Tango and Equality

Tango was born among society’s most marginalized, and their legacy still lingers in the dance. At its roots, tango is a lowbrow art—raw, unpolished, sensual, soul-searching, and deeply human. It reaches into the heart of our shared condition, offering solace and recognition. Beatriz Dujovne likens dancing tango to the experience of childbirth: ecstasy intertwined with struggle, agony, sweat, pain, and joy. Whether maid or queen, she writes, all women share the same birthing experience—just as all people, in tango, share something deeply universal. “Tango is all of us in life’s common places,” she says. “It is who we are at the core, behind our social masks (see The Tango in All of Us).”

This shared humanity offers profound spiritual support, especially to those most vulnerable. In tango, they find liberation and dignity—because here, everyone stands on the same footing. All dancers are created equal, whether taxi drivers or CEOs, servant girls or first daughters. In the embrace of tango, you connect not with someone’s status, but with their essence—as a fellow human being. It’s where Cinderella meets Prince Charming and falls in love. “It melts down differences by zeroing in on our commonality,” Dujovne writes. “It feeds our hunger for being on a level with others.”

Equality has been a foundational ideal in the United States since its inception. When early immigrants suffered injustice under the English crown, they demanded equal treatment. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These words, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, laid the constitutional foundation for the nation.

Yet more than 240 years later, the gap between rich and poor has only widened. Power tends to corrupt. As subjects of tyranny, we championed equality; but once in power, we began perpetuating the very injustices we once opposed. Human nature is a balance of self-interest and compassion. When these forces are held in equilibrium, societies thrive. But when self-interest dominates—when we elevate individualism and personal liberty to justify selfishness, when we reinterpret founding principles to favor the rich over the poor, the powerful over the powerless, when monopolies flourish under the guise of free enterprise, when money buys legislation, when the law becomes a tool of the privileged, when freedom is exploited to promote arms sales, violence, doping, exploitation, or cultural decay, when personal liberty is used to undermine traditional family values, when divorce, promiscuity, single parent family and same sex marriage become the accepted norms and are sponsored by the state, we get ourselves further and further into the mess we are in now.

Ours is the lesson of freedom lost for the vast majority of people when we only seek personal freedom (see The Freedom in Tango). Only a few can "win" in a system where equality and justice are not prerequisites for all other rights. True freedom means freedom from being violated, not freedom to violate. It is the right to act within laws that protect the common good—not the license to harm others. It is a self-restrained liberty grounded in the belief that all human beings are created equal—not the right to do whatever one pleases at the cost of others. It is freedom from poverty and fear—not freedom to prey and shoot.

In short, a truly free society is an equal society—one built on compassion and cooperation, not competition and self-interest. It is a society where individual rights do not override the collective well-being, where no one's freedom is deprived by another's freedom, and where brotherly love, coexistence, empathy, and sharing are shared values. It is a society consistent with the spirit of tango.

The following video captures these themes beautifully. It’s artfully directed, thought-provoking, and laced with humor—from the crowd’s reactions to the sparkle in their eyes, to the old woman being carried away. The performance is superb, with exquisite musicality and choreography. I particularly admire the ending, where the quiet dignity of the underdog triumphs over the arrogance of the elite. Watch it in full screen for the best experience.