Re: [Tango-L] Argentine Tango Dancer Census: Increasing, Decreasing or Dividing?
On 2008-03-06 22:41+, Felix Delgado wrote: Are tango numbers actually decreasing? One description I've heard is that people aren't staying with tango as long as they used to. Many communities are constantly recruiting beginners. Or maybe tango communities are just splitting into little subgroups organized by different instructors. I don't know. But the large tango crowds seem to be less frequent. This is not healthy for the future of tango. Felix To be honest I think is most likely to do with how unaccommodating the Tango community is becoming. That Tango appears to be less and less about people coming together to dance and more about being part of a kind of self-righteousness elitist group who hold a kind of religious belief about Tango. I have a good friend who went to a Tango class for the first time and has never given Tango another chance since. She said the people were unfriendly, arrogant and no one seemed to care at all for those who were starting to learn for the first time. All she wanted was to meet people and start a new hobby. My point is that Tango is no longer just a dance and though it is exciting to discover how much more there is to Tango beside the dance, it is this attitude that has made it unattractive, inaccessible and really just soo arrogant. If Tango was originally people coming together in small venues smiling laughing and enjoying each others company, the music and practising movements and growing a dance; that is a far cry from what it is today. Just the level of bickering and patronising on this mailing list demonstrates how people can't even share their opinion without stepping on someones toes. And toes, dare one EVER bump into someone nowadays in a milonga. It takes weeks to pull out the eye daggers. If the Tango community is decreasing it would not surprise me at all. 'Mash London,UK ___ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
Re: [Tango-L] Argentine Tango Dancer Census: Increasing, Decreasing or Dividing?
Hey, Culturally, I see big differences as far as socializing goes compared to western (from where I am from) and latin europe. I mainly know Boston, but there's little things that don't seem to be very usual in US. For example, rarely anyone stays talking for an hour in a restaurant after the dinner, just having some drink and chatting. People eat and leave. It's as if restaurants are only there to eat and after that, off you go! This surprises me as the best part of going out to dinner, to me, has always been the lively chat after a good meal, *slowly* savored. Having dinner is a good excuse to get people together, because, you know, everyone normally has one every night. When I go to milongas, I like to sit, watch the floorcraft and listen. This has surprised many of my friends since they go to milongas to dance! I love dancing, but I don't need or want to dance everything. I'm sure I will probably be dancing more as I get more experienced, but right now, I like to learn music, listen to what music compose the tandas and, try to socialize a bit. I also like to watch dancers I like and try to understand why I don't like so much others. I believe tango is a very social dance and it only makes sense as such. I believe you shouldn't go to a milonga for dancing alone, but for the whole experience, for the atmosphere, friends and socializing. Argentines by drop boston milongas and aren't always dancing. That surprises some of my friends and I don't understand them. Learning and dancing AT would not make sense to me if I couldn't also enjoy the unique atmosphere that is (hopefully) created at milongas. I think creating this culture of more than just *a dance* would help to keep communities going. This would make communities friendlier and more amenable to welcoming new elements. There are interesting phenomena that happen when cultures or religions are emulated outside their origins. There's a tendency towards extremes. It's funny that some milongas outside BA are probably much more unfriendly than BA's most unfriendly. It's interesting but at the same time hurtful to the communities. peace b On 3/7/08, 'Mash [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To be honest I think is most likely to do with how unaccommodating the Tango community is becoming. That Tango appears to be less and less about people coming together to dance and more about being part of a kind of self-righteousness elitist group who hold a kind of religious belief about Tango. -- Bruno Afonso http://brunoafonso.com (personal, mostly portuguese) http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:BrunoAfonso (Professional, english) ___ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
[Tango-L] Argentine Tango Dancer Census
