Traditional Way to Learn Tango

The young man who was starting to notice the attractions of young
women had little option but to learn to dance the Tango. He would go to
a men only practice dance, or práctica, and, after he had
watched for a little while one of the older men would start to teach
him how to follow, that is to say he would learn to dance the woman's
part. Once he was considered to be good enough at dancing the woman's
part he would be allowed to try leading another young man who had been
dancing about as long as he had, and start to learn to dance the man's
part. I have asked many elderly men, from many different parts of the
city, how long this process took (baring in mind that the men I speak
to for my research are generally the outstanding ones, who would not
have been the slowest members of their group), and I have never been
told that it took less than nine months to learn to dance the woman's
part well enough to be allowed to start learning to lead.They
would then continue to learn, dancing both parts, gradually leading
more, until one night one of the more experienced men would tell them
to put on a suit on Saturday because they were going to a dance, or milonga. I have asked many elderly men how long that whole process took, and not one has told me that it took less than three years.Their
first dance with a woman would have to be arranged for them. No woman
would dance with a young man she had never seen dancing. There were too
many good dancers for her to be interested in risking a dance with
someone if she didn't know if he could dance, so unless he was
exceptionally good looking, one of his more experienced friends would
have to ask a woman, as a personal favour to him, to dance with the
boy. If it went well then he could be left to carry on, as the other
women would have seen him dance. If it went badly then he would have to
go back to the práctica until he could do better.The men did not simply go to the práctica
to learn to dance - or there would not have been any experienced men
for the beginners to dance with. The men continued to go to the práctica
for a couple of hours each night, four or five nights a week, before
they went to the milonga. In fact several men have said to me that you
did your real dancing at the práctica. You went to the milonga to meet women. Generally the men in the prácticas followed better than the women in the milongas did. And in a práctica
you could experiment more and take risks. Dancing with a woman you had
to stick to what you could do perfectly, to increase her enjoyment of
the dance.In the prácticas there would be men who
specialised in following - although they also led in the milongas to
meet women. Often men had regular dancing partners, and there would be
demonstration dances done in the milongas to a very high standard.The
process by which a man would learn to dance was similar to the way a
child learns a language. First of all the child listens. Then, after
perhaps nine months the child starts to make little noises, imitating
the sound of words spoken by the adults around it. But mostly it still
listens. Gradually it starts to make words, and then phrases and
sentences, until by the age of three a child can have a proper
conversation. There is still some way to go, of course, but the
fundamentals are there, and a child who learns in this way doesn't make
grammatical mistakes as an adult. The child may grow up to be a poet or
someone inarticulate, but whatever use it makes of the language it
learns, the fundamentals are always right.