Miradamiranda
Well-Known Member
I’ve stayed out of this thread mostly, and it’s not because I have some trauma I don’t want to relive. I don’t. But I can share some observations and thoughts.
But first about privates.
100% of my private instruction were from either a local gay instructor with a decades long excellent reputation, taking place in a studio. Or from Argentinian or Colombian traveling couples teaching together in a borrowed home studio from mutual friends. (Where I’d be dancing with the guy while she observes and comments.) All very professional. In my dance education, no situations of risk. In my professional education, there were many many more opportunities for my instructors to take advantage of me coming to these men’s homes for private lessons, men who also had the opportunity to make or break my career or coerce me with promises. Yet I was lucky to only have had decent guys in that context, unlike many of my female peers.
Abuse of power. In the work place, in an educational setting, or on the tango scene, or anywhere where HE has a position of power over HER, it’s a delicate situation to handle when there are temptations, regardless whether they are about genuine consenting adults experiencing attraction or whether one part is taking advantage of a situation.
The problems of gender balance in the scene plays out when the better male dancers get the feeling they are semi-gods. When they experience, no matter which way they turn, eyes on them from one attractive woman after another wanting to dance with them, and many of them loading on their flirtatious tricks, just to get a dance, the guys can get pretty full of themselves and believe the ladies want more than the dance. And when they get the dance, they might up-play their pretend-attraction to clinch the next dance with him at the next milonga.
And maybe the ladies do want more. I know single ladies on the dance scene who’d like to find a significant other on the dance scene because it’s hard to balance or imagine balancing a romantic life with a non-dancer while continuing her dance life.
But I’ve also observed the occasional female attitude of ‘the sex is free, the real prize is the dance’. As in a willingness to almost prostitute themselves for free privates with guest instructors. Or simply having the desire to have a good dance partner so they can get into certain events together and have a guaranteed partner.
I recall observing one guest instructor that I saw in a few different cities ‘being cosy’ with ladies from each city, and once at a festival in yet a different city and several of those ladies were present, there were competitive glances and virtual daggers flying through the room. They each thought they were the special one getting maestro’s attention. If guys like that get too used to being so much in demand, he thinks he walks on water and can allow himself whatever he wants with women.
Maybe. It’s an environment where we can up-play our femininity and feel physical and mental connection with men (as a bonus beyond the pure dance), with the safety net of a social context. Would guy ‘X’ behave like an a-hole and ruin his reputation on the local scene? Probably not if he has been around for a while.
I still thing the tango world is a different case from many other contexts in terms of abuse. Because it’s just a leisure activity for most involved. There’s rarely a situation of power. Except in some of those case situations discussed earlier in the thread. And because there’s already a pre-selection of people. If you are very uptight about physical proximity and hotness in the dance, tango might not be your first choice.
Now, there’s another side of the coin that I’ve observed. A male dancer friend of mine had a major crush on one of his regular partners for years but he never dared to take the next step. I could tell while watching them that she was into him also. He asked me for advice about the mixed signals she was giving him. Well, for a lot of people, what happens on the dance floor stays on the dance floor. For others, the thoughts go beyond the dance floor but they decide to not act on them. But maybe she cherished their dance relationship much more than risking complicating their lives or simply not wanting to change anything. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Year after year, the smiles, the eye contact, the proximity, the sparks flying. (I got to know her a bit later on and understood that off the dance floor they have very different values.)
So, obviously some guys abuse their power, others don’t dare anything.
Oh, I just thought of another friend who admitted that for him, tango is only about the conquest. He only worked hard to become a good dancer so he could score, and then, when he finally succeeds, he drops their dance partnership like an old tissue and moves onto the next obsession. And then he complains that too many woman are only in tango for the dance, and that it’s harder and harder to score. It used to be so easy for him. Now, he is in denial of his own diminishing market value, and he is not some big maestro who can get away with taking what he believes belongs to him.
