Once Again It's Time for the Campeonato de Tango!

TITO PALUMBO'S PUBLISHER'S LETTER edited in
B. A. TANGO – Buenos Aires Tango magazine, Nº 184, June 2007.

Regarding separate categories in the Campeonato Metropolitano/Mundial de Tango.
If you think that the topic is important, please, answer to abatango@yahoo.com

and/or forward it to your acquaintances and friends.


PUBLISHER'S LETTER
Dear reader friend:

Some readers propose the creation of different categories in the dance championships organized by the city government; one category for amateurs and another for professionals. And I am going to give my opinion; I do not think that this proposal will become a fact.

The diffusion and sale of the dancers' filmed
material is a business. And dancers do not obtain any income from
the revenues generated by this business. In other words, videos and
DVDs are sold; rights are assigned for the broadcasting in the
country and abroad; movies are shown in theaters; but the true
main characters, the dancers, do not receive a single cent of the money collected from these commercial activities.

Provisions 35 in the Metropolitan Championship
Regulations and 04 in the World Championship Regulations stipulate
that the General Office of Festivals of the City reserves to itself
the right to record all the phases in these championships and to
retain the ownership of those records –as well as to do any type of
business with them– WITHOUT PROVIDING DANCERS WITH A SINGLE BUCK AS
FEES OR REMUNERATION.

If in the championships it was created a category
for Professional Dancers, then the Argentine Actors Association, the
union which represents these workers, could claim for the right to
the corresponding remuneration. This organization' s additional
interest would be due to the fact that they would receive a
percentage. And in this way, the exploitation of others' work that
the authorities of this city are carrying out in agreement with
pseudo businessmen would be finished.

While amateur dancers and professional ones are mixed up, it is difficult for the union to find good arguments to get involved.
* * *
I feel shame on behalf of others because the
associations that gather dancers –though they are not unions– do not
care about claiming for the image, the interpreters and the
choreographic creation rights corresponding to their members and,
besides that, sponsor and actively cooperate with official
authorities to carry out this dispossession.
* * *
With a tanguero embrace, I remain very truly yours
sincerely

TITO PALUMBO Publisher

Good for Tito, who as usual, is not afraid to make a stand for what is right.
I am fully behind separating the amateurs from the professionals in the Campeonato.
Last year Ruben and I competed, as social dancers, right along side of professional show dancers, who of course, won, even though they did all the moves forbidden by the written rules we were given.

I also think there should be separate categories for dancers under and over 40, because once again, it's not fair to judge a twenty-year-old professional against a seventy-year-old social dancer. Last year a 20 year old won first place (left) in the milonga category.

However all in all, Ruben and I are pleased that we finished #15 in Tango de Salon out of more than 500 couples who entered. We stuck to the rules, weren't on intimate terms with any of the judges, and just danced the same way we do in the milongas.