects put   tango—and tango criticism—on ice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But things started changing in Europe in 1977. That was the year of   Soldier of Orange (Soldaat van Oranje), directed by Paul Verhoeven, one   of the best European films of the century. It includes a strong tango,   bristling with politics.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This tango was an invention. It does not exist in the memoir of the   Dutch hero of the Resistance upon whose life the film is based. As   Verhoeven recalls, “We were looking for a situation to bring the hero   and the anti-hero of the film together and came up with the tango.”  One model for their dance was Lemmon’s tango with Brown in Some Like It   Hot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “I grew up admiring that scene,” recalls Verhoeven. The other source   was Bertolucci, “but only as a second impression.”  Verhoeven, in any   event, transcended his sources.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Soldaat is the tale of two Dutchmen. Tight friends in school, they   separate after the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi forces in May   1940. One, played by Rutger Hauer, escapes to Great Britain, then   returns by submarine in 1943 to spy for the Allies. The other, played   by Derek de Lint, joins the German army and becomes an SS officer. (He   is eventually shipped to the eastern front, where Soviet partisans   assassinate him.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    De Lint and Hauer meet at a party in occupied Holland. The scene is a   hotel in Noordwijk, a small beach town not far from The Hague. The time   is early 1943. There is a swastika on the wall. The room is filled with   Nazis. De Lint, as if to extend the aura of Hitler’s aggression,   suddenly seizes Hauer. He makes him tango with him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Their dance is war. It returns us, in an odd way, to early days in   Buenos Aires, when men tangoed with men, to practice for women. De Lint   and Hauer break, however, a fundamental rule of tango dancers: they   talk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    alex [de lint]: Quite a disappointment to see you here among these   Dutch Nazis and builders of Hitler’s bunkers on the coast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    erik [hauer]: Why not? It’s war, and it’s a nice party, isn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    alex: I heard you were abroad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    erik: That’s bullshit!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    alex: I heard you were in London.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    erik: You heard wrong. I’m here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    alex: Shame we’re not fighting on the same side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    erik: Yeah . . . a bloody shame.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    alex: In a couple of years the Germans and English will be fighting   together against the Communists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    erik: I don’t believe that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    alex: Well, anyway, we won’t be around to see it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hidden in this dialogue is an odd prediction of the coming of the cold   war. It is clear de Lint is not fooled by Hauer’s cover. One senses,   correctly, that out of loyalty he will not betray him. So their dance   is a mix of friendship and politics, fascism and democracy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Suddenly the two men break into mirrored head-turns. It puts them in   joking relation to their audience—and to tango film history. They’re   citing Some Like It Hot with a dash of Last Tango, pure movie   faux-tango cool. Hauer and de Lint perform appropriately stone-faced.   They are having fun. Beaming, pretty women form a circle around them,   giving them space and approval.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They race up and down, high-spirited males in action. One tangoist   chose evil and will die. The other will live and become a hero of his   nation. But while they are dancing, tango holds back their tarots and   gives a full moment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Tango Argentino, in the mid-1980s, changed the way films depicted   tango, but not immediately. Catherine Deneuve and Linh Dan Pham, in   Regis Warner’s beautiful film Indochine (1992), practice tango to the   sound of a Victrola on a rubber plantation in colonial Indochina. They   dance the European stiff arm. It’s all they know. They laugh as they   dance, savoring the moment. Dan Pham exclaims, “We’ll never get it!”","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44864771752165,"sku":"NP9781400095797","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400095797.jpg?v=1767737783","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/tango-isbn-9781400095797","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}