Tango y Té

NOT a Scary Image

In order for Tango to become more popular, it is helpful to promote a good image of what tango IS. I realized this recently, when someone, an avid social dancer, professed to me that, before starting to learn Tango, she would have to find "the perfect partner," someone that she could "trust with her life" (paraphrasing liberally).

Some people pick up an image of tango as two people intertwining and leaning on each other, seducing themselves... STOP!

I concede that two different people can look at the same thing and come away with different concepts of it. But concepts are important guides for understanding what something is. My concept of tango is the following: it is an esthetic based on the full development of the individual's posture, balance, and his own individual movement. This means that, if a couple is dancing, and one focuses on the man, or the woman in isolation from his partner, one sees a fully developed (proud) _walking_. And the beauty of tango, as a partner dance, is that this is the only way that a couple have the experience of dancing AS ONE..