[Tango-L] "Save the last dance for..."

[Astrid]

Last night I went to a milonga. I have been going there for years, I 
used to enjoy it but lately it has changed. Many of the old regulars are 
not coming anymore, God knows where they went.
I sat down and watched the dance floor. After a while I started to feel 
a little lonely and depressed: there was the guy I used to dance with 
often, now dancing with a girl who would not do a back ocho without a 
high kick to the front, who would not step over his foot without some 
flamboyant firulete each and every time, like raise her knee to her 
waist, sometimes moreover circulate her elegant little foot and calf in 
the air at the height of his thighs before straightening her knees and 
setting it back dow on the floor...
There was also a new lady standing at the bar, talking to Laura in 
Spanish and gesticulating wildly with her hands. "A new Argentine?" I 
thought. But then someone asked her to dance, and she did the same like 
the Japanese girl before, only her high kicks were even higher and 
straighter, shooting out into the horizontal from her waist. The man had 
carefully maneuvered her into the middle of the dance floor and since 
there were so few people there, it did not really matter but...I 
figured, the Japanese girl must have been taking lessons with this lady 
and is imitating her style now.
What really broke me then was when someone else asked one of the very 
old ladies to dance, and now she also, with her very limited abilities, 
attempted to do a few kicks. Instead of letting her boleos slide on the 
floor as usual, she raised her feet now at every boleo, even every ocho, 
trying to look a little more lively and almost losing her balance while 
trying.
"Who is this lady? Is she Argentine?" I asked Laura. I could not imagine 
that an Argentine would not know better than..."No, she is French, she 
has done ballet and modern dance", Laura said. Later I talked to the 
dancer and she told me, she was a modern performance dancer and had gone 
to Argentina for a few months to learn tango and was now looking for a 
job as a tango show dancer in Tokyo. "Actually, I　think, bellydance is 
where it's at now in Japan", I said pensively, and she answered:"I don't 
like bellydance. Yes, I have performed it several times, but I don't 
like it and I have never had any lessons in bellydance." Whew, this is 
what I suspected for a long time. Get a ballet and modern dance 
education, take a couple of months of tango lessons and then go find a 
job as a show dancer and teacher of tango and get away with it too... 
while us not so flamboyant, non-commercialised types with years and 
years of tango experience but no ballet who are guided by are own sense 
of the dance and it's feel are barely acknowledged by the tango world 
except for being "fun to dance with", "having a great sense of rhythm" 
or whatever and we have never managed or even tried to make a penny with 
it while we were busy instead discovering the heart of tango...
Anyway, I danced a bit, kept watching the dance floor and felt like 
tango had lost it's soul in this place. There were only people out there 
who either scared almost everyone else off the floor with their high 
kicks, a few who started joining and imitating those with the high 
kicks, there were those who had been around a long time, had learned 
reasonably well but not perfectly how to dance and were now trying to 
teach others and went fishing for students in this milonga by dancing 
with the beginners, trying to impress them, and throwing a triumphant 
though tense smile at spectators after leading that lady through 
multiple back sacada combinations during which she managed to at least 
never loose her shoes, she was dancing in high heel slip ons without a 
backstrap, as she did not seem to own any tango shoes yet or understand 
that she needed them.
I hung in there for a while, finally said to Laura:"Hm, she may be a 
good dancer, that French one, but I would not want to dance next to 
her." "Why?" Laura said. (WHY????) "Because I am afraid she might hit me 
with one of her high kicks." Laura did not comment and I felt I had 
better shut up before she took a dislike to me for being so critical and 
spreading "negativity" and I would end up a persona nongrata in here. 
So, I left quietly, went home and started to wonder whether I should 
also stop coming here, try to find another place or maybe just 
concentrate on bellydance. This milonga is closing soon anyway, due to 
lack of customers, probably and high maintainance, as so many of the 
interesting dacners are not coming anymore.
Maybe if some of the great old dancers came back, many of their fans 
would come back too, and this place would become a little more lively 
again and worth going to, and we could feel at home here as we used to.

p.s.
Hi, Deby...
p.p.s.
I have been trying to stick to the rules of tango-content, no 
one-liners, no open flames, not too many postings, stay polite and as 
congenial as possible... I hope, in spite of all this some friends will 
still be able to read between some of the lines...


Keith Elshaw wrote:
> So now, we have arrived at the place where one maintains one's
> "credibility" on Tango-L and self-respect by ... never posting to Tango-L.
> If no people show up, no one wants to go.
> I think a couple of fish who were a nice catch got thrown out in the big net. it is not easy to keep it going.
> Harder all the time.
> Needs re-dedication to original principles on everybody's part.
> Screen for idiocy, don't dictate.
> The core of Tango-L is, for the most part, silent.
>