The Functions of Various Body Parts in Tango

In tango, each part of the body—the head, arms, hands, torso, hips, and legs—has a distinct function. To use them in a controlled and coordinated manner, dancers must understand their roles and assign appropriate attention in the dance. Misuse of body parts is a common issue in tango.

The Head
In a close embrace, the woman may rest her head on the man’s temple, cheek, or chin, depending on their relative heights. She may also choose not to make head contact. When she does, the touch should be light and comfortable. Some women press their head against the man's head to prevent chest contact. Beginners often rely on the head for support when executing steps. These practices indicate a misunderstanding of the head’s role. Head contact is a gesture of intimacy. Dancers should dissociate the head from the body—never using it to prevent chest contact or assist movements, as both can cause discomfort and disrupt the harmony of the embrace.

The Arms and Hands
The functions of the arms and hands are more nuanced. Ideally, they serve to hold the partner gently, forming an embrace that offers support, comfort, and connection. However, arms and hands are frequently misused. Some dancers use them to coerce or resist the partner, push the partner away to avoid intimacy, hold onto the partner for balance and stability, grab the partner to assist the movements, or wrestle with the partner. Such habits turn the arms and hands into instruments of manipulation, rather than connection. Beginners must overcome the habit of relying on their arms and hands. Tango is led and followed through the torso. Arms and hands should be used solely to create a comfortable embrace. The contact of the arms and hands should be gentle and relaxed. Dancers must dissociate their arms and hands from their bodies, not using them to guide, distance, brace, assist movements, manipulate, or fight with the partner.

The Torso
The torso is the command center of tango. Tango partners use their torsos to communicate intentions, music interpretations, emotions, and to bring out the movements of their hips and legs. The intimate, emotionally expressive nature of tango stems primarily from the central role of the torso. Unfortunately, this role is often overlooked by action-oriented dancers who substitute the embrace with an open dance hold, relegating the torso to a subordinate role under the control of the arms and hands. As a result, they transform tango from a feeling-driven dance into one focused solely on movement.

The Legs
In a previous post (see The Fourteenth Pitffall of a Tangura), I cited a young woman’s insightful observation: what she called the “first-layer technique”—maintaining a comfortable embrace—and the “second-layer technique”—pursuing visual beauty—essentially reflect the roles of the torso and legs, respectively. In tango, the torso remains relatively still in the embrace, conveying intimacy, while the legs move expressively, embodying beauty. Brisk and expressive, the legs bring tango's visual elegance to life.

However, when dancers prioritize visual flair over connection, they risk sacrificing the core of tango—the embrace. Formalist dancers often fall into this trap. They treat the torso as just another moving limb, governed by arms and hands to create elaborate movements. But pursuing visual impression at the expense of the intimacy and comfort of the embrace is not worth the candle. As tango evolved—from milonguero to Villa Urquiza, to fantasia, and eventually to tango nuevo—it has followed an aesthetic trajectory that increasingly distances itself from the embrace and its associated feeling (see The Styles of Tango). I believe this path is misguided. I hold that achieving both the comfort of the embrace and the beauty of the footwork is entirely possible. Dancers should not have to sacrifice the embrace to achieve visual beauty. Many memorable performances—such as Poema by Javier Rodriguez and Geraldine Rojas, or those by Carlitos Espinoza with Noelia Hurtado and Agustina Piaggio—demonstrate that technical brilliance and emotional connection can coexist beautifully.

The Hips
These dancers excel because they skillfully use their hips, which serve as the swivel point that connects the upper and lower body. Since their torsos remain connected in the embrace, they must rotate their hips to move their legs around each other. This technique is known as dissociation in tango. Skilled tango dancers can rotate their hips to a greater degree, enabling them to step freely around each other without breaking the embrace. Dissociation is not only a physical separation but also an artistic division of labor, allowing the upper body to maintain the comfort of the embrace while the lower body expresses maximum creativity.

In contrast, the novice’s body often lack the flexiblity. An inexperienced man, therefore, tends to use his arms and hands instead of his torso to lead, while an inexperienced woman tends to turn her whole body instead of swiveling her hips, and they grip each other with their arms and hands to help themselves with movements, causing the disruption of the embrace and incoherence of the dance. You may call it by its polished label "open embrace," but the underlying reason is an inability to dance in close embrace, leading to reliance on an artificial substitute. However, this "cheating" comes at a price—it may deceive others, but not the dancers themselves. Professional dancers may use an open embrace on stage to perform for an audience. They accept this trade-off as part of their work. Yet, when they attend a milonga, they return to dancing in close embrace for personal enjoyment (see Social Tango and Performance Tango). Novices who envy the glamour of stage performances often imitate them blindly in milongas without even can embrace well. Such crude imitation only makes them appear foolish.

