Reuven Thetanguero
Well-Known Member
I am old time guy, Milonguero Viejo...
Macho Culture in Dance
- Thread starter Cerinthe
- Start date
Noooooo!
That's really quite a lot of dancers. I'm jealous. I would have ballparked for active locals something like 10 venues / week, 50 follows / venue, with some significant fraction going to multiple venues, putting the # of total followers at something like 300. But I think I just hallucinated "active" into your original post. And, of course, I'm antisocial.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Putting my university education to work tormenting others with math since 1985 . . .
Our local situation is complicated:That's really quite a lot of dancers. I'm jealous. I would have ballparked for active locals something like 10 venues / week, 50 follows / venue, with some significant fraction going to multiple venues, putting the # of total followers at something like 300. But I think I just hallucinated "active" into your original post. And, of course, I'm antisocial.
Montréal, the city, is only around 2 million people crunched onto an island . . . but there's this concept of Greater Montréal that's more than twice as populous. That covers a bunch of self-contained communities on the north and south shores of the river, and outlying areas, each of which has one or more tango studios.
Montréal is one of Canada's three biggest cities, and on a transport and trade conduit that many people use daily or weekly, so there's a constant stream of people from everywhere from Ottawa to Québec City who use Montréal as their "tango home."
Oh, and half of the dancers in Vermont dance more often here than there.
Anyway, in the greater region there's always at least one but up to three or four events per day. I think 20/week is closer than 10/week, so I'd double your math to 600 and then say, "Those are the addicts, but there's an equal number who come out once a week," for more like 1,200. We used to have a "Grand Bal" here, and at its peak it had 400+ people at at time, so this is a big city for tango.
To get somewhat on topic: More of the organizers of all this are women (Andrea, Carol, Corinne, Diane, Elyse, France, Francine, Laura, Mylène, et al.) than men . . . really, there are only two or three influential male organizers. About half the DJs are female, too. And around 3/4 of the teachers. This makes the mood less macho, I imagine.
Most of my Tanguera friends don’t go out to milongas that often. May be once a month. I might average 1.5 milonga a week. Some I don’t see at milongas for two months at a stretch. They are active in the scene just not regular. How do you account for that 
There is another aspect of churn. Mostly due to people moving out of the area totally or becoming inactive. On an average I will lose about 5 followers that I regularly dance with each year to churn. The scene/community’s loss is much greater. It also means I might gain 3 or 4 new regular followers each year.
There are likely 15-20 events every week. These are dispersed where you may have 5-6 accessible within 20 minutes driving if you live in suburbs. May be 8-9 if you live in cities where public transportation is viable. Enlarge it to an hour’s drive you can probably access 90% of the events. Then it is upto you how many you go to in a week.
I think largest weekly milonga in the area might get on an average 90 dancers. I will average 20 followers per milonga across the area. Bringing the total number of regular followers in the area to be 350ish. On the one hour drive stretch for the milongas I attend, my guess is I get exposed to only about 100 of these. 50 of them on regular basis and other 50 on non-regular basis. I can say that there are about 10 from each group I know well enough that I will be obliged to dance at least a tanda with them if I see them. At any given milonga between 4 to 8 of these can show up. Half of them could be good and other half is work in progress.
There is a chunk of 20 or so followers that I won’t ask either because they are in various cliques or other reasons. They are mostly good ones that generally stick to their inner circle.
Not counting the instructors, there are no more than 20 regular dancers, both men and women, that have been around longer than ten years.
There is another aspect of churn. Mostly due to people moving out of the area totally or becoming inactive. On an average I will lose about 5 followers that I regularly dance with each year to churn. The scene/community’s loss is much greater. It also means I might gain 3 or 4 new regular followers each year.
It is hard for me to come up with numbers of followers in the local area. I will take a shot.That's really quite a lot of dancers. I'm jealous. I would have ballparked for active locals something like 10 venues / week, 50 follows / venue, with some significant fraction going to multiple venues, putting the # of total followers at something like 300. But I think I just hallucinated "active" into your original post. And, of course, I'm antisocial.
There are likely 15-20 events every week. These are dispersed where you may have 5-6 accessible within 20 minutes driving if you live in suburbs. May be 8-9 if you live in cities where public transportation is viable. Enlarge it to an hour’s drive you can probably access 90% of the events. Then it is upto you how many you go to in a week.
