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I have a weird point of comparison. Four minute blues and fusion dances with some of the same people I tango with. Honestly, the duration is not as intense and important that a lot of tango dancers elevate to a pedestal. I’ve also gotten that kind of connection in shorter alt tango sets.

The structure of tango makes it pretty horrible. I recently started learning zouk which also has some of the characteristics of tandas in that people start dancing for a few songs that meld into each other. But in that community they explicitly go out of the way to make the first hour beginner...

I think the list of cities also depends a bit if you are a lead or follow. Cities like Buenos Aires, Instanbul, Paris or Tokyo might be praised by a ton of followers but leads might do better in cities like Barcelona, St. Petersburg or Seoul.

But is it just during summers? Because the outdoor milongas kinda go away when it starts em raining

They absolutely can. You just have to meet the needs differently. In Portland they have an outdoor event at Director Park with a live band every other week. A ton of advanced dancers show up to that one because it is free, outdoors and everyone chats and dances. Even non-dancers. Recently Reed...

I think the container where the dance happens is also super important. I have talked to a lot of folks that are turned off by the salsa and bachata scenes in some cities because they just don't feel safe. Guys are creepy, obsessive and like to quickly get way too close. As a guy, I look at...

Criollo is also super interesting for people from other countries. In the sense that in Mexico and Central America there was pride in mestizaje ( mixing of Spanish descendants - criollos with native population ) whereas in Argentina it was more to distinguish against the new wave of European...

There are other dances that do this and don’t have the same vibe - fusion, blues, kizomba. Even bachata and zouk to some extent. So it’s not the technical bits to me but rather the way that the other rules of the dance that stops a lot of people. I’d say tandas and navigations are bigger...

I think it only matters for organizers that want more role balance in events and for the people that would be sitting out without many dance partners to rotate with. We have a couple that only dance with each other because the wife is super shy. I’ve gotten the husband to lead me a few times...

One of my teachers started a couples only class because members of her church wanted to learn but didn’t give two hoots about rotations and partner changes. It turns out that a lot of the women who wanted to learn to lead also want to just do this with one fixed partner that they knew ( some...

I think for me one thing that significantly made tango more enjoyable is relentlessly trying different new things that are sometimes purely tango but sometimes tango adjacent. For example, I got into fusion dancing because my tango instructor at a time was a guest DJ at an event. I got into...

Were the partners not going to take the workshops if you weren’t going? How do organizers find folks like this that are willing to step?

They shouldn’t be for the whole event but at one of the milongas I really like the DJ will announce “this is a mixer tanda, you dance a song with someone you have never danced with before!”. And it’s great, everyone in the room asks a new person to dance and gets one dance in. Then the DJ says...

The way I seen it done it’s the other way around. Where you start with 3 songs at the beginning and then move to the 4 songs. The reason for this is that there are usually more beginners at the start. They might have stuck around after a lesson and the floor tends to be a bit more empty. This...

This seems to be the source The Evolution of Argentine Tango Styles

Tango can’t compete with dances like this one in Portland - Sujata Shyam on Instagram: "Sk8ers what a wonderful night of learning, growing and playing!!!! Choreo by @morganweske So grateful for each person who shows up, ready to lock in and have some fun. I loved everyone's pastel colors...

In the Pacific Northwest in the US the only three song tandas I’ve encountered were at a beginner friendly Milonga and at an alt tango event. Everywhere else has been four songs

Bro you don’t look a day over 50 stop lying

How are y’all getting young hotshots in your scene? I think it’s super rare to see someone that is below the age of 35 learning tango in our scene. They tend to gravitate more towards the dances like west coast swing, zouk, kizomba, fusion, bachata that have more visibility and fits easier...

I think the men that tend to end up in tango when it is not a big local cultural element are slightly more curious and thrill seeking so a lot of the overall social stereotypes for all men won’t apply. The men I meet at tango tend to skew a bit more artsy, have more weird hobbies compared to...