[Tango-L] Partner rotation technique (was: Labor Day Festival: a complaint)

[Shahrukh Merchant]

"robin tara" <robinctara at gmail.com> says:

> I've even seen it happen in classes where women are asked
> to rotate. They don't seem to notice that some women have been
> standing and waiting for their turn to dance and when the time comes
> for a rotation, one sees the same women dancing and the same women
> standing.

I used the following technique (as teacher, and the teacher really does 
need to take some responsibility for proper rotation) that I thought 
worked quite well for classes with a significant imbalance of men and women:

I would explain that, owing to the large imbalance, the algorithm for a 
partner change was that when I would announce one, the group standing 
out (men or women as the case may be) would first get onto the dance 
floor and find a partner from any of those on the floor, and THEN the 
others would change partners. This at least guaranteed that (a) no one 
would be standing out two rotations in a row and (b) that those who were 
timid or didn't like being aggressive in finding a partner, or whatever, 
weren't being penalized by being left out always. And those who really 
wanted to practice mostly with their selected partner could do so at 
least every 2-3 partner changes.

Works better with frequent partner changes. In practice, the group might 
need a reminder once more during the class and the really timid may need 
to be encouraged not to dilly-dally when a partner change was announced, 
but in general it worked well.

(This of course doesn't address the much more complex issue of Milongas, 
which is what the thread was originally about.)

Shahrukh