What Is Tango?

               I am in a hotel room and it is raining. I remember a young lady with whom I had danced many times. She had dedicated herself to mastering tango before she was thirty and could execute molinete with perfection. Her boleos needed work but she acquired the skill in short time because she was a passionate student.

               I encountered her once after I had attended a workshop on musicality where we worked on dancing to the phrase. She asked what that was and I tried unsuccessfully to explain. She said she understood but I knew she didn’t; she just wanted to work on her molinete.

               I couldn’t explain it to her then but I think I could today after five more years under my belt.
               A phrase is eight beats. To dance to the phrase means executing a set of movements beginning on the first beat of the phrase and completing it on the eighth. Phrases can be strung together and a set of movements can finish at the end of the second phrase instead of the first.

               In this way, an entire song can be divided up into sets of phrases. This is one of the metrics judges use to rate a performance. It is, I believe, just one of the differences in how Argentines dance tango and how the rest of us do it.

               But dancing tango is more than just metrics and the perfect physical execution of a step. It is about machismo and femininity; it is about chemistry, attraction and heartache; it is about being human.

               A man needs to express himself in this dance. He needs to say, “I want you.”

               It is perfectly okay for his partner to respond, “Of course you do. Look at me.”

               This kind of exchange is frowned upon in our professional worlds and we repress our desire to express ourselves. Emotions buildup behind a dam of our own construction and we find ourselves looking for a release. Tango gives us that outlet.

               I’ve heard many Argentine instructors convey this facet of the dance but I think it gets lost in the translation and in our desire to acquire new moves and improve our molinete.

               Sometimes I get to the point where I feel like saying, “I can’t take it anymore; I must have you.”

               I am almost sure but not 100% certain that I’ve heard my partner reply more than a few times, “Yes, you can have me. I am all yours. I surrender.”

               The dialog never goes further than this and it is communicated entirely through the dance, never with words. The song ends and we part. At the end of the night I go back to my hotel and awake to a rainy day and the memory of a young lady working on the perfect molinete.

               That is what tango is.

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