[Tango-L] Fwd: introducing the cabeceo (card)

[Balazs Gyenis]

      Hi all,

 Thanks for the public and private feedback so far!

> Why doesn't the woman just tell the man after the tanda?

> If a man asks me to dance before the music starts, I just say "let's see what the music is", and then we'll decide together.  I've never had a man repeat the same mistake when asking me to dance at another time.

  If you are a dancer and teacher with 15+ years of tango experience,
resolute to refuse dances, and willing to sit through milongas without
dancing more than a few tandas, you don't need solutions like this.
  What I'm curious to figure out is how one could effectively change
the social dynamics in a previously cabeceo-free enviroment so to help
advanced followers avoiding unwanted dances while *minimizing* the
amount of stress and awkwardness which comes with refusing leaders who
walk to them. Yes, of course they *could* simply explain the new rules
after each tanda, but to do that is awkward and time-consuming, and
does not make it clear to the leaders that they shouldn't take the
little speech personally. The thought was that if five-six advanced
followers decide to hand out such cards starting at a certain milonga,
by the end of the evening all leaders in the community will very
clearly understand that the rules of the game changed (at least w.r.t.
some followers) and the transition time from no-cabeceo to
cabeceo-with-some can thus be significantly decreased.
 In the US people are inclined to accept arguments of the form "it is
our policy that..."; having something like a cabeceo card at your
disposal may help creating the ambiance that you are indeed refusing
those to walk to you because it is your policy to do so. And this may
significantly reduce your stress, which in turn makes it more likely
that you can succeed to keep your policy and that the custom sticks.


> Chances are the good leaders and followers in a community already know about the cabeceo and use it in addition to asking.  I don't

 "In addition to asking": again, for good followers the whole point is
that avoiding being directly asked by adopting a cabeceo-only policy
allows them to avoid dances which would be more stressful to refuse
otherwise. I'm not that worried about good leaders; especially with
the usual gender- and proficiency-imbalance they can get their dances
either way, and many of them have plenty of incentives to adopt
cabeceo anyway. (By the way the usual slogen "with cabeceo leaders can
avoid public embarassment of refusal", even if it's historically
accurate, is really bad publicity for cabeceo, for there are much
better reasons why a leader, good or bad, may want to rely on it. For
instance those leaders who prefer to dance in close embrace and who
would actually prefer non-dancing to open-embrace-dancing have every
reason to make it sure that followers make an informed free-will
choice by agreeing to dance a tanda and have a stressless way to avoid
being asked out (that moment, that night, or ever). A leader may offer
the close embrace, but no leader in his right mind would force anyone
who indicates preference for open to dance in close, and so when that
happens he is stuck in an unpreferred dance. Also, writings shedding
light on the psychological aspect of the whole dancing experience,
like Sallycat's blogpost "The Gift" ( goo.gl/HwmY ) should be a
mandatory reading, in my view, for leaders of every kind..)
  Yours,

      Gy.B.

[Note: this is a resent email from two days ago; apparently the
original filesize was too big due to formatting reasons.]

--
Balazs Gyenis
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh
1017 Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
http://www.pitt.edu/~gyepi