[Tango-L] Red Rover

[Nina Pesochinsky]

When women and men sit separately, women dance a lot more.  They have 
an equal opportunity to invite and to be available to be invited.

If a woman sits with a man, any man, at her table, she will not be 
asked to dance much.  The man can be her brother, but no one will 
bother to investigate.  Men respect other men and will not ask such a 
woman to dance because she is giving a clear message - a man at her 
table is her chosen partner for the evening.

That said, the same goes for the men.  If a man sits with a woman at 
a milonga and then tries to invite other women to dance, he most 
likely will be turned down.  These codes becomes much more flexible 
when the people involved are friends.

There is a reason why there are milongas for couples only.  Such 
arrangement leaves no room for confusion.

There are codes of behavior in tango that protect exactly that - the 
intimacy of the dance.  Intimacy without boundaries is sleazy and 
ends up not being intimacy at all.

When women sit together, they often protect each other from bad 
experiences.  Granted, there can be some competition, especially when 
a new woman is seated with a group of women she does not know.  But 
competition is for women who are insecure.  A woman who is secure in 
herself, her dance and her rightful place of belonging at a milonga, 
will have an absolute confidence that she will have only the best 
dance experiences.  Such a woman does not need to sit with people, 
chooses to sit with women without feeling threatened by them and 
usually, in my experience, dances a lot and has magnificent dance 
experiences without exception.

The seating arrangement also allows men to be free to choose their 
partner without obligation to women who sit near by who may be 
acquaintances or friends.  When a man can choose freely, the energy 
of the place changes dramatically.  These milongas where men and 
women sit separately have intense, exciting energy.  Everyone is in 
their natural element.  Most people dance almost every 
tanda.  Dancing is emphasized much more because there is very little 
socializing going on.

Milongas where men and women sit together, such as many friends 
sitting at the same table, are usually not for dancing and everyone 
understands that you might dance a tanda or two, but the experience 
is about hanging out with friends.

It takes a bit of time to figure out many things about the world of tango.

Warmest regards,

Nina




At 07:39 AM 4/2/2007, Fantasia Sorenson wrote:
>I've heard about the seating arrangements in milongas in Buenos Aires and
>I've found videos from Argentina on YouTube. Okay, so the girls are on one
>side and the guys on another.
>
>It looks so lonely!
>
>Tango is so intimate. It seems so odd to me to have this division. It can
>almost look like choosing up sides for a child's game of Red Rover.
>
>One thing I want to know is, what do the girls talk about? Do they talk? Do
>they compare notes about each other's dancing? Do they talk about the men?
>Or are they competitive and they don't really want to have much to do with
>one another while they're sitting there in a row with their glasses on
>hunting prey? I confess that if I go there one day, that scene will be
>pretty intimidating for me.
>
>Fan
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