I run a dancestudio for several years now with many styles of dancing (social and stage), but about 99% of the clientele are white collar workers, many with more than one university degree, well over 50% engineers, IT types, or in real science (this is a well known phenomenon among teachers as well). In a country where 20% claims to speak any other foreign language at some level, well over 80% of the dancer types speak English at conversation level.
My theory: the more educated you are, the more open you are to non-current stuff. Couple dancing and most dances at a danceschool are not part of the current popular culture. People with less education are usually too wound up in current things, currently popular ways of spending their free time, that in the Western world they don't end up learning tango. There are some areas where you can see that current and older things bleed into eachother (like salsa), there the clientele is also more varied, but in a place like Hungary where there is no latino population at all, the 'lower class' (as they are usually handled) will abandon most genres as they feel that this is not their social element. Obviously, at places where there is an indigenious population where (couple) dancing is part of their culture, it is more likely to have different echelons side-by-side, or at least having their own parties. In case of tango, I can only imagine this in South America (which observation tends to support). Nevertheless, some great artists or teachers may have a 'low social status' background and be successful nevertheless (we have a several times champion international latin who is a painter (apartments), or a world class modern jazzballet dancer and choreographer who started out as a taxi driver, one of the best swing dancers and also swing DJs in Hungary is a plumber, a well known professional - stage - tango dancer is an active tram driver). Cheers, Aron -- Aron Ecsedy <http://en-gb.facebook.com/tangodevla> | Create your badge <http://en-gb.facebook.com/facebook-widgets/> <http://en-gb.facebook.com/tangodevla> __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 4587 (20091109) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
