It's been said many times by those in the tango scene that tango reflects life, the good and the ugly. And one aspect that stands out very prominently is snobbery. It's not merely about the rich and their desire to flaunt their status via materialism before the humble majority. It's most abstract form is being picky about who you want to connect to based on superficial reasons that are remotely tied to your own perceived capabilities. And so in the money perspective, snobbery is about trying to connect to those wealthier than you but disdain those who are below you, and all the while flaunting that you think you have. And the same applies to knowledge, especially in a specific field.
Here in tango it's not so much about knowledge but simply danceability. By that I mean who can you dance with and how easy can you reject someone, whether actively as a woman or passively as a man who simply does not choose the women he rejects.
The sad thing is that snobbery here isn't done consciously. There is not only a desire to dance with the best people in order to improve your own skills, such as the best excuse may be, or to simply have an amazing and memorable dance, but also to show others that you have been doing well in climbing the ladder of danceability. The best way is to dance with the so-called superstars, much in the same way many hope to be invited to rich and/or famous people's parties and live to tell about it, or have pictures serve as proofs posted on facebook. And so when there are many dancers on the floor the anxiety and desire to dance with the selected few is augmented.
Women would wait impatiently for those on their target list, and reject those lower than them all the while. Men, having the ability to ask, would device strategies on maximizing the number of top-echelon dancers, a scoreboard that could be greatly damaged by a rejection. So while the game is strategically played, many people don't realize and therefore don't admit to snobbery. Avoiding eye contact is one way to filter out and discourage the undesirables.
Like other snobbery, it's hard to tell who really is the upper-echelon dancers. Teachers are easy points, but there are very few teachers at a milonga, and sometimes none. So if you're already in the elite group of snobs for the milonga, you might just dance with one another, whose skills you know. Otherwise, everyone has to watch the dancers. And that's where the resemblance to real life becomes even more poignant. Instead of assuming someone is rich by how attitude and other superficial attributes, in tango, inexperienced people are rooted out by some superficial set of rules to which the people are put to the test. The deciding factors can be complicated, but in general it involves how the dancer looked dancing, if they are cute or handsome, and how they seem to interact with their partner while talking during the break before the next song comes up. These things often don't correspond to the actual quality of the dance, but at the very least, you're dancing with someone that others respect, and therefore they might respect you.
That is how things work in the tango scene. And it can be brutal: people not getting any daces, or horrible ones, or rejections.