Conclusion
When dancing tango, the head, arms, and hands should remain relaxed, never interfere with the body's movements. The function of the torso is communicating intentions and feelings through direct physical contact, and guiding the movements of the lower body. The legs are responsible for beautifying the dance and bringing tango's visual elegance to life. The key to maximizing the beauty of the footwork while preserving the comfort of the embrace lies in the swivel of the hips. Learning tango is not about memorizing steps; it's about mastering the proper control, coordination, and use of various parts of the body. Overemphasizing movements while neglecting feelings leads to the misuse of body parts in tango.

The Fourteenth Pitfall of a Tanguera

Fish is the primary ingredient of a fish dish. Other elements—garlic, onion—may enhance the flavor, but they are not indispensable. A fish dish without garlic or onion is still a fish dish. Without fish, however, it is not.

The same logic applies to tango. Of all the elements that comprise this dance, some define its very identity—without them, it ceases to be tango. Others are peripheral, adding variety but doesn't hurt if they are more or less. We often see tangueras turn their tango into something neither fish nor fowl, because in it the supplementary superseded the primary.

So, what is the primary ingredient of tango? Many beginners assume it's the steps. They are mistaken. Steps are like garlic and onion—useful but secondary. The true essence of tango is the embrace. Without it, tango loses its soul. You are dancing tango if, and only if, you are dancing in a tango embrace, whether you use five steps or fifty.

By "embrace," I do not mean the open dance hold. Tango—often called the dance of love—originated in an intimate, full-body embrace: chest to chest, cheek to cheek, arms wrapped around one another. Lovers do not feign a hug; they touch. A simulated embrace might look similar, but the dancers feel the difference. Stage performers often adopt an open hold to accommodate choreography to please an audience. But social dancers do not tango for that; they dance to experience connection and intimacy, which is why they use the real embrace. This is the foundational distinction between social tango and all show dances, including stage tango. (See Social Tango and Performance Tango.)

Other dissimilarities all stem from this fundamental difference. Unlike other partner dances, where dancers rely on their arms and hands to communicate, tango transmits intention and feeling through the torso—which is itself a highly sensitive organ, more receptive to subtle cues than the arms and hands. By using their torsos to lead and follow, tango dancers can achieve a deeper understanding and greater synchronization.

Tango’s distinct movements are also shaped by the embrace. Since their torsos remain connected in the embrace, tango dancers must rotate their hips to navigate around one another. This technique, known as dissociation, is the bedrock of most tango steps, making tango particularly effective at showcasing the feminine beauty of a woman's pliable body (see Dancing with Hips).

The intimate embrace also makes tango an emotionally-driven dance, emphasizing feelings over movements. Although formalist dancers have made persistent efforts to elevate its visual appeal, the style they created fails to satisfy the deeply rooted yearning for connection, intimacy, and emotional communication. These needs are met only through a genuine embrace.

A young woman once offered a particularly insightful perspective: “From a girl's point of view, I think tango has two layers. The first, and most fundamental, is maintaining a comfortable embrace and letting your partner feel your complete surrender and control over yourself. If you can do that, you can get through a milonga even if you can only dance ballroom styles. The second layer is external—involving pursuing visual beauty, like in other dances such as ballet. Neglecting the first layer and focusing solely on the second layer is not tango. In most cases, if you can integrate some second-layer techniques into a solid first-layer foundation, your tango will already be quite stunning."

Her words strike at the heart of the dance. Consequently, tango becomes a simple and easy dance for her. Although we cannot dance without steps, the essence of tango lies in the embrace. Dancers should not compromise the embrace for the sake of the steps. Instead, they should keep the embrace intimate and comfortable at all times throughout the dance and use the steps to support the embrace, thereby placing the embrace and steps in the correct order.

Unfortunately, in the U.S., cultural discomfort with physical closeness and ideological emphasis on individual autonomy have shaped the way many women approach tango. To avoid touching their partner's body, novice women often adopt an open dance hold instead of the traditional close embrace. They lean back, extend their arms to create distance, press their shoulder against their partner's shoulder, or use their head against their partner's head to avoid chest-to-chest contact, resulting in an embrace that feels awkward and unnatural.

This detachment affects their dance. Instead of swiveling her hips as one must when dancing in a close embrace, women using an open dance hold often turn their entire body instead, breaking the connection and disrupting the flow of the dance. Unlike professional dancers, who can maintain proper technique in an open dance hold during performances, beginners using an open dance hold tend to develop poor habits, such as using arms and hands to help themselves with the movements, dancing without emotional involvement, unable to communicate feelings through direct torso contact, focusing on personal performance and neglecting their partner, and accustoming themselves to many other wrong ways of dancing tango.

For these reasons, I believe tango instruction should begin with the close embrace. Beginners should avoid open-hold techniques designed for performance—until they have built a strong foundation. Otherwise, the bad habits developed early on may become difficult to unlearn. I know women who have danced tango for years, yet their embrace remains rigid and uncomfortable. Such women are like porcelain vases—beautiful to behold but impossible to hold.

In another post, Women's Common Mistakes in Tango, I outlined thirteen common pitfalls of tango women, many of which relate to this issue. But the embrace is so vital, it merits a dedicated discussion. Hence, this fourteenth pitfall.