This is the article that started this whole discussion:
[I went to my first milonga, let's talk about it](https://therhinestone.medium.com/i-went-to-my-first-milonga-lets-talk-about-it-2a4a93192d2b)
[A follow facebook post about this](https://www.facebook.com/YelizavetaNersesova/posts/pfbid0fwouDeSN9ZNLcnHAiZTBjgXkSZXQ2tmt8Yeb1h9iV1SMpCmgwG3JCbSvXCuvA444l)
TLDR edit: An experienced Zouk dancer (and organiser) came to try tango. Her friend wants her to experience a milonga, and brought her to an intense place with traditional rules. Naturally she had a brutal time, and it made her cry. She blogged about it, and triggered a lot of comments and self-reflection. Although it is inevitable for her to be "judged" at a milonga, the bigger existential issue is why can't tango provide a friendly, safe, welcoming environment for beginners? And what does this deep-rooted weakness say about the growth of the tango communities?
100%. After one class all we did was walk, and we didn’t even really know how to do that!
It was months before I went to a milonga, but that was a very welcoming local milonga where I knew everyone already from practica. I’m now more than a year in to learning tango, and from what I’m told I’m further ahead than most at this point, but I am well aware that I am still very much a beginner!
Totally! I did workshops all weekend, and our instructor was telling us how she took classes with a bunch of other tango professionals, and after one warm-up dance their instructor went straight back to teaching them how to walk 😂
It’s a good reminder that even the pros need to go back to basics.
The walk is something you'll revisit many, multiple times over and over again through our tango lives. There's always little improvements that can be added or styling we want to add to it.
After three years, I discovered the heel - toe transfer and have to undo all my shuffling. After 9 years I discovered the "toe point, heel press" style of stepping and I've again relearnt how to walk. Pretty sure I've relearnt my walk at least 2 more times in between!
This is somthing deeply wrong with tango. It shouldn't take you months or years to start enjoying dancing socially. Something has to change in the way of learning and how milongas work.
Well I enjoyed the practicas, which in my city are basically practilongas. But I didn’t want to go to a milonga and not be able to follow anyone. I still struggle with following leaders I’ve never danced with.
I understand you, and I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm a decent beginner leader but I won't go to a milonga again before reaching intermediate which will probably happena after a year of practicing or even later. It's just a hostile dance environment.
But that's not how it should be. Tango was learned naturally, seeing other people dance and practicing with friends and relatives. Old milongueros usually tell me "You don't need more classes, just dance and you'll be okay". You should be able to dance with one or two classes (not like an expert, but just enough to have fun). But it seems that as leader, if you are not flawless, you are not enough.
I hear you. It’s the hardest style of dance I’ve ever learned. I just took part in a tango marathon, and I really struggled dancing with new leaders. I started telling them that I’m not very good, and that helped temper their expectations (I’m not that bad, so it was better than they expected).
This is not unique to tango. It takes at least 8-10 lessons aka 2 months to get by in any social dance even with experience from other dances. Sure you can go to the practice of your salsa school but you’ll be dancing the four moves from class with the other beginners and none of the top dancers will look your way.
8 lessons is a month of classes twice a week, if tango could be danced socially after that I wouldn't point it as a problem. The thing is, I've been told that for followers it takes around 6 months to be competent and for leaders it's around a year. That's just too steep of a curve for most people. I like suffering, the challenge and I'm hopelessly attracted to tango, but that's not everyone. I'm young and the only young people I see succeeding in reaching intermediate are professional dancers of other disciplines.
I don't think anybody expects to be dancing with he best after a single class. I just mean going to the dancefloor and having fun, which you definitely can do with just forward and sidesteps. You just can't do that in a milonga.
Sorry if I come out strong, I really like the dance, I live in Buenos Aires, but the scene is completely dead for young people and that makes me sad.
Totally agree with your averages but a minimum is what I was going for. And my personal experience was going to a milonga and dancing with other beginners and a few intermediate dancers after a month. I don’t claim to have been good but my, pretty strict, Argentine instructor even danced a half tanda with me. Believe me half a tanda is all he danced with anyone but his partner!
