I read the entire thread before writing this, so I know that much of what I'm going to say has already been said. Rather than comment on others' comments, I'll add a summary of my tango journey. Interpret this as another vote for all the things it votes for. Yes, I'm always this wordy . . . sorry.
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Context Is Everything: I live in a large city with a metro population of 4.3 million. Tango schools have come and gone, but we've never dipped below 8 and sometimes risen above 10. There are dozens of teachers and thousands of dancers, of which a couple hundred dance regularly. There's at least one tango event, often two, occasionally three per evening; there are afternoon events three days of the week; there are semi-regular (say, seasonal) balls; and there's one large and several small festivals.
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I started tango 11 years ago, on April 14, 2013, with group classes. The studio where I did that managed 2-4 sessions a year (sometimes "late winter-spring, summer break, autumn-early winter," sometimes "late winter-early spring, late spring-early summer, late summer-early autumn, late autumn-early winter"). They offered six levels of group classes; I got through those in two years. I found those group classes mediocre for learning tango, but great for: (1) getting to know which teachers I'd want to hire for private lessons, and (2) breaking the ice with people near my level, so I could invite them to dance without apprehension.
I took those classes with my ex. I was fortunate to have a full-time partner, because it meant that I always had someone to analyze progress and attend prácticas with. This advantage meant that we made faster-than-average progress in group classes, which many people attended either alone (and so were put in couples with random partners or accompaniers . . . which I became) or with dance partners who weren't life partners (and so whose working relationship often ended at the door).
Around our second group session, my ex and I hired a private teacher for weekly private lessons. Even after my divorce from my ex, I stayed with this teacher. (She now coaches my current partner and me. Our working relationship with this coach has spanned most of a decade, and she has become our personal friend.)
Between making fast progress, hiring a teacher from the studio, and living 10 minutes away on foot, my ex and I came to the studio owner's attention. She hired my ex as her assistant and me as her barman for the milonga.
This was before either of us regularly attended the milonga. This had several good effects:
1. It demystified the milonga. I saw it from the position of someone not trying to invite or be invited, with a bar between me and it for safety. I eavesdropped on "real talk" at the bar, which erased my romantic misconceptions and confirmed that tango, while elegant, wasn't different from any other dance scene on the psychosocial level.
2. The barman gig was very part-time (a single night per week!) and paid modestly, but the pay plus tips for the evening gave me money beyond my pay at my day job, which let me buy proper dance shoes and – far more important – pay for private lessons.
3. I was around the place all that time – I had the keys, the alarm codes, etc. – to set up the bar, clean the place before the milonga, and of course to take my group lessons, attend the weekly práctica, and tend bar – so I became the go-to accompanier for unpartnered followers. This led to me redoing all six levels of group classes many, many times . . . in some cases, 16 times.
With the extra money and the contacts I made, I was able to hire other private teachers. I hired three besides my first. I never worked with all four at once, but there were several months during which I did two or three private lessons a week. I was also able to afford many special-topics classes on stuff like canyengue, embrace, milonga, off-axis movements, vals, . . . you name it.
The studio also backed a festival. I became one of its barmen and was an accompanier at its workshops. Between free workshops and staff pricing on the others, I got to work with many good visiting teachers.
As I improved, I was also trusted to teach free "intro to tango" lessons. I sometimes stood in as the junior teacher to
real teachers when someone called in sick. My ex and I took over running the práctica for over a year.
This "golden age" came to an end in 2017, when the studio closed its doors. Unrelated to that, so did my marriage. By then I had plunged into the local tango community, however. Toward the end of that period, I'd been attending my "home" studio's práctica and milonga every week, plus one other práctica and at least two other milongas just about every week, and I'd hosted or taught a fair few people.
That doesn't mean I had an easy time inviting people! At my "home" studio, I knew people but was seen as little better than the part-time barman and janitor; between that and being relatively new, I wasn't a high-status dance partner. At other studios, I was just another beginner-intermediate dancer who didn't know anybody.
In the intervening seven years (from mid-2017 to present) I've kept up that pace or better: I've continued weekly coaching with the teacher I hired in 2013. I get out to at least one práctica and three milongas per week; some weeks I manage five or six milongas. I have a life and dance partner to work with at coaching sessions and prácticas (and, during the pandemic pause, we practiced one or two times per week at home or in the park) – though due to health issues, she has less energy than me and so doesn't attend every milonga with me. Sometimes my coach brings me in as her junior teaching partner when working with couples.
I can say without hesitation that making myself go to all those prácticas and milongas has
slowly, over 7 years, won me people to dance with. I can dance every tanda I want to, now. However, that had nothing to do with my early days as a beginner-intermediate dancer. Acceptance came later, when I stopped being a studio lurker and started to circulate. Exposure to all kinds of people who danced in all kinds of ways has been at least as important to my dance development as my coaching sessions.
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Stuff I've learned on that journey:
0. Emphasize connection with your partner (embrace, but also
listening with your body), musicality, floorcraft for those around you, and technique for yourself . . . in roughly that order. Do not get convinced that vocabulary (elements, steps, figures, patterns, sequences, etc.) matter more than these things – you'll pick that up along the way, inventing it yourself if you're dancing with good musicality and technique. Do everything with
intention; do not fall into steps or simply move to the beat, but make each step a jewel, make it count.
1. You can never redo the basics often enough. I took Tango I at least 16 times. I return to basics with my coach all the time. Anybody telling you that you need advanced classes in fancy steps is selling something (namely, advanced classes in fancy steps).
2. You meet people you can dance with in group classes, at milongas, and – if you're in that role – hosting or teaching them. You don't generally meet people you can dance with at prácticas; people are usually there to work with a partner, so bring a partner. I say "generally" and "usually" because recently, there are prácticas that are in reality informal milongas, or practilongas. I don't pretend to understand those.
3. You learn to dance tango in private lessons, by working with your partner(s) at prácticas, and to some extent by dancing with people at the milonga. You don't generally learn much in group lessons, beyond "enough tango to do those other things."
4. Learn patience as well as tango. There's no One Weird Trick to jump into the role of "popular dancer everybody loves to dance with." Trust me . . . I had several tricks, including free event access and working for a studio. That didn't magically put me on dance cards! You must put in your hours, probably 3-4 years of showing up and often being ignored – less if you go out almost every evening, more if you go out just once a week.
5. Don't obsess on level, yours or your partner's. You'll get tandas with people who like your appearance, musicality, how comfy your embrace looks, and how "safe" you are as a partner (which means being good at avoiding collisions, and not leading unmastered movements or movements that don't work in the space available). That isn't what people usually mean by "level," which is technical achievement, not social skills. Social skills are what matters at the milonga.
6. Buy good shoes.
