[Tango-L] Can somebody shed some light on the subject

[Fantasia Sorenson]

On 4/2/07, Michael <tangomaniac at cavtel.net> wrote:
>
> I came back from the Atlanta Tango Festival today. I enjoyed it. However,
> I have some questions about cabeceo.



Michael,

One of the private respondants to my last post shared a link with me to a
website called "Tango and Chaos" written by a man named Rick McGarrey.
Incidentally, this ruined me for work the next day. I stayed up all night
and devoured the whole thing! I only got 2 hours sleep. Thanks a lot! ;-)

There's a section in it about the cabeceo. You might find it very
interesting, too.

http://www.tangoandchaos.org/5%20Codes/8Cabaceo.htm#CabTop

As I read it, where the cabeceo is practiced, discriminating women don't
"sweep the room". They focus their attention specifically on those men
they're interested in.

I think the real answer to your question about why the cabeceo doesn't work
is ... nobody really does it here, nor do they want to.

We North Americans aren't really very interested in rules. We always fret
considerably about how this or that rule might restrict our freedoms, so we
flout every rule that anyone mentions just to prove that we can't be
controlled. We aren't really very worried about the loss of any benefit that
this rejection might cause us, just as long as we maintain our independence.
(You might have noticed that this isn't just with tango.) Basically, nobody
practices cabeceo in the U.S. because we don't want to. We don't want to be
told what to do.

I often sit with other girls at milongas and we talk because we don't have
anything else to do while we're sitting and waiting for a dance. Men who
like to dance with me know where to find me, and they do find me when they
want to. Any man who thought he was going to bring the cabeceo to my town
could wag his head all night long like one of those toy dogs with the
bobbing noggin that you sometimes see in the rear of a car. None of us girls
will ever know he's there.

I had so many interesting replies to my "Red Rover" post. Thank you,
everyone! One obvious conclusion from it all is that the way we sit at
milongas here obliterates any practical chance of invitation by cabeceo ever
working. Will North American milongas ever practice Argentine codigos? Let's
just leave that an open question...

Meanwhile, Michael, if you really want to experiment with the cabeceo,
you're going to have to do what I'm doing. Save up your money and your
vacation days and take a trip to South America.

Fan