Tango Embrace

Tango can be danced in a variety of ways. For example, it can be danced in a "virtual embrace," in which the two partners dance at a distance without any physical contact. The man leads with visual signals to indicate movements, while the women interprets these cues to execute each step. A visual lead is difficult to perceive because it cannot be felt and must be seen. The differences between signals often are so subtle that they are difficult to discern with the eye. It's quite a challenge for the man to send a clear visual signal and for the woman to apprehend it. Also, a virtual embrace lacks the physicality, touch, sensation, and comfort of a physical embrace, disabling movements that require physical support. Despite these, the virtual embrace highlights an essential distinction between leading and following: one is ploting the dance, and the other is beautifying the dance. It also underscores that leading and following are not only physical processes but also psychological, requiring mental focus and understanding. This awareness is crucial, as we cannot dance well with our legs unless we can dance with our hearts.

Tango can also be danced in an open dance hold like that in ballroom dancing, where the dancers connect only through their arms and hands. Arms and hands are extensions of the body, so even without direct torso contact, dancers can still sense each other’s intentions through their arms and hands. The open dance hold, also known by its fine-sounding name “open embrace,” provides more space for dancers to maneuver, making it popular among movement-oriented dancers who enjoy performing elaborate figures. It is arguable, however, that in an open embrace dancers still lead and follow with their torsos as they theoretically should. In reality, the absence of torso contact often leads dancers to rely on their arms and hands for signaling, which is not as seamless as leading and following with torsos. Also, the open embrace lacks the intimacy, comfort, and soulful quality of the close embrace.

Tango can also be danced free from using arms and hands, but with only the contact of torsos. Direct torso communication is unique and essential to Argentine tango, making it an intimate, feeling-oriented, and soulful dance. However, many beginners feel shy about intimacy and adhere to the habit of using their arms and hands to send and receive signals. To help students overcome this hurdle, tango teachers may ask them to dance with only torso contact, without using their arms and hands. Some teachers even place a piece of paper between the students' chests, instructing them not to let it fall as they dance. While people don’t actually dance tango this way, the skills developed through this training provide students with a solid foundation for their tango.

The most comfortable and communicative embrace is the close embrace, in which partners lean into each other, chest against chest, and cheek touches cheek. His left hand and her right hand hold at shoulder height, his right arm wraps around her body, and her left arm hooks over his right shoulder. This close embrace provides the most intimate connection and effective communication, making it favored by feeling-oriented dancers who enjoy the intimate, cozy, and soulful interactions between the partners more than gymnastic movements. This close embrace is the most common embrace used in social dancing in crowded milongas where space is limited.

Beginners may find close embrace hinders their movements, but that is only because they are novices. Dancing in close embrace requires skills different from those used in the open embrace style. These include dancing in a compact way, using small, simple, rhythmic and synchronized steps, the command on dissociation, the mastery of cadencia, the ability to do spot dancing, the knack in floorcraft on a crowded dance floor, the focus on feelings rather than steps, and the emphasis on the elegance rather than flaunt of the movements, ect.

Experienced dancers may also use some variations of close embrace to increase movement possibilities. One variation is the V-shaped embrace in which the two partners are connected with one side of their torsos and leave the other side open. Another is increasing the lean of the body to allow more space between their legs. The combination of the two is yet another option. These variations, as a compromise between intimacy and movement possibilities, require more flexibility and stamina of the body, and are less comfortable than the classic close embrace. In actual dancing, dancers often alternate between different embraces as they see fit. For example, while dancing ocho, the woman might switch back and forth between a standard chest-to-chest embrace and a V-shaped embrace.

The choice of embrace dependends on many factors, including physical conditions (flexibility and stamina of the body), dance styles (movement-oriented or feeling-oriented), purposes (social dancing or performance), environment (floor density and milonga codes), music (fast or slow tempo), movements (complex or simple, large or small steps), maturity (age and experience), and genres (tango, vals or milonga). Every embrace has its merits and limits. In the milonguero style of tango, close embrace is used to facilitate the communication of feelings. In the Villa Urquiza style of tango, a loose embrace is used to ease fancy footwork. In stage tango, open embrace is used to deliver intricate performance (see Three Theories on Leading).

The close embrace earned tango a reputation as the "dance of the brothel" and led to its rejection by "polite society." The emergence of the open-embrace style contributed to the spread of tango. Some young generation dancers saw an opportunity for more elaborate performance in the open-embrace style and launched the tango Nuevo movement, which gained particular momentum outside Argentina, where intimacy between the sexes is often culturally discouraged. As tango moved in this direction, it began to lose its original feel. Gymnastic tendencies, antisocial behavior, breaking of the embrace, adoption of non-tango elements, shifts in gender roles, alternative music, same-sex partnerships, and other efforts to reform the dance emerged in succession, transforming tango into a hybrid form. The old guard in tango's homeland, the Argentine milongueros, strongly defend its roots. Their style of tango, known as the milonguero style danced in close embrace, remains the dominant style in Buenos Aires today. Still, the battle between traditionalists and reformers continues. (See The Fourteenth Pitfall of a Tanguera.)