[Tango-L] chartered for growth

[Ed Doyle]

Wow Trini,

I hope you can keep your community from becoming divided. I will offer
you my 2 cents worth on the subject.  I think the key is
communication, honesty, trust, and a desire by ALL parties who have a
vested interest in tango to keep the community together.  This is easy
to say, and not easy to do.

My wife Cindy and I have the luxury of having a home in Portland
Oregon, and another in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  We spend the winter
in Florida and summer in Oregon.  Let me contrast the two tango
communities.

In Portland, the teachers ALL cooperate with each other, promote each
other, assist and build on each others expertise.  Some teach open,
some teach closed embrace, some cator to beginners, some to more
experienced dancers.  They maintain a web site listing ALL tango
events.  The teachers attempt to coordinate special events, such as
bringing in out of town instructors, and milongas, with each other, so
that people can attend each and not have two events on the same date. 
All teachers suggest to all students that they try all the teachers
and pick the one that connects best with their needs.  I think all
this cooperation got started through the efforts of Clay. You might
want to try to bring Clay to your city and try to have a city wide
instructor meeting to discuss the issues.


Fort Lauderdale is almost the direct opposite.  My wife and I wanted
to attend a milonga hosted by an instructor and he refused to let us
attend because we had taken group lessons with another teacher in the
area.There are days when there is no tango in the area, and days when
there are three milongas on the same night. There is no central
clearing point for information, each person passes on info that they
have and it is catch as catch can. I have mentioned the name of one
instructor to another and he began openly criticising that instructor.
 This is all very sad.

So - my suggestion is that you contact Clay or one of his assistants
as soon as possible. Once a community is divided, I think it would be
very difficult to make it whole again.  I hope somehow you can make or
keep your city more like Portland than Fort Lauderdale.  Individually,
I love and respect the instructors from Fort Lauderdale every bit as
much as my friends in Portland, but it is sad to see them bicker with
each other instead of cooperating and growing the tango community at
large.

Good Luck

Ed


On 5/7/06, Trini y Sean (PATangoS) <patangos at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Several of our friends have started their own tango
> groups recently which has me wondering a few things
> about community building.  Specifically, how to expand
> a community without going through a division within
> the community.  Most of the second groups I know have
> faced animosity from the original group/instructor,
> which can take awhile to heal.
>
> Theoretically, more groups should mean more growth and
> opportunities for a community.  In smaller
> communities, though it can be perceived as a
> debilitating community division.
>
> So far the only city I know of that seems to have
> increased the number of independent instructors/groups
> without any animosity is Portland.  I understand that
> much of that is due to Clay, who runs Octoberfest and
> Valentango.
>
> New York has also grown tremendously, but I suspect
> that the first places to dance tango had professional
> ballroom people who were already used to competition.
> NYC is also huge, so I would think there wasn't too
> much of an issue when multiple tango teachers began
> appearing.  Does anyone know if that was the case?
>
> Have other cities developed with multiple groups (not
> multiple instructors within the same group) in a
> healthy way?  If this has happened in your community,
> was is it just by luck of personalities or had the
> original group planned for growth and possible
> offshoots (something written in the charter)?  Or was
> it just a function of the size of the city?
>
> This may have been discussed before, but I do not
> recall any discussion on specific measures that were
> taken by an original group before a second actually
> group formed.
>
> Thanks,
> Trini de Pittsburgh
>
>
>
> PATangoS - Pittsburgh Argentine Tango Society
> Our Mission: To make Argentine Tango Pittsburgh's most popular social dance.
> http://www.pitt.edu/~mcph/PATangoWeb.htm
>
>
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