Tango Life

Travelling as much as we do we tend to see patterns repeating themselves in various cities around the world. One of these is Planet Teacher, a place of rarefied atmosphere where reality takes on an altered perspective. Another is the Top Table phenomenon. These two patterns tend to go hand in hand. It's an understandable human behaviour, but while they are good for the egos of those at their centres they don't do much for the development of the local dance scenes. There's not a lot of dignity in them, either. It's a really big deal for a lot of people to be seen as teachers. I've actually greeted people at our practicas and had them tell me in their first breath that they are a teacher from another town. It sounds a bit sad and needy, but there you go. Some of these people lose perspective by knowing more than someone else. They seem to feel that they have achieved membership of an elite, and we see many of them in various cities lose interest in dancing...

A common complaint of tango teachers is that their local scenes don't recognise the teachers' ongoing improvement, and still think of them as Bob and Jenny from down the road, whereas they themselves feel that they are actually accumulating more knowledge and experience and becoming more valuable as teachers. This becomes a problem if one is trying to earn a living in one's hometown as a tango teacher, but if one still has a day job then it's just a burden to one's pride. Living in a relatively small tango scene as I am, I'm reminded of this quite often. I'll be dancing with a newbie (or experienced dancer) who hasn't been taught much more than nudge-and-guess, and who cheerfully pulls me off axis with every un-led weight shift and overstep, while gaily telling me that I have "such an unusual style". Oh dear. At times like these I console my bruised ego with my being a popular leader in whatever country I visit, and and having enjoyed the...