After a few hours this evening musing over my memories, a well known book about black swans and some old and dusty statistical books I retrieved from the bottom of a cupboard I have a discouraging discovery to share.

… there is a 94% probability that there are actually no amateur male social tango dancers in the UK who can dance tango to an impressive enough level to really inspire the rest of us intermediate learners. Not even one …

I have basically established – through years of observation – that they just don’t exist. Tango is full of myths – and the really talented, advanced, UK male social tango dancer is apparently just another one.

I admit there is quite a wide margin of uncertainty here because I cannot precisely remember how many classes and milongas I have been to in the last almost 5 years without seeing one, and even worse I cannot find an estimate of the total male social tango population in England so I just made it up ( I guessed at 10,000 ).

I also struggled with the fact that looking at is plainly not the same as dancing with – so I might have not noticed him – but I countered this by positing that it might be equally possible to look inspiring but for this to be not reflected in the experience. So in the interest of making progress I ignored both of them.

I do accept some likely geographical impact on the data as it is totally skewed to the South of England and I am unsure of the bias implications of this. Optimistically we might dream that there is a small bevy of male dancers who can in fact actually dance tango at an advanced level hidden deep in the midlands or the north? Perhaps!

On a much more positive note leaders in the UK will therefore be immensely relieved to know that I am therefore putting my plans to spend much more time on learning to follow firmly back in the same mythical dusty cupboard as my old statistics books came from – as there doesn’t seem to be much point.

Unless ….

We watch and we project ourselves into them. We imagine what it must be like. And we smile.

They had never met – yet they can create this together. The structures, techniques and codes of tango make these amazing moments possible.

We can’t really experience it, because we dont have the technique or the years to draw on. But we feel the heat just a bit.

And we should thank them so much.

For all their effort, their coaching. For coming to our milongas. For being amazing. For being human and yet so talented. For giving themselves to us week after week, year after year.

For always being there for us.

They inspire us in a way that other professionals just cannot. They have our hearts because we have all invested so much.

Because we have stayed with each other. Because we trust them. And in some small way perhaps they trust us also.

They trust us not just to be great students – but to be inspired to follow them, even when it get’s tough.

So let’s not let them down.