[Tango-L] Club Gricel in Buenos Aires

[Huck Kennedy]

Astrid writes:
> Janis writes:
> > The hostess returned from dancing and told me to leave.  She
> > has been coming to BsAs for the past eight years and organizes
> > tours.  Her guests were not ready to dance at any milonga,
> > especially not on the crowded floor at Gricel.  Why couldn't
> > she arrange for a taxi dancer who knows how to dance?
> 
> Because she is doing it for the money, Janis.  Can she dance
> properly herself?  That young man with the ponytail was
> probably the cheapest taxi dancer she could find.  And the
> ladies would not be able to tell the difference.

     They could if they ever had the chance to dance
with a good dancer for comparison.

> How many taxi dancers in BA would be ready to lead a complete
> beginner around the dance floor at Gricel anyway, I wonder?

     They probably don't care if they can.  Sin verguenza.

> I know more people in the dance business who are like that.
> Not just in the tango world.

     Which reminds me of a story.  A few years ago we
used to dance every Thursday night in a certain
restaurant.  Well, a nearby ballroom studio (you know,
one of the chain, cheesy ripoff ones like Fred Astaire
or Arthur Murray) got wind of our milongas, and decided
to take some of their students there on a "starlight."
If you don't know what that is, it's where they take
the students out dancing for the night, kind of like
taxi dancers, and charge them a shockingly exhorbitant
fee (most students at these places are lonely old
retirees with money, looking for companionship).

     So anyway, these studio people (none of whom could
dance a lick of anything) would just march in, take over
our floor with silly American ballroom tango, a circus
dance that takes up all the space with wild throwouts,
etc. (think Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis
in the movie "True Lies"), making any kind of real social
dancing impossible, and then leave, a few hundred dollars
richer each, having fleeced their students' pocketbooks
and trashed our milonga with no compensation to us
whatsoever.  In other words, we just got used and abused
so they could make a wad of cash.

Huck