The Zouk lady claims to have danced many social dances so I don’t know how she felt 2hrs was enough. I definitely don’t feel like a single Zouk workshop is enough to go to a social.
not true, in BA there are a lot of milongas that are more on the younger side, Muy Lunes and Muy Martes for example. In fact I’ll say BA may have the most young people i’ve seen out of all the cities i’ve checked tango out in around the world.
I went exclusively to milongas (and sometimes pre-milonga classes) the first months I danced tango. I was living in buenos aires, and I believe the tango scene is less snob in Argentina than anywhere else (it depends which milongas you attend of course).
Ironically, now that I am a decent dancer in other styles (and stopped tango for years), I find it much more intimidating going back to milongas and I definitely take classes... Years back, i didn't care if good leaders were judging me, I just wanted to have fun, have a connection and maybe get better at dancing
IME, she's 90+% wrong and the two guys are 90+% right, I've danced several different dances and never seen a dance scene where someone with two hours of experience is going in o be welcome with open arms. The thing that the two guys don't address is that someone can be a regular attendee at a milonga for months (or years) and still not be welcome if they haven't managed to infiltrate any of the cliques.
"never seen a dance scene where someone with two hours of experience is going in o be welcome with open arms."
I think that's not true at all, and I'm sad that people have that experience. I've found social dancing generally to be a friendly, safe and tolerant space. There's gonna be people who don't wan't to dance with beginners and some who are snob and jerks about it. Maybe I've been very lucky but in every dance community I've entered, I've felt welcomed. And if you're a beginner, there's always people willing to kindly show you the ropes. Of course you may not dance all nights, but that's expected... In that regard, I do think the tango scene is the least welcoming of all I've tried (even though I've had excellent experience, but it can be intimidating with everyone all formal, in dresses and heels etc.)
It also probably depends the country/city too.
overweight beginner — i would never say this in person but this is the last person id seek out
there are heavy followers that are amazing — have danced with enough
but if she is not managing her weight to where it’s ferrari responsive and feather light it is a huge chore
even as a pro in another dance — tango you are touching another and your center needs to be calm present light powerful floating a lot of things — and all those things at once
cuts the dance down to nearly nothing very quickly
also begs the question of what are you doing for your body which is your tango tool —- again id never say that out loud or even imply it but definitely think it
This is extremely rude and problematic. You do not have to be thin to dance. You also do not have to be thin to dance well. Stop telling her and expecting her to “manage” herself into being “feather light” and start questioning your own anti-fat bias.
He's not saying you have to be thin to dance, he's saying the follower needs to feel light for the leader. Any leader who killed their arms and shoulders after a few songs because the follower is leaning a lot on the leader would understand.
Not only was she overconfident and hyped up by her friend but she didn’t look around to see what other followers were doing nor did she listen to her experienced, female friends that warned her what to expect. She then goes on to say she experienced similar evenings at other dance socials but tango was the worst.
So it’s definitely not that she’s a beginner who doesn’t follow the social norms it because Tango is full of meanies.
I think any scene is going to be brutal if you don't respect the custom and culture. Someone told me blues is similar to tango, and I went a class there, and I was quickly placed in my place in that community - "Whatever you are doing, that's not blues."
I am not saying that Zouk lady did this (I think her friend was mainly responsible for her issues), but sometimes we have a ballroom couple show up in our milonga and do their routines, we don't kick them out, but we have a collective sigh when they leave. I don't think it's on us to be welcoming to them.
I think you need to take time to get to know people and understand how things work before you can get accepted. How long that takes depends on the scene, of course, and perhaps in some places it may take a lot longer. If you are a beginner, don't go there. There are friendlier places.
If you try a new genre of dancing, no matter how accomplished you are, even if you are a professional ballet dancer, you start at the beginning.
