Girl Talk
by Anita Canzian
Copyright (c) 2000, Planet Tango. All Rights Reserved
As a single woman who has gone to Buenos Aires solita, I can attest
to the essential truth of your article in the January
issue of El Firulete. If your readers can stand some more “girl
talk,” I’d be pleased to offer the following of my experiences and observations.First
of all, if a dance or a man’s behavior was not acceptable to you, don’t
dance with that man again, period. As a foreign woman, it seemed as though
I was valued at exactly the value I placed on myself publicly. This was
exemplified for the rest of the people at a milonga, by my choice of dance
partners, both in terms of their behavior towards me as a woman and their
expertise as a dancer. No one will ask you to dance until they’ve seen
you dance (except for the men who are the very beginning dancers). It is
understood that at the milonga, the woman accepts the man. Therefore she
is responsible for and in control of the image she presents concerning
her character and the level and quality of her dancing.
There is a great deal of dance snobbery in Buenos Aires. Some men
will not ask you to dance if you consistently dance with men below their
level. Rejecting dances and dancers can be unnerving, as it goes against
the grain of the North American social dance custom to graciously accept
any man’s offer to dance, regardless of skill or personality. In Buenos
Aires whom you choose to dance with, will lead to dancing with more of
the same. Of course, the reverse is also true - all it takes is one experienced
and respected milonguero to decide that you are a good dancer, and the
Oklahoma Land Rush will look orderly compared to the traffic to your table.
Your article also touched on the subject of an off handed, casual
touch being misunderstood as a sexual invitation. This may be true, but
it is also more true that those casual overtures on the part of the man
may be designed to hinder and discourage other men from asking you to dance.
After all, as the woman, you’ve allowed the overt gesture. The other milongueros
will wish to honor your choice of the publicly stated gesture to align
yourself with that man casually draping his arm around your shoulder. And
how do they honor this? By not asking you to dance, since in effect you
have allowed yourself to be spoken for. This holds true for the most innocent
of courtly gestures that we take for granted in social dance situations
in this country. On the short list, if you take a sip of a man’s drink
from his proffered glass; an offer of a chair at a man’s table; a drink
bought for you by anyone but yourself or a girlfriend (and this includes
an innocent glass of water). Accept any of these from the first man that
offers, and your dance card will wither. So unless it is THE chair or THE
drink or THE arm of THE man you have been praying for all your life, politely
refuse, even if the offer is coming from a “cute” 80-year old grandfather.
If you do accept, you will be waiting for him and only him to ask you to
dance for the rest of your stay in Buenos Aires. If you think no one notices
these things in the crowded milongas of Buenos Aires, think again. The
ones who “have had their eye on you” will notice and behave according to
the age old codes of the milonga.
Another aspect of dancing in Buenos Aires, which differs sharply
from dancing in the USA is that a man will not dance with a woman if she
has danced with his friend. This is in sharp contrast to the USA, where
I would naturally introduce and recommend a good male dancer to my female
friends so that they in turn could dance with each other. I would expect
the male dancer to introduce me to his friends, so that I might dance with
his friends too. This becomes even more tricky in Buenos Aires, because
men who are friends will frequently not sit with each other in the milongas.
This makes it even more crucial to not repeat a dance with a man you didn’t
like. If you are “polite” and dance with him again, and he is the friend
of someone that you do like, in deference to a friend who you were polite
to, your dream dancer will stay away from you.
I had a great time and learned quite a lot from my solo trip to Buenos
Aires, not only by trial and error, but also by the “girl talk” I shared
with Valorie (and others) in Buenos Aires. “The Tango Experience” planned
by Alberto and Valorie looks like a wonderful way to learn to navigate
the cultural nuances in the world of the Tango in Buenos Aires.
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