Tango Is a Language (I)

You might not consider tango to be a language, but it truly is. Tango can be taught, learned, understood, and used to convey intentions, emotions, feelings, musical interpretations, and movement qualities such as type, size, direction, speed, variations, and more. Those who know this language can communicate effectively with each other, discerning their partner's intentions and feelings, and dancing harmoniously as a unified whole. Those who are unfamiliar with it often struggle to express themselves or respond to their partner, leading to awkward and frustrating experiences on the dance floor.

Like any language, tango has its own alphabet, vocabulary, grammar, and composition. The various parts of the body—head, arms, hands, torso, waist, hips, legs, and feet—form the alphabet of tango. Using these elements, we create steps, which are the vocabulary of tango. Musicality and communication serve as the grammar, guiding the improvisation of steps into a coherent dance. Choreography, which combines steps into an artistic performance, represents the composition of tango.

As with learning any language, the study of tango should begin with its alphabet and grammar. Without the alphabet, words cannot be formed. Without grammar, words cannot be properly used. One of the problems in our tango learning is that we focus only on studying vocabulary and don't pay nearly enough attention to the alphabet and grammar. We don't embrace correctly. We don’t understand the functions of verious body parts and often use them incorrectly in dance (see The Functions of Various Body Parts in Tango). Our posture is ugly. Our connection is broken. Our body is stiff, heavy and inflexible. We are unable to dissociate the upper body and the lower body. There is no balance and stability in our movements. We don't listen to music. We don't step on the beat. We don't follow the sentiment and mood of the music. We don't communicate well. Our lead is unclear and follow is clumsy. As a result, although we've memorized a lot of steps, we can't put them together in a meaningful, musical, harmonious and beautiful way.

Like any language, tango has a vast vocabulary. No one masters all the steps in tango, just as no one knows all the words in a language. Fortunately, mastery of the basics suffices for effective communication. For instance, the Chinese language includes over 60,000 characters. The most complete Kangxi Dictionary contains 47,000 characters. The most commonly used Xinhua Dictionary contains 8,500. Yet, only 950 of these characters account for 90% of those used in popular literature. Adding the next 2,800 most frequently used characters increases coverage to 99.9%. Most Chinese characters are rarely used.

Tango is the same. There are only limited steps that are essential in tango, such as walk, salida, resolution, switch between parallel system and cross system, cruzada, pivot, dissociation, cadencia, front ocho, back ocho, molinete, giro, rock, and traspie. These basic steps form 90% of the steps used in social tango dancing. More complicated steps, such as ocho cortado, sacada, sandwich, boleo, rulo, parada, barrida, corrida, carpa, planeo, lapiz, calesita, enganche, volcada, americana, media vuelta, media luna, arrastrar, zarandeo, etc., form the other 9% less common, optional and dispensable steps in social tango. In addition to the above are steps used primarily in performance tango, such as enrosque, giro-enrosque-lapiz combination, high boleo, castigada, back sacada, gancho, colgada, single axis turn, soltada, patada, sentada, kick, lift, flip, etc. These steps are mainly used by professional performers for special effects only. They lack the friendliness of the social tango steps, are difficult, uncomfortable, dangerous and requiring a lot of space to do, therefore are not suitable for social dancing (see Social Tango and Performance Tango).

It's unwise to focus on stuffs that are of very little use, while neglecting the essentials that can benefit you most. Yet, many tango students do just that. A better approach to tango is to focus on the alphabet, grammar and basic vocabulary of tango instead of jumping into big fancy words without a solid foundation. Frankly, for most people, the basics are all they need to enjoy social tango. If you understand that, then tango is really a simple and easy dance. Those who are particularly talented and want to become stage performers can go further to learn performance, but that should be pursued after they have laid the foundation, not before, and certainly not at the milonga where even the professionals dancers dance sociably. (See Tango Is a Language (II).)