[Tango-L] R: World Championship - Why not?

[astrid]

> It all boils down to how we consider tango: in my opinion Tango is an
> intimate dance, danced WITH and FOR my partner, NOT for an audience.
>
> Setting up a competition is certainly PROFESSIONALLY fair to those who
make
> a living of tango:

I think, here we have, in a nutshell, what this problem is all about- do the
dancers want to make money or do they have other goals.
Tango has always beena competitive dance, only the goals were different: was
it about competing with the other men, trying to impress the girls? Was it
about selling your tickets as a taxi dancer (which used to be female...) and
making a few tips on the side?
Is it about trying to attract students? Is it about trying to get a tourist
to invest in you, be it for private lessons or whatever else? Is it about
trying to keep your students or make a milonga guest come back next week?

In my observation, as soon as money is involved, tango quickly loses it's
soul. I have seen many men going from being a fun dancer, open, cheerful
flirty, innocent, to being a haughty but burned out gigolo who only dreams
of banknotes when he holds a woman in his arms. And whose dance gets more
and more boring and mechanical, the more often he chooses mediocre but well
heeled (potential) private students as partners rather than those who can
really dance .
Or, a teacher who runs a studio or a milonga, gets so self conscious that he
only dances in milongas now in order to impress the onlookers, and only with
people who are "worth it", in his calculation of time-cost-efficiency, and
no longer dances just to have fun.
Commiting yourself to tango for business reasons is like trying to trap love
in a marriage of reason.

Unless you are as mad about it as Gavito, who, in his sixties, would ask at
10pm:"Where is the nearest milonga ?" after teaching 5 privadas and two
group lessons since morning, you may have to sell your soul....

Astrid