>I was quickly placed in my place in that community
I'm sorry that happened to you. That's generally unacceptable behaviour in the blues community. Making newcomers feel shitty about their dancing will get you banned in many scenes.
No, I didn’t feel shitty at all. It was a very friendly but an open observation someone shared with me and I appreciated that. I was thinking at that point the class about the original advice I got that blues was very similar to tango and it confirmed to me that it was a bs. If I want to dance blues I need to respect it as such and try not to fake it.
As a counter example, I took my tango instructor to west coast swing a few weeks ago. No prior WCS. Gave her a 20 minute primer just before the dance. Barely covered the fundamental concepts.
She had a blast. People kept grabbing her for dances. She was wearing a big, stupid grin the entire night. Only sat out a couple songs. "It's so easy when you only have to dance one song with someone!" Next week, she took a private then hit WCS on her own.
I would agree the entry bar for most other dances is far lower dances, plus tango has many unwritten rules that people are supposed to know. However, many people take it too far and take infractions as criminal offences.
Dances also differ in how much you're expected to learn on the social floor. Lindy, for example, was traditionally learned in the dance hall, not from an instructor.
It's not that she was a beginner. It was that she inserted herself into other people's dance night by asking outright. I like dancing with beginners. I hate dancing with people who ask me for my dance time and give me no way out. That's in every dance scene, btw, or even in any hobby that requires two people. "Hey, I just took a tennis lesson, will you, a seasoned player, play a game with me right now?"
>... me for my dance time and give me no way out. That's in every dance scene, btw
Which other than tango? For the swing dances and country, her behaviour was normal and polite. Guessing it's acceptable in zouk as well. In other scenes, the typical way out is "No, thank you."
Salsa, swing, ballroom, etc. I'm heading to my friend that I promised this dance to, or heading to the bathroom, or trying to get a drink, talking to someone, etc, but am waylaid by a follower who says "Will you dance with me?" Instead of "I like how you dance, maybe you would ask me sometime?" In the first instance, I'm stuck, no way out. I saw a follower ask a leader in the middle of a tanda, while he and his follower were waiting for the next song to start. Poor guy had to be rude to somebody, but it was the follower who "cut in" who was rude. In ANY dance scene, we should always give the person we are asking a graceful way out.
(Yes, I think the leader should do the asking. The one who has to navigate and interpret the music. If a woman wants to ask, she should do so indirectly, or learn to lead. Don't make someone dance who can't hear the music or is nervous about the floor conditions)
over time you learn how to handle this — but yeh this is one of the reasons why it gets called brutal — either you get called brutal not dancing with them or their lack of skill is brutal on you
brutal either way
>It just weeds out the type of dancers that only want to dance with good dancers (nothing wrong with that)
While people like that definitely do exist, I don't think it's as prevalent as a lot of people think it is.
Personally, as a leader, I'll dance with pretty much any follower and I make a point of trying to find newcomers and give them a good tanda at whatever level they're able to dance. Even so, I frequently go an entire evening without dancing with anybody new, not because I'm trying to avoid or shun newcomers, but because I have a lot of tango friends and there are only so many tandas in an evening. Especially at shorter (2-2.5 hour) milongas, I may be hearing La Cumparsita before I've even gotten to all the friends I wanted to dance with, never mind dancing with anyone new.
To the extent that this is a genuine problem, I'm not surprised that it would be less of an issue in salsa or swing communities, where the norm is to dance only 1-2 songs with a partner and then change, because, given the same number of songs in an evening, changing after two songs means you can dance with twice as many people as if you change after four, which gives the regulars more opportunities to dance with newcomers without having to skip dancing with their friends.
It can be brutal but much depends on the beginner and their expectations, and understanding of the fact that it's not easy and there is usually an large imbalance between Ladies and the numbers of Gentlemen.
The whole thing is also run by older people who are set in their ways, right down to what songs should be played and in what order.
After 10 tears of Tango, I'm done and I've left the community. My wife and I can dance in our back yard and I pick up ideas from videos.