My favorite subject! A buddy and I (will mostly I) used to talk about this a lot. If you narrow the search to people who are passionate about it, perhaps obsessed by it, dance (or take classes) every week or at least once or twice a month... I will start in the U.S... Take Denver...I would estimate 200-300 dancers there that fit this passionate category ...although this figure might be high... Let's use 200 for the average large city... Here's a rough table... Denver 200 Seattle 500 Portland500 San Francisco 500 Los Angeles 200 San Diego 100 Phoenix/Tuscon 100 Austin 50 Dallas 50 Houston 50 Chicago 100 St. Louis 50 Baton Rouge/New Orleans 50 Birmingham 50 Atlanta 100 Miami 200 Ann Arbor 100 New York200 Boston 200 Small towns x 50 states 500 Passionate Total 3800 Round up5000 5000 in the U.S. means about 100 people for each of the 50 states...or more like 250 people in 20 states...which sounds about right... Now remember, this is the passionate group that is jonesing for tango every week... I would guess there are another 5000 that are playing with tango...taking classes...going away...coming back...maybe or maybe not going to milongas... So, let's say 10,000 total in the U.S. (snapshot right now) are dancing tango in some way/shape/form. Would it be accurate to say the same for the entirety of Europe and Asia? 20,000 so far... Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Isla de Pantelleria, etc...everything else we are missing... add 5k...up to 25000... South America...outside of Argentina...say what...2000?...27000 And the big question...Argentina and Buenos Aires...at least 1? Less? 5000? Same as the U.S.? 32000? Just a really rough estimate SWAG...my buddy and I always guessed 30,000 to 50,000 world wide have some exposure to Argentine Tango...perhaps it's more like 20,000-30,000... I would say you are looking at 5000-1 who are passionate about it...dancing every week... This would be my guess? Not very many in the scheme of things...but that's the way we want it, right? ___ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
Re: [Tango-L] Argentine Tango Dancer Census
--- Alex [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not very many in the scheme of things...but that's the way we want it, right? Hell, no! I want more! Take away the top handful of dancers in town and the quality really drops. Imagine if, instead of, as you say, 200 passionate dancers per town, there are 1000. That would extrapolate to 25 dancers of that same quality. More to go around. More improvement through osmosis. More nights of dancing. More teachers with enough students to fill a classroom. Better dancers. More passion! Imagine more and more and more leaders! All those women who used to sit no longer sit! More people means more teachers who can fill their classes. And, you KNOW what that means! More teachers means more teaching styles! More! More!! More!!! Sorry! I moved from a big city to a small city. Trust me. Bigger is better!!! Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ___ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
Re: [Tango-L] Argentine Tango Dancer Census
re the census figures(?) If passionate is going out once or twice a week, how do you classify many of us here in NYC? Many of us dance an average 4-5 times a week and some almost every night, a few every night. Also your figure of 200 people in NYC that are passionate makes us smile. We sometimes have that many at a single milonga and there are more than twenty milongas per week. I think closer to 1000-1500 would be a conservative count. Probably more in total. Not to disparage anyone that only has the opportunity to dance once or twice, just wanted to make the figure a little more realistic. Cheers, Charles ** It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money amp; Finance. (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf000301) ___ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
Re: [Tango-L] Argentine Tango Dancer Census
I think you are a bit random on your numbers and cities. 500 in New York? Admittedly it is hard to define passionate, vs regular vs newcomer vs got-a-new-boyfriend-who-doesn't-dance. It can't be too restrictive like regularly attends festivals or multiple trips to Buenos Aires. There are a lot of people who do tango regularly as a past time, but not as a dedicated part of their life. I used to keep a good mailing list and tracking in Denver, but now that there are so many others who teach, my stats aren't so complete. It used to have 300 regular dancers, 400 if you included those who came out less often. A couple obvious things: there is a lot of churn in the newcomers; And, longer term dancers often reduce their attendance from 2-3 times per week to something more reasonable like 1-2 times per