Intro About to Argentine Tango

Tango is a dance of communication and connection. Tango was born in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Africans gave it’s underlying rhythms, european immigrants added their musical instruments and their experience to create “ el tango” Argentine’s cultural gift to the rest of the world.

Tango has three main rhythms, Milonga, an early pre-cursor to the tango, tango, and waltz which shows a more upper class influence. Candombes are also heard frequently and hark back to even earlier time than the milonga. Tango is a live dance, it continues to evolve and you will also hear a recent modern Tango.

In Tango, there are no set steps and no requirement to be in a particular formation or line. It differed from all previous European dance forms in that it gave dancers the ability to stop, to pause, and to use any part of the room available.

There is not just one way to dance Tango, in reality every dancer dances differently. Every dancer is a different experience. You will see today various forms of Tango, salon, apilado, and tango nuevo. Good dancers weave in and out of these styles in response to the music, to the dance floor and to their partner.

What you see today is not a choreography, it is social style, improvised Tango with a little flair here and there. As an improvised dance, the same song by the same partners, will never be danced again in the same way. Ladies most of the leg movements that you see are in fact led by the man with some adornos or embellishments added by the women.

Tango Tango is a social dance. You can of course dance it in Buenos Aires, you can dance it in Montevideo, in Paris, in New York, Moscow, in all the major cities of the world. You can dance it in Austin Texas, Providence, Rhode Island, or in Monterey, Fresno, Ventura. You can dance of course here in San Diego, almost every night of the week and sometimes select from 2 or 3 different places to dance. You can dance in El Cajon, Encinitas, North Park, Mission Valley.

It is not a dance with a simple step, and you can not learn simply by doing it. Tango is two people moving as one and this requires that you learn how to communicate and connect to one another. The more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn.

The good thing is that you do not need a partner to dance Tango, it is after all a social dance! There are others there waiting to dance with you. If you can walk and know the difference between your left and right foot, then you can learn to tango.