[Tango-L] Shedding some light....

[Deby Novitz]

Interesting...well, we all know that I live here, so for starters:

"My experience from the milongas in BsAs is that women, even when they are sitting
closely, often have very limited conversation with other women."


Not true, not true at all.  I have met some really great women in the 
milongas who sit next to me.  In my early days of coming to BA before I 
moved here,  it was how I learned so much about the customs.  One thing 
is that we are talking but you cannot tell.  Argentines in my opinion 
don't open their mouths when they talk anyway.  So when in a milonga, we 
have become very adept at talking through almost closed lips. We don't 
look at each other.  We are looking for someone to dance with.  If we 
look like we are talking no one will invite us.  Of course when we 
really do not care if we are dancing, then we talk up a storm. 

"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."


Ouch!!!  First of all, in B.A. there are several men who come to the 
table and just take my hand and we walk to the dance floor.  They are 
confident that I will dance with them.  There are men that I can look 
at, hug myself, and smile, and they get up to come get me laughing the 
whole way.  When I am in the U.S. or Europe I love that I have the 
freedom to ask a guy to dance.  There are some men that are very timid 
about being turned down, so they almost never ask anyone.  I do not 
consider myself to be someone who has no dignity.

Maybe what you need to define is, the woman who pushes herself in 
between a man who is talking to another woman to ask him to dance.  Or 
the ones that run up to a guy who is still finishing the last song of 
the tanda to grab him, or the ones who do not understand a guy just 
might not want to dance with her no matter how aggressive she is.  Those 
are the same women who here think they are being invited when it is the 
woman next to her or behind her.  They jump up and run across the dance 
floor before the guy even has a chance to come to the woman he really 
invited to dance.  Rude behavior is rude behavior regardless of the 
situation.

"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 great myth I am afraid.  The male ego is fragile regardless of the 
country..here in Buenos Aires it is made of fine china.  Let me tell you 
about a conversation I had with a guy last month.  We were waiting for 
taxis in the rain.  He turned to me and said, "I don't invite you to 
dance."  Oh duh...I actually told him I knew that.  He asked me if I 
knew why.  I told him no.  He told me that a long time ago I turned him 
down, and since that time he will never ask me to dance.  I really 
wanted to tell him that my heart was not exactly broken, but since I 
live and dance here, I smiled at him and told him that was when I was 
young and stupid.  He laughed, but then made sure I knew he would still 
not ask me to dance.  This my dear friends, is not an exception.  These 
guys hold grudges for years.  That was 5 years ago and the guy still 
remembers.

Do I like the cabaceo?  Yes.  I do.  Most of the time.  There are many 
men that I will not dance with.  The cabaceo makes it very easy for me 
to ignore them.  Guess what?  It also makes it easy for them to ignore 
us.  Here is how we women talk about it in Buenos Aires.  These are my 
Argentine women friends.  We laugh about how some guy will invite us to 
dance several times in a month, then ignore us.  We joke about how a 
balding guy with a big stomach, but one that can dance is a king in the 
milonga.  So he makes us suffer because he knows he can.  The cabaceo 
works here because it is part of the culture.  Believe it or not, 
modified versions are done in the other dances here in Buenos Aires.

Yes, we do sit separate in the milongas.  Especially the more 
traditional ones.  One Saturday, at Consegrados, because there were so 
many people the sides got mixed up.  I ended up sitting with the mostly 
man side.  (Ahhh what a surprise...) I had a great time.  Not because of 
the dances, because I always dance at this milonga.  But because I had 
an opportunity to talk to a bunch of men who never seem to want to give 
me the time of day.  I always thought they were arrogant or didn't like 
me for some reason.  What a surprise to find out they were afraid of me. 
Maybe not afraid, but more I made them shy, insecure?  (Jeesh, I am 
forgetting my English) I had more fun hanging out than dancing.  Now 
these guys ask me to dance.   One of my friends here, Michael, told me 
he had a great time when he ended up sitting with the women at Lo de 
Celia's one day.  There were no more seats on the men's side.  He said 
he learned a lot that day watching and talking to the women.  While I 
like sitting separate, I think once in awhile it is nice to mix things up

The cabaceo is not part of the U.S. culture for many reasons.  While I 
agree that part of what makes tango so wonderful is all the traditions, 
I also know that you cannot expect another culture to change because of 
a dance. Americans have an issue about being asked to do things contrary 
to their culture. (Not all, but many.) I think it is very important for 
visitors to Buenos Aires to respect our culture here.  I think that 
outside Buenos Aires, people should do what is comfortable.






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