Reflections of a tango professional

Warning: 
This post contains boring, disenchanting or even disturbing details about the life of a tango professional. 

I have long pondered whether I can actually publish this, because it might be severely misunderstood. This is why I have to prepend the following:

This article is in no way meant as a complaint about my situation. I really like my job and find it rewarding to help grow an international tango community, meet lots of interesting people and bring joy by promoting such a wonderful dance. I also cannot deny, that I savour the attention, positive feedback and respect for my work. Ah... and dancing with a lovely person who has absorbed some of our principles into his or her dance! I get to reap the harvest of our endeavours directly in the milongas or encuentros. I have actively chosen tango over the career as a psychologist and am glad I did.

But as you know, I am a very realistic and rather prosaic person and a lot of my tango friends, students and clients do not seem to know what my profession actually consists of or implies. Their romantic misconceptions often leave me speechless. At first. Then I try to explain and get carried away. That can be quite annoying for the person whom I am talking to because they were just making polite small-talk. This post is so that I can say: read my blog. 



Here are the facts about my life as a tango teacher, dj and organiser.

1. Job description
My main activity is not dancing or being at milongas. It is not even teaching. 
What I do mostly is to sit in my office (or elsewhere) in front of my computer. This is where I spend 80-90% of my work hours with: event-, class- and travel organisation, preparing local team meetings, building and updating several websites, analysing or preparing music for classes or milongas, updating client data, editing videos, preparing class-content, writing and sending out class material, communicating with students, organisers or team members, writing invoices and bills of delivery, advertising in several languages and much more. A huge part of this involves spreadsheets, online forms and lists and is as exciting as the work of an accountant. Luckily I don't mind such tasks. But add some more annoying work like buying provisions for events or teacher-trainings, cleaning the studio or setting up venues and you'll understand my typical work day. Yes, there are the days during which I teach or dance, but even then the overhead work does not go anywhere. It still has to be done. 
In general I can say: My most important tools aren't dance shoes but the computer and my most important body parts aren't my legs but my brain. I could very easily do most of my work with a broken leg, but basically nothing without my computer.
When I am at home, I get up early in the morning and spend my day in front of the screen until dinner. I try to make a break around noon for a workout and breakfast. In the evenings, I watch a series or movie with my non-tango-sweetheart and go to bed around 11. I usually read 1/2 hour before I fall asleep. 
On rare days, I retire to my sofa in the afternoon because I started work before 6 in the morning. But as I take my computer with me, I usually end up working again. Like now. 
I do not take holidays and I will answer your e-mails within a day (usually within the hour) even on X-Mas or my birthday. 

2. Business travels
How come that everyone wishes me "have fun" when I am travelling to someplace for workshops? Would you say the same to an executive or engineer going to a business conference? Apart from the very few times per year that I go to an encuentro just to dance, travelling stands for a series of very challenging days with only few hours of sleep. Apart from classes, demos and dj-gigs, I squeeze in all the duties described above in the hours free of the payed work. Again, I love my work, but it is still work and I'd rather hear "I wish you lots of energy or success" than "have fun" as if I were going on a holiday. 
On business trips, I don't have time for sightseeing. Although I travel to many exciting places, I seldom see anything apart the tango venues, hotels, airports, train-stations and restaurants. And no, it does usually not make sense to stay a few days longer. I just spent some time in Austria with friends prior to an engagement in Slovenia. It was lovely, but the two extra days of group activities meant that I arrived less well rested than usual for work and overhead tasks piled up. I cannot allow myself to do this very often.
On days of traveling from A to B, I have some more time to read a book, because working whilst driving a car or sitting in a plane does not function well for me. If a train is not too full, I sometimes manage a few tasks on my computer, but I usually do not get a lot done because of the iffy internet. Traveling itself can take up two entire days per week. Judging by the actual work-output, you could call these holidays, but considering the amount of fatigue and stress, I am not sure if I can agree with this interpretation. 
In the past, we traveled up to 46 week(ends) per year. Now we are at home more often because of two encuentros, a 4-module tango-teacher-training, as well as workshops and classes in our studio. Less travel reduces my general stress level but increases the overhead-workload. How so? Well, when we give workshops at a festival or local school, the organisers will manage the client-bookings and payments, a huge part of the advertising and all local logistics. When we offer a workshop in our hometown, all of this is my job. 

