Femininity and Feminism in Tango (I)

Men and women are best friends from the beginning. Men like women. They treat women better than they treat other men. They are more generous to women than to other men. They choose women to be their life partner. They work hard for the women they love, and they give up their life for them. Women, too, like men. They always try to attract men and win men’s hearts. They trust themselves in men, devote their love to men, unite with men and follow men’s lead. Men and women cherish, need, support, complement and complete each other. Their friendship has been, for the most part, a love story (see Tango and Gender Interdependence).

In the milongas of Buenos Aires I witnessed this love story. I found myself experiencing wonderful relations with Argentine women. At a glance Argentine women do not strike me as prettier than other women, but they did make an impression on me when I danced with them. They are gentle, soft, obedient, affectionate and seductive. They dress femininely and wear flowers. They gaze at you to call your attention. They respond to your cabeceo with a smiling nod. They embrace you warmly with their breasts intimately press against your chest. They twist their body in your arms, wrap your body with their body, and entangle your leg with their leg... Femininity is not their weakness but strength, and they know how to use it to make you feel special. They may be professors, doctors and CEOs in real life, but in the milongas they are just pure, natural, simple and lovely women. That tango is invented by them is no accident. It lives in their blood. Argentine women are the incarnations of femininity and affection. Dancing with them is truly one of life’s most gratifying experiences (see The Gender Expression in Tango).

Without femininity tango will not be the same. Tango requires men to be strong, decisive, dependable, protective and regardful, and women to be gentle, soft, loving, obedient, agreeable and beautiful. Men and women play different roles in tango as they do in life (see The Gender Roles in Tango). One is like stump and branches. The other is like leaves and flowers. Together they make a blossoming tree. One is like brushes, and the other paints, together they create a beautiful painting. In Europe and North America under the influence of feminism, some women accuse this idea of being sexist. They dismiss gender differences and gender expressions, refusing to surrender to men and obey men's lead. They demand that macho posturing and gender inequality to be removed from tango, upholding their independence by dancing in an open dance hold to keep a distance from men. They ask men not to lead them but only to offer suggestions, and respect their decision as to how they choose to treat these suggestions. They assert their rights to interrupt the lead, initiate their own steps, reverse gender roles, and form same-sex partnerships. In short, they want tango to be a gender-neutral dance and the milonga to be like a workplace where everybody conducts in a politically correct way (see Tango and Gender Equality).

The masculinization of women in Europe and North America has an undeniable impact on how tango is danced in these societies where the modern way of living encourages women to put on uniforms, hide their gender identity and join the work force to fight like men. Many women choose career over marriage, success over family, and independence over relationships. They refuse to be treated as the weaker sex, and push for legislations to protect women’s rights and equal opportunities. As a result, they see themselves less and less as women and more and more like men. In order to compete with men women need to be tough, strong, ambitious and aggressive like men. Many become violent, mean, sloppy and overweight, as they do not care about how men see them any more. They raise violent, mean, sloppy and overweight daughters, expecting them also to fight with men when they grow up. Violent women breed violent murderers, as the world has just witnessed in Newtown, Connecticut. When women behave like men, the relationship between the two sexes deteriorates, the institution of family disintegrates, and children lose parents. When women cease to be feminine, they become less attractive to men, who then turn to the same-sex relationships for help. You wonder why "marriage equality" increasingly becomes a discourse in our society? When women lose their soft, gentle and loving nature that has been the balance to men’s aggression, the world is becoming a more dangerous place.

What femininity is to humanity is like what green is to the environment. I am nostalgic for the missing femininity in our women. I think the world is nostalgic for that also, which is why people around the globe find Argentine women and their dance fascinating. If you dance enough tango, as do the Argentine women, you will know that turning women into men just doesn’t work in tango, as it has caused more problems than solving any in other social discourses. That being said, I am remaining hopeful thanks to Argentine tango, because in tango men and women have to be who they are created to be for their common good - different yet complementary, distinct yet balanced, divergent yet interdependent, and opposite but equal. (See Femininity and Feminism in Tango (II).)

Private Whispers in the Milongas, by Sara Melul

The milongueros, who are the true personalities of the milonga, have the custom of quietly talking with their partner between one tango and another. These whispers sometimes knit a plot that becomes a love story. Others are memories or anecdotes of one night in the milonga. At times they remain just a lovely conversation. The important thing is that, for us who come to dance, these conversations form an essential part of the warm, embracing atmosphere and one of those most important and gratifying moments. Surely there exist many thousands of such examples which different women receive daily in the milongas.

• How well we dance together! You have eyes that I want to eat. I dance better with you; you awaken the creativity in me.
• For me dancing tango is like flying, to surrender to you as a dream, and to enjoy it.
• I am going to tell you something that perhaps you will not like: The brightness of your eyes makes me blind.
• Do you always come here? Where else do you go to dance? I ask in order to follow you until the end of the world.
• Goddess, if I were God, I would have you in my kingdom, but I have you in my arms.
• I congratulate you because with you one can dance very well.
• How I enjoy dancing with you! Each tanda passes by in a breath!
• When we dance together I feel your body.
• You have a tiny waist that I am afraid will break.
• To dance with you is like a dream…how can I not be very happy, I have the best woman, the best music, what more do I need?
• I am enchanted with you, you dance like the goddess, beautiful, free, nothing worries you!
• After dancing the first tango with you, how could I leave now?
• They made this tango for you. It is called “to the grand doll.”
• Since I met you there is no other woman for me! I will come next week just to dance with you…
• You dance divinely…do you understand me? One only would want to know, to touch you and dance all night…
• You are something unbelievable. One can dance with you all night without being bored.
• I want to dance with you and catch your perfume!
• I want only to enjoy you in this dance…we will not talk. I am jealous when you do not dance with me…
• It is incredible how you dance. You are a monument to femininity.

