Argentine Tango: origins 

Argentine Tango is today a musical genre and a dance which represents charm and elegance.

At its dawns it was different: it was a sad and melancholic genre since it was the poor and immigrant argentinians’s dance, who had been forced to leave their own home.

The term Tango spread around the end of the 1800s in the suburbs of the city of Rio de la Plata, between Argentina and Uruguay. Thanks to the union of two different worlds (on one side the countryside and on the other one the rapidly growing city) it was possible to connect the nomad peasants and the indigenes gauchos to the European emigrant.  

They lived together in run-down apartments built from scratch, called “Orilla”, where this mixture of traditions and sounds were born. 

We are talking about European citizens because between the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s there were millions of families of Italians, French, Hungarians, Jews and Slavs migrated to Argentina.

The Tango that was born in this period is a hybrid of other popular music and dance as, for example: 

Milonga: a Spanish dance imported from sailors that spreads and transforms immediately. This dance takes both the typical trend of a simple walk and, at the same time,the unusual for a dance in which the man advances and the woman backs away. 

Candombe: a dance in which couples dance apart, but very close, indulging in sensual pelvic movements. 

For its sensuality and because of being considered lustful, it has been rejected by middle and upper classes. Songs sang sadness, happiness and the crowd’s joy, they sang nostalgia and homesickness, but even hope and ambitions, loneliness, but even brotherhood in adversity. 

Argentine Tango dance 

The Argentine Tango is a dance characterized by elegance and professionalism, but at the same time is based on improvisation. It’s a dance that requires technique, rhythm, but overall harmony between two bodies that get together in order to interpret the music. No other dance achieves the level of communication, emotion and energy between two bodies as well as in Tango.

Even though basic steps exist, the Argentine Tango is, as we previously said, an improvisation dance, there is no preset choreo, but it’s all up to dancers’ creativity to establish a personal and unique dialogue during the dance and to get involved by music.

The typical position of the dance consists of a frontal hug in which the man with his right hand embraces the partner and with the left one holds her hand, creating a certain distance between the man’s left shoulder and the woman’s right one.  

Only a few and simple rules limit the improvisation of the couple: the man shows a choreo and expresses it with his body. The woman follows him and gives her own interpretation. 

Basically is the man who asks his partner in a purely body language to move.

However, for didactical reasons, they have introduced steps sequences with preset Argentine Tango steps. 

The Argentine Tango has undergone so many influences over the years that the way of dancing of a single person or a group can never be taken as a reference. 

This dance is characterized by three musical rhythms which correspond to three different types of dance: Tango, Milonga and The Viennese Tango. It’s a 4/4 or 2/4, tempo as for Milonga. The Viennese tango, instead, being a Valzer, is ¾. 

How do you move in a Milonga dance?

Milonga, besides being a type of music, it’s even the room where you dance the Argentine Tango. 

The progress of the dance inside the hall takes place counterclockwise, starting from the edge of the floor. 

In a crowded Milonga, the room on the tha floor is narrow and, since Tango is improvisation, it’s not easy to predict how couples will interpret the piece of music they are listening to.  

Consequently, not being able to predict what happen behind, the leader (who while leading has the responsibility of the couple) must avoid taking steps in the wrong direction, that is, in the opposite direction of the hall turning way, or any backwards step should be made towards the middle of the dance floor.     

As a rule, the more experienced dancers should occupy the outermost part of the dance floor, which allows a greater speed.

Another fundamental directive in Tango is that you can’t speak while dancing: silence must be respected on the dance floor and during the pause in between.

Tango requires concentration and listening to both the partner and music. 

In Milonga there are other occasions where to converse.

Figures and steps of the Argentine Tango 

Improvisation doesn’t mean that the leader makes-up the steps, but only that he must have the ability to interlock the Tango moves always differently.

The man leads using his own body axis, the woman follows him with a little contraposition to create and keep the connection.

For didactical needs, but above all for a traditional and strict method of teaching, steps sequences and preset figures have been adopted.

Tango figures can be divided in:  

• Progressive or linear: they allow to continue along the perimeter of the dance floor following the turning way of the room. 
• Still: they take place in a limited space without advancement .
• for shows: they involve a little movement of the couple, not in accordance with the turning way of the dance floor. 

 Others figures are:

• Caminada: it’s the basis of Tango and despite its apparent simplicity is the most difficult figure to perform.
• Salida basica: it’s a didactical sequence of 8 basic steps.
•  Sentada: it’s a figure performed in shows in which the follower makes a sort of “seat”on the partner’s leg, elongated and stretched outwards.
• Volcada: it’s a figure characterized by a very close hug in which the couple is close with their shoulders but far away with their feet. 
• Cadenza: stay still and feel the rhythm.
• Molinete: it’s the typical figure of The Salon Tango, in which the leader and the follower walk around the axis of the couple.

What are the clothes of the Argentine Tango?

Which are the shoes of the Argentine Tango? Which is the skirt of the Argentine Tango? More in general: what’s the outfit of the Argentine Tango?

The outfit counts when we talk about dance, in particular when we refer to Tango, a discipline that is a synonym of strictness and passion at the same time.   

Tango, as for other kinds of dance, requires a specific outfit to bring out potentiality and expressiveness of movement. Despite the changes over the time, for their first Tango lesson women can’t help but wear a close-fitting leotard, preferably in black, a dress or a skirt with a split, black shoes with strap, a heel of a couple of centimeters, and a red accessory, a shawl for example. 

For men it is much easier as the choice is limited: they need to wear black trousers, a white shirt and a rather tied simple shoe, with a leather sole or a buffalo one: the sole must allow slipping (no rubber).