[Tango-L] ENDEMIC PROBLEM

[Jonathan Thornton]

On 7/4/06,
>
>
> Tom Stermitz wrote:
>
> I've recently noticed in several different venues, that the women
> have not been living up to the skill level of the men. ....
>

I'm musing on thoughts of how this relates to the typical approaches to
teaching group classes. I've seen a tendency for greater turn outs of men to
group classes or workshops and sometimes some of the women who come are
wanting to work on their leading. This suggest to me that possibly the man's
role is given more attention and is seen as the more important part of the
dance? I do feel that more attention could be focused on techniques, skills,
attitudes etc. for dancing the woman's part. [I've become dissatisfied with
the terms leader/follower, but think at this point yin/yang terminology
isn't appropriate so I'm using more traditional Argentine terminology]

I think there will be a wide variety of experiences some having to do with
geography so I would hope there will be less of a debate and more of a
discussion on the differences in learning the man's and woman's part of the
dance.

I would particularly like to hear from women about their experiences and
what they found most helpful and what they would like to see.

Does Tom's observation seem to fit your communities? It's a bit hard to
generalize as the cast  of dancers can change from milonga to milonga. I've
not thought about this but my first impression is the distribution in my
community in skill levels between men and women is roughly the same but
there can be fluctuations any given night depending on who comes. I've no
idea how one would quantify this so this is simply a general impression.

There is also turnover. Experienced people move or for some reason there is
a drop in attendance, and perhaps groups of newer dancers bring their
friends and that results in a different level of dance? I heard from one
community that they lost a lot of experienced men and that the floor
situation became a lot more chaotic as a result of not having the effect of
leaders with better floorcraft tempering the cluelessness of intermediate
dancers.

Jonathan Thornton

-- 
"The tango can be debated, and we have debates over it,
but it still encloses, as does all that which is truthful, a secret."
Jorge Luis Borges