Contributed by Sara Melul, El chamuyo en las milongas

Tango and Gender Equality

Some people think that the traditional tango danced in close embrace is politically incorrect, and the open-embrace tango of Europe and North America is the distilled and sanitized version of tango that meets modern requirements. A book I read recently expressed the following opinion:

“In Europe, the idea seems to be that harmony in dance is arrived at by mutual consent and that men and women are equal partners. I get the distinct impression, however, that even today, in Buenos Aires, the idea is that the man is in complete control; every action has its lead and the progress of the dance is a series of well-established consequences… A recent article from a tango web site in Argentina touched on the relationship between the man and the woman. It used the phrase ‘The woman’s attitude of surrender’… I am not at all sure this notion would find much acceptability with the women I dance with. I can see how it might be interesting to look at the undoubtedly macho flavour in history of tango and perhaps derive some ideas from it for our dance-play today. I am less happy to accept this idea as the essential feeling of tango in the modern world. I am more attracted to the idea that tango evolved out of a lucky fusion of multiple cultures, mostly European in origin. It seems that it received a transfusion of refinement in Paris in the 1920s, and it looks to me as if it is benefiting today from another shot in the arm all over Europe. Tango is growing apace here and is being distilled to meet the requirements of today’s relationships. I believe it may be losing its narrow, even parochial feel and is becoming truly international in the hands of a new and more cohesive European people. We are not frustrated, homesick, stressed Europeans, seeking love miles from home with too few women to share. We are a new breed in a new world. Though the passions we bring as individuals to the dance will be the same basic feelings all men and women have shared since the beginning of time, the intensity must be different, and the balance between the sexes has altered most of all. It may also be the case that our societies in Europe are evolving at a different pace from that of Latin America, though not, I suspect, in a different direction. In the Europe today women have immense power, status and influence and they express their needs very clearly. The modern European woman is unlikely to respond too positively to macho posturing… It seems women like their men to be positive but they also want finesse and thoughtfulness. Women hate to be bullied. They prefer to be invited and to feel that they are in full control to accept, or decline, as they feel. Accepting an invitation is not ‘surrender'... When you think about tango being danced way back at the beginning of the 20th century by earthy men in bordellos, hungry for a woman’s touch, closeness between a man and a woman was the business they were in. It was in the ‘sanitising’ of tango for the more genteel public and the wider world audience that the open embrace evolved.”

The author's superiority over things he apparently has little understanding is absurd. The traditional tango is not bullying, neither is the open-embrace tango all genteel. To suggest that people who dance in close embrace are somewhat dirty and less civilized than those who dance in open embrace is ridiculous and hypocritical (see Artistic Sublimation and Vulgarism in Tango).

What concerns me most, however, is his perception of "gender equality," which reflects the canting bias against the traditional gender roles in tango and the attempt of some people in Europe and North America to transform tango into a gender-neutral dance. We fight for the rights of those who are uneasy with their sexual orientations, because they are human beings, too. But most of us do not have issues with our own gender. Most men that I know are happy with their manhood and masculinity, and they behave, function and dance like men. Most women that I know are happy with their womanhood and femininity, and they behave, function and dance like women. Men and women are different, they need, complement and complete each other, and are attracted to each other because of that. Women bear and nurse offspring; men support, help, and protect them. They play different roles in life and tango, which nobody, certainly not modern people, should feel ashamed of. True modern people do not think that women have to behave like men in order to be equal with men. They can be feminine and still equal with men. True modern people believe that the relationship between the two sexes is love-based and not power-based. They do not regard decent intimacy between men and women as filthy, and they are not chauvinistic, especially toward a people whose art they are deeply indebted to and whose culture they may not yet fully comprehend (see Tango and Gender Interdependence).

As I said in another post, "The idea of tango is to welcome another person into your personal space, to accept them, to be considerate, cooperative, yielding and accommodating, to surrender and be one with them, to enjoy the intimacy, to listen to their inner whispers and feelings, and to bring them love, comfort, pleasure and contentment. It is a different idea from what our culture stands for, that is, individualism, independence, self-interest and aggression (see Tango - The Art of Love)." Contrary to what the author thinks, the surrender in tango is mutual. It is in surrender that we stop to compete and start to adapt. Tango becomes popular in the modern world because it has the power to sublimate us by allowing us to be one with each other in an intimate relationship void of the judgment of the last century. Tango is the opposite of hypocrisy. In tango we become better, healthier, more authentic, natural, connected, cooperative, accommodating and cohesive people. Those who prefer political correctness to decent humanity, individualism to partnership, gender neutralization to gender expression, alienation to intimacy, egoism to humility, and power struggle to love live in the shadow of the past. They are evolving at a different pace from that of Latin America, and are not in the same direction as the author thought. They certainly do not represent the future of tango. (See Tango and Trust.)

Three Theories on Leading

The traditional theory of leading in Argentine tango is the drive theory, which defines the lead as a driving force. According to this theory, the man serves as the "driver," guiding the woman’s movements through his body. This approach reflects traditional gender roles and the macho culture in Argentine tango, with the man holding the woman gently yet firmly, while she leans slightly forward, resting in his embrace with her breasts pressing against his chest and her arm around his shoulder. In this setup, the woman doesn’t need to plan or initiate steps; she simply surrenders and allows him to lead her movements. Through torso-to-torso connection, he can easily guide her: propelling her, turning the torso to make her step to his side, twirling the torso and move it clockwise or counterclockwise to make her revolve around him, swaying her torso to bring her free hip and leg to swing, swiveling her torso to make her do a planeo, or interrupting and reversing the swivel to make her do a boleo, etc. The drive method is popular among feeling-oriented dancers who incline to the coziness of the embrace, the comforting sensation of the two connected bodies moving in sync to music, and the intimate physical interactions and soulful communication of feelings between the partners. For them, tango is a highly synchronized dance. What makes a good leader is his ability to use his body to effect the movement of the woman. What makes a good follower is her ability to synchronize her movement to his. Steps are used to facilitate the embrace so that the two partners may move in sync in the dance. Feeling-oriented dancers use simple steps to avoid complication and distraction. They focus on the music, embrace, connection, feelings, communication, and being one with each other. This theory underlies the milonguero style of tango.
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An alternative theory is la marca theory, which defines the lead as a series of signals or marks. Here, the lead might involve a push on her palm, a pull on her back, a tap on her side, a drag of her hand, a sideways use of strength with his arms, a pressure on her thigh with his thigh, etc. These are used as codes to tell the woman how he wants her to move. According to this theory, “Mastering tango is mastering the making of signals” (Tango, the Art History of Love, by Robert Farris Thompson). One disadvantage of this method, however, is that it encourages leading with arms and hands, deviating from the traditional drive method that uses the torso to lead. Another shortcoming is its lack of uniformity in signaling. Since each dancer may mark steps uniquely, following requires the woman to interpret individualized signals. Because this method is not well defined, it can cause inconsistancy, misleading, coerce, incoherence and discomfort. Nevertheless, this approach has influenced tango’s development. Leading with signals may result in different reactions from different followers, forcing the leader to accommodate. This changed the way how tango is danced and made it a less synchronized dance. The Villa Urquiza style of tango danced in a loose embrace in favor of fancy footwork, hence relies more on the arms and hands to lead, is associated with this theory.

