Neophytes

First drafted 24.4.15 

There are plenty of places where the milongas feel intimidating to new people, there's no 'milonga-lite' at all but that's a different problem.  Notoriously Unfriendly, asked why milongas can seem to be scary, unfriendly places and proposed that it was a behavioural attitude stemming partly from temperament and partly from the way most people in the UK learn to dance at the moment, rather than a fact per se about tango dancing. 

The extension to that idea is that if you entrench that segregation of new and experienced dancers, in classes or dances, if experienced dancers do not dance with new people, which, in its most pernicious form means separate milongas for new and experienced dancers, then the route to a marvellous tanda with be a slow, tortuous and probably expensive one. You will be persuaded, you will persuade yourself, that to become good enough to attend milongas, to be good enough to dance with the “best” dancers you must attend lots of classes. 

But in fact the surest, fastest, not to mention cheapest route to that marvellous tanda is for experienced dancers to dance with new dancers. New dancers will encounter far fewer diversions - of “moves”, “steps”, “technique” and “expanding your repertoire” that way. There shouldn’t be goats. There shouldn’t be sheep. There should be people, warm and unafraid to interact with each other. Experienced people do dance with new people - all the time. There is pleasure and benefit both ways. The opposite is a myth and if that isn’t the case where you are then why is it like that and should it be and could it be otherwise?