Marathon
| Characteristics: Marathon | ||
|---|---|---|
| Purpose(s) | Social Dancing | |
| Target group(s) | Internationally Traveling Dancers, Regionally Traveling Dancers | |
| Target group(s) | Advanced Level Dancers, Medium Level Dancers | |
| Exclusivity | closed event | |
| Role-Balance | role-balanced event | |
| Event Duration | 3 days; usually Friday to Sunday | |
| Pre-Registration | Pre-Registration mandatory | |
| Number of dancers | 250 dancers125 couple <br /> | |
| Entrance Fee | from 50 €50 EUR <br /> to 150 €150 EUR <br /> | |
| Food included? | Snacks, Dinner, Brunch | |
| Drinks included | Non-alcoholic | |
Tango Marathons are a special kind of events for dancers who travel to dance tango.
Marathons are usually events from Friday to Sunday with many hours of dancing. There are no workshops, no shows, nor live music. Instead, multiple DJs are invited to provide music selections to the dancers. Often these marathons are “full packages”, where there are brunch and dinner (two dinners (Friday and Saturday), and two brunches (Saturday and Sunday)) included in one fee.
Marathons are closed events with an equal ratio of followers and leaders. This often requires pre-registration, and due to increased demand for the limited available tickets, or imbalances in the registration flow, a waiting list is usually utilized.
Many marathons aim at internationally traveling dancers of a high level who are coming to dance well, much, and meet their friends. Tango Marathons are mostly a European phenomenon, but events outside of Europe do exist mostly in North America and Asia.
History
The first two marathons that are publicly known of are El Corte's New Year's Marathon and the original Berlin Marathon.
Starting in 2012 more and more marathons were organized, which lead to the marathon format becoming more standardized. The number of events doubled between 2012 and 2016, and has been steady since then.
During the global Covid-19 pandemic tango marathons have mostly been set on hold. The last events that took place were in the second half of February 2020, and most events scheduled to happen in the rest of 2020 have been either cancelled or postponed. In 2021 a few events took place again.
Criticism
List of Directories with Marathons
List of Marathon
- ↑ Analysis by Daniel de Kay in 2020.