My Tango Diaries

Images, edited for this post, were obtained from morguefile.com . I received two emails from readers, one leader and one follower, regarding my continued "rabid" support of the "archaic" cabeceo.* (All I wrote in the last post was that a good, clear cabeceo knocks my socks off. I didn't think that sounded rabid .) Normally I simply agree to disagree. You can choose to participate in this custom or not - no one, not even me, is going to force you. This time, however, I couldn't help noting that in previous messages to me, they had both complained about not getting the dances, with the dancers, that they wanted. So I asked if the cabeceo was at least moderately used in their communities. As it turns out, yes - about half or more people use it in these two separate communities. My answer to them? You can't have it both ways. If you choose to ask verbally in a community that uses the cabeceo, or where the dancers you most want to dance with u...

The floor at Friday night's milonga was enormous. All of the dancers I asked agreed we could have fit a couple of hundred dancers on that floor. Instead we had a few dozen. A nice crowd - but we still had what seemed like acres of room. With all that room you would think there would be no need for any leader to overtake another couple on the pista. (That's what I thought, anyway.) And yet a couple of tangueros not only tailgated and overtook another couple on the right side (the other leader's blind side, which is why you don't do it) - but they overtook many, many couples - practically "lapping"(1) the other dancers on the floor. I couldn't keep the "Are you *&%$# serious?" look off my face when a leader repeatedly got within a few inches of my partner and me (leaving a full 6+ feet between him and the couple behind him), and then passed us. Twice. It's not like we were holding up the line of dance either. We were maintaining the same fe...

This is far more information and analysis than anyone wants, but it's been on my mind a long time. So maybe it's time... This post is in response to a forum discussion going on at Tango Connections about the criticism at the milonga, and tango codigos . If you go to the Tango-L listserv (mailing list/forum) archives, you'll find that from the very near the beginning (of the archive list anyway) tango dancers have been arguing about the codigos, about milonga manners and floor craft etc. The archive only goes back to 1994, but the first specific post I found was November 1995 - http://pythia.uoregon.edu/~llynch/Tango-L/1995/msg00050.html . That's just one place - there are sites archived elsewhere with the same debates and they go back years. The Social Human So why do we constantly, heatedly, unrelentingly argue about the milonga codes? Because we are engaging in a shared, emotional experience . Defining terms and setting rules makes it feel safe to do that. Wh...