[Tango-L] Growing up an excellent man-dancer. How?

[Tango Society of Central Illinois]

On 10/10/07, Igor Polk <ipolk at virtuar.com> wrote:
>
>
> So, my question is how to bring up those excellent tango dancers:
>
> How to retain promising beginners, how to provide a guidance of great
> dancing, how to motivate men not to stop in the middle. What workshops are
> possible to train great man-dancers?
>
>

The situtation Deby is talking about is Buenos Aires. The men she is talking
about are probably milongueros in the 60s or older. They have been dancing
for decades, perhaps as long as 40 or 50 years. It would be safe to say
most, if not all of them, did not take tango classes. They grew up enveloped
in tango, its music, its customs. They learned by observation and by
practice, the tango they found inside themselves developed, individual yet
always in harmony with the environment and culture in which tango lived.

There has been some comment about the quality of men dancing in the US. Yes,
there are quite a few men who have acquired a great deal of skill in
excecuting a wide variety of tango steps, leading women to follow a wide
variety of tango steps, mostly on an open dance floor. However, put them on
the crowded dance floors in Buenos Aires milongas and even the best American
tangueros cannot compare to the best Argentine milongueros. How can one
expect them to be as good? Very few men in the US have been dancing more
than 10 years, although some who have been dancing less than 5 are hired as
experts to teach at tango festivals.

What I see as missing in American tangueros (myself included) that is
present in Argentine milongueros is a way of interpreting the music which
such precision, with such subtlety, with such passion (and that doesn't even
do it justice) that only someone who has tango music circulating in their
blood, beating with their heart, breathing with their lungs, and riding the
waves of their nerves and muscles can do. It is so obviously different and
it is so difficult to emulate.

So, while tango classes taken from fellow countrymen who have mastered the
dance in 5 years may help you in setting you on your journey of producing a
good male tango dancers (provided it doesn't send you up some irrelevant
alley or off some tango-destructive cliff), in order to produce a better
American tanguero, you need to send him to Buenos Aires to observe the best
male dancers. He needs to dance a lot on crowded milonga floors. Any
progress will take some time. It will take repeated visits. Even then, the
best will still be apparent only as works-in-progress. It has taken a
lifetime to produce these milongueros.

In the meantime, be patient and enjoy the journey. Tango is a difficult
dance. It takes a lifetime to get good, 2 lifetimes to master.

Ron