A more unconventional theory on leading is the invitation theory promoted by some people in the West who, under the influence of Western liberal ideologies such as individualism, feminism and political correctness, oppose the traditional gender roles, and advocate for dancing in an open dance hold that allows of more independence and individuality. This theory defines the lead as an invitation. According to this theory the leader's job is to offer proposals, and he must respect the follower's choice on how she takes them. The process is being described as this: “The leader ‘invites’ the lady to enter a room. She accepts the invitation and, in her own time, enters, and he then follows. In a sense, therefore, the leader has become the follower (A Passion for Tango, by David Turner).” This approach leads to significant changes in the way tango is danced. First, it alters the dance frame from an A-shaped frame to an H-shaped one, allowing each partner to be more independent, which reduces the intimacy between them. Second, the absence of torso contact means that dancers must rely on their arms and hands for communication, even though, ideally, arms and hands should remain completely relaxed and uninvolved in leading. Third, it only works if the woman is an experienced dancer who knows how to follow the man’s torso; otherwise he would have to force her with his arms and hands, which not only feels coercive and uncomfortable but also confusing if his arms and hands are inconsistent with his torso (see Men's Common Mistakes in Tango). Finally, even if she knows how to follow his torso, the lack of torso contact makes the lead from his torso less direct, allowing her more freedom to interpret his intentions, and in turn requiring him to adapt to her responses. Consequently, their roles become more fluid, with less emphasis on traditional synchronization and a greater focus on individual expression. This shifts the dance from a feeling-oriented style to a performance-oriented one, transforming tango from an intimate, connected experience into a dance centered on movement and visual flair. (See The Styles of Tango.)

Tango Is a Feeling

We often hear people say that steps are tango's "vocabulary." As the word suggests, steps are the means used to express music and feelings, just like words are the tools used to convey thoughts. In its essence tango is not about steps, but what the steps express. So much so that someone famously stated: "Tango is a feeling that is danced."

It is difficult to define feelings, which encompass everything from sentiment, emotion, mood, daydream, euphoria, sorrow, excitement, to duende. Simply put, what we experience in tango is a state of mind. As ineffable as it is, we are most exuberant, creative, fluent, eloquent and satisfied when we are in that state of mind. How this state of mind comes into being is a mystery. It may not come by will or effort. It may not come always. It may not come at all even when we try hard to find it. But everyone has experienced it at some point. We are addicted to tango mainly because we have experienced that feeling. (See The Psychology in Tango.)

A key factor in tango’s ability to evoke deep emotions is its music. High-quality music is essential for a truly satisfying tango experience, serving as a catalyst, unlocking our potential for originality, imagination, skill, ability, and fluency on the dance floor. Excellent tango music, characterized by lucid rhythm, beautiful melodies, and deep sentiment, not only facilitates dancing but also resonates deeply within us, stirring emotions, setting moods, sparking creativity, and transporting us to a heightened state of mind. When we reminisce about a memorable milonga with captivating music and buoyant spirits, or a dance partner with whom a special connection was felt, it is the emotional resonance that we recall, not merely the sequence of steps.

Certainly, music isn't the sole creator of emotions. The embrace holds considerable significance as well. Tango is unique and different from other dances largely because of its embrace (see The Fourteenth Pitfall of a Tanguera). Unlike what novices may think, tango embrace is not just a hold or frame. It is the connection that makes us one, the communication that links up our hearts, the intimacy and coziness that comforts our souls, and the physical touch that sparks chemistry and resonance. It fulfills the needs lying deeply in our humanness, giving us a sense of connection, belonging and completion. It takes us back to our earliest memories, to the cradle of our infancy, the nourishment and comfort of our mother’s chest, the support and protection of our father’s arms, and the warmth and safety of our home. Tango reflects our longing for a “home.” It reminds us that we are better not when we are alone, but when we are together. In the end, we find "home" in each other because we belong to, need and complete each other. We dance to become one with each other, thus make ourselves whole. Without the embrace, tango is not tango but another ordinary dance.

If embrace is important, so is the partner. We cannot find that feeling when dance with someone who doesn’t know how to embrace (see The Connection and Harmony between Partners). The problem with a tango pedagogy focusing solely on steps is that it produces just such amateurs. They shy away from the embrace, lean back to keep distance from the partner, grab the partner like grab a shopping cart, and are emotionally disengaged. Such people completely miss the point of dancing tango. Dancing tango is like holding a baby in your arms, singing a lullaby and gently rocking her to sleep; or resting comfortably in your parent’s arms, listening to the hymn and being tenderly swayed to a dream. Tango is the warm, safe, comfy and intimate feeling that we experience and share with our partner. Indeed, the beautiful music, comforting embrace and rhythmic motion of tango have a hypnotic effect, lulling us into a state of meditation or daydream, so blissful that we don’t want to wake up when the tanda ends (see Cradle Effect). People need to know steps to dance tango, but the whole point of steps is to facilitate the embrace so that we may remain one in motion. Tango resembles the relationship in real life where we face all kinds of challenges but keep on united, connected, supportive, complementing and inseparable. It requires love, trust, surrender and devotion (see Tango Is a Relationship).

If you can see tango from this perspective, I guarantee you will experience a totally different dance - intimate, romantic, comforting, dreamy, soulful, and deeply satisfying (see Tango and Romanticism).

The Tango in All of Us, by Beatriz Dujovne

At the end of our quest, a question remains unanswered: What is the power in the heart of this dance? Why does the tango - born of the angst inherited from the 19th century and the tensions of the 20th - speak so compellingly to people of the 21st century now?

Something in it feeds our hunger for being on a level with others. Something in it understands our rebellion and soothes our longing for “home,” giving us a sense of belonging and a shared communication that knows no barriers. Something in it mirrors our nostalgia. We are nostalgic, each of us, historically: we all have emigrated from the warm, the safe, and the personal. Our feelings parallel those of the inventors of tango, who left their familiar homes to arrive in a city where they saw their dreams for a better future crushed by an unexpected reality. They had to reinvent themselves and adapt to a world of sudden and rapid change. Our world no less than theirs puts us face to face with a grave uncertainty about the future: they did not know if they could survive in the small locality of the Rio de La Plata; we do not know if we can survive in a global world that veers us away from our most precious possessions - our subjectivity and our hearts.

The malaise of our times - the philosophy “any gain is good” - demands that we look outside for direction, that we put our status ahead of our hearts, that we treasure possessions over human connections and subjective fulfillment. What we lose in these exchanges are our “homes,” our hearts, our values. We are irredeemably nostalgic for that. Historically we have arrived at a nightmare of greed and its consequences: terror, endless competition, infinite careerism, alienation.

We are not only nostalgic. The “any gain is good” attitude is the culprit of another malaise: we are developing the uncanny homesickness that descends upon people who are still at home but feel estranged from the place they have lived all their lives. It has been called “solstalgia”: it occurs when ecological changes leave people watching their gardens becoming infertile, their birds disappearing, their crops and animals perishing.

