[Tango-L] Men's strategies (2)

[Steve Littler]

Several times I would get a dance with one lady who was at a table with 
her girlfriends. She would go back and give a favorable report to them. 
Later I would look over and get an easy dance with the next lady and 
then the next. This occurred several times with both Porteñas and 
tourist tables.

Once I saw an attractive woman sitting most of the night. Late in the 
evening, the crowd was thinning out. I'd had many dances that night 
already. El Flaco Dany Garcia walked by the woman on his way out to the 
lobby and stopped to speak with her cordially for a minute and then 
walked out. I decided to see if I could get a dance. I had to walk about 
50 feet to get within 20 feet of her so she could see me. I cabeceo her, 
she looked at me and pointed to herself with a questioning look. I 
nodded. She nodded back tentatively. I approached closer and we went to 
dance. (She had a bottle of champagne on her table she had been drinking 
all night that maybe I should have paid better attention to.) She was 
the worst dancer. Either drunk or just a poor dancer. I suffered and 
said Muchas Gracias after what I thought was the 3rd song, but she 
pleaded to stay on the floor and not be sat down. Apparently I 
miscounted or it was an odd 4 or 5 song tanda. I was nice and suffered 
the last song. (It's an adventure. LOL!)

Typically the women want to talk at the beginning of the tanda. The 
typical questions were my name, where I'm from, how long I will be 
there, is that my wife at my table, how old am I, how long have I been 
dancing. I only know enough Spanish to answer these few questions, but 
that was enough. They usually spoke some or a lot of English so it 
worked out ok. One of my best partners spoke almost no English and I 
didn't talk much with her. We just danced and I had 3 tandas with her 
that night that were quite magical.

Sometimes I would see the same woman at a different milonga on another 
night and get an easy cabeceo with her. One of them was a popular ex-pat 
living in B.A. and I danced with her several tandas a night. Once at a 
smaller busy milonga I stood at the edge of the floor at the end of a 
tanda while dancers were exiting and I grabbed her arm to say Hi and ask 
her to dance. She said "ok, but not now, wait until I'm seated and the 
music starts. These guys don't like it if you cut their flow." Heh! So I 
did. She taught me a good lesson.

To be continued...

El Stevito de Gainesville