The navigation is atrocious here
I hear that! We have the same problem, I believe (I don't
know . . . hopefully somebody who posts here will visit and give me a reality check at some point). For me, the worst parts of this are:
1. Much of the worst navigation is by teachers, so
even if they are teaching floorcraft in class, they are not teaching it with their actions. To quote the individual teaching me to teach tango: "What you do and how you do it – at the milonga as well as in class – is as or more influential on your students than what you tell
them to do." This covers everything from ornaments, to facial expression, to navigation. I'd say that some teachers and other senior dancers believe that bad navigation is caused by "other people," and that their own weaving, rushing, stopping, and backing up is acceptable because it's them using their tango mastery to rectify a bad situation . . . even though in reality, they are worsening the situation both in that moment and, by setting a bad example for their students, in the future. If you chose to present yourself as a tango teacher, you gain a certain status but pay for it by sacrificing your right to be less than perfect whenever you dance locally.
2. And yet . . . the traditionalists' insistence on good floorcraft is alienating and one of the things militating against retention and choking off recruitment. At least here, people who come to tango with other dance experience come from slot or spot dances, typically salsa or some sort of swing. Those with no experience have mostly danced only at nightclubs and weddings, where you prance about in place. So, the insistence that not only you adapt to music you probably don't hear anywhere else, using movements you might never have seen before (e.g., people often find anything in cross system to be "bizarre"), but also do so down an imaginary line with lanes, feels
to newcomers like veterans adding artificial difficulty to maintain an advantage over them.
A lot of the younger followers sorta dont look for cabeceos unless they’re point blank ones, which makes it so that style of cabeceo semi become the norm depending on the place.
Definitely.
We've had a major influx of younger dancers here since we were allowed back on the floor after the (worst of the) pandemic. To invoke my point #2 above, mirada-cabeceo is another thing that feels
to them like veterans adding artificial difficulty to maintain an advantage. But unlike navigation, musicality, technique, vocabulary, etc., this is not a
technical advantage – it's a
social one. And younger people in the prime of their social lives arrive with a real advantage outside of tango's rarified codes, starting with being for the most part slimmer, fitter, and better-looking. So, they can and do push back, and the biggest pushback I've noticed is that they just toss mirada-cabeceo in the trash, and invite who they want how they want, end of discussion.
I have suffered from this going on around me. There are some dancers I simply cannot cabeceo because they don't even know why I'm looking their way . . . and anyway, they have a big group of fellow dancers who invite them "normally," like in nearly every other style of dance. But this doesn't mean I hate it. It just means I have to either learn a subsidiary skillset to invite that subset of dancers, or ignore that subset of dancers. Doing the latter might strike traditionalists as a good tough-love correction, but it also militates against retention and chokes off recruitment, because at first glance it seems not traditional, but merely snobby.
And while we can say that we don't need or want to dance around newcomers who have poor floorcraft or who reject mirada-cabeceo, guess what? They
will be the good technical dancers of tomorrow, if we don't discourage them by grinding their faces in old codes they don't understand. Then we'll want them around.
So, it's looking a lot like a choice between "maintain old traditions, even if the technical dance dies" and "maintain the technical dance, even if the old traditions die." And to get on topic a bit: It's teachers who'll decide that, because as I said, "What you do and how you do it – at the milonga as well as in class – is as or more influential on your students than what you tell
them to do."
I'm not claiming that
I know the right choice, or have the answers to my many implicit questions! I'm just pointing out that many veterans are denying the very existence of the dilemma and associated questions. Ordinary dancers can probably afford to do so.
Teachers cannot. Remaining neutral on traditional vs. technical, and letting questions be "somebody else's problem," are more things you sacrifice your right to do the instant you decide to present yourself as a tango teacher. Better a firm-but-controversial stance than a vague-but-safe one.
Other than that, social tango is taught here.
Same here for the most part. It's just that "social" is taken as the opposite of "show," and is used to label movements. It's less and less taken to have anything to do with "traditional." For the most part, when someone here says, "I dance social tango," they mean, "I don't dance huge and often risky movements intended for the stage when I am at the milonga," and not, "I accept the old social codes of the milonga."
Part of learning social aspects is getting it wrong, and being corrected.
And correction is
hard in many cases, for reasons I called out above: Younger dancers are often living freer social lives than (i.e., they are unrestricted by spouses, careers, health, etc.), and are more attractive than, veterans. They're making their own social success, and don't feel the need to shrink socially due to having not mastered tango's old social codes. So, veterans correct these younger arrivals
at their peril . . . at best, they might be getting themselves rejected for being sticks in the mud by an ever-growing percentage of the community, while at worst they are stifling recruitment and retention, helping to
kill said community.
The cabeceo/mirada aspect is a relic from the past which doesn't really have a meaning where the local culture has developed their own dance invitation etiquette for the environment.
That nicely sums up part of what I've been saying! Mirada-cabeceo just doesn't mean anything to people who've come from clubs, other dance styles, and casual freestyle dance, who are accustomed to walking right up to the person they want to dance with. It's a case of "Ain't nobody got time for that!"
Lack of floorcraft is a significant problem in some places. The underlying issue is respecting others on the dancefloor and not making it all about your dance.
The more fundamental issue is that in many cases, people with bad
tango floorcraft absolutely
are capable of respecting others and not making it all about their dance
in a slot/spot environment. But the moving line of dance is alien and an added level of difficulty, and having that thrust in their face as "how things must be" might work, but it could just as easily fail if they're confident dancers outside of tango. It can seem to them that the couple rapidly approaching them from behind are the ones not respecting others.
It's on teachers to call out and explicitly explain these different definitions of respect. It's also on teachers to do so not with an appeal to tradition – which
especially annoys younger people – but from a purely technical angle: "In tango, walking is considered a step, and the single most important one, and there are movements like cadenas and progressive turns that work only when moving down the floor. So, to get the most out of your vocabulary, you have to be moving ahead most of the time, and the line of dance allows that." Then they have to
teach more progressive figures than static ones.
Honestly, I think that hinting that static figures are more show than social would be a great pedagogical move. Unfortunately, there's a whole touchy-feely, "celebrate the pause," slow-tango crowd out there who prefer to park. They claim it's for emotion and connection, but facts on the ground, most of these people have a poor progressive dance game. Because you can connect and pause with a moving dance . . . it just that this takes better skills, and if you don't bother to learn those skills, tradition gives you the easy out of saying, "Well, we were savoring the pause." Sure, all 3:30 of it.
