love tango - but so few I want to dance with

[aaah]

hi dancers
a serious question here. ... what do you do when your appetite for dancing tango with the passion and closeness it requires is gone because you are turned off by most of the available

partners --- no flaming please this is a legitimate and real question

they are not attractive to you at all so in fact you are repelled somewhat
too old, too heavy, smells, etc.

how do you deal with that and do you think a certain mind state to still be able to enjoy tango with the passion it requires

I find myself not having the will to dance if my fave partners are nit present

 

[dchester]

I have not had this issue, but if I were to find myself in this situation, there would seem to be only a few solutions.
1) Find a new activity to replace tango.
2) Figure out what I needed to do differently, to make it more enjoyable.
3) Move to a new location where the dancers are more to my liking.

 

[fascination]

I don't dance AT...however, my first question would be; would old or heavy be an issue if they were good?
my next thought would be that, before I go social dancing anywhere, I assess what it is that I want...if I truly want a yummy dance experience, I probably need to find a yummy dancer (and make some sort of arrangement to dance exclusively with them)...if that is not available, I need to decide whether or not I am willing to go looking for the needle in the haystack and accept what I get (which will be an awful lot of hay) or not dance at all....

 

[Mladenac]

Learn the skill with domestic good dancers and find passion on internationals events.

Be focused on more you can give, than you can receive.

 

[aaah]

Learn the skill with domestic good dancers and find passion on internationals events.

Be focused on more you can give, than you can receive.

with heavy partners I find it hard to move around in a close embrace even when they have some skill - not too enjoyable

guess I want yummy dance experience - both mutual attraction and some skill - so some useful mind states until this comes along is

and if I want to continue dancing

1. focus on giving not enjoying
2. focus on improving skill with good skill partners
3. lower expectations - realize that I will get a lot of hay

 

[Gssh]

hi dancers
a serious question here. ... what do you do when your appetite for dancing tango with the passion and closeness it requires is gone because you are turned off by most of the available

partners --- no flaming please this is a legitimate and real question

they are not attractive to you at all so in fact you are repelled somewhat
too old, too heavy, smells, etc.

how do you deal with that and do you think a certain mind state to still be able to enjoy tango with the passion it requires

I find myself not having the will to dance if my fave partners are nit present

That is a hard one - my usual answer to this question is "You can love tango as much as you want, but you have to realize that it will never love you back, it is just a dance". Tango is not going to change with us when we change, there are no compromises between what we want tango to be and what tango is - we can work on changing our community, our own dance, we can travel, but ultimately if we are not happy with what tango is it is not going to change for us. And it is ok to leave and do something else if the tango that exists doesn't fulfill what we imagine that tango that we imagine could exist promised.

Also i think everybody experiences that some partners we used to dance with are not fun to dance with anymore - maybe our preferences in style have developed into different directions, or maybe the way we hear the music has drifted apart. That is ok, too - it has nothing to do with how much we like somebody - there are a lot of people that i like as a person and we don't enjoy dancing together, and there are a few that i don't like all that much, but enjoy dancing with (that is much rarer - the between song chats are a bit tricky is you both avoid saying anything substantial). The flip side of this is that the same way we and our favourite partners change, the same way the people we don't like to dance with change. I try to dance with at least one person i have not danced with yet, or i have not danced with in a long time at every milonga. Sometimes there is a pleasant surprise, and i find somebody i want to dance with again.

That said, i notice that none of the things that you list as problems in your community about are about tango - i expected something like "Everybody here is a milonguero shuffler" or "Everybody here does nuevo acrobatics" or "Everybody is stomping around and doesn't understand the elegance of salon" or "The dancefloors are too empty" or "The dancefloors are too packed". Any activity is fun with people who are either great friends, or you find attractive. I have dragged enough girlfriends to museums, and i have been dragged to enough operas to know how this works, but there is a difference between "i enjoy dancing tango with people i am passionate about" and "I am passionate about tango and appreciate the people who share this passion".

I feel like you need to unpack what you are looking for, and figure out how to get more of that. "Loving tango" can mean a lot of different things, and i think it migth help thinking about what you actually love. Expectation mismatch can be trouble - i have dragged enought dates to hole-in-he wall restaurants in dodgy neighbourhoods and food courts in ethnic supermarkets where nobody speaks english before i learned that "i looooove eating out" can mean a whole range of things between "i love great food" to "i love beautiful interior decoration, white tablecloths, and people paying a lot of attention to me and being completely comitted to giving me impeccable service".

Gssh

 

[AndaBien]

First, I fully understand not wanting to dance close embrace with someone who is physically repulsive to you. Are those dancers repulsive to other followers?

