Tango Traveler

The San Francisco Tango Marathon (SFTM) has all the raw materials needed for a great tango event. Immediately when you walk in you have an elevated view over the vast dance floor. It is surrounded by a perimeter of tables, then an aisle for convenient walking around the whole perimeter and another ring of seating beyond that. The dance floor gets crowded, but the place is so huge that it easily accommodates the ~550 role balanced dancers that were registered this year. An enormous overflow room is kept well stocked with snacks, water, and breath mints…the universal fuel of tango. They’ve thought of everything. Even a space with child care and toys for the kids.

Each evening milonga has a suggested dress code. Friday night was a fairly vague “Una Noche Elegante”. Saturday night was a James Bond theme. Sunday night was “CITRUS” with lots of bright orange, yellow, and green. The dress code isn’t too serious. There are plenty of men not wearing the suggested jacket. But more casual than that would definitely be out of place.

The dancing level is relatively high. The floor is great. The room is bright enough that even fairly distant cabeceo is possible. As with most marathons, it’s a hard core few days of tango. But in spite of all of this goodness, getting dances is HARD.

I have a theory about this. I think the overall friendliness and ease of getting dances at tango events is significantly influenced by the mindset the majority of attendees have. When I’m dancing in my hometown, I have a completely different mentality than when I’m away at a festival, marathon, encuentro, etc.

At home, often I’ve just finished a day of work and I go dancing to relax and unwind. In that situation I usually just want to have a reliably good time dancing with partners that I know. In short, I’m not always a particularly friendly dancer. When I’m travelling or at a festival, marathon, etc it’s completely different. In my mind the whole reason you go to these events is to dance with new people. Often I’ve gone to great lengths to get to a new place, so why would I spend all that time dancing with people I dance with all the time?

It would seem that this thinking argues against the unfriendly experience I had at SFTM. If the people there had my thinking, then it would seem that I would have had a much easier time getting dances. But a closer look suggests a different explanation. The SFTM makes the list of people registered available to all attendees. That list includes what city each person lives in. From this we see that 75% of the attendees are from the West Cost. There are a number of active tango communities in West Coast cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, etc. West Coast dancers who are likely to go to SFTM are probably regular attendees at lots of these other tango events and therefore are probably friends with a lot of other West Coast dancers.

If you’re from anywhere on the West Coast, you’re likely to see lots of people at SFTM who you are friends with but who are from out of town and you don’t see very often. In that situation you’re obviously going to want to dance with them. Now some are probably thinking that this is just a crazy hypothesis, and that the reason I had trouble getting dances is more likely something about me, the gender balance, etc. However, it’s actually supported by a number of points. First, one person I danced with who is a very experienced dancer from the West Coast told me about halfway through the weekend that she had only seen something like two people who she didn’t already know. Second, my experience wasn’t unique to me. When asked how her weekend was going, one person I danced with said “I’m so over 500 people.” Also, as regular readers of this blog will know I recently went to a tango festival in Europe and had a great experience. SFTM is a role balanced event, so the oft-discussed preponderance of leaders in #manfrancisco is not a factor here either.

The bottom line for me is that I danced with something close to twice as many people over a weekend in Europe than I did at SFTM. If you subtract out people who I already knew, the ratio gets even worse. I’m not trying to criticize the people at SFTM. I can see a perfectly reasonable explanation for the situation and might have even done the same thing in their shoes. It seemed like a great event for many of the people there. But at the end of the day I travel to tango events because I want to dance with new people, and SFTM was not a good place to do that.

At a Glance

Summary

The SFTM felt like a reunion for west coast tango dancers. You, dear traveller, will be lost in the crowd. My advice? Don’t waste your time.