[Tango-L] men dancing with men

[Jeff Gaynor]

Being an armchair sociologist with no direct experience in Argentine 
history or culture (how's that for a refreshingly honest disclaimer ;D) 
I would observe one other thing.

In most older European derived cultures, women were to be courted and 
everyone had their role to play in such exchanges. This often meant 
limited and very circumscribed interactions between men and women. This 
was especially true in BA where, if census figures are correct from the 
period, the ratio of men to women was badly skewed. If the men were to 
impress with their dancing, it was probably a relief to practice with 
other men since they could actually focus on the technique rather than 
having all the social baggage they would otherwise have to attend to. In 
the US/UK men have a lot of contact anxiety that other cultures do not, 
so they tend to view this topic with a good deal of alarm. Also, because 
men back then would probably only get a few minutes for their tanda with 
their prospective paramour, it had to be perfect. Experimentation with 
the dance to make it more impressive (pretty sure they would have done 
that back then just like the singles on the prowl do it today -- after 
all, we lack plumage...). Such practice would also have been easier with 
guys who were in the same boat and consequently more forgiving of 
errors, miss -steps etc.. As it is now it was back than: The man 
proposes, the woman disposes.

Women often completely misunderstand how stressful it can be for guys to 
interact with them. My experiences with other cultures where there are 
still strong divisions between men and women have shown me that most of 
the courtship rituals, arranged marriages and such protect the man from 
direct rejection as much as anything else. I would suspect that men 
practicing with men was a much safer bet from this point of view. In any 
case, we should be wary of projecting our own gender issues (and agendas 
too, I might add) onto another culture -- and BA in 1900 was a bona fide 
different culture from today.

And I could be wrong...

$.02

Jeff G

Crrtango at aol.com wrote:
>  tangopeer wrote:
>
> <<<<I keep waiting for someone to pipe in about men
> dancing with men in BsAs years ago.  Isn't that how
> they learned?  I've heard dozens of stories about
> that, but I am no historian.  Who gots da goods on
> this?>>>>
>
> Although today same-sex people dance with each other and exchange lead and 
> follow for different reasons, the main reason men danced with men is fairly 
> simple and a product of the cultural milieu of the day. Tango was not considered a 
> respectable dance to do and many women, especially young ones, were not 
> allowed to go to practicas (inasmuch as they existed in those days). They might go 
> to milongas, and even then perhaps accompanied by the parents. We forget in 
> our enthusiasm that even in Argentina, tango was frowned upon for years by the 
> upper classes and "cultured" people did not dance it, and not all of the 
> "lower" classes danced it either. I have known older Argentine women who told me 
> their parents did not allow them to dance tango. Men didn't have too many choices 
> for practicing steps except with each other, but this enabled them to be 
> prepared when they went to the milongas. Tango came out of the bordellos and 
> conventillos...not a world you wanted your daughter to be associated with. We may 
> smile at the depictions of "compadritos" on stage, but the reality was not so 
> romantic. Compadritos often carried knives and violence was a part of the early 
> tango world.   Canaro writes in his autobiography of knife fights and 
> gunshots being exchanged (and barely missing him) at clubs in La Boca. It was a 
> different world from the one we know.
> Danel Bastone told me that he often practiced with other men, simply because 
> there were no women around to practice with. I have heard the same from Gavito 
> and other milongueros I have known. This persisted well in to the forties and 
> fifties of the 20th century. We forget in our modern, more-enlightened day 
> that the social customs were more restricted than today. Women did not have the 
> same freedoms and men had to learn from each other. 
>
> Cheers,
> Charles
>
>
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