Well that's because attempting to cabeceo people who are either talking or just sitting next to other dancers of the same role is unreliable
Talking with anybody, really! Conversations block invitations under many circumstances. Something I have noticed at our milongas (this is
far from universal and likely also sexist, but it's my observation regardless, and my inner scientist reports even uncomfortable data):
• Groups of men are typically larger than 2, often converse leaning against the bar or wall, don't seem to feel a strong need to make eye contact, and usually scan the room while talking. One can suddenly invite with the cabeceo and simply walk away to dance without the others caring much.
• Groups of women are typically larger than 2, often converse leaning in toward each other, seem to feel the need to make eye contact, and so are not looking into the room while talking. This means no mirada, and so attempts to invite them with the cabeceo either fail completely or work only because one of the women looks up, notices an invitation, and starts the "Which of us is being invited?" conversation.
• Mixed groups are typically exactly 2 – 1 man, 1 woman – and whether in a couple or not, they converse in a bubble, making eye contact with each other and actively ignoring the room while talking. Neither can be invited by anybody but the person they're conversing with, which is usually exactly what happens.
To complete the set:
• Lone men tend to be scanning the room for potential partners. We rarely see this because women so vastly outnumber men that lone men are hunted down and dragged onto the floor.
• Lone women tend to be fiddling with their phone. In fact, vast numbers of women who've given me flak for not inviting them missed about 38 attempts from me while texting. Some have actually told me it's a show to avoid invitations they don't want, and that it's okay for
me to come over and use words . . . which misses the point that less polite people will either do that first or see me doing it and do that next.
To double-underline what I implied at the start: These are
my observations at the places where
I dance in
my city. They might not reflect reality at
other places in my city,
other cities in my country,
other countries,
other planets, etc.
There's this unwritten rule for couples: If you want to dance with me, your partner should also dance with my partner.
Wild! I've been in a couple of one kind or another since I started dancing, and I never really ran into this. Most of the coupled women I've invited, I've invited because their partners were already off dancing with somebody other than my partner . . .
My partner does wish it worked as you said! She complains that the partners of the women I dance with don't invite her, but that's a testament to women outnumbering men badly around here. She falls victim to the "Well, you showed up with a guy, so you don't
need me to invite you like all these seat-ironing women do!" effect. Which is sort of true, because she dances more than most of the other women due to my presence.
There are other reasons, beyond the uncertainty of cabeceo/mirada in a poor environment, and that's the social aspect of interrupting some couple or group.
Particularly a couple. A couple generally converses in a bubble that actively excludes everybody else at the milonga.
That might be a rare couple on a 'date night', or some group of friends chatting, or even checking the phone.
That wording makes me smirk because it puts "checking the phone" last, after "even," as though it were a remote possibility. Whereas my experience some nights is that 90% of tangueras and 50% of tangueros have their phone out. I guess people here just have terrible phone etiquette. (My phone is switched off, hidden in a bag, the bag hidden under furniture . . . which appears to annoy people who dance with me and then want to "add me" on social media.)
So, there tend to be invites within the social group.
I find that the practical situation at most milongas is that specific social groups stake out specific groups of tables, bits of wall, ends of the bar, etc. and sort of mill around in their zone, mostly dancing among themselves.
Not having a group and a zone severely reduces your invitational success rate, whether that means receiving invitations or having invitations accepted. A few tango tourists with whom I've become friends have commented negatively on this tendency here . . .
Of course, there's the occasional, old-fashioned, 'request', or acknowledgement, to me if requesting a dance with my wife (see also discussions re The Tango Lesson).
There are still people in my city who are old enough or conservative enough that they expect you to do this. Sometimes it's just an affectation for their tango identity, sometimes it reflects their real values. I play along mostly because despite my strong anti-conservative, at times anarchistic values, I'm not a fan of drama, and not playing along causes drama.
The 'watering hole' seems to gather a crowd at such milongas which facilitates invites.
Here, the bar tends to be staked out by a specific group. You can walk up to it to order, but you can't park there because all of the seats and most of the standing room are the zone of that group. This is a thing I know from both sides of the bar . . . working as a barman at milongas and festivals, I've often had a lot of issues with people trying to order around and despite the gang who use the bar as their table.
No wonder you are ENTP, though I too think all these pyschometrics are pseudo science. But they do capture a language to describe behavior and traits in people.
