[Tango-L] Buenos Aires Tango Festivals - Criticism

[Fantasia Sorenson]

On 6/19/07, Trini y Sean (PATangoS) <patangos at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I don't fully understand why the Argentine Actors Union
> feel they would have a claim on "professional dancers".  I
> don't believe the Screen Actors Guild have a claim on the
> professional ballroom dancers.  I would think the publicity
> dancers would get from the championship is pretty good
> compensation enough.


It's simply a case of being a little loose in the English phraseology.
Performance unions don't have "claims" on professional performers. They're
advocates and bargaining agents for the performers. The idea expressed in
this op-ed is that if there were to be a distinction between amateur and
professional, then the performers' bargaining agents would step in and try
to negotiate compensation for the professionals who are under their
representation.

In this op-ed the author is expressing skepticism that the event
coordinators would ever agree to that. Therefore, in the author's view, it
is more likely that they'll continue to overlook the distinction between
amateur and professional.

My personal experience with friends who have been and are now in performing
professions as that they are much happier receiving cold cash over mere
"publicity".

It's an interesting point to debate, though. Certainly there is a lot of
sharing of free information on YouTube, for example, that brings returns to
some people. On the other hand, if my actor friends knew that someone was
going to make a profit selling DVDs of their images, they would want a piece
of that right now. They wouldn't want to see somebody else making money off
of them while they simply got "publicity" out of it.

Fan