The 19th century-born tango understands our 21st century “algias,” our nostalgia and solstalgia, our isolation-algia, our fragility, our immigrant condition, our anger at human-manufactured threats to life. That’s how this dance of tenderness and connection eases our return to a safe and warm “home.”

Whether as music, dance, poetry, lifestyle, or identity, the tango still fulfills human needs and soothes our 21st century angst. This is its power, but… is this all that propelled it to rise above cultures and to resonate around the globe? As I pondered this question, I flashed back to two experiences. I copy them here from my life notes; this is the first:

I wanted to participate in the miracle of birth, as an observer. The mother had to be someone I did not know. I was allowed into the delivery room, which was the mother’s private hospital room. Decorated in shades of green, everything was impeccably sterile.

When labor began, the “all” of life looked me straight in the eyes. There it was, staring me down. At its rawest. Unedited.

Mother’s ecstasy. Mother’s agony. Cries of joy. Cries of pain. Hard labor. Sweat. Blood. Strange body materials. Malodorous fluids. A mother’s body without will. Nature pouring her insides out. A thunderstorm agitating the ocean.

A mother’s suffering became a baby’s head, then a baby’s body, then a little person who could cry his very own terror out loud with his brand new lungs. This now human being could only calm down when his father’s arms held him securely and tightly close to his chest.

The birthing mother could have been an English queen surrounded by an entourage of caretakers, giving birth in the luxury of a palace. Or a woman from the Argentine pampas. Or a Muslim with a veil. The baby could have been any color. As never before, the basic common experience of all mothers and all babies struck me as being uncannily identical.

In that delivery room, I felt myself made of the “stuff” tango is made of: the beautiful and the ugly, the joy and the pain, the blood and the sweat, the fragrances and the odors. Tango has earth in its soul. It melts down differences by zeroing in on our commonality. Tango is all of us in life’s common places. It is who we are at the core, behind our social masks.

How is it that other social dances do not take us there? I believe that the physical tango embrace is a one-second ticket to emotions so old we do not have names for them, to the moment we enter this world as a creature. In the embrace, we are held in the same exact vertical position against someone’s chest, feeling safe and connected, engaging in a myriad of bodily duets. This ineffable universal “home,” the beginning of our ontology, still matters to us in that zone of the “unconscious,” where present and past are one and the same.

I heard the sound of silence during my visit to the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, in the wildlife that inspired Charles Darwin, in the habitat that remains largely as it was when he studied it. We were not supposed to disturb the animals while touring the islands. When we encountered, on our narrow path, the Blue-footed Boobies with their white and black outfits and blue painted feet, they did not walk away or fly off. We humans stopped in our tracks. Then we detoured so as not bother them.

They owned the place. The familiar differences between urban animals and humans did not exist in Galapagos. In that semi-pristine landscape, it was crystal clear that they had more rights than we did… Detouring around them, we reached the ocean; a sea lion had given birth in the beach. I could tell because a solitary placenta was basking in the sun, waiting to become food for another species. Perfect cycles of nature: one’s discard becomes food for another.

On that beach, for the first and only time in my life, I listened to a new sound of silence. Not the one that results from absence of noise. A silence that enveloped the earth and the skies and everything in a larger dimension, where human and animals lived in a shared space and had equal rights. This zone transcended both our species.

The delivery room and the Galapagos confronted me with something basically human… maybe bigger than human… cosmic perhaps.

In bother memories I encountered a point, as it is at the beginning of life and (I imagine) as it is at the end of life. Between these two points, we do the dance of life that pushes them apart… We grow away from our common stock, from our one same story, believing that our different affiliations to country, religion or ethnicity separate us. We kill for those beliefs. And in many cultures we deny our bodies as inferior to our minds and spirits. Tango bypasses all these camouflages of the self and goes right into the ineffable zone of the cosmic where we were in the first place, to that ineffable story of sameness, those points where our bodily nature screams its existence.

Tango’s power also resides in how it works in our psyches from the inside. The carnal embrace destabilizes our polar tendencies, while giving us a visceral sense of being more complete. The dance is a meeting ground of opposites and synthesis of the extremes that are in our very cores: man and woman, masculinity and femininity, oneness and separation, spirituality and carnality - all of these universally human polarities clash and blend in the embrace. We dance our man and woman to the fullest, in halves that need and complement each other. Yet, in this dance where the polar genders meet, I feel strands of androgyny that we dance, that we hear in the music, that we experience in the poetic text and in the singing. Many compositions insist on the beat; they seem more masculine. Others are melodically slower and gentler; they seem more feminine. Others balanced in their melodic and rhythmic aspects. Men and women singers switch from grave “masculinity” to tender “femininity” in voice and feeling in a fraction of a second. So do poets, who, in a macho culture, felt free to express their “feminine” emotions.

The opposites of oneness and separation do their own dance as well. The embrace summons us back to a wonderful oceanic experience, where two of us become one - for three minutes - until we recover our boundaries. The distinguished psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel used the expression “oceanic” to refer to the blurring of boundaries between self and world (which is uncannily similar to the experience of “merging” reported by dancers in moments of transport). It is a wonderful metaphor for the connection we feel but that others cannot see. In certain moments of the dance we go back to the ocean. In the rhythmic tides of the music we rise and fall; we are waves with a form that merge with the water, but that soon enough acquire individuality again. As dancers directly or indirectly told us, even in nonspectacular moments, we often feel snatches of a vast zone beyond ourselves and a sense of connection to more than what our senses perceive.

Not only does the dance fulfill needs, but it also confronts us with our ineffable nature, with a mystery our minds cannot understand but our emotions do.

Whether as dance, lifestyle or identity, song lyric or alternative culture, the tango has proven itself able to fulfill universal human needs. Most popular dances celebrate the happy side of life and put the tragic off to the side; the tango speaks to our pain and losses without trivializing or erasing them. Instead by in fact confronting and intensifying what is usually left in the margins, it summons us back to our realness.

Its initial spread and its current resurgence around the world show that, despite the disparities of time and place, language, skin color, religion or social status, we find ourselves, we find each other, we find the tango’s strength in strangers’ arms.


Beatriz Dujovne. In Strangers' Arms: The Magic of the Tango. North Carilina: McFarland & Company, 2011.

The Styles of Tango

Many terms are used to describe different styles of tango, such as tango milonguero, tango apilado, tango Villa Urquiza, estilo del centro, estilo del barrio, tango de salon, the salon style, tango fantasia, and tango Nuevo, etc.

The origin of different dance styles lies in human psychology. People who are feeling-oriented tend to prioritize internal experiences. These dancers, of whom many are milongueros, developed the milonguero style of tango, also known as tango apilado. It is danced in a close embrace with a slightly leaning (apilado) position, intimate bodily contact, and simple steps to allow for a focus on feelings. This style is commonly seen at tango clubs in downtown Buenos Aires, where the floors are crowded, disabling fancy movements, hence its nickname "estilo del centro" or downtown style. The milonguero style features embrace and feelings.

