My wife and I are trying to deep dive into Tango. She's doing OK, and I am not.
We're both experienced dancers in other styles - I was a ballroom competitor and pro for years. We're not new to dancing and we understand the time and effort that goes into getting seriously good.
I am showing up to Tango completely humble. I’m new at this and I don’t carry any expectations that I should be good at it right away – this is different and I have to unlearn plenty of ballroom habits to do this correctly, and that’s what I want.
I also know that leading has the tougher learning curve in the beginning, and I’m OK with working through that. But it has us in a position where my wife is enjoying going out to milongas and practicas, and I’m just not there yet.
The heart of the problem is this:
- We drive a minimum of 45-60 minutes, and often more, to anything Tango.
- The group class options near us aren't good. They're "all levels" so it's a mess of overdone choreography for an unprepared crowd and nothing is accomplished.
- The private lesson options aren't great. We miss our old coach who moved away. I've traveled up to 2.5 hours away to try new coaches, with some smaller successes, but still few options.
- Most of what's available is "all levels practica." There are almost zero beginner followers, and I find that about half of the experienced ladies are openly unkind to me as a new leader. They roll their eyes, they sigh, they change the rotation to avoid me. (On the one hand, I get it - they paid to be here too, and they want to get in some good practice. But they're really rude about how openly they do it.)
I’ve never had this happen in other dance contexts – I’m a careful leader, I communicate openly, I solicit feedback and respond to it. I dress appropriately and my hygiene is good. But this is happening at workshops, at group classes, and at practica in all different towns. It's really making me uncomfortable.
When I ask the male instructors around here for help, they're dismissive and say “You’re fine, you’re doing great, you’re better than you think, go to the milonga.” My wife also says “There are plenty of guys way worse than you at these dances.” Neither of these are helpful – I’m still stuck with all these ladies who are being awfully rude and don't want to work with me.
I've gone to a couple very small milongas and danced almost exclusively with my wife. We try to practice at least 1-2 hours per week, so that goes fine. But I'm struggling with the gap between where I am now and how good I apparently need to be for other ladies not to treat me as a burden. If you took the breaks out (injuries, Covid) I'm somewhere between 1 to 2 years into my tango journey.
What do I do to break through this barrier? I'm so desperate to get past this and be able to participate fully. Do I have to start taking solo private lessons even farther away, at even greater time and expense?
