Tango as culture and dance

A story about European Tango

We should start by looking at tango as both culture and dance – not only as a dance.

Why?

Because it may help explain the difference between the tango we hear about from the 1940s and 50s and the tango we see today.

In 1983, the stage show Tango Argentino put Argentine tango on the international map. For many Europeans, this was their first encounter with tango as a powerful and exciting dance.

But some of those who became fascinated by it wanted to experience tango not only on the stage or in the classroom, but where it came from. During the 1980s and 90s, European dancers travelled to Buenos Aires and encountered an echo of an older tango culture – a culture we can partly glimpse today through interviews with dancers who experienced Buenos Aires in the 1940s and 50s.

They came home with more than new ways of dancing.

They brought back an experience of another way of being together through the dance – and another expression of the dance itself.

And that experience entered a Europe where tango was already developing within a different dance culture: dance schools, teaching, associations, workshops, festivals and competitions.

Tango was not simply moved from one continent to another. It was moved from one culture into another.

Which culture is developing tango?

We often say that tango develops.

Of course it does.

But which culture is developing it – and according to which values?

Can we still call what we dance in Europe Argentine tango if the culture surrounding the dance is no longer the same?

Perhaps Argentine tango tells us where the dance came from. But perhaps what we practice today is increasingly shaped by the culture in which we live.

That does not necessarily make it less valuable.

But it does make it important to ask what was actually transferred, and what changed along the way.

If we want to preserve social tango

If we want to preserve tango as a social dance, we therefore need to understand the culture in which it originally developed.

Not in order to recreate Buenos Aires in Europe.

That is neither possible nor necessarily desirable.

But to understand what was important in that culture – the values, relationships and ways of being together that were part of the dance.

And then ask what makes sense in a Europe shaped by, among other things, association and competition cultures.

I sometimes have the feeling that something is being lost in the dance itself.

Not necessarily because dancers are less skilled, but because the culture in which the dance is learned and practiced has changed.

That is an observation, not a conclusion.

But perhaps it is a reason to look more closely at the relationship between culture and dance.

What is this article about?

My own position is that I have experienced what I think of as social tango, and that it has given me some of my most meaningful experiences through dance.

I have experienced how something can emerge between people that is larger than the individual dance.

Something human. Something meaningful. Sometimes something deeply emotional.

At the same time, I see a tango in which teaching, technique, events and competition play an increasingly important role – and where, since the 1990s, teaching tango has also become a profession and an industry.

The two do not have to be in conflict.

But what happens when a social dance moves from one culture into another?

What can we learn about the culture tango originally grew out of?

What happened when it came to Europe?

And perhaps most importantly:

Can we begin to see the outline of a European culture of social tango?

That is what this article is about.

Buenos Aires — what was the culture?

To understand what happened when tango came to Europe, we first have to look at the culture it came from.

The tango of the 1940s and 50s was not simply a dance that people learned.

It was part of everyday social life.

The old dancers describe milongas as places where people met, recognised each other, watched each other and gradually became part of a community.

You learned to dance, but you also learned how to behave.

You learned how to invite someone to dance. How to enter the floor. How to move among other couples. How to relate to the music. How to take care of the person you were dancing with.

Much of this was not written down.

It was learned by being there.

The dance itself was also shaped by this environment. The embrace, the small movements, the rhythm, the improvisation and the constant awareness of the other couples were not separate techniques. They were part of a way of being together.

And perhaps that is important.

The dance was not simply performed inside the culture.

The culture was helping to shape the dance.

The old interviews give us glimpses of this world. They do not give us a complete picture of Buenos Aires, and they certainly do not tell us exactly how tango should be danced today.

But they show us something that is easy to miss when we look only at the dance:

Tango was a social practice.

Read more about tango of the 1940s and 50s in Buenos Aires here (opens in a new window): Tango in Buenos Aires 

Tango arrives in Europe

When Argentine tango arrived in Europe, it entered a very different environment.

