Argentine Tango dancing by Marcelo Solis and Mimi at Pulgas Water Temple, San Francisco, California.

Unveiling the Art of Argentine Tango: Qualities, Etiquette, and the Essence of a Perfect Dance

The following are my answers to a questionnaire from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology of Palo Alto, made in 2011.

1. What qualities characterize a good Argentine tango leader during the dance? MS: Secure, precise, smooth, gentle, patient, adaptable, intelligent, elegant, musical, respectful, protective, spontaneous, unintentional, efficient and aware.

2. What qualities characterize a poor Argentine tango leader during the dance? MS: Insecure, imprecise, rough, impatient, rigid and single-minded, silly, ignorant of the music, disrespectful, intentional, calculative and unaware.

3. What behaviors and attitudes are demonstrated by a good Argentine tango leader? MS: Asking to dance according to the etiquette, entering the floor, acknowledging others, following the line of dance, listening to the music, and knowing it well (knowing the song, the orchestra, the singer, the year of the recording, etc.), letting the dance happen rather than trying moves and steps, not talking or chatting while dancing, talking nicely between songs, at the end of the tanda accompanying his partner back to her place, not insisting on a second tanda.

4. What behaviors and attitudes are demonstrated by a poor Argentine tango leader? MS: Asking to dance in an inappropriate way, making the other person feel obliged, entering the dance floor at any time and place without acknowledging other dancers, not following the line of dance, not listening to music, not caring to learn about it, trying to do moves and steps, talking while dancing, being mean to his partner, correcting or teaching her, leaving his partner on the dance floor at the end of the tanda or insisting on another tanda.

5. What behaviors and attitudes are demonstrated by a good Argentine tango follower? MS: Listening to music, knowing it well, waiting for the lead but dancing (not just following), being present at the moment like someone who takes a challenge, and being patient.

6. What behaviors and attitudes are demonstrated by a poor Argentine tango follower? MS: Not caring about music, moving by herself without waiting for the lead or just plain following without any life in the moves, being absent-minded (for example, thinking about the next leader she wants to dance with), impatient, asking you to dance or making you feel obliged to dance with her.

7. What qualities characterize a good Argentine tango follower? MS: She likes the music and knows it well; she is elegant, natural, and spontaneous.

8. What qualities characterize a poor Argentine tango follower? MS: Does not care about music, is exaggerated and calculative.

9. By what criteria do you judge a good dance? In other words, how do you know when you have experienced a good dance? MS: A good dance is when everything happens without any intention.

10. How do you know when you have had a bad dance? MS: I never had a bad dance. If it is not good, I know it beforehand, so I pass.

11. As a teacher who has many opportunities to observe couples, what do you look for—or what do you see—in a good dance? MS: No intention.

12. What do you see in a bad dance? MS: The dancers try too hard.

Learn to dance Argentine Tango and make your life a work of art.

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Presence

The physical presence of our partner, here and now, is an invitation that can either be accepted or refused, but is hard to postpone.

Love is to demand improvement from each other.

Let’s do what we consider to be the best, in every moment, and do it in the most efficient way.

Let’s free ourselves from the actitudes which enclosed our bodies in a shell of prejudice, conformity and cowardice, a shell which made our body redundant.

Own it, care for it, use it, dance with it.

If we are not our body, it is at least a part of our world which remains present to us at all times.

Contemplate the continuity with ourselves, our body and the world with the other people in it.

Let’s be inspired to be productive, selecting creativity rather than inertia or anger.

Words are an indispensable tool to determine our relationships to objects, both in the case of our interactions with things and in the interactions between people in relation to things (for instance: our belongings).

However, regarding interpersonal relationships, the objective word may be useless.

Challenge, creativity and embrace make most words superfluous.

Dance is a manifestation of our essential freedom of being, making existence beautiful.

Dancing with Lola at milonga Parakultural, Salon Canning, Buenos Aires.

Walking is at the root of our existence

Our head is placed in an upright position, allowing for the development of powerful vision and an extraordinary brain; our arms and hands free from the task of locomotion, set to create new things and reshape the world.

Looking at your partner, making eye contact, is a very effective way to connect.

You walk towards your partner, already listening to the cadence of Tango music, which paces your steps.

Then, you offer your hand, full of sensitivity and dexterity. You embrace your partner: a stream of emotions flow.

You are dancing Tango.

Learn to dance Argentine Tango. Make your life a work of Art.

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How to Tango

1– Let Tango call you, seduce you, charm you, bewitch you.

“Tango you are an enchanter
of those who listen to your sounds.
Tango you attract hearts,
with your sweet songs
and your bandoneons.”

Listen to “Tango Brujo” by Juan D’Arienzo y su Orquesta Típica with Héctor Mauré in vocals (1943).

2– Tango is embodied. You can see it. It is that person or that couple dancing, which lets you know -intuitively, but nevertheless as undoubtedly real to you as objective empirical knowledge- what Tango is.
You want to Tango because you want to be different from yourself. You know that you have not fully expressed all your capabilities. You have been exhausting yourself in many cul de sacs of life, never reaching a sense of self-approval with your achievements, never being satisfied with the recognition you receive from others: your boss, your colleagues, your friends or family.
When you see Tango, you can see it, you get a strong sensation of knowing what you could be.
You realize that it is not anything on the surface. It is in the deepest knots of your web of existence that Tango has to be rooted.
You must learn Tango from whom presented it to you. You must ask to that person or that couple who made you become electrified, amazed you and made you feel that you must dance Tango, to teach you, or to recommend to you someone from whom you need to learn it. Tango is not a commodity. You cannot get Tango like gas from a gas station. You do not look for an advertisement for tango lessons and go to the one that is closest to your home, the most convenient or the cheapest.

Néstor La Vitola & Mónica Paz dancing at Cachirulo milonga, October 2007.

3– Tango defies you, challenges you, faces you, shouts at you, demands from you, puts you through pain. Take it all. Be ready to feel uncomfortable, to have pointed out to you what you do not like about yourself and maybe always tried to ignore and hide. It will all float to the surface of Tango and you will need to deal with it face to face. Continue reading at Medium.com.

Marcelo-Solis-Argentine Tango dance classes for beginners, intermediate and advanced level. Argentine Tango dance Private lessons. one to one Argentine dance lessons. Argentine Tango dance lessons for couples. Argentine Tango Milongas and workshops.

Why Tango?

This article continues a previous article.

I do not want to idealize the “natural man”, but our civilization took away the graceful walk of an elegant hunter-gatherer, leaving us instead the limping of a wounded beast.

Is it too late for this realization?

At the individual level, aging poses a burden on us, making it more difficult, as time passes, to reconnect to our body, and with it, to the sensible aspects of our reality: shapes, colors, textures, smells, sensations, emotions, our sweat and that of others.

Our civilization, our education, train us, preferably, to be able to infer and deduce rather than perceive.

Still, perceiving is indispensable to our survival. But to the organization of our “modernized” societies it matters less that we develop good taste than that we are capable of accurate accounting.