[Tango-L] Community Expansion Brainstorming

[Ron Weigel]

Neil,

For the most part, I share your sentiments, certainly as an ideal
goal. However, practical issues often intervene and cause us to modify
our goals.

On 11/28/06, Tango Tango <tangotangotango at gmail.com> wrote:
> In most tango communities outside of Argentina, great focus is often placed
> on growing the community. This goal seems to be one of universal appeal and
> as such, becomes something that occupies both the resources and attention of
> the community.
>
> However, you can grow a community on two ways: You can grow it larger or you
> can grow it into a better community with higher communal skill. Which one
> should it be?

Ideally, we would all like a large skilled tango community. In
reality, we need to have a suffiicent number of dancers at milongas
and in classes to generate dance energy and social energy. A gathering
of 20 highly skilled dancers in even a small club does not have the
energy of a milonga. An empty floor does not build navigational
skills. Add 20 developing dancers and 20 beginners with at least some
basic navigational skills, musicality, and a decent connection
(assumes good teaching of basic skills), and we have some good
ingredients for a milonga.

Why we need to be tolerant of beginners and developing dancers:
- They may be coming to tango for a social need but may find tango
provides rewards of it own.
- Todays' advanced dancers all started as beginners


> Now, when I use the term 'quality' (which of course is subjective), I mean
> an experience more like the one you will have at a milonga in Buenos Aires.

...

> 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'?

I will digress and ask that true devotees of the tango culture of
Buenos Aires not call their tango 'Argentine' tango. (They don't talk
about dancing 'tango argentino' in Buenos Aires.) My first encounter
with this terminology was in a ballroom studio, where 'tango' was
taught along with 'foxtrot', 'cha-cha', 'swing' et al., and there was
a separate class called 'Argentine tango'. Hey, tango was born in
Argentina! The tango taught with other ballroom dances is not the
original (hardly resembles it at all. probably doesn't deserve to be
called 'tango' - another issue). 'Tango' by definition, without
modifiers, is what is danced in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Anything else
that masquerades as 'tango' needs a modifier - American Ballroom
Tango, International Ballroom Tango, Tango for Export and the like.
[end of digression]

> 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.

...

> As a matter of fact, when engaging in proper tango protocol in
> Denver, one will most likely hear: "Oh, don't worry about it! You're not in
> Buenos Aires".

I'm not sure sure it is disrespectful as much as it is due to
ignorance. Americans dance stage steps at milongas because the tango
revival of the 80s and 90s was fueled by stage performers from
Argentina who taught what they knew or, more specifically perhaps,
what was requested. The first generation of homegrown American
instructors were trained to teach a dumbed down version of tango
fantasia. (8-count basic, the sandwich, ganchos, high boleos - rarely
seen at Buenos Aires milongas) At least initially I believe this was
an honest attempt to transmit the tango culture of Argentina to the
US. Upon visiting Buenos Aires for the first time we experienced tango
culture shock - they don't dance there like we do!! Only those who
have been to Buenos Aires and come back and continue to sell fantasia
(or the latest fad - 'nuevo') as social tango are being disrespectful
to Argentine culture. Either that, or they believe "When in America,
sell what America wants". America wants flashiness. Give Hollywood
credit. Or maybe we Puritans just can't hold each other close and
share each other's breath - way too threatening! One could even
believe that cultural change occurs with the transmission of an art
form from one culture to another and that change is legitimate in
adapting to the local culture. Of course it is, but then it's name
should change to reflect that (as you suggest).

> 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.

Free events attract people who don't want to invest. The quality is as
good as the price.

You can attract a lot of people to tango if you offer something else
instead. For example, tango events in a singles bar might attract a
lot of people (even more if the event is free), but you will get a lot
of people whose primary purpose is hooking up with the opposite sex,
no connecting to tango. (Not that hooking up with the opposite sex is
bad, but let's at least do it with good tango, as they do in Buenos
Aires.)

Oh, yes, offer them music they are familar with - electronica - add
bandoneons and call it 'tango'. They will love it!! Maybe even gypsy
music, new age, jazz, whatever. Tango is what you make it - 'American'
tango, that is. You'll have to search far and wide among the 150+
milongas per week in Buenos Aires to find this. Of course, you can
find it and claim legitimacy, but this is cultural diffusion in
reverse, from America and elsewhere into Argentina. it has not evolved
from tango roots and Argentines know the difference.

> 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.

Let's teach connection to partner and music, and steps only as
navigational possibilities or interpretations of the music. Let's
avoid combinations. I haven't seen that much in Buenos Aires.

> 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.

Yes, that's good. Where profit is not the primary motive, numbers are
not as important.

A closing note on numbers. A growing tango community has a pyramidal
skill structure - a lot of beginners, few at the top. Communities that
ignore beginners do not produce tomorrow's experts. Some of these
experts will develop slowly at first. Some who rise quickly up the
pyramid today may take up skydiving to replace tango tomorrow. The key
to building a strong skilled community is good instruction. Good
instruction needs to be tolerant of slow learners. (As an instructor,
I've found my best dancers are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, many of
whom learned slowly at first.)

Anyway, good post, Neil.

Ron
Tango Society of Central Illinois
Urbana IL
http://www.centraltango.com