Tango is a serious drug. So even if you know it will will be frustrating, or painful or bad for you, you do it anyway.
Truth. I've danced achy, injured, physically tired, etc. (though never sick . . . that's inconsiderate). Twice after surgery, I was told to wait for time
T and managed maybe 60% of
T. So I find easy to imagine people who come to the milonga
psychically injured,
mentally tired, or right after a bad experience
for the ego.
I think that if people are frustrated on a regular milonga, most of the time the dominant dance school is at fault. For not encouraging friendly, inclusive and supportive environment from the beginning. People are people, but they will also look up to and copy what their teachers are doing. There are some very reasonable things to complain about.
That lines up with my experiences. I went a few rounds trying to convince one school (where I had part-time work) to move toward greater inclusiveness. I was told that exclusiveness was what sold the dance. Well, they weren't wrong . . . I've seen it too often to deny it, even if I dislike it intensely.
If i dont dance with my favourite leader because we are both sitting and waiting for music that we like, but the dj never plays it, thats our problem for being special snowflakes.
I confess to doing the "If the DJ plays
X, we dance!" thing. My values of
X aren't what DJs here like to play – more than one DJ has told me that the most energetic D'Arienzo and dramatic, complicated Pugliese "encourage bad behavior on the floor," and also, "Who the heck even knows who Salamanca and Varela are?" So there are evenings where that promised tanda never happens.
Other reasons I have seen people stick with Tango:
- It is their social network
This is huge. It's hitting me like a ton of bricks right now.
Here, March 6, 2021 marked the first anniversary of all in-person tango events being closed indefinitely due to pandemic. In the lurch, I've realized that tango was in equal parts my main physical activity, my main antidote to mental stresses, and my "third place" away from work and home, where my social life resided. Without tango, I don't have much of a social life (it's a complicated story, but in brief: I got separated, ex-wife turned non-tango friends against me, I retained tango friends, I rebuilt my social life there).
I think that even if tango events resumed tomorrow and were always horrible, I'd still go to see friends.
I have pointed out very often in this forum that learning tango is not about the dance steps, but about social learning in the first place
That'll depend on how you learn and what you're seeking.
I'm a structured thinker who likes a puzzle, so for me,
learning tango – in classes and lessons, group and private – was about the movements (though I'd hesitate to say "steps").
Dancing tango – at the milonga – was indeed a social learning experience, as my previous remark underlines. I don't consider the latter to be "learning tango," though of course one's learning does continue through doing.
