Okay, guys, I’m going to say what we have all thought at one time or another, "where are all the women?" If you’re like me, you’ve been to too many workshops with too many men and too many tangueras declaring, “it’s about time!” We all know it happens almost every other time. We didn’t get into tango to balance the gender gap, we heard there were too many women and that is just not true(unless it's a beginner class taught by Guillermo "sixpack" Argentineroni).
I don’t think the ladies know how big a risk we take beginning an education in dance. Our machismo is on the line and it is a very delicate thing that we must take care of or risk a daily ass-whooping.
I know the sign said, “NO GIRLS ALLOWED!” but I’m sure they’re here, so I better explain. Machismo is something that every man is assumed to have by every other man. During childhood, we learn that we can’t pick on other guys because they’ll fight back. When we get older, we presume this to be true of all men. This is what machismo is.
If a man is perceived by other men to be lacking machismo, some will think it is okay to kill him, plain and simple. If our machismo is threatened, we need to reply in a way that re-establishes it in the minds of the men who may have heard the threat. Women learn, early on, that we are sensitive to this and have developed so many ways to take a stab at it that it has become an art form.
Sesostris, the ancient Egyptian general who led the first army out of Egypt to the world beyond and found mostly stone-age tribes, wasn’t satisfied with defeating warriors in battle, he had to attack their machismo as well. All who faced him fought and died. Those who died poorly got a stone monument placed on their graves with the picture of a woman’s genitals carved into the stone: pussies!
We all have been razzed by our friends when we admit to being a dancer. If it wasn’t for that one guy who always remarks, “Y’know what, that’s pretty smart. I’ll bet there’s a lot of hot chicks there and only gay guys,” we’d be dead meat as soon as we hit the street.
We risked losing our machismo to learn tango, so we expect, nay, demand, more females. When I first started dancing, I always encountered another man with this thought in my mind, “Oh, no, not another guy.” When the guy/girl ratio has too much testosterone, I know I start acting like a little baby. I get really moody and feel like leaving.
I’m not the only guy acting like a child. I noticed that the most skilled tanguero in the room can be prone to temper tantrums if he is not getting enough attention. I assume he has been the only leader amongst a group of needy followers for too long; once competition shows up, his good mood flies out the window.
This moodiness can often be triggered by something a woman says. She might be oblivious to her remarks, after a lifetime of honing her ‘machismo blade’, and might not be aware that her commentary was cutting.
The music at a milonga is arranged in a pattern of styles, separated by cortinas. First there is a tanda of tangos, cortina, tanda of tangos, cortina, tanda of vals, cortina, tanda of tango, etc. While I was jogging, it occurred to me to devise a scale that simulated a leader’s mood to match the arrangement of the songs.
I will use three sounds to represent a man’s mood: 'woof', 'meow' and 'grumble'. Here is how each is defined:
woof!: represents a man in his natural state with only ‘one thing’ on his mind – sex.
meow: means the man’s machismo has been threatened and things could get ugly.
grumble: is the leader’s natural state when he doesn’t have that ‘one thing’ on his mind.
There are three songs in these tandas. Here we go:
Woof!-woof!-woof!(cortina)woof!-woof!-woof!(cortina)woof!-meow-grumble(cortina)grumble-grumble-grumble(cortina)grumble-woof!-woof!(cortina)woof!-woof!-meow(cortina) grumble-grumble-grumble(cortina)grumble-woof!-woof!(cortina)woof!-woof!-woof!-la cumparsita.
There you have it. If you are new to tango, I hope this helps. I’ve got one more piece of advice for you: don’t show up early. As guys, we are conditioned, most of us, anyway, to show up on time. During the first hour of a milonga, competition for the females is fierce. If you’re a novice, arrive at least forty-five minutes late and you’ll have a better chance of getting a dance.
No comments:
Post a Comment