On the other hand, dancers who are movement-oriented tend to prioritize intricate footwork. Such dancers, of whom many also are milongueros, developed the Villa Urquiza style of tango, also known as the salon style, which is danced in a loose embrace with an upright posture to facilitate fancy movements. Movement-oriented dancers like to dance at neighborhood clubs, such as Club Sin Rumbo in the neighborhood of Villa Urquiza, where the dance floors are open, hence the term estilo del barrio, or neighborhood style. The Villa Urquiza style features footwork and impression.

Milonguero style and Villa Urquiza style are commonly recognized as tango de salon, or social tango. Social tango is a loose term broad enough to include stylistic differences, and narrow enough to exclude anti-social behaviors. Social dancers may be feeling-oriented or movement-oriented, but they all dance at the clubs and abide by the milonga codes.

Social tango dominated the culture of Buenos Aires from mid-1930s to mid-1950s. This period is known as tango's Golden Age. Between 1940 and 1950, some 23 dancers, who were even more movement-oriented than their Villa Urquiza colleagues, met regularly at the Club Nelson to work on novel steps. The result is a new style known as tango fantasia. The names of these 23 dancers are listed in Robert Farris Thompson's book, Tango, the Art History of Love. Danced mainly in an open embrace, tango fantasia dramatized tango with fancy movements and showy figures, and separated itself from social tango by using choreography and not conforming to the milonga codes. The purpose of this style is to perform on stage; therefore, it is also known as stage tango, show tango, performance tango, and exhibition tango (see Social Tango and Performance Tango).

From 1955 to 1983 Argentina was ruled by military juntas whose policies discouraged social tango. Curfews were enforced and pedestrians were frequently stopped by the military police for interrogation. Many were arrested or simply disappeared for aligning with the previous pro-tango Peronist regime. As a result, people stopped dancing socially and tango went underground. The absence of social tango during this period gave tango fantasia an opportunity to take the stage. When the military rule ended in 1983, it was this style that led the revival of tango (see Tango: Historical and Cultural Impacts).

The renaissance was led by a group of stage performers who brought their show, Tango Argentino, to Paris and New York City in 1983 and 1984, where they ignited an enthusiasm for learning their style of tango. Seizing the business opportunity, these professional dancers began to teach tango fantasia to Europeans and Americans, thus spawned the tango Nuevo movement catered to the tastes of foreigners. Because tango Nuevo incorporated many non-tango elements such as exotic music and eccentric steps, it ceases to be tango as it was created for. For this reason, tango Nuevo is despised by the milongueros, who called it "tango para exportar" or tango for export. (See Three Theories on Leading.)

Tango - The Art of Love

One of the protocols in tango is not to blame, criticize, or advise your dance partner unless that responsibility has been specifically given to you. Milongueros follow this code strictly because they understand the consequences. Recently, two of my students had a serious disagreement. It began, perhaps, with good intentions to help: she commented on his leading, and he defended himself with a remark about her following. The exchange escalated into insults, ultimately ending with two broken hearts. They may never dance together again.

Learning tango is like learning a language, and it takes just as long. Anyone with fewer than five years in tango is considered a novice. Novices are often the most frustrated - they want to dance tango well but don’t know how. There is so much they don’t yet understand, including how to conduct themselves at milongas. Each novice has plenty of challenges and opinions about others, yet experienced dancers rarely partner with them, so they stay within their own circle, often blaming each other for their issues. The irony of “the pot calling the kettle black” is that they are quite similar. When one criticizes the other for being stiff, the other is likely thinking the same thing. By the time they’ve mastered the steps, feelings may be hurt and relationships strained.

Beginners often don’t realize that, whether they like it or not, the people they learn tango with are the most important people in their tango journey. They will likely dance together for a long time because each tango community is small, bringing people together by fate (see 惜缘). It’s wiser to accept one another and allow time for mutual growth. In real life, if you like someone, you tell them they’re beautiful. If you tell them they’re unattractive, chances are they won’t want to see you again. The same principle applies if you want to dance with someone: always speak positively about their dance, even if they ask for your honest opinion. How many husbands have found themselves in trouble after giving an overly honest answer? Remember, tango is more than just a dance; it is a relationship, an art of love (see Tango Is a Relationship).

Robert Farris Thompson said in his book, Tango, the Art History of Love, that tango "is the dance that teaches the world to love." The idea of tango is to welcome another person into your personal space, to accept them, to be considerate, cooperative, yielding and accommodating, to surrender and be one with them, to enjoy the intimacy, to listen to their inner whispers and feelings, and to bring them love, comfort, pleasure and contentment. It is a different idea from what our culture stands for, that is, individualism, independence, self-interest and aggression. Hopefully, tango will make us a better person who treats others with respect, appreciation and love, accept them as who they are, and put others instead of oneself at the center of one's life and dance. Until then, we are not qualified as tango dancers and cannot dance tango well anyway (see A Dance that Teaches People to Love).

Tango: Historical and Cultural Impacts

Today, Buenos Aires is home to one-third of Argentina's 45 million people. But in the early 19th century Buenos Aires was just a small town populated by Spanish colonists, indigenous South Americans, and black slaves. In May 1810, inspired by the French Revolution, the Argentine people rebelled against Spanish rule and proclaimed independence. The new government made a conscious decision to change the demographic composition through immigration from Spain, Italy and other parts of Europe. By the end of the 19th century, the original population of Buenos Aires was completely swamped by European immigrants. While tango has its African roots, the main inventors of tango were the European immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who came to participate in the construction of the modern city of Buenos Aires.

The fact that tango was created mainly by the immigrants is significant. Far away from home, disproportional in gender, and facing difficult life, the immigrants were the most nostalgic people. They came to the milonga to dance the loneliness, homesickness, nostalgia and grief in them, to find a shoulder to rely on, to quench their thirst for love, and to touch and be touched by someone of the opposite sex. Tango is their refuge. The intimate, soulful, sensual and comforting nature of tango reflects and serves their deep, inward, human needs. That's why tango is danced in close embrace wherein the dancers lean into each other, chest against chest, and face touches face. Via such intimate physical contact they communicate through dance the feelings stirred by the music. Like the dance itself, tango music is created to express nostalgic feelings. Its rhythm is masculine - robust, sharp, and rigid, and its melody is feminine - soft, moody, and beauful. The two opposite moods intertwine and respond to each other, reflecting the man and woman in the dance (see The Characteristics of Classic Tango).