month. Also, a mature community gets a bit more spread out over all the different milongas by geography and time. You might think someone isn't coming anymore, but they have a different favorite milonga. Maybe your benchmark city has the following pattern of milonga attendance: DISTINCT ATTENDANCE: 100 Once or twice per week 200 Once per month 400 Once per six months I think you can approximately double this to count group classes and privates. Denver is a medium-sized city with a population of 3 million within a 60 mile (100 km) radius). So, if you compare Denver to the benchmark, we could ask whether it has 200 DIFFERENT people attending milongas, practicas or classes once or more per week. I think that is too low; I'd say 300-400 different people do one or more tango events per week. We have a lot of milongas and a lot of teachers, so it is hard to add up all the different places, and harder still to count distinct people. TOTAL WEEKLY ATTENDANCE CALCULATION Probably an easier calculation would be to simply add up the total attendance at all the milongas/practices or the classes per week. Separate out the newcomers left over from the beginner class, and just count just the paid attendance if you want. By that measure, Denver might have 400 dancers each week. I think we have a classroom census almost as high (we have a lot of teachers, and a lot of classes per week, although attendance varies). On Mar 5, 2008, at 2:02 PM, Alex wrote: If you narrow the search to people who are passionate about it, perhaps obsessed by it, dance (or take classes) every week or at least once or twice a month... I will start in the U.S... Take Denver...I would estimate 200-300 dancers there that fit this passionate category ...although this figure might be high... Let's use 200 for the average large city... Here's a rough table... Denver200 Seattle 500 Portland 500 San Francisco 500 Los Angeles 200 San Diego 100 Phoenix/Tuscon100 Austin50 Dallas50 Houston 50 Chicago 100 St. Louis 50 Baton Rouge/New Orleans 50 Birmingham50 Atlanta 100 Miami 200 Ann Arbor 100 New York 200 Boston200 Small towns x 50 states 500 Passionate Total3800 Round up 5000 ___ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
[Tango-L] Argentine Tango Dancer Census
Enjoyed reading Tom's take on things. This really is a topic of great importance; having any sort of true numbers would be of benefit to so many promoters. Of course, we can't know very true numbers. But trying to get a true grasp of pretty true would be useful. Useful!;-) I know it can't really be done - but I believe we should always trying to have a reasonable number at hand. I'll give you my take on Montreal. It's really difficult, because things have been in a constant state of change for the last three years. Old-timers who can really dance don't show-up any more. Big events don't happen like they used to. The scene has too much going-on, meaning mostly everyone's numbers are sort-of down over-all week-by-week. So, we all know that there are more people than ever in the scene. But no one has numbers to show it. Five years ago, I canvassed promoters and found a consensus that there were perhaps 2,000 tango dancers in Montreal. Since then, the tango schools have been recruiting and training a continual stream of new dancers. A lot stick. It is possible to go to a place and not know many people there (I am one of the ones who hasn't been going around much since things have changed. If the good dancers aren't going out, there isn't incentive for me to go out. We are all in the same boat). So, a realistic count for Montreal could be 3,000 in all. Wow. But you can still put on a milonga where you only get 60 people where you used to get 160 because things are so dispersed now. I mean - there are 3 or 4 things a night many nights a week. Certainly something on any night. Too much, in a way. If you came from outside and inspected the scene for a month, maybe you would say we have 500 dancers. If you've lived here for 3 years, you might say we have 1,000. If you've lived here for 10 years, you know we have at least 3,000. Yikes! I'm thinking - well - the challenge is to get them all out again/together. I know what I describe is what it is like everywhere. We have more than we can show. No? People fall away. Often because of a break-up that is too hard. No good partners. Dumb promoters. Whatever. So, I think we all have latent numbers of significance. That, being latent, are not countable. We who do the thing just have to keep going in the right way so the opportunity is there for everyone old to come back and for the new ones to stick. I am up for contributing to a discussion about all this if anyone else is interested ... It's a big topic. Cheers to all ___ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
