[Tango-L] Red Rover

[astrid]

Nina:
 When a man can choose freely, the energy
> > of the place changes dramatically.  ... Most people dance almost every
> > tanda.
>

Fan:
. The milongas I attend have never been
> anything so convivial.
>
> It's very easy to spend a sullen evening waiting for a dance and never to
> attract anyone's attention at all.
---------------------

I think, the difference between Fan's and Nina's experience is that Fan goes
to a milonga where there are much more women than men. (tell me about it!
Even in BA it is like that sometimes)

Fan: It doesn't help that I'm very proud and
> won't ask a man for a dance.

No, that indeed does does not help you at all, Fan... Don't you have a
Swedish last name? What's the problem with asking a man?

Fan: I feel Iike I lose a huge percentage of my
> possibilities because other women are bellying up to the men who I know
like
> me

If the men really liked you, they would turn the other women down and come
to you.

Fan:  and "challenging them to a dance" before those men are able to get to
me.

I have seen some men give some pretty chilling reactions to the women in
such a scenario. Just the other day, a middle aged Italian dancer who I had
never seen here before, told me, he thought that most of the women were
"presumptious", that all of them think of themselves as "artists" even if
they can't dance well, that they treated him as though he should be grateful
for dancing with them, and that he had danced with that very old lady with
the salt and pepper hair because she was simply happy to be asked and danced
from her heart... And that he had been sitting a lot during that night
because he did not like those other women. Ah, to talk to a Western man in
Tokyo--- all the secrets get spilled. ; )
He was the only seeminly good dancer left that I had not yet danced with at
the end of the milonga, so I sauntered over and asked him. He got up,
embraced me, walked a little with me, and said:"You are mine now!"
>
> Men feel guilty about saying no to women's invitations, so those of us who
> wait to be invited ... sit.

Well, see above. Not necessarily.

; )
Get your money's worth. Ask them, and beat the other women to the tandas.

Astrid