The success of Tango Argentino in 1983 was an important turning point. The stage show brought Argentine tango to a huge international audience and made the dance visible in a way that few Europeans had experienced before.

For many, tango first arrived as a performance.

Then came the teachers, the classes, the workshops and the schools.

European dancers began travelling to Buenos Aires. Some wanted to learn more, but some also wanted to find the tango behind the stage.

They met older dancers. They danced in milongas. They experienced close embrace, navigation, musicality and social codes.

And they came home with stories.

They talked not only about how tango was danced, but about how people were together when they danced.

This created an interesting situation.

Tango came to Europe through the stage, through Argentine dancers and teachers, and through Europeans travelling to Buenos Aires. But once it arrived, it began to take shape within a different culture.

Europe already had strong traditions of organised dance.

There were associations, dance schools, teachers, classes, workshops, festivals and competitions.

These structures made tango accessible to many more people.

But they also changed the context in which the dance was learned.

Tango was becoming something that could be taught, organised and developed as a profession.

And at the same time, something else was beginning to grow.

A desire to dance not only more tango, but with particular people, in particular social environments.

Two things begin to emerge

Perhaps this is where two different directions in European tango slowly become visible.

One direction is built around learning and development.

• More teachers
• More technique
• More workshops
• More festivals
• More ways of teaching and explaining the dance

Tango becomes something you can work on.

Something you can improve.

Something you can perform.

And eventually something you can make a living from.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this.

Without teachers, schools and organisers, Argentine tango would probably not have reached anything like the European community it has today.

But alongside this development, another desire was growing.

A desire for the social experience itself.

To dance with people you knew. To meet dancers from other places. To dance close. To listen to traditional music. To share a floor where the people around you mattered.

This eventually became visible in marathons and encuentros.

These two directions are not opposites.

A dancer can love technique and love social tango.

A teacher can create a community.

An encuentro can be professionally organised.

And a local milonga can become competitive or impersonal.

So this is not about dividing tango into two camps.

It is about recognising that different values can shape the same dance.

And perhaps the interesting question is not which one is right.

It is what happens to the dance when one set of values becomes more dominant than another.

From local community to travelling community

Something else happened in Europe that could never have happened in quite the same way in Buenos Aires.

The tango community became international.

People began travelling for tango. Places such as El Corte in Nijmegen became important meeting points for dancers from different countries. Over time, festivals, marathons and camps created events where people travelled long distances simply to spend days dancing together.

This changed the geography of the tango community.

In Buenos Aires, a milonga could be part of a local social world. In Europe, the people you wanted to dance with might live in another country.

The community was no longer simply the people who lived around the corner. It could be people living hundreds or thousands of kilometres apart who met several times a year.

The different types of events that developed in Europe became expressions of this travelling tango community. But encuentros introduced something more specific.

They did not simply bring dancers together.

They made the social culture itself part of the event.

Close embrace, traditional music, small movements, navigation and cabeceo were not only ways of dancing. They became part of what was expected from everyone taking part. Limited numbers helped create a particular social environment, while the absence of teaching, performances and competition left more time and space for dancing and for being together.

The aim was not simply to organise a good tango event.

It was to create the conditions for a particular kind of social tango to happen.

But something new was also happening, because this was not Buenos Aires.

It was a European way of bringing together a travelling tango community and creating a social environment around it.

Perhaps this is why encuentros can feel so intense.

For a few days, people who normally live far apart inhabit the same social world. They are not simply attending an event. They are helping create the culture that makes the event what it is.

Read about the history of tango in Europe after the 1970's (opens in a new window): A European Tango History

What was actually transferred?

So what did the European dancers actually bring home from Buenos Aires?

It is tempting to say that they brought back steps, technique, embrace and musicality. But perhaps that is only part of the story. They also brought back ideas about how the dance could feel, and about the relationship between the individual dancer, the partner and the room.

