Well from what I’ve heard, a ton of the experienced dancers in nyc left after the pandemic, to cheaper cities, or simply they just don’t dance as much.
Aha, yes, that would change the situation anywhere!
The floor craft at most milongas has become a mess.
Ours has never been particularly good, unfortunately.
Tango didn't catch on quickly here, so entire cohorts of dancers – the ones who learned in the 1990s and 2000s – had huge amounts of space to dance in, and grew accustomed to that. Their time overlapped the peak of tango nuevo, the movements of which tend to occupy significant space. In the 2010s and 2020s, tango became a bigger deal locally, for whatever reason, and these same people made up the bulk of the teachers. They passed their experiences along to later cohorts; most taught tango nuevo movements but failed to teach floorcraft as its own thing, because it hadn't been relevant to them.
Anyway, being older here doesn't necessarily mean being a bad dancer, but it comes with troublesome floorcraft. Many 20- to 40-somethings in 1993 who were dancing athletic, open movements in place on empty floors have become 50- to 70-somethings still dancing too large and too static today, with the added burden of less athletic bodies. I'd say that our older dancers are technically fairly good, but also the primary cause of our floorcraft problems.
I'm not exempting myself, because I know there are people who dislike dancing around me. However, I at least make floorcraft a conscious priority, alongside musicality and connection to my partner. I cannot say whether my technique and vocabulary are below average, average, or above average, but at the milonga those things get little conscious attention from me compared to connection, floorcraft, and musicality – they stay at whatever level I've internalized during coaching and practice. Regarding the latter, I consider myself lucky to have had influential instructors who adopted "salon" or "milonguero" values as a direct reaction to the mess, and who drilled it into my head that social tango is a walking, constantly advancing, small-spaces dance, not a show.
To the point where the host of one has placed tape on the ground drawing lines between the inner and outer rounda (it’s a rectangular space), which has worked remarkably well despite it being kinda tacky. Actually would wish they did this at all the other milongas now.
I wish the organizers of milongas here would speak up to the worst offenders. Unfortunately, many of them
are the worst offenders (I'm visualizing one who zigzags between lanes, another who parks and dances figures that block the line of dance, and yet another who has led partners into me repeatedly because all his turns are huge orbits). The rest of the offenders are friends or long-time, we-don't-dare-lose-them clients of these organizers. I think that many of them find my drive forward down the line of dance with walking steps, and willingness and ability to dance fast, small turns so close that other couples can smell my breath mint, to be bigger problems than parking, reversing, huge orbits, and high leg movements.
