[Tango-L] Argentine Tango on Dancing with the Stars

[JFPaloma@aol.com]

Kace, 
 
When you throw out a generalization it's a good idea to  duck because 
generalizations can be like boomerangs.  I am  compelled to address your boomerang... 
"how many of us go beyond  our own simple enjoyment of the dance into 
demonstrating, choreographing,  speaking or writing on the subject for the laymen?"   
I am a  professional television/film writer with a long list of credits.  At 
each  and every opportunity if appropriate to the story, I include a scene 
with  tango.  Even though all my scripts make it into production, none of these  
scenes has yet to be shot.   If there is interest in including a dance  scene, 
the producers want it to be a salsa dance.  I recently wrote a  romantic 
comedy into which crept tango characters and, therefore, a lot of the  action ends 
up taking place at a dance studio and a milonga.  The  producer from New York 
called to tell me how much he loved the script, how it  made him both laugh 
and cry at the same moment... and then the deal breaker...  would I change all 
the tango scenes into salsa scenes.
 
So there are those of us who constantly go beyond our own enjoyment of  the 
dance.  
Additionally, and this is the real irony...
 
My husband and I are co-owners of a dance studio devoted to Argentine  Tango. 
 It also happens to be one of the studios that Dancing  with the Stars uses 
for their rehearsals.  I am in touch with their  production people on a regular 
basis and yet when the time came for them to  include a tango exhibition, it 
never occurred to them to even ask us to point  them in the right direction.  
 
So, Kace, whattya gonna do?
 
This studio is owned by four of us who all have regular careers  and jobs.  
We took out second mortgages on our homes to open the  studio and we spend all 
our free time doing everything we can to tell the world  about the joy of 
Tango.