BA Tango
For many of the people who has developed a keen interest in Tango, a trip to Buenos Aires is probably the ultimate goal in their Tango experience. In fact, these days it seems that more and more people that I am personally aware of are able to make the trip, e.g. a blogger that I follow is right there as we speak.
For me, after taking up Tango about 8 years ago and with the recent changes in circumstances, I feel that I am getting to the stage where a trip to Buenos Aires can signal either a new beginning, or the end of it all.
I wonder what it will be when the time comes?
Self-sustaining communities
Had been following a recent thread on Tango-L on community building with a lot of interest. I was particularly impressed with the comments made by Sean of the Pittsburgh Argentine Tango Society, who made a number of telling observations.
I will try to paraphrase some of the discussions below.
How long for newbies
Got into a conversation recently lamenting the fact there it’s very difficult to bring in new people – and guys in particular – to our Tango community. One of the main point, it seems, is that Tango, when compared with, say, salsa, is a difficult dance and so people drop out because of the lack of “instant gratification”. That is, people tend to drop out because it takes too long for them to reach a level where they can enjoy Tango!? A gross generalisation, perhaps, but there is probably some element of truth in there? Perhaps it is happening right in your community?
To a certain extent I’d have to agree with the assessment above. However, since people join Tango for various reasons, with pursuit of excellence being but one of many, I believe it is also fair to say that most people during their initial brush with Tango just want to have fun, and preferably with like-minded people. In fact, in my opinion, it is rather the exception to find people who are very serious and dedicated from the word go, except perhaps for people from competitive dance background, e.g. ballroom/dancesport.
Assimilation
It’s great to have Hsueh-tze back, for the second time this year. Currently we are about half-way through her series of workshops. As usual, she has enlightened all of us on the subtleties of close embrace and yet again highlighted some very important fundamental techniques that allow us to do just that little extra with the music…
Unfortunately, as usual, this is also going to be another period of struggle for me, as far as the Tango is concerned, as I try to disassemble and critically scrutinise the Tango knowledge that I have accumulated up to this point. Really a kind of deconstruction/construction process. Hopefully, after the eventual reconstruction, I can reach a better level than I am. The trouble is, it can take a while. Meanwhile, things can get a touch frustrating. 🙁