[Tango-L] Milonga 101 -- leaving the floor at the end of a tanda

[buffmilonguera@aol.com]

I love the word, "improvers".  A handful of our more experienced leads 
don't come to basics classes because they say they are not learning 
anything new.  Maybe I'll use your model.  Another way we successfully 
"mixed" experienced and brand new dancers worked out to be a lot of 
fun.  We had been asked to organize a demonstration and lesson before a 
professional tango performance.  We knew that the performance had sold 
out - but we weren't prepared for the literally hundreds of people who 
showed up early for the demonstration and lesson.  After the 
demonstration, about 100 folks actually participated in a lesson - 
basically, I had them walk. Then folks just danced for about 20-30 
minutes.  Experienced dancers (leads and follows) who volunteered to 
walk around the floor with the newbies all wore a red ribbon.  The 
audience was told that anyone with a red ribbon had already volunteered 
to dance with them, so all they had to do was ask...it really worked.  
Some of the volunteers did take the ribbon off to dance with a friend - 
but they could then just pin the ribbon on again after that dance.

We are not yet at the point that men dance together very often at all.  
If it does happen, it's in class, or just playing around at a milonga.  
There are only 4-5 women leaders, and we dance with everyone.

I think our community's experience is probably fairly common.  People 
very often come to tango because they have seen a stage performance or 
demonstration with a lot of "tricks," which is all they want to learn.  
Eventually, some choose "close embrace", some like nuevo more - I am 
perfectly willing to lead/follow either. For me, tango is easier to 
learn in open embrace, and easier to lead in close embrace. I think 
there may be some leads who dance nuevo because of the tricks which 
they rely on too much but I have danced in both styles with some 
fantastic dancers who "get" the music and some dancers who just don't.  
In my experience, there isn't much correlation between "musicality" and 
styles of tango.


and happy New Year to you and yours as well

b




________________________________________________________________________
More new features than ever.  Check out the new AOL Mail ! - 
http://webmail.aol.com