The tango elite

 

rodimuspower

'Elite' has always had connotations of male power, vigour, and superiority: the elite guard, elite condoms perpetuate the idea. Search for 'elite' these days and the images that come up are of transformer type creatures, non-human, powerful, un-relatable, lacking personality because, well, they are not persons.  They are aggressive-looking and very well defended. 

So it is ironic to see a comment that tango attracts a kind of elite person. That wasn't the word they used. No, they talked about the kind "ready for" tango, having "a certain maturity" those who have "loved and lost" and experienced the melancholy and betrayal heard in the plangency of the bandoneon.

Connection through dancing tango is such a profound , embodied and human experience that it is hard to see the parallels with what is meant by elite in popular culture today.

This portrays tango dancers as "special", in a world apart, who have made it, even if only through experience. In the microcosm of the milonga there is at least as much in the way of every unkind and awful thing that happens in the world outside.  There is no elite.  There is just the same kind of human behaviours as everywhere else.

I am now into my thirteenth year in the milongas and in that time I have seen men lecture women, minor and major harassment of both sexes, manipulation, lies, cruelty, bad manners, a friend mentioned  "the nastiest things being said about other people".  I have regularly seen dangerous and selfish dancing including by many teachers. There have been infidelities, broken engagements, divorce, power politics by teachers and organizers, organisations and groups that claim to be for the community without every holding elections, snubs, cutting out, cutting in for that matter, obsessive control and extraordinary acts of revenge.

Then there is common or garden unkindness, selfishness, crassness, pushiness, and the things the milongas are famous for: snobbery, arrogance, vanity, ego and contempt. 

And consider, these, in the UK, are largely the middle classes: academics, artists, professionals, therapists - the irony, or perhaps they are there for the need.

Sure, there are instances of kindness, good manners, volunteering time to help out and  occasional generosity. A Peruvian acquaintance yesterday was telling me about a very poor elderly woman that used to bring milk round the houses on her donkey.  You would ask for 2.5 litres and she would give you three. Los que menos tienen, siempre son los que más dan. It is always those who have least, who give most, he said

The milongas are, on the whole, places I like to spend time, listen to the music, watch the dancing and the miniatures dramas of human behaviour play out.  They are where I regularly have interesting chat and occasionally some great dances. But in no way does all this balance out to make tango dancers some kind of elite. Quite the contrary. 

When I have a conversations about porteños with other latin people, they are invariably mocked and  disparaged for arrogance and untrustworthiness. This is far from true of everyone and I invariably found  warmth and kindness in Buenos Aires.  On Tuesday a woman told me the only place she was mugged (at knifepoint) in Latin America was near Retiro station. When you hear repeatedly about a culture of arrogance and untrustworthiness you are wise to at least take it into account. Sometimes I see photographs of Argentinian dance teachers where it is all there: immaculately dressed but with a steely, cold haughtiness.  That seeps into the milongas.  Not all of them and not all the time.  But in a place where invitation is by look - the look says everything.

Dancing tango can be a special experience. But let's not kid ourselves. There is no rarefied elite that dances tango.  We are just as morally bankrupt and corrupt as everyone else. The people bandying around the word "community" generally have an interest in people believing that is what they are part of. It is an easy sell, if not a true one.

There are just groups of very different people who get together in loose agglomerations, mostly looking for dance and connection, sometimes accompanied with simpering and self-congratulation when it all works out and sometimes with tears, upset when it doesn't. But for the most part, in the milongas, people live out their enjoyment, friendships, loneliness or insecurities, quietly.