When Women Kept the Balance at the Milonga: A Tango Meditation (or possibly a rant)
There was a time when women actually kept the balance at the milonga.
A time when culturally if a man did not dance at a certain level the woman would turn down a cabaceo without thinking about it.
The women, as a tribe, would keep the balance at the milonga, because there was a hierarchy that was respected.
The old milongueros were “untouchable”, they too, would keep the balance at the milonga, as they would never invite an inexperienced dancer to dance.
The rejection of a cabaceo by a good dancer would signal to the gentleman that he needed to pick a woman of equal dance status.
Thus, women would keep the balance at the milonga.
A gentleman would also take it as a sign that he needed more classes; to study more, to practice more, before he was able to invite those heavenly dancers to dance.
Because women kept the balance at the milonga.
Men took classes from men and never touched a woman until he was deemed ready, by his maestro, by the older milongueros, or by the milonga.
This, too, helped to keep the balance at the milonga.
I remember early on in Buenos Aires. I arrived at a very traditional milonga, by myself. The older gentleman at the door greeted me with a hello and a pause, eyeing me, and then he asked, “pero bailas?” – “But do you dance?”
But we live in different times now and writing this from the US we live in a different culture. A culture where, from the start, we expect women and men to learn together. Shoved into a quick 4 week session, once a week, to learn as much as possible or as little as possible, to keep students returning merrily to the studio. And also, where, often dance floor etiquette is the last thing that a teacher shares with a student, if at all.
When I first came to tango, I often attended a class where women were divided from the men. I used to think, why on earth would you ever divide the women from the men in a classroom? How backwards!… and now, I am totally convinced that this is the way tango ought to be taught. And we’d have to reeducate the culture and then convince people that they would learn better this way, to generate interest in tango again.
Men are motivated by different factors than women. Men are typically visually driven species, motivated by competition, motivated by the pursuit, by goals, and by their eyes. They are visual stereotypically by nature, enraptured by physical appeal and beauty. So how can we expect them to get into a room filled with women and expect them to learn tango that requires them to take on so many tasks both emotionally-based and physically-based all at once? A Leader has to lead, conveying confidence and trust, embrace, follow traffic, not crash into anyone, listen to the music and put all the things his body knows into that music so that she, at the end of the dance, opens the embrace and smiles at him with joy or excitement or at least another positive expression.
But again going back to the fact that we live in a culture that copied the ballroom world we get men and women learning the tango at the same time knowing that the rate is different. So motivated by different things – men lose momentum or stop enjoying it altogether because women often excitedly pressure the men to do more than they can possibly at one time. And sometimes, as we all know, in unkind ways. (Not that men are saints at expressing their feedback at times. We all could take a lesson in smiling and keeping our mouths shut, or just saying thank you and walking away.)
So we go to the milonga or a festival and find ALL those women who have put in endless hours of class time, privates, shoe buying, clothes shopping, sitting down hoping that 1 of the fewer men in the room will ask them to dance or that he won’t run away from all the eyes staring at him as he exits the dance floor.
Side note – I know that this has increased the number of women who learn to lead and I love how empowering teaching women to lead is. I love to dance with some women and I have a hard time turning down a woman because I know what the journey is like to learn to lead. I want to be encouraging even if I’m being shoved about. However, this will not fix our problem of “not enough good male leads in tango”.
And I know I don’t need to mention, the number of complaints I hear about this, the lack of good dancers to dance with, and then the fact that those male dancers who were chosen were not great dancers. And by “not great dancer” I mean it could be a range of issues from crashing into other dancers or crashing the follower into another couple, which probably means the leader just needs more practice learning to improvise and staying focused on the group dynamic. It could also mean a leader who leads very big uncontrolled choreographed movements on an inexperienced follower. But you, as a follower, said yes, because you just had to get out on the dance floor and you were tired of sitting around waiting….(been here done that… more than once.)
What have we come to? Well, that’s the not so pretty picture, is it? And with that, tango has earned the reputation of being a “hard dance”. There’s so much pressure on the lead to do so many things! And the culture has imposed this! So who really wants to put the time into it anyway? Aren’t we all so busy posting our updates? So the communities are decreasing and the teachers are increasing in numbers, and it’s all becoming more competitive.
I won’t even mention the #metoo and #mgtow movements and how I think they will affect tango – I can only hope it will be a positive influence. But change is challenging.
I really believe that tango can rise and help to heal all these cultural and community wounds, if we let it, if we are open to it.
I think teachers need to really take a look in their hearts and decide if they are serving community and not just themselves. Who can you collaborate with? What can you offer?