3. Financial aspects of tango dj-ing
To dj does not generate an income to speak of, but is rather a very expensive and time-consuming hobby. A well known tango-dj can earn between 100€ and 250€ per gig plus expenses. (A local non-tango-dj in a disco earns a minimum of 500€.) Taking into consideration that you will have to buy lots of music and expensive equipment, the profit will be around zero, if not a loss. Some popular djs who live in an area with many regular milongas might be able to make a modest income, but usually even they have day jobs to pay the rent. When I am invited to dj at an encuentro, I see it as a great opportunity to play music for nice dancers, to get into an event for free and have my travel-expenses covered. My salary will most likely be spent on meals during the weekend. 

4. Financial aspects of organising events
Organising events or milongas will usually not be profitable. Sure, if you've got a regular milonga with more than 100 visitors in your own studio and you don't pay an external dj... But most local milongas just cover the expenses or make a loss. Our local milongas often are within the deficit range, but we see them as important service for our students and the community. 
Events like encuentros can generate a profit. But please note that the biggest part of the income will still go into the venue, djs, other staff, equipment, catering, insurances and taxes. Sure, if the organisers are smart, an event with 200 visitors can make an income of 1000-5000€. Sounds a lot? Not if you consider the work hours that go into organising it. 
Please be aware that the only ways of making an appropriate income with events would be:
- Reducing the expenses and therefore the quality and/or exploiting djs and helpers. Which would be evil and stupid!
- Raising prices. That would be the sensible thing to do, but tangueros will complain when the event costs 120€ instead of 85€. Considering that the entrance fee is the smallest expense over a weekend... well... 

5. Financial aspects of teaching
The only activity that can generate a decent income in tango is teaching. But even then, I do not know any tango teacher who could be considered as wealthy by normal standards. 
I live from tango since 2006 and cannot complain. Actually I think that we are better off than many other tango teachers (see note below *):
We have (a little) above average per hour prices and therefore generate an appropriate income. Our lifestyle is acceptable: we never had to hunger, we rent nice apartments and I can afford to buy a new Macbook and iPhone every 5 years. Or books and videos. Or invite a friend for dinner in a restaurant and give money to family needy members. But I do not own a house, our car is old and I do not have a pension plan. Why is that?
- Because of the disadvantageous proportion of classes (payed work) to overhead (not payed work). I will usually not teach more than 6-10 hours per week, sometimes less, because we do not travel all the time. 
But teaching is my only income to speak of. So why don't we teach more? Well, even if there were more engagements, I would not have the time to actually take on more classes because of the overhead workload and the traveling from A to B. When we started traveling for workshop weekends, we decided to give up our regular classes in three cities. It would have been just too much.
The ratio of payed/not-payed work is better during tango-holidays (14-20 teaching hours per week) and teacher trainings (25-30).  
- We do only seldom take on privates during workshop weekends or festivals, because we have to preserve our energy for group classes for which the organiser carries the financial risk. We also do not charge for demos - unless it is during a festival where the other teachers also get payed for their shows.
- Because in spite of a good turnover, work-related expenses are quite high and we spend a considerable part of our income in tango again: travel to encuentros as paying customers, buy tango music, software, online services, ads in tango magazines, studio rent, equipment, paying staff, inviting clients for dinner... yes, I also buy shoes and dresses - but from what I can tell, much less than most dancers.
- We often give substantial reductions to people with a low income, in rare cases up to 100%. Sometimes, I even offer free classes or seminars for entire groups because I want the tango community to develop. In tango, one cannot just take, one has to give as well to keep the system running. 
Had I pursued my career as a psychologist, things would look very different.