Tango reached its maturity and dominated the culture of Buenos Aires between 1935 and 1955. This period is known as tango's Golden Age. Following this Golden Age was almost three decades of the Dark Age during which tango disappeared. In 1955 a military coup ousted Juan Domingo Peron, the democratically elected president. Peron and his wife Eva Peron had actively supported tango. The dancers aligned with them were suspicious to the anti-Peronist juntas, who created a climate to discourage tango. Curfews were enforced and pedestrians were stopped by the military police for interrogation. Many were arrested or simply disappeared for their links to the old regime. Consequently, people stopped dancing socially and tango went underground. Tango music produced in the Dark Age was mainly for listening and not dancing. The revival of tango started after the restoration of democracy in 1983. Since then tango has regained worldwide popularity and is now danced in most countries in the world and most cities in Europe and North America.

As one BBC commentator remarked, “Tango contains a secret about the yearning between men and women.” In many cultures, intimacy between the opposite sexes is considered sexual and therefore taboo. In those cultures men and women are not supposed to have intimate contact unless they want to have sex. But Argentine tango represents a different perspective or culture that endorses innocent intimacy. The Argentinians, due to their immigtant status and a largely Spanish and Italian background, are a closely-knit community, and tango is a product of their cultural heritage. The triumph of tango, after all, is the triumph of its idea, which views non-sexual intimacy as human, decent, healthy, and beautiful.

But, the triumph of this idea did not come without a price. Many things have changed after the Golden Age. The tradition has been suspended for almost thirty years. The immigrants have settled down. The gender balance has regained. Many old dancers have died. The entire young generation did not know how to dance tango. The only tango survived the Dark Age was the stage tango. As a result, the revival of tango was led by a group of stage performers, who in 1983-1984 brought their show, Tango Argentino, to Europe and North America, where they ignited an enthusiasm for learning their style of tango - tango fantasia, which is different from the tango danced in the Golden Age.

The tango danced in the Golden Age is tango de salon, or social tango. It is a popular dance suited to the tastes, needs and abilities of ordinary people. It is danced on a crowded dance floor for pleasure and not on stage for show. It is an intimate, feeling-oriented and improvised dance, typically danced in close embrace with considerable physical contact between the partners. Its steps are simple and compact, allowing the dancers to focus inwardly on the emotions stirred by music and the feelings of the two connected bodies moving in sync with music. It is administered by the milonga codes. Dancing tango de salon is a chummy, soulful and personal experience. What matters is how it feels and not how it looks.

Tango fantasia, or show tango, on the other hand, is created for stage performance. It is a dramatized version of tango involving difficult steps and techniques not suited to ordinary people, but professionals with expert skills. It is a fancy, movement-oriented and choreographed dance, typically danced in an open embrace for broader movement possibilities. Its steps are wide, flashy, dazzling, often dangerous and requiring a lot of space to do. It is not intended to be an intimate, soulful and personal experience but an exhibition of elaborate footwork and fancy figures to entertain the audience. Safety, comfort and user-friendliness are not its concerns. It does not abide by the milonga codes and is not suited to a crowded dance floor. What matters is how it looks and not how it feels (see Social Tango and Performance Tango).

Without the same cultural background, Europeans and Americans were more interested in tango fantasia than tango de salon. They didn't have an exploded immigrant population crowding in a new city under construction. They didn’t suffer the hardships, homesickness and nostalgia of the immigrants. They didn't experience a severe gender imbalance (see The Chivalry of the Milongueros). Their dance floors were not crowded, and their cultures did not endorse innocent nonsexual intimacy. On top of that, their teachers were the stage performers from Argentina. Before long, tango fantasia became a fashion in Europe and North America.

Despite that, the tango fervor abroad rekindled the pride of the Argentinians for their traditional dance. Milongas were reopened. Porteños returned to the dance floor. Tango clubs and bars were packed again. Tango music, tango fashion and tango tourism flourished. Buenos Aires once over became the Mecca of tango, where dancers from around the world came to dance tango with the locals. But foreigners quickly discovered that the tango they have learned at home is not the same tango danced in Buenos Aires.

Having tasted the intriguing close-embrace tango of Buenos Aires, most visitors don’t want to go back to the open-embrace style. Some decide to stay for good. Others return home to spread the message. Their number increases every year as more and more people come to Buenos Aires to dance tango with the locals. Trend starts to shift from open embrace to close embrace in Europe and North America. It may still take time for close-embrace tango to settle down and become the prevailing style in that part of the world, but that will happen, I believe. Tango is created to serve a human need (see Why People Dance Tango). Its form must meet its purpose. What is superficial and trendy changes, but what is internal and essential endures. As more and more people savor the charm of close embrace tango, as milonga becomes increasingly popular and crowded, people will want to, and have no choice but dance in close embrace. Eventually, what belongs to the stage will separate from what belongs to the dance floor, again.

Here is an example of the tango danced in the milongas of Buenos Aires.

Dissociation and Gear Effect

The woman must place her weight on the ball of her foot in order to pivot as if on a fixed pin. But she does not pivot her whole body, she only pivots her lower body from the waist down. The waist is like the swivel that joins the upper body and the lower body. Since her torso is attached to his torso in the embrace, she needs to rotate her lower body sideways in order to move around him. This technique is known as dissociation.

An experienced woman knows that a subtle twist of her torso by the man indicates and must result in a big rotation of her lower body. The man leads her by turning her torso slightly in the direction he wants her to move. On receiving the signal, she needs to swivel her hips and pivot her lower body in that direction. In this twisted posture she can place her right leg on his right, or her left leg on his left, while her torso remain attached to his torso in close embrace. The rotation of her hips needs not to be huge. In most cases a 45° rotation of the hips will enable her to step to his side. In some cases, such as in molinete, gancho and back sacada, a greater rotation of the hips is required.

It is worth noting that dissociation is different from contra-body movement or CBM. CBM is turning the right side of the body towards a left moving leg or turning the left side of the body towards a right moving leg. But dissociation is turning the upper body without turning the lower body, or turning the lower body without turning the upper body. Both are forms of dissociation. The former is not difficult to do, but the latter is hard and needs a lot of practice to master. When you practice disociation in front of a mirror, you should keep your torso facing the mirror still and swivel only your hips. You should not cheat by turning the torso instead of swiveling the hips.