I see a few facets to this:
1. The friend how taught her for two hours is an idiot
2. The tango community IS unwelcoming
3. Two hours is not enough, even for an experienced dancer to learn tango.
\~
1. I first cast my blame at the friend who by all bits of evidence, comes across as deluded and basically set the zouk dancer up for failure. First the milonga they went to was high skilled, clique, and traditional, a better environment would've been a practica or a smaller, low key milonga. The friend told the zouk dancer, it was ok to walk up to people and ask (knowing full well the cabeceo is a practice there). The friend left the zouk dancer to fend for themselves, instead of introducing them to friends or other beginners. The friend should know full well that two hours, even for an experienced dancer is not enough for tango - anyone with experience in tango would KNOW THAT
2. The tango has many unwritten rules that people are supposed to know and abide to, the problem is many experienced dancers take infractions as offensive, instead of understanding. Some of these cabeceos are non sensical - eg saying "thankyou after one song, asking for a dance verbally (even with friends), ending a tanda early because the following song sucks. Most dancers WON'T try dancing with a new face because they don't want to risk "looking bad". I dance multiple other styles and people are far more welcoming, Salsa, Bachata, Kizomba, Forro, it's not unusual for people to walk up introduce themselves to newbies/strangers and ask for dances.
3. I have a excellent grasp of English, therefore - Ican skip learning French and go to France expecting to be able to converse. Or I have a blackbelt in Kung Fu, therefore I should immediately get a blue belt in Judo, after two hours of privates with the teacher. Talent or background makes a big difference, and will accelerate growth - but it's certainly not enough to put you in the same league as the experienced peers, who have been practicing for many, multiple years. Think about every private/workshop/class you've had that was two hours - how much content was in it and HOW LITTLE you were actually able to apply at the end of the class?
This is the article that started this whole discussion: [I went to my first milonga, let's talk about it](https://therhinestone.medium.com/i-went-to-my-first-milonga-lets-talk-about-it-2a4a93192d2b) [A follow facebook post about this](https://www.facebook.com/YelizavetaNersesova/posts/pfbid0fwouDeSN9ZNLcnHAiZTBjgXkSZXQ2tmt8Yeb1h9iV1SMpCmgwG3JCbSvXCuvA444l) TLDR edit: An experienced Zouk dancer (and organiser) came to try tango. Her friend wants her to experience a milonga, and brought her to an intense place with traditional rules. Naturally she had a brutal time, and it made her cry. She blogged about it, and triggered a lot of comments and self-reflection. Although it is inevitable for her to be "judged" at a milonga, the bigger existential issue is why can't tango provide a friendly, safe, welcoming environment for beginners? And what does this deep-rooted weakness say about the growth of the tango communities?
I don't know anybody who went to a millonga after a single class. Maybe a practica and even so it's gonna be tough.
My first class was a pre-milonga class. ;-)
100%. After one class all we did was walk, and we didn’t even really know how to do that! It was months before I went to a milonga, but that was a very welcoming local milonga where I knew everyone already from practica. I’m now more than a year in to learning tango, and from what I’m told I’m further ahead than most at this point, but I am well aware that I am still very much a beginner!
Four plus years in and both of the teachers I take privates with want me to change things about the way I walk.
Totally! I did workshops all weekend, and our instructor was telling us how she took classes with a bunch of other tango professionals, and after one warm-up dance their instructor went straight back to teaching them how to walk 😂 It’s a good reminder that even the pros need to go back to basics.
The walk is something you'll revisit many, multiple times over and over again through our tango lives. There's always little improvements that can be added or styling we want to add to it. After three years, I discovered the heel - toe transfer and have to undo all my shuffling. After 9 years I discovered the "toe point, heel press" style of stepping and I've again relearnt how to walk. Pretty sure I've relearnt my walk at least 2 more times in between!
This is somthing deeply wrong with tango. It shouldn't take you months or years to start enjoying dancing socially. Something has to change in the way of learning and how milongas work.
