Cabeceo and Other "Rules"

[Brummbaer]

We had a live duo at one social advertised as practica and there was a pause for a clap at the end of every song. Tandas of two songs were the average with some couples opting to dance the entire live set (8 songs? then a DJ set then Second live set) together and some people not dancing during the live sets at all.

Went to a ballroom event once with a live band. The only rhythm they played was foxtrot - the whole evening.

A codigo I'd come across with a live tango orchestra is to listen to the first set and dance the rest. Live tango orchestras are like hen's teeth, so never experienced that. Where there's been a tango group then they've just got on with tandas (not enough time for niceties). Have had a group of musicians from some prestige orchestra who did an 'Argentine Tango set' (not Piazzolla). Well played, but no feeling.

Conclusion...

Without some publicity of 'codigos', they're not going to happen as they're unknown, and then they're going to need to be accepted. They also need some alignment - almost a standard rather than what one venue found they had to impose to keep order. Not seen any promotion of a 'standard' from any cultural institute in Argentina (but maybe need to search in Spanish), nor from any European country 'co-ordination' (for want of a better description).

It's always about the money in the end, however idealistic people get.

Absolutely.

 

[Tangogal]

Live tango orchestras are like hen's teeth, so never experienced that. Where there's been a tango group then they've just got on with tandas (not enough time for niceties). Have had a group of musicians from some prestige orchestra who did an 'Argentine Tango set' (not Piazzolla). Well played, but no feeling.

I've danced to a few live orchestras - some were great! there was a foursome who arrived at an afternoon practica during a festival in Budapest who were excellent. Otres Aires were also brilliant the time I saw them live (a coordinated approach meant they were able to set up a dance floor in the theatre). Travelling musicians sometimes show up and play for us - mostly bandoneon players. One night we had a busker who played accordion - also very talented. And many duds!

I mentioned that my local tango group is tiny. Most people have taken classes from the same Argentine teacher. He did teach codigas when I was in his classes but perhaps he doesn't anymore. The majority of people at the live duo practica were experienced dancers. They know the codigas.

Between studio hire, music purchase and wear and tear on my dance shoes running a practica would cost me in the region of €600 a month - more if I had to pay extra for parking or electricity.

 

[ArbeeNYC]

I agree, but that ship's sailed in many locales, and for many reasons. The problem is to get an appropriate part of that culture back when it is seen as of little value to many dancers.

Ahh, well that is unfortunate then. I'm not sure what the solution is other than to encourage it through use and education (where appropriate).

 

[ArbeeNYC]

Tango groups are better. They tend to understand tandas and cortinas, and stay out of the dancers' way. But unless they're dancers themselves, they sometimes get so crazy with the tempo changes and spontaneous variations that nobody can follow the music.

Or they get into solo riffs and off they go!

 

[ArbeeNYC]

Between studio hire, music purchase and wear and tear on my dance shoes running a practica would cost me in the region of €600 a month - more if I had to pay extra for parking or electricity.

Could you make it back with a cover charge? At least enough to cover expenses?

 

[JournalInTime]

I ran a tango practica for a few months but the studio wanted more money and most people really wanted me to teach a class with a small social dance afterwards - too big a commitment for me at the time.

Yeah, that's too much.

I made it clear that I was just a social dancer willing to act as the person who rented, set up, and tidied up a studio; found music; advertised an event; and collected money to cover it all. I made sure we all had a place to practice. I wasn't then and am not now a teacher. At nine years – however intensive – I'm just another intermediate dancer.

Yet . . . being even a month more advanced than another person is enough to bring out the "But you could teeeaaach us!" talk. I had that: "Oh, you dance back sacadas all the time! That's tricky. Can you teach us?" Privately, I thought it would be a boring subject for a class ("Uh, it's a back step."), but I would say, "Sorry, not a teacher."

Then next week it would be another movement.

If the studio hadn't ceased to be available, that might've made me quit before my ex did.

Between studio hire, music purchase and wear and tear on my dance shoes running a practica would cost me in the region of €600 a month - more if I had to pay extra for parking or electricity.

Oof, yes, that's steep. We were paying closer to (translating from CAD to EUR) €155/month, though I'm not factoring in shoes and personal expenses, nor the bottled water, nor . . . okay, maybe closer to €200/month. Not too bad, but we didn't earn a penny. As I said, I was just the voice of the collective.

