[Tango-L] Community building

[Tango Society of Central Illinois]

On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Trini y Sean (PATangoS)
<patangos at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>  Years ago, Trini and I were the rogues in Pittsburgh. We
>  made some mistake along the way; but we also acted to
>  marginalize our own importance from the very beginning. Our
>  most successful strategy for community building has been to
>  foster our own competition:

>  I have tough questions for all the self proclaimed
>  community leaders on this list:
>  - Are you building a self sustaining community (one that
>  doesn't need you)?
>  - Are you building a little tango fiefdom, totally
>  dependent on you, so that you can play petty tango tyrant?
>  - Or are you just a tango merchant, building a captive
>  customer base for your personal profiteering?
>
>  Sean

If creating more tango subgroups in Pittsburgh has led to greater
overall community growth and harmony, then that is great. I've heard
that a similar symbiotic relationship exists among tango groups in
Portland.

Certainly a tango community with only one organizer is always living
on brink of extinction. However, with multiple organizers, rather than
blissful harmony, the more likely scenario is the balkanization of
tango communities. Numerous community members want to teach, be DJs,
organize milongas, invite visiting instructors. To some degree, more
teachers and milongas results in community growth, but my observation
is that very few tango communities know when they have reached the
optimal number of events. It is more likely that multiple classes,
practicas and milongas leads to decreased attendance at most of them.
Organizers compete for dancers. Hostilities develop. Newcomers see a
small number of competing groups and get turned off. Some of these
communities progress to senescence.

So there is some optimal number of instructors, classes, milongas, and
practicas that any community can have, based on potential population
size. In rare cases, such as young communities, that number may be 1.
In most cases, it is probably a few more. Most tango communities I
have learned about have exceeded that optimal number.

Ron