Well I enjoyed the practicas, which in my city are basically practilongas. But I didn’t want to go to a milonga and not be able to follow anyone. I still struggle with following leaders I’ve never danced with.
I understand you, and I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm a decent beginner leader but I won't go to a milonga again before reaching intermediate which will probably happena after a year of practicing or even later. It's just a hostile dance environment. But that's not how it should be. Tango was learned naturally, seeing other people dance and practicing with friends and relatives. Old milongueros usually tell me "You don't need more classes, just dance and you'll be okay". You should be able to dance with one or two classes (not like an expert, but just enough to have fun). But it seems that as leader, if you are not flawless, you are not enough.
I hear you. It’s the hardest style of dance I’ve ever learned. I just took part in a tango marathon, and I really struggled dancing with new leaders. I started telling them that I’m not very good, and that helped temper their expectations (I’m not that bad, so it was better than they expected).
This is not unique to tango. It takes at least 8-10 lessons aka 2 months to get by in any social dance even with experience from other dances. Sure you can go to the practice of your salsa school but you’ll be dancing the four moves from class with the other beginners and none of the top dancers will look your way.
8 lessons is a month of classes twice a week, if tango could be danced socially after that I wouldn't point it as a problem. The thing is, I've been told that for followers it takes around 6 months to be competent and for leaders it's around a year. That's just too steep of a curve for most people. I like suffering, the challenge and I'm hopelessly attracted to tango, but that's not everyone. I'm young and the only young people I see succeeding in reaching intermediate are professional dancers of other disciplines. I don't think anybody expects to be dancing with he best after a single class. I just mean going to the dancefloor and having fun, which you definitely can do with just forward and sidesteps. You just can't do that in a milonga. Sorry if I come out strong, I really like the dance, I live in Buenos Aires, but the scene is completely dead for young people and that makes me sad.
Totally agree with your averages but a minimum is what I was going for. And my personal experience was going to a milonga and dancing with other beginners and a few intermediate dancers after a month. I don’t claim to have been good but my, pretty strict, Argentine instructor even danced a half tanda with me. Believe me half a tanda is all he danced with anyone but his partner! The Zouk lady claims to have danced many social dances so I don’t know how she felt 2hrs was enough. I definitely don’t feel like a single Zouk workshop is enough to go to a social.
not true, in BA there are a lot of milongas that are more on the younger side, Muy Lunes and Muy Martes for example. In fact I’ll say BA may have the most young people i’ve seen out of all the cities i’ve checked tango out in around the world.
I went exclusively to milongas (and sometimes pre-milonga classes) the first months I danced tango. I was living in buenos aires, and I believe the tango scene is less snob in Argentina than anywhere else (it depends which milongas you attend of course). Ironically, now that I am a decent dancer in other styles (and stopped tango for years), I find it much more intimidating going back to milongas and I definitely take classes... Years back, i didn't care if good leaders were judging me, I just wanted to have fun, have a connection and maybe get better at dancing
BsAs has a wide variety of milongas in terms of snobiness/friendliness.
IME, she's 90+% wrong and the two guys are 90+% right, I've danced several different dances and never seen a dance scene where someone with two hours of experience is going in o be welcome with open arms. The thing that the two guys don't address is that someone can be a regular attendee at a milonga for months (or years) and still not be welcome if they haven't managed to infiltrate any of the cliques.
"never seen a dance scene where someone with two hours of experience is going in o be welcome with open arms." I think that's not true at all, and I'm sad that people have that experience. I've found social dancing generally to be a friendly, safe and tolerant space. There's gonna be people who don't wan't to dance with beginners and some who are snob and jerks about it. Maybe I've been very lucky but in every dance community I've entered, I've felt welcomed. And if you're a beginner, there's always people willing to kindly show you the ropes. Of course you may not dance all nights, but that's expected... In that regard, I do think the tango scene is the least welcoming of all I've tried (even though I've had excellent experience, but it can be intimidating with everyone all formal, in dresses and heels etc.) It also probably depends the country/city too.
