Tango Is a Relationship

Tango is an intimate dance. It invites your partner to touch your body, share your snug embrace, and experience your gentle obedience, attentive leading, loving protection, and responsive following. It also opens a path to your inner world, allowing your partner to hear your unspoken voice. Indeed, much can be learned about a person through the act of dancing with them. The way you connect, move, communicate, respond, and adapt reveals your somatic, psychological, ethical, artistic, and aesthetic sensibilities. Your dance is a mirror of your true self—whether you are warm or distant, shy or open, expressive or restrained, spontaneous or rigid, musical or tone-deaf, sensitive or sluggish, serene or irritable, agreeable or contentious, coordinated or awkward, yielding or demanding. In tango, nothing is hidden.

Tango is a relationship. And like any relationship in which the well-being of both individuals is intertwined, you must strive to be your best self to bring out the best in your partner. In tango, as in life, the greatest obstacle is the ego. It is the ego that fosters self-centeredness, arrogance, control, rigidity, irritability, rudeness, and resistance. True enjoyment of tango arises only when two people move as one in complete agreement and harmony. This unity requires letting go of ego, surrendering to your partner, attuning to their inner rhythm, and responding to their intentions. You must accommodate yourself to them, subtly complementing their strengths and compensating for their weaknesses, ensuring they feel entirely comfortable and able to enjoy the dance with you. If you focus only on yourself and neglect your partner, the dance will fail—no matter how skillfully you execute the steps.

Ultimately, tango as a social act demands good manners. Learning tango is far more than mastering steps. It is, among other things such as acquiring a taste, a new set of values, and a different culture, learning to be one with another person. Unfortunately, this crucial perspective is too often overlooked.