[Tango-L] Petit treatise on value formation in tango

[Nina Pesochinsky]

I just thought of something else.

When we are looking for a methodology that would help communities 
outside of Argentina shift from the focus on "bigger" community to 
the focus of "better", it is essential to look at the values of those 
who influence the growth of 'bigger', and these are the teachers and 
the beginner dancers.

Beginner dancers arrive to tango with no developed value system in 
regard to tango.  Just like children, they are first offered values 
by their caretakers.  Then they are asked to practice those values, 
just like the children.  When they mature, they begin to select which 
values they accept or reject as a part of their developing 
identity.  In children, this happens around the age of 12 and goes on 
until the ego solidifies (Erikson model for psychology oriented) around 18.

People generally come to tango as adults.  They already have their 
identities in the world, but they lack a tango identity.  As they 
learn to dance, a new identity of a dancer emerges that influences 
their identity in the bigger world.

The values that they get exposed to while their dance identity is 
emerging is the key to the value system that places high premium on 
quality.  If a dancer passes important emotional milestones in 
relation to tango in a dance community with low standards, he/she 
will hold on to those low standards as something precious because of 
how important those moments/events were for this individual.  Until 
death they will defend those low standards as being acceptable and 
even desirable.

The argument that has emerged polarizes dancers who advocate the BsAs 
experience and those that claim that one does not need to go there in 
order to dance/have/know Argentine Tango.

Even though I can be beastly with you (who do not agree that 
everyone, EVERYONE, even if they don't dance tango, should go to 
BsAs, when I am not there, that is) on this list in arguments and 
rotten fruit fights, please know that I have great empathy for this 
(no sarcasm on my part here).  When my own dance was developing and I 
was emerging in it, there were very few milestones that are attached 
for me to the quality of the milongas and practicas outside of Argentina.

My point is that teachers and organizers need to be very careful in 
regards to the value system that they are presenting to the beginner 
dancers.  True, people will choose what they need and want.  However, 
what is what they need and want is never offered to them as an 
option?  If a dancer is happy with his/her learning and thinks that 
he/she has achieved a lot in 2-3 years of dancing and learning, and 
then goes to BsAs and finds out that he/she cannot dance, what will 
happen then?  One of two things - he/she will come back and continue 
without ever wanting to go back to BsAs and discover and advocate for 
the "new" tango, or accept the defeat and start again, much 
transformed.  This depends on the individual.

"Quality" is very difficult to define.  It is highly 
subjective.  However, I propose this - what if we stop looking at 
each dancer as its own entity and look at an experience that people 
share, which is the relationship between dancers.  That is we stop 
looking out for "me" in the dance - did "I" dance enough dances, did 
"I" have good dances, etc., and look at what happens between dancers 
at the moment of a dance experience.

For those people who have dance partners, this would mean to stop 
focusing one the "I" and focus on the "we".  It is the emotional 
space between the dancers that would be central to this value system.

In a communal sense, the relationship between the people in the 
community will become a focus of "quality".  In Argentina, the codes 
of conduct demand respect.  Rather, respect is at the center of the 
value system.

So perhaps it is important for the teachers and organizers to offer 
beginning students the value system on which tango was based.  I 
think it is very important for them to know why things happen the way 
they did, even if they choose not to embrace it.

I give you an example.  In Argentina, women are held in high 
regard.  I mean this in an abstract form.  High regard can border on 
contempt, at times, but that is more complicated than I want to go 
here.  Women were held in even higher regards during the early 
decades of tango because not many of them ventured into the new 
land.  This contributed to the value system where a dance with a 
woman was prized highly.

Currently, not only in Europe and North America, but also in 
Argentina, there are many more women dancing than men.  This is 
natural because throughout human history, women were the dancers and 
they still are (yup, that is how we lure the men.  Men go where the 
women are).  But what does it do for tango?  it changes the value 
placed on a dance with a woman.  Now, women feel a lot less special 
than they did when there were fewer of them.

In my opinion, this is bad for tango.  It is wrong psychologically 
for the two sexes.  When women pursue, men retreat.  Then women get 
angry because they want men to be men.  This creates an acid-like 
feeling in the milongas, practicas and classes.  Women want to be 
pursued (in dance, in life).  Women do not want to pursue (there are 
some exceptions, but they are in different contexts than tango).  The 
dance is not the same for a woman when she has to ask, even if it is 
a wonderful experience.  I am saying this with a heavy assumption 
here that the men and women live in their respective energies - men 
are naturally mostly (not always) are in their masculine, and women 
in their feminine.  Again, this is for another discussion!  Men in 
their feminine and women in their masculine is an ugly thing in tango! :-)

One value that I advocate for the men is to deal with it in a very 
special way.  Outside of Argentina, sadly enough, cabezeo is not 
practiced much, so women often come up to the men as ask 'Would you 
like to dance?".  The men never want to hurt anyone's feelings and so 
they usually say yes.  At the end, the woman does not get the 
experience that she may have wanted had she been pursued, and the man 
may have lost an opportunity to dance with another partner of his 
choice that he may have contemplated to invite.

There is a huge clash in values here between the Western way and the 
Argentine way.  The way I bridge these is by recommending that the 
man says to a verbal invitation from a woman "Not this tanda, but how 
about the next milonga tanda" (or something like that).  This 
satisfies both requirements - the man gets to dance with whoever he 
wants to at that moment, and the woman will be pursued by him for a 
dance a little later.  This is actually a horrible situation and this 
way seems to work.  The verbal invitations just need to stop.  They 
are inappropriate given the intimate nature of the dance.

There are many more examples of mismatched values between tango in 
Argentina and outside and I am sure that most people on this list can 
come up with their own vivid stories about it.

The point is that the values introduced to the beginner dancers will 
determine the quality of a community.  The values are not only about 
movement and dance, but also about the relationship between partners 
and between the members of the community, as well as values about 
music and the shared purpose of the dance.  Why do we dance 
tango?  Is it for men to be in the company of women and women in the 
company of men?  Is it to experience a gorgeous embrace to the poetry 
of music?  Or is it to construct architectural entities with 
interchangeable partners to background noise that hints tango but 
suggests heavy use of illegal substances?  You have to choose for 
yourself.  I only advocate.  I have no answers.

Warmest regards,

Nina