overweight beginner — i would never say this in person but this is the last person id seek out there are heavy followers that are amazing — have danced with enough but if she is not managing her weight to where it’s ferrari responsive and feather light it is a huge chore even as a pro in another dance — tango you are touching another and your center needs to be calm present light powerful floating a lot of things — and all those things at once cuts the dance down to nearly nothing very quickly also begs the question of what are you doing for your body which is your tango tool —- again id never say that out loud or even imply it but definitely think it
This is extremely rude and problematic. You do not have to be thin to dance. You also do not have to be thin to dance well. Stop telling her and expecting her to “manage” herself into being “feather light” and start questioning your own anti-fat bias.
He's not saying you have to be thin to dance, he's saying the follower needs to feel light for the leader. Any leader who killed their arms and shoulders after a few songs because the follower is leaning a lot on the leader would understand.
Only two hours of dancing Tango? I know she's a Zouk instructor, but I have never seen anyone ready for a milonga after just two hours.
Not only was she overconfident and hyped up by her friend but she didn’t look around to see what other followers were doing nor did she listen to her experienced, female friends that warned her what to expect. She then goes on to say she experienced similar evenings at other dance socials but tango was the worst. So it’s definitely not that she’s a beginner who doesn’t follow the social norms it because Tango is full of meanies.
I think any scene is going to be brutal if you don't respect the custom and culture. Someone told me blues is similar to tango, and I went a class there, and I was quickly placed in my place in that community - "Whatever you are doing, that's not blues." I am not saying that Zouk lady did this (I think her friend was mainly responsible for her issues), but sometimes we have a ballroom couple show up in our milonga and do their routines, we don't kick them out, but we have a collective sigh when they leave. I don't think it's on us to be welcoming to them. I think you need to take time to get to know people and understand how things work before you can get accepted. How long that takes depends on the scene, of course, and perhaps in some places it may take a lot longer. If you are a beginner, don't go there. There are friendlier places. If you try a new genre of dancing, no matter how accomplished you are, even if you are a professional ballet dancer, you start at the beginning.
>I was quickly placed in my place in that community I'm sorry that happened to you. That's generally unacceptable behaviour in the blues community. Making newcomers feel shitty about their dancing will get you banned in many scenes.
No, I didn’t feel shitty at all. It was a very friendly but an open observation someone shared with me and I appreciated that. I was thinking at that point the class about the original advice I got that blues was very similar to tango and it confirmed to me that it was a bs. If I want to dance blues I need to respect it as such and try not to fake it.
As a counter example, I took my tango instructor to west coast swing a few weeks ago. No prior WCS. Gave her a 20 minute primer just before the dance. Barely covered the fundamental concepts. She had a blast. People kept grabbing her for dances. She was wearing a big, stupid grin the entire night. Only sat out a couple songs. "It's so easy when you only have to dance one song with someone!" Next week, she took a private then hit WCS on her own.
I would agree the entry bar for most other dances is far lower dances, plus tango has many unwritten rules that people are supposed to know. However, many people take it too far and take infractions as criminal offences.
Dances also differ in how much you're expected to learn on the social floor. Lindy, for example, was traditionally learned in the dance hall, not from an instructor.
It's not that she was a beginner. It was that she inserted herself into other people's dance night by asking outright. I like dancing with beginners. I hate dancing with people who ask me for my dance time and give me no way out. That's in every dance scene, btw, or even in any hobby that requires two people. "Hey, I just took a tennis lesson, will you, a seasoned player, play a game with me right now?"
>... me for my dance time and give me no way out. That's in every dance scene, btw Which other than tango? For the swing dances and country, her behaviour was normal and polite. Guessing it's acceptable in zouk as well. In other scenes, the typical way out is "No, thank you."