Because honestly, there is no balance at the milongas anymore. The level of dancer is wide and diverse, the number of followers far outnumber the number of leaders (unless it’s a gender balanced event, such as a marathon or an encuentro, but even here the quality of dance is disparate.)
And how do we move forward? Education, I think is the answer, but after all, I’m a teacher, I would say this!
(Just my 2 cents…. and I apologize for the binary nature of this post. I hope it will be accepted as just a reflection.)
Love everything you said!!
Thank you!
Good topic, good thoughts on this problem of not enough strong leads. I do agree that the solution in part lies in men learning from other strong leads and women learning from other strong follower/leaders. The problem with this is that it doesn’t get much worse than beginners dancing with beginners. Especially beginner followers (women) dancing with other beginner followers (women). There are men I won’t mirada either because they can’t lead yet, talk too much while dancing, or have douced themselves with cologne, and there are men who won’t mirada me either because I’m not a good enough follower or I’m not pretty enough, too old, or whatever. The system works to eliminate courtesy (unfun, boring) dancing. I’d rather sit than be miserable for 12 minutes!
SO, there aren’t enough leads, but it was better when women refused to dance with anyone who wasn’t an expert… Got it! No contradiction there at all. The rudeness of Phoenix Milonga’s (well, several of them, particularly the group that used to dance at mijana’s) is why I quit tango, and went back to salsa. Even during the class, which, presumably it is ok to take the lesson before you are an expert, or are you just supposed to magically become an expert, without the lessons? Anyways, even there, follows were just happy to yell out for the hole group, “he isn’t getting it at all!” etc. Yeah, lots of fun! I joined a freaking hip hop dance crew at age 50, and they were more supportive than tango was. Beautiful dance, some of the worst people I’ve ever met in a dance community, ever.
Interesting 🤔 ponderings. What to do, what to do…
Interesting ponderings…what to do,what to do…
Someone is giving classes for men only in Germany. http://tangochicos.com
Although I never attended, I think it is a great idea. We should have more of this.
I am currently in BsAs. Last night no one asked me to dance and no one even looked my way. The night before three tandas, the night before 1 tandas. A big difference from previous trips when I didn’t dance as well. I saw only two women leads so far.
I danced this year in about 15 cities around the world and dance mores erywhere else (often as the new girl in town).
I have no conclusions but this is my observation.
Excellent points
I totally agree. And being an older tall woman does not help. I have put years of time and practice into my tango. But when the choice is a pretty young woman in slinky clothes and me, I loose every time.
Thanks for sharing Lindsay…. Hugs to you!
Thanks Priya!
Thank you for your observations, Amy. Yes, Times are changing…
Thanks Ulli for your comment and for sending the link. I totally agree with this and yes, I think in the US it might take a little longer to catch on. This is what I want to do actually – or encourage others to do!
Thanks for your comment, Pamela. And yes… hmmmmmm
Thanks for your comment. For me there is no contradiction – and it is not about being an expert, it’s about putting time and practice in and knowing and understanding the codes and being a team player, a community contributer/dancer. Sorry Phoenix wasn’t a match for you.
Thank you for your comment Jessica.
Excellent analysis! I totally agree! Tango is not just dancing. It’s an attitude. It involves respect, humility and dedication. I’ve had many discussions about these things, and, sadly, there are only few in tango who share these views. It’s true that our way of life and culture in Europe or the U.S. are different from the old times in Argentina (and this is good!), but I think this does not mean that we cannot learn from and adopt a true tango attitude.
Thank you so much Irma for your comments. Yes – the Tango Attitude. Maybe that’s my next blog!
Daniela, I am 100% with you wanting higher dance standards. I want it from the men equally, but the numbers are an obstacle (in addition to sex role differences). Nowadays typically there are more women than men, which I think has a great effect on behavior. This makes it hard for some women to preserve their standards, and it tempts some men to disregard standards. Plus, my theory is, the more men disregard standards, the less incentive for women to improve their dance, unless they are already quite good … and it’s often the quite good women who learn to lead. I like that I’ve seen some teachers teach beyond technique, musicality, and comfort, they actually teach leaders how to have a desirable dance, without reserving those topics for private lessons. And they normalize the idea of male followers. If we can get men thinking this way it opens up a whole new appreciation for tango–the quest for the magic, not just the catnip of the embrace once a week. Of course it’s unfair to generally expect teachers to change the world, if they’re trying to make a living. BTW in my limited experience, tango communities with a closer role balance seem to me to have higher dance standards, which is partly why I hold this view.
Thanks so much for your comment… really appreciate it !