For fans of both blues dance and ice dance, the fusion concept is both familiar and — perhaps for some in the latter group — occasional cause for consternation among purists. A perfect meeting of worlds comes in the blues tango: the blango.
While blues is a mandatory rhythm and style to be skated by ice dancers in their short dance in this coming season of competition, tango was a supplementary style adopted by many a couple in the short dance’s first year of 2010-11, when waltz served as the mandatory style. The wango, as fans dubbed it, produced in the view of some (including your editor) a few delightfully creative moments, though some expressed little use for such a corruption of waltz.
The blango likely won’t inspire much imitation on ice — swing and hip hop are the only permitted secondary rhythms for this year’s blues short dance — but the category does provide another look at tango’s uses as a fusion dance. Blues clearly dominates in these examples (and many more are easy to find on YouTube!), but the occasional Argentine flicks and turns offer an intriguing interruption to the strict closeness of blues hold, while further reinforcing the relative kinship of these intimate social styles. (And if dance purity comes into question? The “St. Louis Blues” suggests the possibilities for fusion predate even the emergence of the modern dance forms.)