...mutual attraction...

And then, I wonder if you are looking for something beyond just enjoyable tango. If so, you have an additional handicap in finding good partners, and I could see why older guys wouldn't be as pleasing to you.

As already mentioned, it would be sad if you don't like dancing with guys just because they are old. Some of them can be very enjoyable partners, partly because they aren't young any more and have a more mature perspective. You know, like aged wine.

 

[Steve Pastor]

aaah, I wonder if you are clear in your own mind about why you want to dance Argentine Tango; what the "passion" is in Argentine Tango.

For me the "passion" is about moving to music with someone of the opposite sex; finding a common ground in music, movement, and physical closeness. That, to me, is way more important than my partner being "physically attractive."

BTW it is my belief that the more years you have under your belt, the easier it is to see it this way.

 

[aaah]

First, I fully understand not wanting to dance close embrace with someone who is physically repulsive to you. Are those dancers repulsive to other followers?


And then, I wonder if you are looking for something beyond just enjoyable tango. If so, you have an additional handicap in finding good partners, and I could see why older guys wouldn't be as pleasing to you.

As already mentioned, it would be sad if you don't like dancing with guys just because they are old. Some of them can be very enjoyable partners, partly because they aren't young any more and have a more mature perspective. You know, like aged wine.

I'm not judging you but I'm not gay. my post was about finding few partners okay women that arouse the desire to dance tango with the passion it is supposed to be danced with. I am straight and do not want to dance with men! no passion there. if all the people say is that you should just enjoy dancing then I guess they can dance with men as you are advising I think

 

[aaah]

aaah, I wonder if you are clear in your own mind about why you want to dance Argentine Tango; what the "passion" is in Argentine Tango.

For me the "passion" is about moving to music with someone of the opposite sex; finding a common ground in music, movement, and physical closeness. That, to me, is way more important than my partner being "physically attractive."

BTW it is my belief that the more years you have under your belt, the easier it is to see it this way.

I will try to keep that in mind but still need a woman that makes me want to be at least a little passionate. thanks

 

[AndaBien]

I'm not judging you but I'm not gay. my post was about finding few partners okay women that arouse the desire to dance tango with the passion it is supposed to be danced with. I am straight and do not want to dance with men! no passion there. if all the people say is that you should just enjoy dancing then I guess they can dance with men as you are advising I think

I'm so sorry. I made a bad assumption. I find women are sometimes unhappy about the physical contact with men, maybe more often than men are unhappy about the reverse. I assumed you were a woman. I did not mean to imply anything about your sexuality.

 

[LKSO]

It seems like you go dancing for more than just dance. In tango, the majority of women are older than other social dances. While I wish that weren't the case, I dance primarily just to dance.

 

[Zoopsia59]

hi dancers
a serious question here. ... what do you do when your appetite for dancing tango with the passion and closeness it requires is gone because you are turned off by most of the available partners

they are not attractive to you at all so in fact you are repelled somewhat
too old, too heavy, smells, etc.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that by "old", you mean that they are well beyond your own age range (not: "I'm middle-aged myself, but I'd hoped to meet a younger woman instead of a bunch of old women my own age")

Try encouraging women in your age bracket to take up tango! Our community has quite a mix of ages now that a couple of local colleges have started clubs. There are enough people in all age brackets for everyone to feel comfortable.

I will say though, that in our community, the young guys like to dance with the experienced (I'm talking about dance, folks!) middle-aged+ followers once they get past being a little intimidated. There are a few guys who seem to only go for the "sexy young things", but they aren't actually that young themselves. Mostly though, everyone mixes without an obvious bias based on age.

If you want a younger crowd, create one! In the meantime, while you are waiting for it to grow to a level of participation acceptable to you, learn as much as you can, and then when all the younger women are coming, you'll be the one younger guy that already knows what he is doing that they all want to dance with.

As for "too heavy", I'm not sure whether you mean they are heavy as partners (hard to move) or that they are too fat for you to find them attractive off the floor. Since those are 2 radically different things, I'll withhold comment pending clarification.

 

[Zoopsia59]

Of course, your other option is to keep going to local events to practice and become as good as you can, but make pilgrimages to places like NYC where there are quite a few drop dead gorgeous younger followers.

Of course, you'll have to be VERY good to get to dance with them.

 

[Mladenac]

"She may be horizontally desirable in life, but she’s vertically challenging in tango..."
http://www.verytango.com/quotes.html

I came across some georgeous followers who were stiff as a oak tree.
If you want a gorgeous one, find one and teach her how to dance.

I hope that you will be able to bring passion into it.