Saturday, November 20, 2010

Chance to dance!


Most of the articles about the situation on pista are written from ladies perspective. Texts are telling about ladies hours to shape the body, get the tango training , fix the makeup, buy clothes and then not getting any dances but an evening in burning frustration. Then the other stories about leaders who make disgusting choices, not taking care of the looks, not training enough and taking a tanda off, not doing their duty.

But I think that followers chance to dance is totally a follower issue and followers need to cooperate here to get to their goals!

To me there is two main aspects: the need of corresponding number of leaders and the distribution of existing dances.

Could the ideas below be a starter for creating some suitable for a tango community?

How can a community attract new leaders?
Informing men around you about tango; start to talk everywhere about dance during your day,
Organizing introduction hours where men, fresh for tango, can test to dance tango with a group experienced followers with 2-10 years of dance in their feet,
Organizing a godmother program where experienced followers for a term/6 months are dancing certain evenings with newcoming leaders
Program where leaders who take classes are promoted by training with experienced followers on practica. I think it must be limited favor - as follower you should not be in charge all the time.


How can a community make the distribution of dances more fair?
Use cabeceo
After a tanda followers are going back to their place - not asking for/accepting next dance on the pista.
The popular ladies take pause when they need rest - put up an area for that (popular followers can be under a pressure to say Yes! when asked for a dance.
If you get involved in this kind of activities suitable for your community you can bet more acceptable situation in milonga. In my life frustration has been a good engine for many kind of changes!

Put your frustration to work for you!

No comments: