JournalInTime
Forum Master
Oh! If your community isn't one where a milonga tanda fills the floor, I can understand that. At many of my favorite places, milonga tandas are among the most popular. This may well be a function of a couple of influential local teachers being, essentially, milonga specialists.
Sure, I can see that. It's important to differentiate cases here. There are at least two:
1. People whose life leaves them few resources to enjoy life, full stop, and so who are forced to pick one or two activities to stay sane. They choose tango as one of those things, and are very committed to it.
2. People who have plenty of resources to enable endless activities and interests, but who for whatever reason focus laser-like on tango to the point where they seem obsessed.
I don't see commitment and obsession as equivalent, nor a choice forced by circumstances as being the same as one made completely freely.
I happen to be in category #1. Even so, I have other interests and activities. For instance, I am a devoted amateur mixologist, I cook for pleasure (not just to eat), I do things with a girlfriend whose health means she cannot dance all the time, and I have a whole other life peripheral to my day job wherein I interact with those in that domain off the clock (in essence, I'm a writer). If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would leave category #1 but I would not enter category #2. I have a long list of things I'd like to do (especially travel, and spending more time and money on food and drink), most of which aren't tango.
This is more controversial. All interests have numerous facets: cultural, historical, performative, practical, technical, theoretical, traditional, etc. . . . pick your terms. Not all people have the gifts to see or function in all of these areas; so, if it's a leisure activity for them, they'll drop (or just never pick up) the elements that feel more like work than pleasure to them.
And that's fine!
There are plenty of, say, football players who have no idea who won the World Cup in what year, which professionals are currently top-rated, and suchlike. They're just in it to kick the ball around with their pals. There are also plenty of people who can rattle off stats for days but barely kick the ball 1m.
With age, I've come to accept that polyvalence within a field is a noble but rarely practical goal for most people . . . I saw that in my particle physics days, when I knew revered theoreticians who were experts in one specific model and who'd never done an experiment. I see it in the world of cocktails, where mixology, flair, and high-volume service are practically separate domains appreciated by separate groups of people on either side of the bar. I see it in my industry, where almost nobody has time to be a writer, an editor, an artist, a layout expert, etc., and where the customers often read but don't play the games, or appreciate the rules but not the writing.
We risk becoming snobby if we decide that vertical expertise is required to be a "real" tango aficionado. I'm entirely fine with people picking and choosing between the cultural, historical, musical, and dance facets of tango as suits their temperament. I highly doubt that it would improve tango to insist that, to be a "real tanguero," you have to embrace it all . . . I think that would lead to negativity and exclusion, to be honest.
