[Tango-L] Leaving the floor

[Deby Novitz]

I realize in the U.S. and maybe Europe the customs are different.  Janis 
was referring to Buenos Aires.  Here we have shortages of leads as 
well.  It is no different.  On a given night it seems like their are 20 
women to every man.  I have stopped going to certain milongas because 
the ratio of  women to men is almost to the point where it seems like a 
"woman's milonga".  In one milonga where the women sit separate from the 
men, 3 sides of the floor were women. 

In your communities you have "your women" and "men."  In ours we not 
only have "our women" we have tons of women who come here to dance.  
Many more than men. How about this?  A milonga that normally has 60 
women and 40 men receives 2 tour groups - each has 15 women and 5 men.  
So we now have 90 women and 50 men.  This is not unusual.

Keeping this in mind, we still dance all 4 songs in a tanda.  Men do not 
walk off the floor after the second song because "followers are 
waiting."  They dance the whole tanda with the woman they invited.  The 
only reason to walk off the floor for either a man or a woman is when 
either is very rude or there is a gross mismatch of skills that make it 
impossible to dance.

When the tanda is over, the man walks the woman back to her table.  He 
should not leave her in the middle of the floor.  It is like a date 
dumping you at the curb and expecting you to walk to your front door 
alone.  A gentleman guides you back to your table.