6. Expiration date of tango careers
Unless you are an "old Argentine maestro or milonguero", who will still be invited for classes abroad and highly respected in Buenos Aires, please do not expect to make a great living from tango once that you've passed a certain age. Younger, better dancers are constantly popping up and the memories of customers are surprisingly short. No matter how impressive your résumé as a teacher or how much you have perfected pedagogical skills, you will eventually be discharged. 
And even if not: can you imagine how the above described workload will feel when you're 75? Would you really want to travel that much, live out of your suitcase, often staying at tango people's homes without any privacy at an advanced age? I actually pity the "old ones" who still have to go on tour. 
Successful local teachers in big cities will have better prospects, but only if they play their cards well and integrate young talent. 
Rigorose diet and exercise (or just good genes) as well as plastic surgery might also help, but Detlef and I have now both passed the 50s-demarcation and I stopped colouring my hair recently. We're not young anymore and one can see it.
This last consideration may sound particularly harsh and bitter, but I am just being realistic. I have been teaching tango and expanding my business for 18 years. I do not regret having chosen this path, but I'd better start working on a backup plan. 

Conclusion:
The life of a tango teacher, organiser and dj is not in the least bit as glamorous as you imagine. Sure, there might be the few top-notch "maestros" who do not prepare their classes, are so famous that they do not need to take care of publicity, will answer mails with a delay of weeks and can spend their retirement on the beach. But I guess that these are rare exceptions. And even then: these artists might spend hours per day practising or preparing choreographies. That's maybe a little bit more exciting than managing the pizza-list for our encuentro, but it is also hard work. I guess.

Please consider all this:
- when you see me or another professional being tired or not dancing a lot during a workshop weekend,
- before you complain about the costs for a class or an event,
- before you plan on taking up one of these activities professionally.

... in particular if your partner is not a tanguero. You need a very, very understanding sweetheart. Luckily, I do.



* This is just a guess, because I know of so many tango stars living in tiny flats or even entirely out of their suitcases. But maybe they are just smarter and saving money for the future. It is true that I do not see a lot of professional teachers at tango events unless they are there for work. As mentioned above: we still go to encuentros a couple of times per year and everyone knows how expensive these trips can be. I guess we could save a lot of money by not going or by participating for free and staying with local dancers. But we don't feel comfortable with such practises and we love dancing. So: spending money for tango is indispensable. Also: what would be the point of teaching a social dance and not dance yourself? Right?


P.S. Here is a link to a post from 2011. As you can see, my general perspective has not changed over the years. 

Je déteste les démos - and why I still do them!

It is Saturday evening and you are visiting a tango festival or a workshop weekend. You know what is going to happen around midnight: the teacher's performance!

What will you do?

Secure a good seat, because you are looking forward to it? 

Do you even prepare your camera or phone to video the demo?

Or do you start making preparations for leaving the event because you hate performances?

Maybe you'll just go to the bar or have a smoke or use the opportunity to go to the bathroom.

In Buenos Aires performances are an important part of tango culture. Foreign teachers, local heroes and heroines, stars, birthday celebrants and most honoured seniors perform at all milongas. There are actually few milongas without demos and the performers usually get loud cheers during and compliments after the shows. Everyone wants to show, that they liked the dance.

But in Europe, this is often very different. Apart from cultural differences (e.g. Germans and Finns e.g. not being overly extrovert and therefore not cheering a lot), one can detect a general lack of interest in watching performances. Wanting to avoid shows are after all one of the main reasons why Encuentros and Marathons have developed. There you can dance without interruptions.

Where does this aversion come from?

Is the tango community still traumatised from the festivals of the 90's with 4 performing couples that forced you to sit and watch for an hour? I don't think so, because many people now dancing tango started much later. And weren't these the exceptions anyway? Most demos usually last 3-4 songs - the length of a tanda. And honestly: do you dance all tandas? What is the big deal of sitting one out and watching someone else dance? Don't you do that during the milonga, don't you even like watching your fellow dancers? Why is it different, when there is only one couple on the dance-floor? Do you assume that this is a fake show, even if they are "performing" social tango? Is it "evil" because it is about promotion and making money? Does it pollute the purity of social tango?

