[Tango-L] Community Expansion Brainstorming

[Nina Pesochinsky]

At 07:22 AM 12/2/2006, Janis Kenyon wrote:

>I would rather be dancing where there are 20 highly skilled dancers (Lo de
>Celia in the afternoon) than on a crowded floor like Nino Bien on a Thursday
>night that is 50% or more tourists.

Agreed and not agreed, but it is really a personal choice. Skilled 
dancers are not everything.  I can sit for hours, enjoying the music 
and the people, get up once for an tanda of what to me is an amazing 
dance experience with a very special dancer (who does not have to be 
old or Argentine), and then leave feeling that the milonga was worth it.


>The milongueros make it a milonga, not
>the collective energy of the dancers.

This I disagree with.  This says that we will no longer have milongas 
when all the milongueros are gone.  New people do not qualify for a 
term milonguero because they have jobs and lead lives that are 
focused on other things than passing all of their free time at the milongas.

>Essential ingredients for a milonga begin with a good floor, sound system
>and a DJ who knows how to program the right music.  Then add dancers, stir
>gently and see how it turns out.

This I disagree with.  I believe that the essential ingredient is the 
VALUES of the people who are present at the milongas.  This includes 
the DJ, the organizer and the dancers.

When the system of values between the local dancers and the visitors 
is vastly different, those who are in greater numbers set the tone of 
the milonga.  I believe that the value systems of Argentine people 
who dance tango, and I stress "Argentines, who dance tango", and the 
value systems of North Americans and Europeans are not only 
different, but often divergent.

The tourists come to Buenos Aires for a limited amount of time.  They 
often feel pressured to dance, dance! in order to make the trip worth 
the effort.  This brings anxiety to any event where people who value 
quantity of dancing are present in great numbers.

Personally, I prefer one gorgeous tanda to an evening of mediocre 
dance and personal experiences.  But I dance for almost 12 years and 
I work in dance professionally, so I feel quite jaded.  Beginner 
dancers need quantity.  They need a safe place where they can acquire 
mileage on their legs and movement.

I think that it is also a system of values that effects the issue of 
communities outside of Argentina being over-focused on growing the 
size of the community and attracting new people vs. focusing on 
quality of the dancers.

I think that Neil was right when he wrote that the focus on quality 
is almost non-existent and that people do not try to model their 
events on the milongas of Buenos Aires.  I thought long and hard 
about this because I have been involved in building a tango community 
here for almost 11 years.

When we were beginning to dance, there was nothing outside of 
Argentina with an exception of Berlin and maybe a handful of other 
tango communities around the world.  There was nothing in the United 
States other that the Stanford Tango Week (Thank you, Richard 
Powers!).  Daniel Trenner began to bring tango to different parts of 
the United States.  He truly is the Pied Piper of tango!  He brought 
the dance and the stories.  He was originally interested in contact 
improv, and so the improvisational nature of tango captivated him and 
he focused on the intense connection that the dance required.

People who became captivated by the dance at that time, all wanted to 
go to Buenos Aires.  The milongas of Buenos Aires were an enchanted, 
magical world.  People were hit in their emotions and 
sensitivities.  Those who went to Buenos Aires at that time, came 
back transformed.  We were not the people we were before.

I do not believe that this happens now at such a high rate.  Back 
then, the milongas of Buenos Aires had no foreigners.  Those of us 
who danced tango were freaks by all "normal" standards.  So when we 
came to the milongas, we were in a great minority and had no trouble 
getting lost in the crowd.

We saw pure Argentine milongas, that is without the influence of 
attending foreigners.  Tango tourists have changed the feel of the 
milongas.  When there are 50%+ of foreigners in a place like La Ideal 
or Nino Bien (which I still remember being almost entirely attended 
by Argentines only many years ago), those people who want to learn 
about what milongas are like in Buenos Aires will get a distorted picture.

I do not believe that events outside of Buenos Aires should be 
modeled on the events in Buenos Aires that have a high number of 
foreigners in attendance.  Instead, they can find milongas that have 
almost no foreigners and see what they are like.

On another note, if people refuse to embrace the values of the people 
who created the dance originally, then they will not be able to bring 
or create that particular quality in both dance and event organizing.

People must be able to embrace EMOTIONALLY the values of the culture 
that created the dance and the music.

It would be very interesting to ask an organizer of some very 
traditional, "non-foreign" milonga in Buenos Aires what he/she is 
focusing on and trying to achieve.  The relationship between men and 
women is quite different in Argentina than, say, in the United 
States.  This also may add to the difference in the values placed on 
the dance experience, but this topic is for another discussion.

Neil advocated for a shift in values from quantity to quality and he 
even proposed how this can be done.  To that, I would like to add 
that the knowledge of the people who have been dancing and traveling 
to Buenos Aires for over a decade is very valuable for that shift and 
should be shared.

When communities are new, the beginner dancers resemble 
children.  They take.  They take and they need a lot.  Tango is an 
emotional experience that requires great sensitivities from its 
practitioners.  New dancers need a lot of care and protection.  It 
becomes a part of the responsibility of the teachers to offer them 
those skills in addition to movement.  This is where the codes of 
behavior become handy.  They help to protect the feelings.

Beginner dancers to not bring quality.  Instead, they need a lot of 
care.  All dance, including tango, is a living art.  It is passed 
from person to person.  It cannot be learned from videos or 
books.  As such, those people who hand the dance to the beginners 
have a huge responsibility to guide them and help them grow in their 
own unique way.

So Neil is right.  The quality of the teachers becomes essential to 
growing communities that can cultivate not more dancers, but better 
dancers.  There are teachers who sell out for status.  There are also 
dancers who are unable to feel, unable to connect, and so their only 
refuse is movement.   Those who hold the dance sacred keep its flame 
as they discovered it.  The new dancers who want that flame reject 
fake teachers and seek those who can offer them what they need the 
most in the continuum of their development.  But at the end, it all shakes out.

I believe that there is hope in shifting the focus from quantity to 
quality, as long as those who believe in quality do not give up.

Warmest regards to every one of you,

Nina