[TANGO-L] Men and milonga, traspie, etc.

[Bruce Stephens <bruce @CENDERIS.DEMON.CO.UK>]

A few women have told me that quite a few men don't seem to get the
hang of milonga---that some just dance tango, approximately to the
rhythm.

One possibility that occurs to me is that some teachers teach traspie
too soon---perhaps delaying or preventing men from learning the basic
rhythm of milonga, blurring the difference between milonga and tango.

One (female) teacher made a related point while teaching a workshop on
decorations.

Her argument was that once upon a time, milonga was danced almost all
in a simple rhythm, and that women would often decorate elaborately.

But as time progressed, male teachers who had never learned to follow
very well came to prominence, and since they'd never learned to follow
well enough to decorate in milonga, they tended to be less reluctant
to dance and teach traspie than the older men.  (Milonga is nice for
decoration because it has a very predictable regular rhythm of led
steps, so provided the follower is fast enough, she knows when the
next step is coming and can decorate freely before it comes.  Traspie
takes that space away from her.)

And so traspie became more and more popular, and decoration in milonga
became less and less popular.

So there's another possibility: maybe the men can't dance milonga, but
perhaps it's that they've never danced with women who could dance it
really well.  I know plenty of women who clearly understand the
rhythm, but *very* few who decorate.

(I'm not blaming anyone, particularly---it must be very hard to learn
to decorate when just about every leader is trying to lead traspie all
the time; and vice versa, it's hard to resist dancing some double-time
rhythms when you just know your partner's not going to attempt any
decorations anyway.  It's just that I think we're all missing
something very special because of it.)