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 affectionate, their feeling is deep and sincere, their heart is sensitive and sympathetic, their movement is raw and infectious, and their dance is sentimental and tender. 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. Rich people, successful people, arrogant 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 affluent 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 the music. In other words, dancing to music involves not only timing steps, but timing the swings of the body also. 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. The third section is the leg. A little motion of the first section will lead to a bigger motion of the second section, which will lead to a still bigger motion of the third section. In other words, the swing of the leg is a chain reaction of the swing of the torso and hip and leg. Novices often use their thigh to move their leg because they focus on the step rather than the swing. 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 focus on the vertical action of stepping down and neglect the lateral motion of the body. To create cadencia you need to accelerate the lateral motion. The movements must be pulsating, like surging waves rather than flowing water, so your whole body, including the torso, hip and leg, will swing with each surge. At the compeletion of a swing you reverse the course to let your body swing in the opposite direction. This alternating back and forth or side to side 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 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, hip and leg 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. To do cadencia, the two partners must have matching musicality and balance control, which is not very easy 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