[Tango-L] Milonga Codes and weird anecdotes

[Melina Sedo & Detlef Engel]

Thank you Sergio, thanks Trini and all of you.


I find it so very important to make everybody understand, that you  
need to respect the codes of polite behaviour, when you're in a  
Milonga. It's not even about Tango-Codigos, it's just basic  
instinct. ;-)

-You do not invite someone to dance, who avoids eye-contact to you.
-You do not sneek up from behind and surprise him or her.
-You do not interrupt a serious conversation.
-You do not assume, that every person will love to dance with you,  
even when she has never had the chance to see you on the dance floor.
-And, if you happened to "break" this rules: You do not insult  
someone, if this person declines politely to dance with you: nobody  
is OBLIDGED to spend time hugging you.

Unfortunately all of this happened a lot to me during our recent tour  
to the US, even in the "very traditional" Milongas:

I am used to being invited by the Cabezeo/Mirada and I rarely accept  
a direct invitation out of several reasons: Very often I am just  
tired after a day of classes or I have not seen the person dance yet,  
so I avoid eye contact. Or I am doing something else, like resting  
between two tandas and drinking a glass of wine or talking to  
someone. Or of course, I just don't want to dance with this person.  
So, if I get invited in such a case, I decline very politely and  
always with a smile. I do not want to hurt anybody.

But: Apart from being forced to decline direct invitations of  
stangers so extremely often in the US, I got some real rude  
reactions, like an omnious "You made a big mistake", uttered in a  
threatening voice.

Sometimes, things like that happened MULTIPLE times at the same  
Milonga, once even with the SAME person.

And one man (an Argentine!) did something real strange: I was just  
avoiding eye-contact with everybody as I was very tired and this man  
came to my table and asked me. As I had declined already declined  
three (!) direct invitations during this one Tanda, I told him very  
nicely: "Excuse me sir, I'm quite a traditionalist, so I don't accept  
invitations at the table. I'm so sorry." He smiled and stepped some  
meters away and looked at me in a Cabeceo-like-way. I was so stunnd,  
that I accepted his invitation, but later on I was even more surprised.
He told me, that he was an Argentine and uses the Cabeceo on a  
regular basis. But: I had not reacted like the argentine women do:  
they look, if they want to dance with you! So, I asked him, WHAT DOES  
THAT MEAN NOW? THAT I DID NOT WANT TO DANCE WITH YOU!

Unbelievable, but true.
Sometimes, truth is stanger than fiction... ;-)

What can I do?
A friend of NYC recommended me, to speak more about these things  
during classes. We never did this, as we always assumed, that most of  
the people do understand these things instinctively and we do not  
want to bore grown-up-people with sermons about argentinoid-Milonga- 
codigos. But Detlef and I decided to follow our friends advice and  
will try in the future integrate one or two sentences about this  
topic in every class, where it might make sense. And we'll talk about  
this more often to people.

Which I did just now. ;-)

Thanks for listening my sermon.


Have a nice day,


Melina


Melina Sedo & Detlef Engel
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