I don't have the answers, but I do have my personal experiences with this facet of tango life.

Let me tell you a story from 2007:

It was one of our first engagements outside our home region. We were giving classes in Lyon, France and the workshops were nicely filled with dancers from near and far. After this weekend, word of mouth caused a multitude of invitations from other French tango clubs. This weekend was a game-changer in our "career".
But still I think of it with very mixed feelings. Because of the demo. (See video below.)
It was a couple of minutes before the performance and I was speaking to a dancer, with whom we had dined just a few hours earlier. He seemed friendly enough, but now he was sitting outside the hall and pulling a face. Willingly, he told me why: "Je déteste les démos." I hate demos. 

Thanks a lot. I was about to step onto the empty floor and have 150 strangers watch me dance and this was really not helping.

Before this evening, I could not even imagine, that tango dancers would have such strong aversions against tango demos. Sure, one would not like a particular performance because of the style, execution or other specific reasons. I myself was quite critical, but up until then most of my tango friends also liked tango demos. And why not? Sure, we were nervous when we had to perform, but not devastatingly so and even our first performances in Buenos Aires and New York had been a very positive experiences.

So this one sentence from a french milonguero shattered my fragile self-confidence for the evening and changed my perception of performances for ever. Where others thinking the same? As I later discovered: yes, I have heard many similar comments ever since - usually in a more general context and not directed to me personally. But still, if you are a teacher, performing is part of your job and such words will affect you - in particular when they come from friends and/or clients. (And amongst my students/friends/clients there is a high probability to encounter this aversion against demos, because so many of them are regular Encuentro visitors.)
So even now, when I perform, I often first notice the people who don't like demos. In order to get into a better place, I consciously have to concentrate on a benevolent person or group. Sometimes a very welcoming audience will make me forget my doubts. (See 2 videos below.) But often not.

And this fear of annoying people is boosted by who we are and what we do.

Please understand:

We (my partner Detlef and I) are no artists. We are social dancers, teachers, organisers, book authors, djs and whatnot. We don't do choreographies. We don't practise figures or poses. My absolute focus is on maintaining a high quality of teaching and events. Therefore 80-90% of my work takes place at my desk preparing the content of classes and teacher-trainings, organising events and tango-holidays, communicating with clients, making publicity, managing spread sheets and lots of other things.
How would I find the time to prepare demos and choreographies and practise many hours? We don't even choose the music for demos together, because it used to take up much-needed rest-time between classes and the milonga and usually led to arguments. So nowadays, I do that on my own and Detlef will be surprised by my choice. Like in any tanda.

But even without the "unwilling spectators" or our special priorities, I find it difficult to make social tango* look interesting for others. Our focus is not on how tango looks from the outside, but how it feels in the couple. Can you make this visible without actually affecting the feeling and therefore having to fake it? This is why for us, our demos will always feel like a compromise between authenticity and wanting to show something appealing. This does not create an ideal mind-set and is particularly disturbing, when you perform at a festival with everyone else showing the big moves. (See video below.)

The result of these inhibitors: we will only rarely dance as nicely as we'd do in a milonga. Our demos will usually be less musical, less connected, less varied and not half as elegant as in the ronda. Therefore, we are seldom pleased with the videos. Also: The more experienced we get as teachers, the more we become aware of our own weaknesses. In the years, 2016-17, we only uploaded very few videos, because we were not content with the majority of our performances. In 2018, we did a bunch of fine demos, but who knows how long this lucky stretch will hold? It remains scary!
So honestly: for me, performing is often more tedious than managing the pizza-oder-list for our encuentro and only a little less upsetting than doing the tax returns.

But, if it is that difficult, why do we still perform or invite others to do demos at our events?

There are at least three good reasons.

