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.