The Alienation of Tango

Tango is facing serious challenges in the liberal West. In a sense it becomes a self-inflicted dance. The steps of tango do not have fixed configurations, and its music allows for interpretation, so dancers are free to improvise and create as they dance. This rather untrammeled nature of tango induces dramatic changes to the dance at time like now when free-spirited foreigners pour in, bringing too many outlandish influences into the dance.

No matter what people do, there will always be some who do it to the extreme. Tango is no exception. We humans seek freedom, yet unrestrained freedom defeats itself. Our forefathers understood the danger of this human tendency, which is why they created a political system of checks and balance and the rule of law. Tango outside of Argentina, however, is still an uncharted water where people can do whatever they please at their free will. They replace tango embrace with an open dance hold, supersede tango music with alternative tunes, reassign gender roles, and bring in non-tango elements such as underarm turns, high kicks and body lifts into the dance. Now you go to the milongas in the US, you often hear exotic music of foreign lands and see rogues of all kinds dancing wildly. It is still called tango, but the essence of the dance has been changed. There is nothing resemble the tango danced in the milongas of Buenos Aires.

Tango is a free dance, but it is not a "you can do whatever you want" dance. It has its characteristics. For example, it is a close-embrace dance. Breaking the embrace and drifting the partner apart is not tango (see The Fourteenth Pitfall of a Tanguera). Tango is an intimate and soulful dance. It lies in the feelings stirred by music. In fact, tango is more about feelings than steps. No matter how many new steps people try to create, without feelings it is not tango (see Tango Is a Feeling). Tango is a heterosexual dance. It is danced by a man and a woman to allow his masculinity and her femininity to glitter in each other's company (see Tango and Gender Interdependence). The man is the leader who plots the dance and shines the woman. The woman is the follower who surrenders to the man, synchronizes her movements to his and beautifies the dance. Refusing to surrender, switching gender roles and forming same-sex partnership are against tango (see The Gender Roles in Tango). Tango is danced to the sentimental music specifically created for the dance. Foreigners often don't know that the magic of tango lies in its music, which connects the dancers, stirs up their nostalgic feelings, synchronizes their movements and inspires their creativity. Changing tango music to outlandish tunes, the dance ceases to be tango (see The Signature of Tango).

Nobody can stop the reformation of a dance that invites free expression, I suppose. Only time can tell which reforms will last. Tango has been through this trial for one hundred and fifty years. Whatever changes that people try to bring to tango today must have been tried by others before. Most of those changes did not stay. The current form of tango, including its music, embrace, steps and protocols as being practiced in Buenos Aires today, is the survivors of fitness among zillions of attempts to alter the dance along its history. Tango will continue to evolve, of course, but it will evolve in the same direction that made it tango. Any attempt to change tango into a non-tango dance or hybrid will fail. If not so, tango would have stopped being the tango danced in Buenos Aires today long ago.