Saturday, October 30, 2021

Are Early Milongas a Bad Business Decision?

 


No. The early milonga eventually will be seen as the best business decision of the century for tango lovers. The COVID-19 pandemic was mostly bad news for tango communities.  However, one thing that was good is that the pandemic has taught many people that they need more sleep. A strong immune system requires it.

Why are early milongas a good business decision for those who are organizing them?
 I was not sure that that would be the case, but it made good sense "on paper."  In early 2019, I gave my rationale to local organizers, and many were skeptical.  However, people who had to drive an hour loved the idea.  Others liked hiking or some other activity on the next morning.  During the week, many need to wake up early for work. The late-night milonga made them cancel one, and often it was tango.  On the other hand, there were those who were night owls, worked late regularly or were retired who hated the idea of an early milonga.  Organizers wondered if people would come.  So what happened? Dancers came in record numbers once the milongas started at 7pm. 

For the nay-sayers, below is a footnote of the myths of why early milongas are a bad business decision.*

The best business decision always has an eye on the bottom line: Money.
An organizer in my community gave the early milonga concept a try on her longest-running monthly Saturday milonga.  The result was stunning.  Never had there been so many people come to that milonga since its inception, some 12 years ago.   She said, "This is great for me too. I have to get up with my children the next day.  I love it."  

So what was a feasibility issue for early milongas eventually became a good business decision for her and other organizers who jumped on the bandwagon in the same city.  But beyond the money issue, having early milongas (before 7:30 pm start),   In summary: 
  • More people came.  The main reason was that people out of town came.
  • Dancers had better personal balance and danced better.
  • Customers drove home before the drowsy-and-drunk drivers were on the road.
  • People with multiple interests awoke to enjoy a full Saturday or Sunday.
  • People who work for a living woke the next workday with uncompromised sleep rhythm.
  • Everyone had a better chance to have their memory and mood doing better.
One can ask, how is it feasible (or a good business decision) to continue late-night milongas in a time when people are more knowledgeable about the direct correlation of being more susceptibility to infections and viruses?  

Are late-night milongas feasible or even thinkable in a post-pandemic world? 

_______________________________

Photo Credit:
The worst business decisions ever made [article]. 


*Here is that false or at least questionable list of reasons early milongas won't work in your town:
  • Early milongas have lots of kids running around your feet. This is not true. Early milongas billed as kid-friendly can create this problem.  The tango community understands etiquette. So a simple rule of no children on the dance floor fixes that problem.

  • Dancing is a late-night event.  "Some wine and a darkened room are part of the tango allure.  Think about it. Some of the best dancing you probably have done was early in the day at festivals or encuentros.  Early milongas or practicas are doing well in large cities too, including Buenos Aires.

  • The excuse is often this:  "We have a class before the milonga and that is why the milonga has to be later."  This is the best and worst reason to have later milongas.  First the best reasons:  Classes and following a milonga help raise enough money for organizers. Classes, it is argued, help grow the community with new dancers.  The worst reason for combining classes to a milonga:  If you are going to have a quality milonga, don't have people learning and then practicing what they learned at your milonga!  Also, do you really want to frustrate and demotivate beginners with trying to dance after a class?  Seeing advanced dancers dancing so well may be frustrating for many beginners. 

  • No one will come.  The smart organizer merely must try an early milonga that is well advertised. Early milongas in traffic-ridden cities during the week may be hard.  But in some cities, an early milonga could allow dancers to come right after work and then go home early.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Be Your Best, Not Hers

 


My goal is to be my best.

For those who do not dance, let me share a fact:  It is a rare thing to have your own partner as your favorite dancer. But let’s say that you marry your favorite dancer. What happens when another great dancer replaces you?  So it was never my goal to be my wife's best dance partner. It still isn’t. 

After years of dancing together, however, Sybille has become my favorite. We have great dances with others, and then when we reunite, we both rediscover how wonderful we are together.  It’s always a wonderful surprise. After dancing with others we return to each other as better dancers and interestingly renewed in our appreciation of each other.  

If one day Mr. Perfect Dancer comes along, I will be so glad!  She’ll tell me why he was so good. I will learn. And eventually, all my partners will notice that I have improved.

