Human Connection Through the Tango

A few years ago, Maria and I took a few tango lessons from an Argentine from Buenos Aires. She taught the traditional Argentinian tango of the Buenos Aires tango halls (milongas), not the ballroom version taught at Arthur Murray. (That’s another story from our courtship days.)

In American ballroom, at least for this amateur, one leads with an intention of movement communicated through the shoulders, arms, and hands. In Argentinian tango, one leads with intention communicated through the whole torso, upon which the woman pretty much leans with her upper body and side of the head. With American ballroom, we can imagine the dance still being practiced with chaperone-approved distance between the partners. Not so with Argentinian tango.

Argentinian tango also encourages a lot more flexibility of timing in the steps than what I learned in ballroom. In ballroom, we were taught what foot to move to what position and to what beat in the music. The most important part of the tango is the walk, whose cadence can vary with the artistic inclinations of the leader. A desire to savor the moment might be reflected by a slow walk, or even a pause, while maybe an expression of joy is communicated with quick steps. The communication through the steps’ cadence becomes a conversation.

Of course, ballroom dancing offers a lot of possibilities for expression and communication. Yet I think the Argentinian tango, with its necessary close body contact and the high degree of freedom in the steps, inherently requires deeper expression and communication right from the very start. Many perceive the tango purely as a sexy dance filled with near-full body contact and sultry movements. After our Argentinian tango lessons, I came to see the tango as an intimate dance that transcends sexiness. It really is about human connection and expression.

Astor Piazzolla wrote the two tangos presented on our D’León Piano Quintet concert on March 27 (Prescott) and April 1 (Surprise). He was an Argentinian composer who performed in the Buenos Aires milongas and formally studied composition with some of the era’s great teachers. His compositions incorporated elements of jazz and classical and revolutionized the traditional tango. Oblivion, one of the tangos being performed by the trio of James D’León (piano), Grace Nakano (violin), and Ruthie Wilde (cello), is previewed below in its original, slow form for the movie Enrico IV (Henry IV). In this recording, Astor Piazzolla plays his instrument the bandoneon, a type of concertina. I hope you can imagine the intimate human connection of the Argentinian tango when you listen to Piazzolla’s works.

– Henry Flurry, Executive Director