Dear Dancers,

I write today with a sad confirmation of things I suspected. I hope to learn that it is somehow incomplete.

As you know, TangoForge has been documenting our knowledge of tango in various online education tools. In these 7 years, I’ve made many different “offers”, and collected data on the various results. I know that our flagship product, the MasterCourse, is the most popular of the four parts of our Digital School, despite being significantly more expensive than the others.

On just two special occasions I have offered discounts. The 2020 MasterCourse Challenge offered an intensive 16-week access. In every case these offers have received enthusiastic response.

This is because the MasterCourse demystifies tango in just 10 compact hours of video. This empowers dancers to understand their progress and take control of their tango education.

Recognizing dancers’ increased dependence on online materials and the financial difficulties many people are facing, in December 2020 I launched the biggest discount *ever* on the full 18-month MasterCourse enrollment (which also includes access to all the materials of the Digital School, free entry to our live workshops when they are allowed to take place again, and six private video chats with me to answer questions).

Even at only €3/week, nobody has enrolled.

It’s easy to blame lockdown fatigue, even despair. Will we ever embrace friends and handsome strangers again? It’s even easier for me to blame my own failures of clear communication about the offer.

Those could explain a low enrollment. But online lessons are going strong. And even with my imperfect communication, zero is an unprecedented response to my offers.

The crux of the matter is that to gain this huge 47% discount students must enroll with a study buddy, a friend. Not the same thing as a practice partner, but a friend near or far with whom you would check in regularly by video to keep each other on track, discuss things you don’t understand, talk about what happened in your practice sessions…

And I am here today to report to you that my darkest observations about tango seem to be true. Tango is friendly, but we do not make friends. Not the kind of friends we can call and say “Hey do you want to study together? We’ll get a really huge discount.”

I imagine various scenarios:

• The persons who I would like to name as “friends” are actually dancers of higher level than me and I anticipate rejection of my invitation.
• The persons who I spend time with at milongas and festivals are of far lower level than me, and I do not anticipate they would commit to study, or that I could gain any benefit from studying with them.
• My connections at milongas and festivals are primarily sexually motivated. I do not consider my tango “friends” to be peers.
• I feel too insecure about my tango skills to study with someone. Although I know many tango people, there’s not one person in my tango life who feels like the kind of friend who I can be honest and vulnerable with.
• The friends who I usually socialize with or share a table with at milongas have different teachers. We disagree about issues of technique or learning, so our relationship stays on a very polite, formal, and superficial level, although we spend one or more evenings a week together.
• Dancers who I dance with regularly have been resistant when I have suggested slight modifications in a position, or trying a new move. It seems they don’t want to learn, or not with me. And I don’t want to lose these relationships so I wouldn’t initiate such a conversation again.
• At events there are people of my own role who I often greet, or hang out with between dances. These are people whose dancing I respect, and I’m sure I could learn something by studying alongside them, but nevertheless I feel competitive with them. I wouldn’t want them to know what I don’t know, or what I’m insecure about. And anyway, I don’t know how to start a conversation like that with them.
• I feel those who call me a “friend” mostly use me for rides, housing, or dances, but they will choose others whenever they get the chance. I go along with our arrangement, but I don’t really feel good with them.
• I do not actually have contact information for the dancers I respect. We have no relationship outside of these events.