We have so many technical possibilities that anyone who is interested can get what he needs through YT and other channels.
Up to a point, though one must acknowledge that not all people can learn from two-dimensional videos on a screen, in the tiny space in their home. I can't, for instance – I need a teacher who can walk around me, and a good-sized studio for me to walk around in. I've tried video lessons . . . no, they are useless to me.
I learned in a metropolis and experienced 15 different tango teachers in the very first years. Sometimes it is difficult to find the right teachers, even when there is a large number of courses available.
This, however, is true. Around here, you can't swing a cat without hitting a tango teacher or studio, and I'm not even counting the non-dedicated dance schools. I suspect that's true of nearly all large cities.
The part that I find mysterious is that my country – Canada – is geographically huge and has relatively few large cities, yet people routinely "commute" into those cities to take lessons. I've met people who were taking weekly lessons at the end of a
two-hour drive. Does this not happen in other places? Or are long drives to big cities a uniquely Canadian or at least North American concept?
I'd ignore any cry of cultural appropriation. There have been less than sensible questions raised in the internet about Europeans dancing AT, or salsa. So I guess that could also write off waltz outside Germanic countries, or salsa outside Cuba.
I agree with you here.
Tango is about as Argentine as maple syrup . . . which is to say not very. Sure, I think the Argentines have done the best job of promoting it, and they hosted it for a long time – heck, their country's name is on the box – but they swiped a huge percentage of it from African and European dance. And it took trips to Europe and North America over the years, and came back . . . from Paris with ballet and from the U.S. with jazz.
Long before we had the Internet or the modern vision of globalization, and even before airplanes were affordable to the masses, tango was a truly international dance. I find the Argentine claim to it to be a bit disingenuous. It always smells like teachers trying to earn a quick buck by invoking foreign exoticism.
But . . . the cries of "cultural appropriation" will happen regardless. And right or wrong, they'll taint the learning process.
But you need affiliation to some national AT body, which could also look at general protection or insurance issues.
I doubt that'd ever happen where I live. Nothing like that exists for any dance that I know of. Even ballroom dance – the most regulated, competition-heavy kind – has multiple, mutually unfriendly associations, and these faff about with things like dress codes and compulsory figures, not insurance.
That phrase really needs to be erased from the language, we are in an age where culture propagates globally and the idea that one gets to own an art form through birthright is completely absurd.
I mostly agree, as I said above. Which said, there are exceptions: The indigenous cultures where I live have really, truly been wronged by people who basically shoved their face back and took their arts. I think there is a need to protect the cultures of endangered peoples. But that's something that citizens of countries without such peoples rarely think about.
At any rate, it isn't the case for tango, the "appropriation" of which is on the same footing as the global "appropriation" of Champagne or silk clothing – i.e., maybe it came from somewhere once, but those who were its guardians happily sold it globally and now it's just another luxury you can buy.