Let me start with the obvious one: attracting students

Although our demos are not as good as our dancing in milongas, they are still publicity. Hundreds of dancers have visited our classes or have invited us for workshops because they have seen our videos on Youtube. Sure, word of mouth (about quality of teaching) or us going to events and dancing with people are as important, but: a tango teacher has to be visible as a dancer.

And by my last sentences you will understand: The target audience of a demo is usually not the one in the room, but the ones watching on the internet. We were amongst the very first teachers to post dance-videos on our site - many years before Youtube. Back then, other teachers still feared that a video on the internet might allow dancers to copy their steps and therefore make classes obsolete. That was a wee bit short-sighted. For us, videos were an important trigger for our early popularity. 

And also: attracting the right students
Our initial reason to upload videos to our site in 2002 was not publicity, but to prevent people from coming with wrong expectations. Back then, social tango was still rare and most teachers were focussing on the big moves - in particular in their shows. We did not teach jumps and poses and wanted to attract only the people who were looking for what we could actually offer. Also, as beginning teachers we were not so confident in our own dancing and wanted to avoid disappointing more advanced dancers.
Today I am much more self confident and believe that even people who dance better than us can still profit from our classes, but the principle is still valid: a demo will give prospective customers an idea of what you are doing and will therefore sort out the ones, who don't like your idea of tango. Those who show up, will share some general philosophy with you and this creates good conditions for the learning/teaching process.

Last not least: Inspiration

Performances can inspire people to take up dancing, to change something in their dance, to develop, to dance better. And this applies not only to choreographed shows, but also to demos of social tango. As there are dancers who want to imitate the kicks and jumps of a show, there are others who strive to walk nicely, because they have seen it in a demo. I strongly believe that the rise of tango de salon / tango milonguero in the new millennium is very much due to showing how social tango can look like: how nice, musical, elegant it can be. Without that, we might still live in a tango world were everyone wears black and red and where it is dangerous to come near another couple on the dance-floor. And there might not be any Encuentros and Marathons today. Without demos of social tango, tango might still be very different. And let us not to forget that the tango shows in the late 70's - 90's caused a tango-renaissance all over the world. So, without performances, there might not be any tango today. 

So, here is my appeal for all the "advanced" dancers being bored by demos:
Before you criticise or yawn openly or pull a face, please think of your favourite dance-partner with the nicest embrace and musicality. She or he might not be dancing that way without being attracted by a video to a particular class. Her or his local organisers might not even have invited the teachers, because they might never have become aware of them. And the teachers whose classes influenced you in the past, might not be able to do their jobs, because no one would even notice them and therefore would not work at influencing more people to dance nicely. So: if you still want new people to be attracted by social tango or to learn important skills in classes, please be aware that this won't work without demos. Performances are part of the package and won't go away.

Deal with it.

-------------------

Part of the demo in Lyon (2007) after the negative comment. Back then still with Ganchos and Voleos. I think one cannot see the nervousness, but I felt super bad.

A demo at a festival in Portland (2010). We were totally intimidated by all the other teachers impressing the audience with jumps, kicks, speed of lightning and complex moves. Because of being so nervous our repertoire was even more limited than usual. Nevertheless, no-one seemed to notice and the demo was very much complimented on because of its purism:

Performing the same song as in the previous video (Bajo el cono azul, OTV), this time for an audience, that made us feel welcome from the moment, we stepped onto the dance floor. On this evening, we even gave two encores and it was one of the performances that we uploaded (almost completely) to Youtube in 2016.

A more recent demo from Firenze, just to make the point that we always perform nicely there, because the audience is so welcoming. We have uploaded videos each year that we have worked there:

* The words social tango for me describe any tango, that could be danced in a (moderately) crowded ronda. High voleos and certain forms of ganchos are therefore tabu. Also any reliance on memorised figures, as well as followers projecting their legs into huge steps and decorating every movement will make navigation difficult and the dance less social. So please be aware, that not every teacher couple dancing in a close embrace will show social tango. Or teach it in class.