Ladies,
I’ll bet you are wondering who that good-looking man is at the milonga and
wondering why he never asks you to dance. He is the Dance Studio Tanguero. He
mostly dances with his students or prospective ones.
This
post is not meant to be insulting; I simply wish to make people aware of the role he plays in tango societies and in making tangueras better
dancers. I risk offense in order to educate those who do not understand why
these qualified leaders do not assume the same responsibilities of a community tanguero whose job it is to dance
with all the followers, especially the newcomers.
Also, as
with everything, there are no absolutes; I am certain there are a few
exceptions.
The
Dance Studio Tanguero studies the performance of his students at the milongas and
makes suggestions to them during her next lesson.
So far I
have not seen the female equivalent, a Dance Studio Tanguera for leaders.
The primary
reason for this, I believe, is that men prefer to learn at group lessons and
from dancing with as many women as possible. We do not, IMHO, usually employ a
private instructor unless we are perfectionists but most of us are not. We are
men, content to be lost as long as there is a possibility that we might figure
this dance out on our own.
Men
don’t ask for directions or take advice and we sure as hell don’t take private
dance instruction! We’re big babies. We
have a rattle and it is called machismo.
It is a difficult toy to play with and we are always afraid of losing it so we
guard it carefully. The last thing we need is to be alone in a room with
another man fighting to hold onto the essence of our manliness.
Women
don’t have this same stigma. One of the many reasons they got into this dance is because they are curious
about men; being alone in a room with one of them is just the kind of lesson
they’d like to have.
Until I
began writing this blogpost, I believed that these guys were shirking their
responsibilities but now I see it the other way. A dance with them is not a
tango even if there is tango music. I have to imagine that with them there are
few possibilities when they are teaching, especially for amore. Tango is all about possibilities.
The fundamentals of tango must come to them more easily than it does to the average dancer. I’ll bet they find
it frustrating when others find the basics so difficult to comprehend. I think that, for these guys, there are only two outcomes possible: failure or success.
So why do
they do this? I do not know. I can, however, say that they are part of the
scenery and definitely a positive force in the growth of any tango community. I
have to believe that their reward and thus their raison d'être, is the
satisfaction of their students and in living a life doing something that they love.
As with any art, learning to tango is a
lifelong lesson. Our goal should not necessarily be mastery of the subject but enjoyment
in the pursuit of perfection. The Dance Studio Tanguero is a part of that
pursuit. The lessons he teaches spread throughout the community and eventually
all benefit from it.
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