The close embrace is not simply a position of the body. It can create a different kind of attention between two people. Small movements are not necessarily a lack of ambition. They can make space for rhythm, music and connection.

Navigation is not simply a way of avoiding collisions. It can become an awareness of the other dancers around you. And cabeceo is not just a technique for choosing a partner. It changes the way an invitation happens and makes the decision to dance part of the social interaction.

The music is part of this as well. Traditional tango music is not merely a repertoire of songs to dance to. It can become a common language shared by everyone in the room.

This is where the social dimension becomes difficult to describe.

There are rules and codes, but the codes are not the whole culture. You can follow every rule and still miss something.

The hardest part to transmit may be the quality of the connection itself – the connection between two dancers, the connection with the music, and the connection with the couples around you.

This may be what some dancers discovered when they travelled to Buenos Aires. They were not simply discovering a different technique or a more traditional way of dancing. They were discovering a different relationship between the individual, the partner and the room.

And when they brought that experience back to Europe, it had to find a place within a different culture.

Something was preserved.

Something was changed.

And something new began to grow.

What is European social tango?

Perhaps we should therefore stop looking for one European version of Argentine tango.

There may not be one.

There are local scenes, associations, independent milongas, marathons, encuentros, festivals and communities. They have different histories and different values. Some may be very close to the social culture described by the old dancers from Buenos Aires. Others may be shaped more strongly by European traditions of teaching, organisation, performance or competition.

But perhaps we can still begin to see the outline of something.

A culture where the dance is not only about what the individual dancer can do, but also about the partner, the people around you and the atmosphere we create together. Where music is something we share, and where participation can be more important than performance.

And perhaps this is where the difference between individual and relational autonomy becomes interesting.

In much of modern European culture, autonomy means being free to find your own way. That is also important in tango. We want to develop our own expression, find our own musicality and discover our own way of moving.

But social tango adds another dimension.

My freedom affects you. Your freedom affects me. The way I dance affects my partner, the couples around us and the atmosphere of the room.

So perhaps social tango is not about giving up individual freedom. Perhaps it is about learning a different kind of freedom: the freedom to express yourself while remaining deeply aware of your relationship with others.

And that brings us back to culture.

A culture cannot simply be transferred through rules. It cannot be preserved by copying the past. And it cannot be learned only in a classroom.

It has to be experienced, lived and shared.

And perhaps it also needs people who are willing to guide others into it. Not by telling them exactly what tango should look like, but by helping them understanding how to participate in the culture.

Read a comparison between competitions in 1940s and 1950's compared to Mundial de Baile de Tango (opens in a new window): Tango and Competition

What does it mean to preserve it?

Perhaps this is also where the real challenge lies.

Culture is not easy to work with.

It requires a willingness to participate, to listen, to adapt and sometimes to put aside the idea that our own way of doing things is the starting point.

It also requires courage. Because culture cannot simply be reduced to rules. Much of it has to be experienced, observed and gradually understood.

And perhaps this is where guidance becomes important.

Not someone telling us exactly how we should dance, but someone helping us to understand how to participate in the culture.

There is a tension here between individual autonomy and relational autonomy.

We want to find our own expression. We want freedom to dance in our own way.

But in a social dance, our freedom also exists in relation to other people. What we do affects the person we dance with, the couples around us and the atmosphere we create together.

Perhaps autonomy in social tango is therefore not simply about being free to do what I want.

It is also about learning how to be free within a relationship with others.

That is not something that can be taught through rules alone.

It has to be lived.

First learn how to participate in the culture. Then find your own way of expressing yourself within it.

We cannot preserve a living tango culture by trying to freeze it in time.

We can only create the conditions in which people can experience it, participate in it, and pass something of it on.

And perhaps that is the real challenge for social tango in Europe.

Here is a guide - a framework - for working with this culture (opens in a new windows):  A Cultural Framework for Social Tango

Read about this article (opens in a new window): About the article