[Tango-L] Milonga 101: There's a woman waiting to dance the tandawith me, but she's not the one I invited

[Victor Bennetts]

Ah yes, all the anxiety of the Cabeceo is coming back to me as I read Janis' post. Of course, from a leader's perspective the reverse of what she describes can also occur. You have a woman nod to you curtly from across the floor. At least you think it was you that she was nodding at. Some of them make it pretty obvious but others give you not much more than a brief condescending raise of the eyebrows before they look away.

So you get up onto your hind legs with pretty much the same sensation in your guts as the diggers must have had going over the top in WW1 to face the barbed wire and machine guns. Suddenly the floor seems to be twice the size it was before and your legs have shrunk to half their length so you are moving as rapidly to the other side as you can but hardly making any progress. Eventually you arrive and the follower does nothing to acknowledge you. I eventually hit on the strategy of clearing my throat and giving a slight bow. They look around theatrically blinking as if to say, oh *you* want to dance with *me*.

That is what we might describe as the 'fair weather' scenario. There is a lot that can go wrong. Firstly, you can suddenly spot another leader come into view obviously heading for the same follower. You then need to recheck if La Reina is actually looking at this guy and if she is looking at neither of you then you have to decide if the other guy was the one who actually got the nod. The decent thing for the follower to do would be to take the guy who gets there first, but as we know, not everyone is decent. It is also quite possible for a follower to seemingly change their mind while you are making the long journey and pointedly ignore you when you get to the other side. I take this as just another manifestation of the fickle nature of women ;-). Hopefully the bar (or the bathroom) is in the same direction as the follower's table so you can pretend you have just paused to adjust your shoe and make for it to save face.

Yet I am still desperate to get back to BsAs and do it all over again!

Victor Bennetts

>>>This is a common situation for men in the milongas of Buenos Aires.  They're
seated on one side of the room, and the women are on the other side.  A man
invites a woman with a nod or tilt of his head, and she accepts.  There are
other women looking in his direction at the same time.  As he's walking
across the floor, he sees another woman has entered the floor and approaches
him to dance.

What does a gentleman do in this situation?  He dances with the woman who is
in front of him on the floor.  The one he invited is seated.  She waits
patiently while he dances with the other woman because she knows he will
invite her for the next tanda.  This avoids an awkward situation for both
women.

The men who don't consider the woman in this situation will explain that
they invited someone else.  She then has to return to her table and deal
with the situation.

I have been in this situation many times when man who invited me was
intercepted by a very eager dancer who thought the invitation was for her.
It's not worth saying or doing anything about the situation.

Women can avoid this situation by remaining seated until the man reaches her
side of the floor and makes eye contact with her.  Afterall, we want to
dance with a man who wants to dance with us.


Janis
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