A typical figure using dissociation is the front ocho, in which the woman draws an S on the floor with one leg, then draws another S on the floor with the other leg. The two S's are overlapped in the opposite directions, so they look like the figure 8. To dance the 8, she first swivels her hips and make a forward step to one side of the man. While her weight is shifted to the acting leg, she swivels her hips again and makes another forward step in the opposite direction. She then swivels her hips back to face him. Another similar figure using this technique is the back ocho, wherein she dances the 8 backward. She first swivels her hips and make a backward step to one side of him, then swivels her hips and make another backward step to the other side of him. If she is able to over rotate her hips, she can move forward by doing the back ocho and move backward by doing the front ocho. A third example using dissociation is the molinete, a figure in which the woman revolves around the man who serves as the anchor for her rotation. In all these examples the woman keeps her torso attached to the man's torso and rotates only her hips side to side. The technique suits the flexible body of the woman and highlights her feminine beauty, as she continuously turns her hips while her torso remains parallel to his torso.

The rotation of her hips will cause her chest to roll side to side on his chest, generating a pleasant sensation know as the gear effect. The chest is the center of her attention through which everything, including intention, music interpretation, feeling and flirtation, is expressed and exchanged. The woman should not glue her torso to the man's torso but should let it roll while her hips are swiveling. With each swivel of the hips her chest rolls to one side on his torso. As she swivels her hips in the opposite drection, her chest rolls to the other side on his torso.

The rolling of the chest must not be so conspicuous and abrupt as to cause discomfort. In most cases it is just a smooth transfer of weight from one breast to the other breast. She needs to make the transfer gentle, musical and comfortable. A novice woman who can't do dissociation either turns her whole body, causing the rupture of the embrace, or just crosses her legs without swiveling her hips, so her chest sticks to his torso and does not trundle. Tango is a dance in which the dancers interact and please each other with their bodies. An experienced woman knows how to use her body to comfort her partner, just like an experienced man knows how to display her feminine beauty (see Revealing her Beauty in Tango). Gear effect increases the sensual pleasure of the dance - a feature of the close-embrace tango that is missing in the open-embrace style. It is one of the things that make the two styles fundamentally different.

Balance and Lightness

The sense induced by the change of the body’s location and position is called the sense of equilibrium. The semicircular canal and vestibule in the inner ear are organs related to this sense. Those whose equilibrium organs are dysfunctional due to disease, drug or alcoholism cannot keep balance well. Balance can be improved through training. Woman gymnasts, for example, can do difficult movements on a balance beam. Acrobats rely on their trained sense of equilibrium to do high wire walk. Experienced dancers also have a good sense of equilibrium so they can stay balanced in complex movements.

In bicycling one uses wheels to keep balance. In dancing one uses steps to keep balance. All dancers need a good sense of equilibrium, but that is particularly true for the woman partner because she is the one being driven by the man. The man leads her by tilting her in the direction he wants her to move. How far she moves, however, is decided by her own sense of equilibrium. If she steps not exactly where she should to keep her balance, she will fall. A falling woman relies on the man for her stability, thus becomes heavy. The man may not mind if the woman occasionally holds on to him for balance, but if she hangs on him all the time and grabs him tightly in every move and turn, that could be quite burdensome. A woman must know that maintaining her own balance is the key for her to be light in the dance. Some women habitually rely on the man for balance, as a result their sense of equilibrium fails to improve.

Tango has a unique balance problem because the two partners lean against each other to form an A-shaped frame. The A-shaped frame is a stable frame in which the partners support each other. A novice woman often does not realize that her support for the man is equally important as his for her. If she leans back, she could pull him off his balance, which is a common problem for women who feel uncomfortable leaning on the man.

On the other hand, some women lean on the man too much, thus become heavy. Dancing in leaning position demands strength on her back. A woman with a weak back cannot sustain in that position for long, especially if the man holds her tight. An experienced woman maintains certain resistance in symmetry to the force that the man applies on her in both directions - his chest pushes her out and his arm pulls her in. Some women counteract the man with too much force, thus become heavy. The woman needs to know that maintaining balance is maintaining a state of stillness, uniform-speed rectilinear motion, or uniform-speed winding motion, not doing wrestling. She must be careful about how much resistance she applies to counteract the man to avoid being heavy.

For her to be light in dancing the motivity of her movements should come from herself rather than him, that is, she should activate herself instead of relying on the man to move her. An experienced woman does so by pushing with her standing leg in the direction she is led to go. Like a self-propelled mower, she moves by herself, thus is light. Novice women, on the contrary, rely on the man to move them, and due to their inadequate dancing skills they often move in hesitance, or hold on to the man tightly with their arms and hands to help with the movements, thus become heavy. On the other hand, some women dance so aggressively that feels like they are leading or doing their own dance. In order to remain light in the dance, women need to be both motivated and obedient, proactive while being totally agreeable with their partners. (See Women's Walk in Tango.)

The man, on the other hand, should not put pressure on the woman's waist, as that would restricte her movements. A tall man should use his stomach rather than chest to lead a short woman and not bend his torso to add pressure on her since that could cause her to bend backwards if she does not have a strong back. As her strength and balance improve, she may sustain more pressure, lean more on the man to expand her movement possibility, or even want him to hold her on her waist. Men often see experienced dancers dance this way or that way, and some may try to imitate before their partner is ready. Keep in mind that tango can be danced in many ways. One should choose a way that suits the ability of one's partner. (See Why Women Fail to Do Cruzada.)

Why People Dance Tango

The reason we dance tango has something to do with the gloomy side of life. Some people say they dance tango because they like tango music, but they can listen to tango music at home. Some say they like the movements, but they can do movements in other dance forms as well. Some say they like the unrestrained nature of tango, but martial arts may give them the same satisfaction. Some say tango is artistically challenging, but ballet raises that bar even higher. If these were the only reasons people dance tango, then there would not be tango, because the alternatives are many.

Tango triumphs for a unique reason. While most dances are created to celebrate life, tango serves a different purpose. It is created by the least fortunate to shelter their sorrows. They do not come to the milonga to play peacocks, but to expose their vulnerability and seek comfort, to dance the loneliness, homesickness, nostalgia and grief in them, to find a shoulder to rely on, to take refuge for their wounds, to quench their thirst for love, and to touch and be touched by another human being. These are ordinary people - poor people, immigrants, construction workers, waiters, waitresses, shop assistants, maids and taxi drivers. They may not be splendid in their appearance, but you feel it when you dance with them. Their embrace is warm and consoling, their feeling is sincere and deep, their heart is sympathetic and sensitive, their movement is raw and infectious, and their dance is affectionate and sentimental. Tango is their refuge. The intimate, soulful, sensual and comforting nature of tango reflects and serves their deep, inward, human needs. This is the tango still danced in less affluent societies, such as Argentina and Uruguay.

Not all people share these needs, of course. Successful people, arrogant people, affluent people, and superficial people, for instance, like the beauty of tango but don’t embrace its purpose. Instead, they use tango to celebrate their life, to glorify their success, to show off their style, to display their ego, and to boast their superiority. The traditional tango is too modest for them, so they make changes - opening up the embrace, inventing fancy steps, adding ostentatious tricks, using exotic music, etc. As a result, they created a peacocky version of tango. It looks flashy and feels empty. This kind of tango now is the fashion in opulent societies such as ours.

