[Tango-L] Community Expansion Brainstorming

[WHITE 95 R]

>From: "Tango Tango" <tangotangotango at gmail.com>

>It is a great and admirable goal to create a large community where people
>can dance with each other, but if a community wants to drape itself with 
>the
>term 'Argentine Tango', then at the very least one should expect that
>efforts are made to make the dance experience in that community as close as
>possible to the one you would have in Buenos Aires. If this is not the 
>goal,
>then why call it 'Argentine'? Convenient interpretations of this word in
>order to make it 'fit' the local circumstances is, -quite honestly,
>disrespectful to the originators of this wonderful dance. If embracing the
>whole of tango, -and not just the dance steps, is somehow not deemed
>necessary, then the practitioners of this should call it 'American Tango' 
>or
>something altogether different. Unfortunately, it is much easier to steal
>legitimacy for whatever it is that you are doing by borrowing established
>terminology and hoping that the people you seek to impress do not know the
>difference.
>

I could not agree with you more. I've noticed over the years that more and 
more people are purposefully changing the tango to suit their particular 
tastes or ideas of what tango should be. Too bad they reject what tango 
really is.....

>
>Comments such as this point to a mentality where quantity, not quality is
>valued. This behavior is fueled by people who are uninitiated in tango, but
>nevertheless are billing themselves as teachers of Argentine Tango. The
>teachers in a community are the foremost proponent of habits, -good or bad.
>If teachers churn out large amounts of poorly educated students, does this
>serve the community? If a teacher is afraid of going to Buenos Aires 
>because
>he thinks the floor is too crowded, what does this say about that teacher?
>If a teacher doesn't want to go to Buenos Aires because she says she can't
>get any dances, what does this say about that teacher? Is a 'teacher' who
>has never even been to a Buenos Aires milonga qualified to teach Argentine
>Tango? If we get more of these 'teachers' who in turn produces more people
>that dance like them, we will surely have a larger community, but do we 
>have
>a better community? One could be tempted to say we would then have a
>'diverse' body of people, but diversity is not really what we seek when we
>join a community that specializes in one single dance form from a very
>narrowly-defined geographical region.
>

Lets face it, many people get into the "community building" business for 
purely selfish reasons. For instance, who has not seen the situation in a 
city which already has 3 or 4 teachers of  tango, regular milongas and 
organized events and suddenly, out of nowhere (it seems) some recent arrival 
will decide "what we need here is a tango community".... The best way for 
these people to get more and more followers is usually to pander to the 
tastes and preconceived ideas of people. Not to instruct and promote the 
tango as it is... As you say, they don't know tango and if they do know it, 
they find it too alien or difficult, or too "constraining" of their artistic 
creativity... Thusly one ends up with the usual number of "agitated 
molecule" style of dancers performing all sorts of acrobatics or running all 
over the floor. Also, it's much easier to sell Gotan Project or Bajofondo to 
people more used to club music than to sell D'Agostino with Vargas.  Also, 
it's much easier to perform pseudo-tango and affect knowledge if one sells 
and promotes one's own invention rather than to accept and respect the 
traditional tango.


>When looking at what motivates students, teachers and promoters in the US
>today, it becomes clear that unless special attention is given to growing
>BETTER communities, then this is as good as tango will ever be in the US.
>The larger a community grows, the less motivated people will be to seek out
>the roots and foundation of what it is they are dancing. (After all, with a
>large group, doing something incorrectly becomes easily justifiable by the
>fact that 'everybody else does it'). Less people will go to Buenos Aires to
>see how Argentine Tango is danced, and the result is that local communities
>develop entire sub-genres of the dance. -American Tango. This new dance 
>will
>naturally draw heavily from the culture in which is was formed as as such
>will appeal to more of the local population. Voila! -We now have a large
>community.
>
>Growing a large dance community is easy: Give the dancers what they want.
>Give them something that is easy to learn but is presented as something
>spectacular and extraordinary. Also, low cover charge, cheap drinks and
>popular music are time-tested methods of drawing large crowds. Creating a
>good Argentine Tango community on the other hand, is far more complicated.
>It must fall upon the few knowledgeable teachers to not only teach steps 
>and
>combinations, but to initiate the student into the world of tango.
>Non-profit organizations can make efforts to promote events that are as
>authentic as possible and support teachers that make an effort to teach in
>that same spirit.
>
>Growing large, or growing better? A community must first grow into the best
>community it can be before the focus shifts to becoming the largest it can
>be. After all, who wants to super-size an airline meal?
>
>Neil

You are right in much of what you say Neil. Growing a large community of 
pseudo-tango might be easier than growing a real tango scene, but much less 
satisfying for those who just want to enjoy Argentine tango as it is. Still, 
it would be nice to grow larger communities where the traditional tango 
would be respected, danced and enjoyed.

Manuel



>

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