[Tango-L] Gender Roles in Tango

[Tango Society of Central Illinois]

In tango, the man leads and the woman follows. The man embraces the
woman and in that embrace and his smooth but rhythmic movements around
the floor he provides a peaceful, protective, and enjoyable engagement
in dance. The woman may follow, but she is not passive. She gives her
energy, her passion, her emotion to the man in the dance. She has the
opportunity for self expression in decorating her dance with
adornments, as long as this does not interfere with the dance the man
is creating for her. Tango is a dance between a leading man and a
following woman, and the interplay of physical and emotional
connection that transpires during the dance.

At least that is tango argentino, as danced socially in the milongas
of Buenos Aires. It reflects the gender roles in Argentine society,
particularly historically, but to a large degree today as well. There
are a few gender alternative milongas in Buenos Aires, such as La
Marshall, which are usually advertised as gay milongas, whereas in
fact they are really better described as 'gay friendly' or 'gender
alternative' because not all people who attend are homosexual and
indeed it is in these milongas where gender roles are flexible.
However, there are at any time 2 or 3 of these milongas per week, and
their attendance is low compared to the over 100 milongas per week
where one will not see gender alternative dancing.

Promoting traditional gender roles as part of the culture of tango
outside Argentine often seem heretical to our societal values of
gender equality. However, to change gender roles is to change tango so
that it is no longer Argentine. If women lead and men follow, or women
dance with women and men with men, this is not Argentine tango. It is
another kind of tango. People often mention that men danced with men
to practice tango in Buenos Aires, but this existed in the past (I
believe it was gone by the 40s) because women had limited freedom to
travel unchaperoned. Today it is rare in Buenos Aires, and certainly
not the norm.

When a man and woman engage in tango, they may step outside of gender
roles they otherwise practice. Women have achieved considerable power
in the workplace and men have become more involving in work
traditionally performed by women, such as child care, household
management, nursing, etc. These advances in society are enlightened
perspectives on gender roles whose time has long been overdue.
However, when entering into tango, a man and woman step outside their
daily roles and engage in a dance where the man is masculine and the
woman is feminine, as traditionally defined. There is nothing wrong
with this. It is stepping into the tango world, the tango culture. It
does not define who you are outside the milonga.

In free societies people do not have to maintain the gender roles of
tango practiced in Argentina. However, in doing so they are ignoring
an essential part of tango argentino. They are not dancing tango
argentino; they are dancing another dance.

I ask people to think about calling their dance Argentine tango if
they are not practicing it as it is danced in Buenos Aires. This is
misleading.

Ron