[Tango-L] Community building

[Stephen.P.Brown@dal.frb.org]

Both Sean and Joe offer interesting perspectives on the inevitable 
transition a successful tango community must make.  The domination of the 
founding organizer(s) gives way to market determined outcomes as a new 
generation of organizers and teachers organize new milongas, classes, 
practicas and workshops.

In such a transition, the original organizers may suffer from a sense of 
shock that new organizers no longer make decisions out of a sense of what 
builds the community.  Instead, the new organizers take a different 
approach:  What is fun to do?  What might be successful?  The old 
community understandings of no two milongas on the same weekend give way 
to two milongas on the same night.  The big halloween milonga becomes 
three smaller milongas, and the big New Year's milonga becomes four 
smaller milongas.

Inevitably, geography and the development of stylistic and philosophical 
differences leads to some degree of splintering--even if there are no hard 
feelings.  At that point, some of the founding organizers may look around 
and wonder why things look do different and why the new generation of 
organizers take what looks like a selfish perspective--rather than a 
community perspective.  That is what a market place looks like.

It's natural to be concerned when such changes take place.  I remember in 
the mid-1990s when the Stanford Tango Week was the only tango festival in 
the United States.  Everyone wondered whether the country could support 
new summer events in Chicago, Columbus and Miami.  When the Stanford Tango 
Week came to an end, it was not because it had lost out to other events, 
rather it was because the organizer wanted to concentrate on other 
activities.  Now there are more than 50 tango festivals in the United 
States, and we see the continual entry and exit of tango festivals from 
the market.  Some of these festivals cater to the latest stylistic trends.

What do the founding organizers get for their effort?

1) An opportunity to dance in a self-sustaining tango community that no 
longer requires their organizational effort.  (How many times did the 
founding organizers think or say that they'd just like to quit organizing 
and become dancers in a city where tango was already established?)

2) The opportunity to be revered as one of the original organizers--if 
they didn't try to hold onto control too long.

3)  If the founding organizers started their community in the mid-1990s or 
earlier, they were also rewarded with the opportunity to create a network 
of friends across the country and globe made up of founding organizers in 
other cities.

With best regards,
Steve (de Tejas)

one of the founders of the tango community in Dallas, TX