[Tango-L] Flaming women at classes

[Gary Barnes]

Extracted (perhaps out of context)  from what Trini  wrote on 21/07/2007

>
> ... if a beginning woman goes to a milonga
> or a practica on a fairly regular basis, she's likely to be
> lead into stuff like boleos or ganchos or paradas before
> she is even taught those elements in class.

This can be fine, or problematic, depending on the man and the  
woman.  If she has strength, balance, trust, etc and the guy is a  
good leader who chooses the right moment, it can be great, whether  
she has been taught it or not.

Without those, he shouldn't be leading it!

But, guys do!

I've seen this a lot from guys who don't go to classes at all (maybe  
they've seen it in a show? or see other people doing it on the  
milonga floor and try to copy what they think they see?), as well as  
from ones fresh out of classes which don't teach leading, but 'moves'  
-- or which teach this stuff to men or women who are not ready for it.

Also,  so many women seem to get a weird idea of what these things  
are, from sitting at a milonga watching,  or from the whole range of  
other sources I've listed before. Plus, from guys who wrench her  
through some parody of it while 'teaching' her on the dance floor, or  
give verbal instructions on the floor.  Certainly, it  doesn't need  
the intercession of a bad teacher to plant these evil seeds - people  
seem able to produce them from scratch! But also, even when women are  
learning just fine from a good teacher and lots of practice, or are  
just practicing and dancing and working out fine, it seems to only  
take one lesson from a crap teacher where they do 'the man puts his  
leg here and then the woman lifts her leg here' type of instruction,  
and they're off doing self -led 'gancho' impressions, to the dismay  
of those around them on the floor. Which is very hard to stop them  
from doing -- so I am glad there are teachers who subsequently  teach  
them that this is not a gancho (even though that effectively means  
saying that the other teacher,or that guy on the floor, was wrong!)

I agree that its often more important for women to be told by someone  
what a gancho or boleo is _not_ -- to stop them anticipating them.  
And then they can get back to developing their dancing skills to the  
point where a guy will lead them in these moves and it will 'just  
work', without her having to 'know' it.

>
> Beginners are easily impressed.

Sadly, this does seem to be true around here.  And women, more so  
than men, mostly, in my observation - though there are some men  
attracted to the girl doing the high flicks and stuff, and don't  
notice that while she is doing that, the guy she is dancing with is  
gritting his teeth and waiting for the song to end before someone  
loses an eye or he loses his back...

I've spoken to quite a few women where they say they were initially  
keen to do dance with the guys who dragged them through complex  
stuff, and they did not see anything particularly desirable in  
dancing with guys who were  musical, and attentive, and only led what  
could their partner  could dance. Partly because most women cannot  
see it - and as beginners, they may not feel it either. Later , these  
women discovered the joy of these other leaders, and left the  
wrestlers behind.  The wrestlers then move on to the next crop of  
beginners, often undermining good classes and good practice with  
others....  Its a hard cycle to break. We can all see where they are  
getting the bad habits from -- these few leaders, or one bad teacher  
--  but its hard to stop it happening. Hopefully they will stick at  
it long enough to have an epiphany of some kind.

How you stop these bad leaders developing is harder. For a few, its  
clear: they go to teachers who teach bad stuff, which they repeat.  
But I've seen guys produce bad stuff of their own accord, without  
teachers;  and others where no matter what class they go to, they  
come out of it with a 'move' which they have to explain verbally to  
the woman -- even when the class has been explicitly not about that,  
and others have got other things entirely from it.  Maybe for some  
people, if they start tango from a 'dance is steps that the man and  
woman learn' point of view, they will always see everything through  
that prism: classes, what other dancers are doing, what their partner  
says afterwards, why certain people don't want to dance with them...

Gary