My goal is just to be my best, not her best.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

A New Tango Start


At the end of the pandemic, maybe a new start?  Look around, if you have been around and experienced tango communities come and go, you will see the effects of the Dark Side, the negative elements of tango. Slowly tango can become extinct here and there in the tango world.  Maybe a new start can help tango to better thrive?

 Tango communities--communities that hug--will certainly lose some dancers forever and have a smaller pool of prospective dancers.

The Dark Side, then, is a true threat to tango communities as it is so vulnerable for viability now. It is true that a certain kind of tango may continue; I call it "Wax Museum Tango."  You already are aware of the Wax Museum of Dance museum piece, taught with other ballroom dances which live in the Wax Museum of Dance, or the so-called ballroom dance.  Although I have enjoyed ballroom dance, it really is not so much a social dance but for the show--expensive gowns and lessons which only the rich can afford.

You also have seen Wax Museum Tango exists already in the ballroom repertoire.  It's a generalized rhythm taken from a few authentic but not beloved tangos.  The ballroom tango tempo is prescribed in a narrow spectrum between 120-128 beats per minute.  (I am not kidding.) Men and women often look in opposite directions as they march machine-like across the floor. He is passionate and tough on his woman and she is a bordello-like temptress.  Great fun. Argentine tango is different, but also easily could join the other museum pieces if the "Dark Elements" of AT continue to eat away and this and that tango community in the world.  Surely you know of some communities--sometimes large cities whose tango communities wither and die.  That's how it happens.  One or more of the below elements sealed the coffin of that community.  For a large city near where I live, it was #5 as the major factor, but all were there.

Elements of the Dark Side: 

1. Dark Side Element: Over-defining what dance is.
Source: Teachers and students who focus on multiple standardized moves and perfect presentation.  In a few words:  Cookbook dance.
Solution: Dance always was and will continue to be as unique as each person is. People who are motivated to dance out of a need to show off to others, or even worse, to compete to see who is best will ruin any dance genre as a social dance.  The dance will land in the Wax Museum of Dance.

Competition brings with it choreography (literally "written out dance") that requires mostly group-think. Sure ballet is beautiful but does it have people dancing out of joy for the music?  Maybe in the streets?  Or dance halls?  It is an elitist dance that damages the body. How many old ballet dancers do you find out there?  Communities that have teachers who focus on social dance and being unique in one's body create communities that will last. 

2. Dark Side Element:  Lack of shared etiquette among social dancers.  
Source:  An over-emphasis on how to move the body gracefully but not how to move gracefully in the community.  The source tends to be from ballroom and salsa dancers using rules from a one-dance (not tanda) community.  Tango teachers and veteran dancers are the only ones who can fix this. But often they are too passive or don't know or want to follow etiquette.
Solution:  Well, you cannot easily fix what I have seen in a now-dead community--a teacher who comes over to a potential partner, puts out both of his hands with his feet inches from her feet, expecting that she is delighted to dance with him.  Then he breaks a very important etiquette rule:  He teaches her at the milonga. Since he has many women who he thinks need his services, he drops her off at her seat after a few dances and repeats this behavior.  Etiquette worked very well in the tango community to make the community grow and remain lively.  Don't try to fix etiquette.  It is not broken, only misunderstood or trivialized by some.

3. Dark Side Element:  Creation of unisex sanitized dance.  
Source:  This element is pernicious because it hides under the important social changes of our times.  But in reality, it is the cultural appropriation of social dance from Argentina.  Do you really want to kill tango?  Forget that we are passionate human beings that love to be held.  
Solution:  Learn to appreciate yin and yang, male and female energies--in yourself and others. Erasing these ancient ways of understanding life does not come from making female into male.  If you do not like being uniquely feminine or masculine and kind of wish that everyone were the same, then Argentine tango is not your dance.  I recommend the fusion or blues community, where that works well.  One thing that I see that differs between Hispanic culture and Europeanized culture is that the former women love being women and men love being men.  (Yes machismo and machisma come from this too, but is it any better in "Gringolandia"?) If you want to participate in the cultural appropriation of tango, make it a unisex dance! My wife and I lead and follow.  When there are too few men in Gringolandia, as is often the case, my wife leads.  Unisex communities will see fewer and fewer beginner men maturing in this environment.  Look around!  In the rare case that there are too many men, I want the chance to follow.  By dancing both parts we are not making the dance neuter.  Knowing both parts is a part of learning the dance better, not some sort of social statement for masculinists or feminists.  The bottom line is that communities with their cultural appropriation of tango via unisex sanitized dance will fizzle out, and then come back and argue with me.)