At €600/month, you'd need a wealthier crowd or a much, much bigger one. We had only 20-30 regulars, so I'd have wanted 50-100 at that rate. I don't think we could've found 20-30 people willing to pay three times the price!

 

[Cabbit]

The most recent milonga i attended was fifty people, invitation only, role balanced. It lasted maybe five hours and all but two invitations i got started out as chatting with people. I was okay with that because i felt that i had enough time to take it slow and i was really glad to see these people. It did not feel as if they were misusing a conversation to pressure me into a tanda.

I mention this because in general, it is a very pro- cabeceo community, and on some events (attended by the same people) it is much more closely observed. So maybe sometimes it has to do with the space or the mood of the crowd too.

And teaching customs to beginners was never a big deal. Most new dancers dont question or push back against these rules. The instructors just mention how things are done several times, with an emphasis on - it is better to practice cabeceo with the people you know so that once you start traveling to events abroad you are able to use it effortlessly and - dont bring shame and disgrace to our tango scene by being rude, especially to guests.

 

[Tangogal]

Could you make it back with a cover charge? At least enough to cover expenses?

Cover charge would have to be less than a lesson charge so say €5 so I’d need a minimum of 25 dancers coming weekly to cover costs and with me and the other practica partners volunteering our time. Not sustainable!

Alternative 1. Find a free venue - still charge €5 to cover insurance, advertising, music and other expenses. But that can only last a few months until the venue realises they’re not making money at the bar or on food.

Alternative 2. Charge more - classes cost between €10 and €15 depending on courses, loyalty deals and whether they’re 45 mins or 90 mins so it’s unlikely that people will pay €10+ for a practica

Alternative 3. Teach a class and have a 1hr practica afterwards. Lots more work and a bigger time commitment for me plus now I’m competing against the other teachers and my practica partners can’t just substitute for me

Alternative 4. My practica partners and I make up the shortfall and volunteer our time - this will lead to burnout!

When I ran a practica briefly before I tried to run it for 1hr at a rental cost of €30 no advertising, relying on the studio’s public liability insurance and using their equipment with a CD I kept in the car. Sometimes I had 20 people sometimes 6. Another person had “better” CDs in their car so they took over the music. My biggest problem was getting the people out without running into the second hour (doubling my rent)!

 

[Tangogal]

Could you make it back with a cover charge? At least enough to cover expenses?

Cover charge would have to be less than a lesson charge so say €5 so I’d need a minimum of 25 dancers coming weekly to cover costs and with me and the other practica partners volunteering our time. Not sustainable!

It could still be done with a partner who could negotiate down the venue cost. If it could be <€200 and no extra insurance costs then the incidental costs would be easily covered.

I would also run a quarterly milonga with a cover charge of €25+ and support a local charity. I’m pretty sure the DJ would waive their fee and we’d get a good turnout from neighbouring cities.

 

[Tangogal]

Weird double post! Posted while editing

 

[JournalInTime]

These things seem hard to avoid:

[...] cover charge would have to be less than a lesson charge [...]
[...] loyalty deals [...]
[...] make up the shortfall and volunteer our time [...]
[...] biggest problem was getting the people out [...]

Cover vs. lesson charge: Our cover was more-or-less set for us by the existence of "open lessons" in our community. People could obtain a card good for 10-12 lessons on tuango.ca or a similar "deals site" for less than 100 CAD – sometimes for less than 50 CAD. So, we were competing against lessons that cost $4-10/hour, which were so crowded that people used the time and space for a práctica, ignoring the lesson. Without offering a lesson, we couldn't compete without offering 2+ hours for $4-10 (i.e., $2-5/hour).

Loyalty deals: The existence of cheap cards for open lessons meant we needed loyalty cards to compete. They were a great idea because they doubled as membership cards, which helped a lot with "belonging" and repeat custom. However, printing wasn't free, and having no physical card was a nonstarter . . . we learned quickly that checking ID against a tablet or piece of paper was too slow to be practical.

Volunteer time: It all was, in effect. Some rare few days, we made a profit – but really, our time was unpaid because something had to give to get "hours of dancing at a low, low price," and that something proved to be paying ourselves. As a fanatical tanguero, this didn't bug me! Still, it wasn't precisely a choice – I was lucky to have the right personality for this, but I could see that being a deal-breaker for someone else.

