Continuing from the end of my prior post...
I get this a lot...okay not a lot...sometimes...occasionally...especially when I lived in Aspen...I think (not 100% sure though) that some people (not all, mind you) thought I had to be gay because I danced tango - never to my face - just an undertone. I never really got that - because obviously I am dancing tango in a very intimate and very close embrace with soft, supple, sensuous, cuddly, warm women who 99 times out of 100 also happen to smell really, really good.
Ahhh...I just love the segue...especially a segue in the morning....which brings me to another post/topic...that 1 time in 100...when a follower does not happen to smell really, really good....
4 comments:
This is a very interesting topic, Alex. One which I have pondered in the past. As a general rule, the average American male seems to regard men who dance (any dance) as "gay". Of course, it was not that long ago that "real men" proved they were so by jitterbugging up a storm.
Yes Johanna, and in the early early days of tango, the hard life of the gauchos from the Pampa and harbor workers, et al, the rough and tumble days of a "frontier" city (Buenos Aires), seasoned with the now famous latin machismo and competition - it is this "maleness" that actually spawned the tango.
The fact that these tough men in a tough life often danced together to improve their dance - and thought nothing of it - it was all about the women.
It's our twisted, American, puritanical way of thinking that may cast a homophobic perception of male dancers. It's sad really.
For me, I am a man by virtue of my anatomy - and I need nothing else to prove it.
Well, hopefully the media and its current dance offerings (Dancing with the Stars, Dance War, etc.) will turn the tides again in favor of more social dancing.
Having worked for years in professions where gay men are a large proportion of my colleagues, I can tell you that the last thing a gay man wants to do is dance with a woman! Do her hair, go shopping with her, be a good friend, sure. But dancing in a close embrace, hell no.
I've seen a men dancing together as a couple (not for practice) at a milonga here and a little surprised that I don't see it more often.
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