Potential Solutions:
and dual role actually makes the learning curve worse. Normally some of the more advanced follows show up to help the beginner classes and some leaders get to lead someone who knows what they are doing. Now, these follows are just in the same class as leads, so the beginner classes are not only lead heavy, but the potential to later ask a more advanced follow to dance at a practica is not there since there is no interaction with her at rotations.
It’s honestly a good microcosm of the state of online dating these days.
No need - or no desire?
Yeah, the complaint was always about having to kiss a lot of toads before you met your handsome prince - but sometimes the pairings were astonishing. In those days there were also some women who took finding a partner as a serious task. Requirements for a partner have, reportedly, changed.
Probably depends on their age. I could imagine that working for a time in a university environment, or with the older demographic. I've known a few couples who've been in classes. Even if inseparable initially (the only person to suffer is the one you know!), they eventually rotate if everyone else does.
I honestly can't see any value in that. It's not bringing in anyone who will dance with other people, and indeed they very likely would be unable to do so. I know of one couple like that who only danced with each other for two years, after which they finally decided they were happy to dance with other people – but neither of them could do so because they were just so used to each other's poor signals and bad habits that they actually had no idea how to either lead or follow.
Maybe not for you if you're in solo world - but it gets some through the door into another world.
The unique selling point of tango is that you desperately need a dance partner for the single purpose of getting rid of him/her as soon as possible.
Tango is super scary for some people. One of my friends is taking a friend she knows from the contact dance and fusion communities to this couples only dance class. They are both women. To her it is an easier way to introduce tango without having to deal with her friend having to navigate inexperienced leads or sit for long periods of time waiting to dance in a rotation. So even if the teacher built it really to accommodate folks from her church that wouldn’t go out otherwise, it also works as a more balanced class where people get to advance faster.
Oh, there are!
Dance can be super scary! And partner dance without some chosen partner even more so.
Who are you speaking for here?
Conversely, everyone found it normal. The early waltz (ländler) was a traditional folk dance. And even the aristocracy exploded in a waltz-craze, because 200 years ago Romanticism actually ordered sensual connection. (pre-Georgian-III era)
It was about copyright. Besides the English waltz, there was the French waltz, which always remained compatible with the Argentine vals.
The context was 'newbies', so 'newbies' - before they start.
Irrelevant. It was regarded as 'unseemly' by some, and that persisted for a short time. Of course people enjoyed it! That's why its legacy forms are still around.
The English sanitised it and codified the dance steps. It's still regarded as somewhat risqué (possibly by any pearl-clutchers watching Strictly/DWTS). That persists as a stereotype (like the rose) in folk-memory. 'Copyright' is irrelevant to that.
You present the developments of the last 10 years as the norm. In doing so, you legitimize these developments. I consider the norm to be how things were 200 years ago.
In my city, the queer tango scene emerged at the same time as the heteronormative one in the 80s. They have now (almost) merged. In the lindy hop scene, it's also common for two males or two females to enroll in classes.
Why do you defend people who are too weak to break free from their culture, their religion, their parents, their traditions? Tango was and is primarily a dance of people who have left their ties behind. Hamburg, my hometown, was a place of emigrants. You can read the endless lists of the homeless people who boarded the emigrant ships. They were the very essence of tango.
These exist in nyc and are more private-ish. They’re pretty great since the teachers can actually teach the material they want since they know everyone in the class is at a minimum level of dance and don’t have to wildly adjust.