Clearing people out: The worst part of the experience! Getting fellow dancers who knew me personally to leave on time to avoid issues with the studio owners put me in the awkward position of either being short with close acquaintances and friends, or being a bad tenant. The plot twist in Canadian winter being that people have heavy outdoor clothing, and change before and after dancing, but were very cool on being asked to include cloakroom time in their paid dance time. My experience is that few tango people are punctual or respectful of schedules.

no advertising

This was avoidable. Facebook was and is the tool for getting people to tango events here. It's "free" (not really, since they advertise at you and harvest your data). All we had to do was create a public group for our event, remind attendees to join the group (yes, we had the obligatory-if-annoying five minutes of announcements), put that info on cards we were printing anyway, and remember to update the event weekly (a turnkey thing that amounted to "clone event, change date"). It worked fine.

 

[JournalInTime]

Reading my last post, I wonder if we weren't over-organized: intelligence-gathering on competing events, loyalty cards, member lists, studio contracts, advertising on the web, announcements, etc. I know people who've run prácticas that amounted to "lie to some studio about renting space to practice a routine, verbally invite all our friends at the milonga, dance, ignore the overworked studio staff, leave late and leave a mess." They did this for years and weren't kicked out because they had the studio over a barrel (here, studios are legion and can't risk turning anyone away) . . . maybe I'm too honest or far more of a rules-follower than I was at age 18.

 

[Tangogal]

These things seem hard to avoid:

Cover vs. lesson charge: Our cover was more-or-less set for us by the existence of "open lessons" in our community. People could obtain a card good for 10-12 lessons on tuango.ca or a similar "deals site" for less than 100 CAD – sometimes for less than 50 CAD. So, we were competing against lessons that cost $4-10/hour, which were so crowded that people used the time and space for a práctica, ignoring the lesson. Without offering a lesson, we couldn't compete without offering 2+ hours for $4-10 (i.e., $2-5/hour).

Loyalty deals: The existence of cheap cards for open lessons meant we needed loyalty cards to compete. They were a great idea because they doubled as membership cards, which helped a lot with "belonging" and repeat custom. However, printing wasn't free, and having no physical card was a nonstarter . . . we learned quickly that checking ID against a tablet or piece of paper was too slow to be practical.

Volunteer time: It all was, in effect. Some rare few days, we made a profit – but really, our time was unpaid because something had to give to get "hours of dancing at a low, low price," and that something proved to be paying ourselves. As a fanatical tanguero, this didn't bug me! Still, it wasn't precisely a choice – I was lucky to have the right personality for this, but I could see that being a deal-breaker for someone else.

Clearing people out: The worst part of the experience! Getting fellow dancers who knew me personally to leave on time to avoid issues with the studio owners put me in the awkward position of either being short with close acquaintances and friends, or being a bad tenant. The plot twist in Canadian winter being that people have heavy outdoor clothing, and change before and after dancing, but were very cool on being asked to include cloakroom time in their paid dance time. My experience is that few tango people are punctual or respectful of schedules.

This was avoidable. Facebook was and is the tool for getting people to tango events here. It's "free" (not really, since they advertise at you and harvest your data). All we had to do was create a public group for our event, remind attendees to join the group (yes, we had the obligatory-if-annoying five minutes of announcements), put that info on cards we were printing anyway, and remember to update the event weekly (a turnkey thing that amounted to "clone event, change date"). It worked fine.

I meant no paid advertising! I had a Facebook group and an sms list - WhatsApp wasn’t popular at the time.

 

[Tangogal]

Ideally a passionate hotelier would offer their function room once a week for free. I’d happily pay the dance toll- probably a free private practice and occasional lessons partner or a coach for a couple - where you cast your eye over something they’re working on and offer suggestions.
A school principal who could lend out the school hall would also work beautifully.

 

[Rabbit]

The most recent milonga i attended was fifty people, invitation only, role balanced. It lasted maybe five hours and all but two invitations i got started out as chatting with people. I was okay with that because i felt that i had enough time to take it slow and i was really glad to see these people. It did not feel as if they were misusing a conversation to pressure me into a tanda.

The reason I prefer cabeceo is because dancing from a starting point of mutual attraction/interest is important to me. If verbal invitations are done with this in mind I don't mind them either