Customer Reviews

Tango : An Anxious Quest for Freedom

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I'm a tango teacher. I've being teaching tango for 15 years and all my tango students are very happy with this book. From beginners first class to my most advance students.

This book is excellent for those who wish to really understand the physics involved in the dance - the relationship between the leader and the follower. It doesn't waste space trying to teach you figures, nor does it cover music. It is focused and precise on teaching you exactly how to hold yourself and your partner when you dance tango. I highly recommend it for intermediate and advanced dancers.

TANGO an anxious quest for freedom by Gloria and Rudolfo Dinzel, burdened by an editor asleep on the job and unnecessarily awkward and technical language, really challenges you to remain engaged ... a book should not be a struggle to read yet this small 115 page book is; how it speaks gets in the way of what it has to say, at least, for me ... and I do think it has something to say.

Is the destination worth the bumpy ride?? Now, that is the real issue here, isn't it??

There are problems of translation, spelling and punctuation (mostly missing commas) that usually do not affect comprehension but sometimes do but my difficulty with this book goes beyond that. I have, in the past, enjoyed books equally blessed with such challenges but which still retained clarity and engaged me. This book, simply put, just does not do either. Instead, I must struggle to stay on the page. Why? Though I am committed to the study of Argentine Tango, I keep getting about a third of the way through and, then, I "put it aside for later" ... and start again; I keep thinking I will get to the rest of it but, so far, I have not as, each time I try, I find myself thinking that this is a very complicated and murky way to say something very simple such as that one may achieve better balance and pivot more easily if one lands on the whole front of the foot, not the heel, but toes first and with toes active. When I glance through the rest of the book trying to see if it gets better, it seems to get worse and includes a geometric presentation of the dance ... yes, geometric ... very geometric, that is, there are about 3 dozen geometric diagrams using almost every possible geometric shape, with and without human bodies ... fortunately, most of them (not all) are in the third of its five chapters. Sometimes a diagram contains just several bare geometric shapes superimposed on each other. The related texts seem, to me, to become increasingly abstract as the book goes on; this all serves to discourage me as it seems, at times, overly theoretical and yet, not all the time, as there are moments of clarity and plain talk which makes it frustrating. So it is no surprise that being "technical and theoretical" is how the back cover describes it.

Perhaps, if I were in the class of a teacher who loved this book and made frequent reference to it in class enabling me to tie in its abstractions to concrete application, I might love it too ... but I am not. So I am frustrated because, as I mentioned, I do think that this book has something to say. Now whether the destination is worth the ride will depend on your willingness to struggle with it. For me, there were too many times when I had no idea what was meant!! Besides information on the technique, there are other things presented that I like as well such as the discussion on the topic of gender roles ... it's such a mix-up of interesting ideas and and poor presentation.

For me, it does not seem to offer enough, in what I have read so far, that I find immediately practical/helpful in my current attempts to return to Argentine Tango after an absence of several years and that may not be found in more hospitable contexts ... though I must admit I was fascinated by the idea that the posture taken originally by tango dancers was affected by things like riding a horse or the clothing one wore and curious about whether the passive role of women in the dance is really, as stated in this book, a later phenomenon not originally part of the way it was danced. I have read before about the women's steps being influenced by clothing styles that restricted movement but had not come across the idea that the passive female role in the dance might have been a product of its later evolution. This is part of why Argentine Tango keeps evolving and there can be no single right way to dance it that is true for all times and places. I would love to know more about both but this book does not say more about either ... at least not in the parts that I read. This is another problem of this book: it touched upon so many things that wet the appetite but but were not developed enough to satisfy ... but it would have to be very concise, clear and word-efficient to do that in 115 pages and it is not.

The bottom line is that, given what I most need from a tango book at this time, I have been happier with other books such as A PASSION FOR TANGO by David Turner or GOTTA TANGO by Alberto Paz and Valorie Hart as these books are more comprehensive in their approach ... and they are both very clearly written. Both are reviewed by amazon.com so you can easily compare. For a wonderful understanding of the cultural context, try THE MEANING OF TANGO by Christine Denniston.

By the way, if you have not yet discovered Argentine Tango on YouTube, check it out; start with Dario's Tango Guides.

The inconsistency of this book is amazing. It opposes any serious book written about the Argentine tango that I have encounter. I have found that in the introduction tango is presented as a free dance, and after that it comes chapter after chapter with non sense phrases, about how you should feel and all that...

I started to read andI thought that it was something professionally written. I've been dancing for 15 years and I found tons of mistakes on this poorly written book

When I first read the other reviews I thought it was a bashing of the competitors, but I got it and I have wasted my money.

I bought this book on the strength of the first two 5 star reviews. I'm sorry I did. I should have listened to the two succeeding one star reviews. The writing (and tranlation) is embarrassingly bad, full of mistakes and useless pseudoscientific nonsense. What I don't understand is why the Dinzels, who I understand are highly reputed worldwide as dancers, would turn out such junk?

I thought I could at least get something out of the chapter on the history of Tango, but if even this chapter is full of mistakes like the other reviewer wrote, then the book has been a complete waste of time and money.

This is the first time I've written a highly critical review. I've chosen to do so at this time from an overwhelming sense of outrage...

Each chapter is more promise, but no delivery. The book reads like a first draft that was phoned in to the publisher. Is full of mistakes about the history of tango.