--- "Chris, UK" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > That is nonsense. A good leader needs only the girl to > stay on his chest.
Sean here. 99% of what is written on this list is nonsense. Now I remember why I quit writing. But Chris did have some good observations about communities. As he pointed out, an established community is self sustaining. There are no essential members. The problem here in the 3rd tango world is that established communities don't spontaneously appear. Someone has to start them from nothing, and those pioneers deserve credit for that. As the community is being built up, some people become the essential, sustaining members. Unfortunately, those members often end up being the very people who arrest the growth of the community when it is on the verge of becoming self sustaining. They aren't prepared to become mere mortal nonessential members. In your words, they don't want to give up their power. In most cases I think it has more to do with validation than with power. I suspect this is what Floyd is going through. For years, he was the driving force promoting tango in Buffalo. That brought him a certain status, even stardom on the local level. But the community grew too big for him to control. Some rogue members slipped out and went off to a festival in Toronto where they met some guys who dance very well. Now those same rouges are inviting outsiders to teach on his former turf. Floyd went from being the king of tango in Buffalo to just another non-essential member of the community in a very short time, and that must be painful. Now that they have dethroned their king, the next challenge facing the Buffalo rouges is to avoid setting themselves up as the next generation of petty tango tyrants. The leaders of a proto-community must be marginalized if it is ever to becoming self sustaining. They can do it themselves, someone will come along and do it for them, or the community will stagnate. Years ago, Trini and I were the rogues in Pittsburgh. We made some mistake along the way; but we also acted to marginalize our own importance from the very beginning. Our most successful strategy for community building has been to foster our own competition: - We helped to start tango clubs at two local universities, and then left them alone. Trini still volunteers to teach free classes for one of the clubs, but we don't interfere with their operation. - Trini promotes everyone's events in a weekly email newsletter. - We invite all of the competing teachers in Pittsburgh to take turns teaching the class before our weekly milonga. This gives every student a chance to meet all of the other teachers. As a bonus, it gives the Pittsburgh community more than one shot to retain new dancers. I have tough questions for all the self proclaimed community leaders on this list: - Are you building a self sustaining community (one that doesn't need you)? - Are you building a little tango fiefdom, totally dependent on you, so that you can play petty tango tyrant? - Or are you just a tango merchant, building a captive customer base for your personal profiteering? Sean PATangoS - Pittsburgh Argentine Tango Society Our Mission: To make Argentine Tango Pittsburghs most popular social dance! http://patangos.home.comcast.net/ ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
