[Tango-L] introducing the cabeceo (card)

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

Balazs, please feel free to share this post with your tanguera friend(s).

The real issue, here, is that your friend doesn’t seem to respect herself to tell a man “no”.  Argentine tangueras do not use the cabeceo to hide behind.   They are aggressive in using it.  Many men have told me that they are the ones who really run the milongas.  She is better off confronting this issue herself than trying to force other people to accommodate her.  Does she want to be shy the rest of her life?  Wouldn’t she rather be self-confident and able to turn down a dance with ease?

Fifteen years ago, I was a painfully shy person (hard to believe, I know).  In this dance, your friend will run into men who will hit on her, may try to grope her, will be physically rough with her, may try to undermine a relationship she has, etc.  Tango is not sanitary.  She has to learn to set her boundaries and respect herself enough to do so.  Nor is she responsible for other people’s feelings.  If she can say “no” at a nightclub, she can do it at a milonga.

Your friend has probably had some practice turning down men since high school.  They’re called excuses.  They might be true, they might not.  Same thing in tango.  Her feet hurt, she’s tired, she promised this tanda to someone else and is waiting for him, she’s talking to someone right now, she hurt her arm playing tennis and needs to rest it.  If she’s turned someone down but someone she wants to dance with asks her, she just needs to tell him that and make a date for the next tanda.  Generally, men have had more practice with rejection.  They can handle a nice rejection without breaking like china dolls.  

If she’s uncomfortable with “no”, she may be comfortable with negotiating.  She can say with a smile “not this tanda, but perhaps later?”  She needs to stick to it, but it gives her more control over when and how long she dances with him.  If she keeps track of the number of songs in a tanda, she can get it down to only one dance with him until the cortina comes in.  She can say that she’d like to wait until she hears “our music”.  Imagine how special he will feel when she finally comes to him for a dance.

A woman who is good also needs to understand that she will have a big effect in influencing the quality of the men’s dancing in her community.  If she expects them to come up to her standard.  If she doesn’t lower her own.  She needs to be the muse.  If she wants to help the men in the community improve their dance, she needs to learn to say “no”.

A friend of mine recalled how he once asked me to dance a Pugliese tanda with him and I turned him down.  He realized, even then, that it wouldn’t quite be right anyway.  When he asked me again about a year or so later and I said yes, then he felt that he had finally become a good dancer. 

“No” doesn’t have to mean something negative.  It can also be an inspiration.  And when that “yes” comes along, it can be a memory worth savoring.  I remember the yes’s that made me feel great, and there were plenty of no’s before them.  I’m sure we all have those memories.


Trini de Pittsburgh