How about a five-minute salsa break?
I prefer that to a 90-second salsa
cortina, if it's done right: [tango, vals, or milonga tanda][cortina][salsa break][cortina][tango, vals, or milonga tanda]. Treat it like another tanda, even if it isn't structured as a tanda per se. Gives me time to change my shirt.
I tend to stop playing milongas in the last hour
I suppose I just don't get it. Near the end of the evening, the horde of more casual/less diehard dancers has left, so there's more space. Everybody who remains is well warmed up. That's when I'd
most expect to dance to high-energy music. Up until then, I've been moving 3 metres per tanda because it's crowded, so it isn't as if I'm out of energy – in fact, I feel bottled up and ready to go!
I tend to let the floor clear fully, pause a few seconds, and slowly fade out the cortina
Best answer.
Most times when the DJ plays the whole cortina for a small bunch of dancers, they're usually part of the elite table/organisers' gang/hangers-on. I never let it go on unless a significant proportion of people are dancing it.
Also a great answer. This is the truth of the matter as I've experienced it.
I get annoyed when they play a chacarera — it makes my cynical self cackle in glee when a bunch of middle-class (and above) dancers who can afford to fly around for tango events dance a rural folk dance, especially in a private, glitzy venue.
That's exactly how I see it. Playing a structured rural folk dance at an event for an improvised urban salon dance is straight out of Bizarro World for me. Sort of like attending a jazz show and having a musical pause where a jug band plays old-timey standards.
Someone who always writes about tango in super dramatic prose (there’s a popular blogger that always pops up in tango fb groups that comes to mind) + always shilling his books or other content.
I know exactly who you mean . . .
I think it goes from top down in terms of how their attitude effects the dance and community as a whole even to the lesser teachers and local advanced dancers.
Snobby maestros are the seeds from which a snobby tango community grows. Fortunately, there are also non-snobby maestros. A recent, reasonably well-known visitor here hung out at the bar with the rest of us, danced with all levels, and said, "Awesome evening!" and hugged people at closing time, without his presence being announced or any mention of his availability for private lessons.
if a milonga is entirely geriatric and shuffling along in the dance. Good for them for being active and dancing at that old age
I have mixed feelings.
My style is high-energy, dynamic, and mobile. I mark most accents, use many changes of direction, and advance down the line of dance with long steps, progressive turns, cadenas, etc. Particularly in vals, I like a constant flow, frequently mixing up 1-2-1, 1-3-1, and 1-2-3 phrasing. I feel suffocated when people in front of me aren't moving simply because they cannot, even if they wanted to.
On the other hand, I'm almost 60, so that'll probably be me in 15-20 years. Some of my favorite dance partners are over 80. And yes, I can appreciate pauses and just breathing.
I resolve it by not going to dance at the most geriatric place in town, and avoiding the runner-up place except when I'm sort of tired and won't be dancing at full energy anyway.
Honestly, at that point, it's more about being able to get out of the house and socialise with peers.
That's part of my tango life
now, at age 58! I've had a boring work-from-home desk job for the past 30+ years. If it weren't for tango, I'd have no social life. The "social" in "social dance" is as important as the "dance" part for me.
Even a well-ordered ronda can be seen as an obsessive exaggeration. There are certainly many dancers, perhaps less advanced but still paying full entrance fee, who see it quite differently. And aren't we all democrats?
Despite my frequent rants about floorcraft, we agree here with one qualification: When chaos in the ronda is caused by less advanced dancers, yes, I accept it and move on. However, reality is that it is far, far more often due to
more advanced dancers deciding that they have the right to more floor – and indeed the right of way in general – and outright
taking the ronda from less advanced ones. That doesn't seem very democratic to me . . . it inconveniences less advanced dancers the most.
And then one can also ask what the "cringe list" looks like in one's private and professional life. Is everything arranged in such a way that there are enough alternatives to tango dancing? And why exactly isn't there a positive spin-off from one's private circle of friends into tango? Is tango perhaps meant to compensate for deficiencies?
Some of us lack the financial wherewithal and free time to accommodate multiple interests, and moreover have personal limitations (neurology, health, health of a partner, family obligations, etc.) that largely block easy resolution of that situation. We have space for one major interest, and we choose tango because it offers physical, mental, emotional, and social stimulation in one convenient package. I wouldn't describe it as compensatory but as practical and realistic: "I'm not privileged enough to choose two from column A, one from column B, one from column C, and three from column D. I can have one from A and one from C, and I'll choose the best ones."
Not an attack on you, but: Much of the perceived "snobbery" in tango comes from privileged people who can arrange their private and professional lives with ease to have tango as one of many interests, and who casually dismiss people who have to fight harder to have less – and who choose tango as their prize – as being somehow second-class or "people with deficiencies." That's pretty cringe right there.
Democratic should include accepting that travel, two other dances, a couple of sports, a mostly paid-for residence, a vehicle or two, and so on is a privileged rarity, and not trying to normalize it as "what tango dancers mostly have."
Sometimes I've been half of the only couple dancing it and TBH we didn't sign up to do an unscheduled performance either, it is just that some people also enjoy dancing other styles and we are just dancing it because we like the music.
To be honest: Me, too. I just don't think the DJ should leave my favorite disco tune (there, I said it) play for 2 1/2 minutes while everybody watches me get down tonight.
It's up to the DJ to decide whether it's contributing to the energy/flow of the milonga or not and when to cut it, I certainly don't have an expectation.
Exactly!
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