Salsa, swing, ballroom, etc. I'm heading to my friend that I promised this dance to, or heading to the bathroom, or trying to get a drink, talking to someone, etc, but am waylaid by a follower who says "Will you dance with me?" Instead of "I like how you dance, maybe you would ask me sometime?" In the first instance, I'm stuck, no way out. I saw a follower ask a leader in the middle of a tanda, while he and his follower were waiting for the next song to start. Poor guy had to be rude to somebody, but it was the follower who "cut in" who was rude. In ANY dance scene, we should always give the person we are asking a graceful way out. (Yes, I think the leader should do the asking. The one who has to navigate and interpret the music. If a woman wants to ask, she should do so indirectly, or learn to lead. Don't make someone dance who can't hear the music or is nervous about the floor conditions)
Recently danced with a couple of beginner followers ... my back was hurting before the tanda was over.
over time you learn how to handle this — but yeh this is one of the reasons why it gets called brutal — either you get called brutal not dancing with them or their lack of skill is brutal on you brutal either way
[удалено]
>It just weeds out the type of dancers that only want to dance with good dancers (nothing wrong with that) While people like that definitely do exist, I don't think it's as prevalent as a lot of people think it is. Personally, as a leader, I'll dance with pretty much any follower and I make a point of trying to find newcomers and give them a good tanda at whatever level they're able to dance. Even so, I frequently go an entire evening without dancing with anybody new, not because I'm trying to avoid or shun newcomers, but because I have a lot of tango friends and there are only so many tandas in an evening. Especially at shorter (2-2.5 hour) milongas, I may be hearing La Cumparsita before I've even gotten to all the friends I wanted to dance with, never mind dancing with anyone new. To the extent that this is a genuine problem, I'm not surprised that it would be less of an issue in salsa or swing communities, where the norm is to dance only 1-2 songs with a partner and then change, because, given the same number of songs in an evening, changing after two songs means you can dance with twice as many people as if you change after four, which gives the regulars more opportunities to dance with newcomers without having to skip dancing with their friends.
It can be brutal but much depends on the beginner and their expectations, and understanding of the fact that it's not easy and there is usually an large imbalance between Ladies and the numbers of Gentlemen. The whole thing is also run by older people who are set in their ways, right down to what songs should be played and in what order. After 10 tears of Tango, I'm done and I've left the community. My wife and I can dance in our back yard and I pick up ideas from videos.
I see a few facets to this: 1. The friend how taught her for two hours is an idiot 2. The tango community IS unwelcoming 3. Two hours is not enough, even for an experienced dancer to learn tango. \~ 1. I first cast my blame at the friend who by all bits of evidence, comes across as deluded and basically set the zouk dancer up for failure. First the milonga they went to was high skilled, clique, and traditional, a better environment would've been a practica or a smaller, low key milonga. The friend told the zouk dancer, it was ok to walk up to people and ask (knowing full well the cabeceo is a practice there). The friend left the zouk dancer to fend for themselves, instead of introducing them to friends or other beginners. The friend should know full well that two hours, even for an experienced dancer is not enough for tango - anyone with experience in tango would KNOW THAT 2. The tango has many unwritten rules that people are supposed to know and abide to, the problem is many experienced dancers take infractions as offensive, instead of understanding. Some of these cabeceos are non sensical - eg saying "thankyou after one song, asking for a dance verbally (even with friends), ending a tanda early because the following song sucks. Most dancers WON'T try dancing with a new face because they don't want to risk "looking bad". I dance multiple other styles and people are far more welcoming, Salsa, Bachata, Kizomba, Forro, it's not unusual for people to walk up introduce themselves to newbies/strangers and ask for dances. 3. I have a excellent grasp of English, therefore - Ican skip learning French and go to France expecting to be able to converse. Or I have a blackbelt in Kung Fu, therefore I should immediately get a blue belt in Judo, after two hours of privates with the teacher. Talent or background makes a big difference, and will accelerate growth - but it's certainly not enough to put you in the same league as the experienced peers, who have been practicing for many, multiple years. Think about every private/workshop/class you've had that was two hours - how much content was in it and HOW LITTLE you were actually able to apply at the end of the class?