4. Dark Side Element:  Poorly trained DJs. 
Source:  Milonga organizers who do not give clear guidance to all DJs.  (In other words, it is your party, not theirs!
Solution:  Whenever I played professionally as a musician, someone in charge wanted to know our repertoire, and make it clear that he or she wanted people to dance.  If the band was too loud, the organizer would be the first to complain.  Organizers wanted the dance floor not to get too rowdy.  I remember one rowdy crowd in which there was a guy who threatened to get his gun in his car. The organizer ordered us to play "a bunch of slow songs." And so we did.  It was like a tranquilizer for the crowd.  

But what do tango organizers often do?  They often allow the ignorance or egos of the DJ's rule.  One DJ is dancing and not in control of the volume.  Another is not paying attention to the floor but talking loudly off to the side.  Another plays an expressive Pugliese on a crowded floor instead of waiting for later in the evening. Yet another DJ plays a super long and loud reggaetón to which some in the audience are holding their ears and no one (thank God) is dancing.  The DJ is not the queen or king of your milonga.  If you love tango and do not know what you need for a successful dance party, then get a room manager.  A poor DJ ruins the party and has harmed ever so slightly the whole community.  Some may decide to give up tango at your poorly managed milonga.

5. Dark Side Element:  Lack of coordination and civility among organizers.   
Problem: If the community does not have a central calendar, like one finds in Washington DC or Austin, Texas, organizers cannot even begin to be civil to one another.
Solution:  Well, try getting a group of volunteers.  Start with a milongas-only calendar, as I did in 2008 in Austin.  Large cities around where I live have this problem of a lack of coordination, too much competition, and straight-out incivility.  Meanwhile, my smaller town has avoided this pretty successfully.  This Dark Element has destroyed tango in spite of huge populations.



Photo credit: Ballroom tango https://milagro.org/ballroom-tango-vs-argentine-tango/

Saturday, January 30, 2021

Literally dying from a lack of touch

Encuentro in Newport News, Virginia by Ivy Garrenton
Sybille, my wife, and I were talking about the five languages of tango, and I think she formulated what allows people to stay a long time in tango:

"People start dancing tango for different reasons, but those who stay with tango, stay because their dominant love language is the Language of Touch," she quipped.

I think she is has a good point.

Dying to dance tango? No.
At least, I don't think it is dancing that we are so missing. It is probably more that you are dying to have human touch.  A desire to have socially acceptable human touch with many people may add years to your life, according to the research.  This is especially true of certain people. Although research indicates that human touch increases in its pleasantness the older we get, the lack of touch especially as infants and older adults can lead to "the failure to thrive" conditions, leading to an "unexplainable" death.  This idea of having a dominant Language of Touch is another way of understanding how people literally die from a lack of touch, which I mentioned back in November.

If human touch with friends, family, and one's partner is important in a general sense, and you personally especially crave human touch, then tango will be your long-lived friend. Having the luxury of touch adds
 years to your life on the planet.  


Some prefer the other 4 languages.  
Gary Chapman, the author of The Five Love Languages, suggests other languages that I believe are complementary to tango-- the languages of Quality Time and Words of Affirmation.  Coupled with the Language of Touch, tango will be pleasant for a long time.  When I wrote the post The Five Languages of Tango, the first draft had problems with the so-called languages of "receiving gifts" and "acts of service."  But it became clear. The freedom of movement and expression is the greatest gift you can give to many people.  In the realm of dances, there are simply some better dances for this than tango.  Seeking a "freedom of movement" high? You might be in the wrong dance studio, and you might be a menace on the dancefloor!

Longevity in life and tango may be correlated, but the dance is so much more enjoyable when we give each other a warm embrace. Is touch your dominant language, your most fluent language? Tango itself needs to stay with this foundational strength; otherwise, I fear that tango itself will once again die out as so many dances have over history. I love other dances for movement, but if tango stays with its own foundation, it will come back strong after the pandemic once again allows a warm embrace.



Photo credit:
The line of dancers in the ronda was taken by Ivy Garrenton https://m.facebook.com/ivygarrenton/ at the Newport News, VA (USA) encuentro.  March 2018.