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

[Nina Pesochinsky]

Fan,

You said that no one in the US practices cabeceo.  I completely and 
absolutely disagree.

In Denver, it is practiced and learned by the new dancers fairly 
early.  There is a Memorial Day Milonguero Festival in Denver that is 
coming up and the years of this festival have shown that the best of 
the best dancers would not even think of inviting or accepting an 
invitation any other way.

Personally, regardless of the continent where I dance, I will not 
accept an invitation that comes verbally, unless I am with my partner 
at a milonga where we sit together or I am chatting with a good friend.

Verbal invitations can often create tense and unpleasant 
situations.  If a man looks at a woman and she does not respond, no 
one sees that he was turned down.  If a woman looks at a man she 
wants to dance with and he does not respond, no one knows that she 
was turned down.  This practice allows people to keep their dignity 
and have a freedom to say yes or no without the pressure of "not 
hurting anybody's feelings".  (I hate that expression with a passion!)

And when women come up to the men and verbally ask them to 
dance...  uh, don't get me started!  When they do that, It is an 
embarrassment to the sisterhood!  These are the women who have not 
mastered any of the feminine arts - charm, seduction, persuasion, 
etc.  I read some place a fine definition of charm - getting a yes 
without asking a question.  Women who come up and ask a man for a 
dance have no dignity.  They are willing to sell whatever dignity 
they may have had for dances.  In my view, no dance and no man is worth it.

But not asking is not a passive experience.  You do not sit there 
waiting to be collected for a dance.  Women do invite, with their 
eyes.  So you have to look who you want to dance with and who is 
available and pay attention to when they become available.  Chatting 
with girlfriends and paying no attention to the surrounding is not 
conducive to positive dance experiences.

I hate crazy American milongas, or any milongas, where there are no 
rules of conduct.  The behavior of people who do not know how to 
behave because they were not informed can be so out-of-line that a 
quality dance experience becomes impossible in such places.

I think that it is unjust and unfair to teach people to get into the 
Argentine tango embrace and ask them to dance without teaching them 
the rules of conduct.  The closeness and intimacy of the dance must 
be protected and the rules will do that.  Cabeceo is one of those 
rules.  It is graceful and discrete.  When I person is turned down 
with a cabeceo, it can be done in such a way that will not prevent a 
future invitation between these partners.  A verbal refusal is pretty 
much a guarantee that a person will not ask again.

Investing in learning and practicing the rules can greatly enhance 
one's experience of the dance.

Tango is a great place to find and practice what may be missing, such 
as proper boundaries, etc., - different things for different people.

The other thing is that Argentine tango as a dance was defined by 
these rules and greatly influenced in its development by the conduct 
of people and what was acceptable or not and for what reason.  some 
reasons are universal and do not change with times.  I see dignity 
and respect in tango as values that do not change and that are still 
as powerful and as important as they were decades ago.

Warm regards to all,

Nina






At 08:13 AM 4/3/2007, Fantasia Sorenson wrote:
>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
>_______________________________________________
>Tango-L mailing list
>Tango-L at mit.edu
>http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l