Tango has survived many challenges in the past. It will survive this one as well, I believe, because needs, desires, yearnings, loneliness, love, interdependence, tenderness, sentimentalism and romanticism are an intrinsic part of human nature even among the toughest. The less fortunate people are particularly vulnerable, which is why they created tango. This may also explain why milongas are more crowded in bad times than in good times, why more women dance tango than men, and why the revival of tango happens now when there are more travelers, immigrants and refugees in the world than ever before. Tango will always be the dance of the lonely, homesick, nostalgic, needy, vulnerable, sentimental and romantic. The fortunate people need tango, too, if they are not blind by their success and arrogance. After all, we are human, and tango is for all who search inward for their humanity.

Cadencia

Beginners often interpret dancing to music as stepping on the beat, but there is much more to it. Dancing with cadencia, for example, is also a part of the equation (see Notes on Musicality). Cadencia refers to the swings of the body to music. In other words, dancing to music involves not only timing steps, but also timing the swings of the body. Cadencia is one of the key techniques in tango that is essential to the dance but often being overlooked.

To learn to do cadencia, you first need to learn to swing your leg. You need to lift the hip on the free leg side until that leg hangs loosely and can dangle freely like a pendulum. You need to keep the knee and ankle straight so the leg looks long and can swing gracefully. Now, imagine that your leg does not start from the hip but from the chest, that is, imagine everything below your chest is your leg. The chest is where you and your partner connect. It can serve as a fixed point to swing everything below as a whole. That way, not only your leg appears longer, but your entire body also looks tall and elegant.

Swinging the body is like swinging a cudgel of three linked sections. The first section is the torso, the second section is the hip, and the third section is the leg. The movement of the first section will drive the movement of the second section, which will then drive the movement of the third section. In other words, the swing of the body is a chain reaction. Novices often use their thigh to move their leg because they focus on stepping rather than swinging. Consequetly there is no cadencia. To generate cadencia you need to use your torso to bring your hip and leg to swing. You should keep your body tall and resilient, so it will swing like a pendulum rather than fluttering like a soft ribbon.

The swing is lateral. Students often neglect the lateral motion of the body and focus on the vertical action of stepping. To create cadencia you need to accelerate the body's lateral motion as you implement each step. The movements must be pulsating, like surging waves, so your body will swing with each surge. At the completion of a swing, you reverse the process and swing your body in the opposite direction. This alternating side to side or back and forth swing caused by the surge and inertia, feels like riding on a swing, is called cadencia.

Cadencia is teamwork and will not happen without man's initiative. Leaders must be aware that whether the follower's body swings to music depends in part on the lead. Often, the woman fails to step on the beat because her body is led to swing too little or too much, too slow or too fast, disabling her foot to land naturally on the beat. An experienced man generates just enough swing, so the woman’s foot will land exactly on the beat. Likewise, a skilled woman times the swing of her body to the music as well. She does her part to complement his lead.

Cadencia is used both in social tango and performance tango, but it is primarily a social tango technique aimed at the sensual pleasure rather than visual impression of the dance. The two partners must have matching musicality and balance control as they swinging - a skill that does not come naturally and requires adequate training. But, once dancers have learned how to do it, the sensation of two connected bodies swing together in sync with the music will make the dance much more enjoyable. (See Cadencia and the Flow of Tango.)

The following video illustrates this technique:

Related videos:

Cadencia - the pendulum effect

Tango close embrace, connection, cadencia

Tango Is a Language (II)

In order to communicate with someone you need to speak the same language. If you speak a different language, or talk with a strange accent, or use self-invented words, it would be hard for people to understand you. Not speaking the same language is a big problem in our tango. Different leaders often lead the same step differently. Different followers often follow the same lead differently. The leaders complain that the followers are following incorrectly, and the followers complain that the leaders' signals are unclear. This happens often because people do not speak the same tango language.

Many students fail to grasp the significance of standardization. They overlook the fundamentals, ignore the instructions, and disregard the standands. This tendency is particularly noticeable among people embracing unconventional approaches and seeking to dance in a way deviating from the traditional tango. Some tango teachers also contribute to this problem by teaching self-invented and nonstandard steps that are unsuitable for social dancing. While such creative liberties may be acceptable for performing on stage - where the professionals only dance with a fixed partner and can rehearse their routine beforehand - it presents a challenge in the milongas where partners are randomly selected, successful communication and the ability to improvise in harmony largely depend on adhering to the same standards. Without these unified standards, dancers cannot communicate well with each other and improvise in unison and harmony.

Social media has further complicated the already divided tango language. Many students mistakenly consider the performances they see online as the standard tango, when in reality, those are performances that differ from the tango commonly danced in milongas (see Social Tango and Performance Tango). The tango that most people dance in milongas is social tango, particularly the milonguero style of tango originated from Argentina. This style continues to thrive as a grassroots dance in Buenos Aires today, attracting tango enthusiasts from around the world who come to experience the authentic dance culture at over two hundred milongas throughout the city. No matter what tango language you speak at home, when you visit Buenos Aires you realize that their language is the tango language you must conform to. If social tango needs a standard language to become an international dance, that must be the language of Buenos Aires.

Examining the histories of other languages can provide valuable insights into this matter. For instance, the Chinese language has undergone significant evolution, resulting in numerous dialects with distinct pronunciations, making communication challenging between people from different regions of China. Over the past century, the Chinese have endeavored to achieve language unification through the promotion of a standard dialect. This goal has only been partially accomplished in recent decades, primarily due to the widespread use of the Beijing dialect, known as Mandarin, in television broadcasts and media. However, despite progress, many Chinese residing in rural areas still communicate using local dialects that remain incomprehensible to outsiders. If you study Chinese, you want to study Mandarin and not a local dialect. Likewise, if you learn tango, you want to learn Argentine tango and not Finnish tango or American tango. If your purpose is to dance tango in the milongas you want to study social tango and not performance tango, and you want to learn the milonguero style danced in the milongas of Buenos Aires, not some self-invented and localized style danced only in a university campus in North America. Some university campuses in North America are fairly isolated. They rarely associate with other tango communities and seldom invite outside teachers in to teach. As a result, they developed their own tango dialect unfamiliar to tango dancers elsewhere. Similarly, foreigners visiting Buenos Aires often find themselves unable to dance with the locals because they dance differently from the locals. As tango gains worldwide popularity, the possibility that it is transformed into different dialects increases. If we are not careful, we may end up repeating the history of the Chinese language.

Here is how Argentinians dance tango in their milongas.