I think largest weekly milonga in the area might get on an average 90 dancers. I will average 20 followers per milonga across the area. Bringing the total number of regular followers in the area to be 350ish. On the one hour drive stretch for the milongas I attend, my guess is I get exposed to only about 100 of these. 50 of them on regular basis and other 50 on non-regular basis. I can say that there are about 10 from each group I know well enough that I will be obliged to dance at least a tanda with them if I see them. At any given milonga between 4 to 8 of these can show up. Half of them could be good and other half is work in progress.
There is a chunk of 20 or so followers that I won’t ask either because they are in various cliques or other reasons. They are mostly good ones that generally stick to their inner circle.
Not counting the instructors, there are no more than 20 regular dancers, both men and women, that have been around longer than ten years.
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Well, I think it's completely normal that the people I enjoy spending a lot of time with on the dance floor are also people I'd enjoy spending time with off the dance floor. If I only cared about their dance skill and nothing else, it would be objectification. (We're not doing a performance.)
Montreal sounds like an amazing place to live (aside from the weather).
opendoor
Forum Master
Maybe I didn't understand you correctly. But following actually is much easier than leading. My best (I am a leader) dance experiences were in the following role. It's like meditation or like a lucid dream. Being lead is like being a piece of wood that slides back and forth in the sea's fringe. Unfortunately there are too few good leaders to have it regularly.
JournalInTime
Forum Master
It's a good city for tango. For the rest, it depends on what you like! I moved here in 1990 and had no reason to stay past 1995, but I stayed anyway – for the cultural events, food and drink, walkability, big parks, public transit, and relatively low crime, and for the fact that the atmosphere is more cosmopolitan than average for North America, among other reasons. Now I'd add tango to the list.
On the other hand, it's cold and snowy in winter, hot and humid in summer, and has a relatively short spring and autumn. Municipal politics are unfriendly. Property taxes are high. There's a perpetual three-way war between automobilists, cyclists, and pedestrians. And there are language tensions, especially if you start a conversation in English. I take it all in stride, but it helps that I was born in an area with similar weather and that I speak French.
Probably not well phrased. You get a leader not on their best form, then following is difficult. Let's not underestimate following. It's a skill. It's not all down to the skilled leader able to take anyone with no skills and lead them through some spectacular dance.
I've turned up to dance after a stressful day and rushing to get there. It's been just a regular dance. I'd like to be thinking about the dance, but that work problem that needs a solution keeps popping up, even with potential solutions (makes notes in-between dances!). But I've ben led on to some dance. You just do it as it comes. You think about some 'wow moment' move, and it's a disaster.
raindance
Forum Master
Side note - I went through Montreal as a passenger in someone else's car during a short visit. Forget the cyclists and pedestrians, it felt like all the car drivers were trying to kill each other. Or at least not worried in the slightest about leaving room for one another and avoiding accidents. Most scared I've ever been in traffic in my life!
You've never driven around the centre of Paris, or the Périphérique in rush hours! My business colleague refused to drive the hire car. I remember 2 lanes parting to allow an ambulance through - followed on it's tail by a stream of motor cycles and small cars.
The Périphérique is always a nightmare but for real scary try riding round the Arc de Triomphe on a motorbike!
JournalInTime
Forum Master
Try approaching central São Paulo along Rodovia Ayrton Senna at peak hour on a busy day. You risk meeting the same fate as its namesake. Smaller cars pass between bigger cars if there are gaps, and then motorbikes pass between the cars. Random people kind of hang out in the traffic to try to sell you stuff during the traffic jams.
I did once see a guy riding down the Av. De Champs Élysées (Paris' internal motorway).on a long skateboard amidst all the traffic
Not only in France!
JournalInTime
Forum Master
And not only in dance. This sort of stuff generally goes with macho conduct, too. I'd take a bet that among people who both bicycle and dance tango, or both skateboard and dance tango, doing insane things in street traffic correlates strongly with being a pushy jerk in ronda traffic . . . a trait that itself correlates with being macho and feeling you have the "right" to disregard rules because you're a Big Man.I did once see a guy riding down the Av. De Champs Élysées (Paris' internal motorway).on a long skateboard amidst all the traffic
Not only in France!