Tango High and Low

Carlos Gavito, a kind of metonym for tango, once said that tango is what happens between the steps. “El tango está entre paso y paso, allí donde se escuchan los silencios y cantan las musas.” (“Tango is found between the steps, there where silences are heard and the muses sing.”) It’s a surprising comment from a man like Gavito, whose life was filled with dance steps of one kind or another: rock, swing, folk, jazz, even tap. Was he implying that the substance of tango is found not where we would most expect it, in the delineation of our movements, but somewhere else? For all its seeming vaguery, the idea highlights something essential about the dance. And the message is simple. Seen from this perspective, our steps, whatever they may be, wherever they may lead, are no more than a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. Although tango is a dance of improvisation with no fixed choreography, it is still a deliberative act, something we enact on the dance floor.

Yet, with time I have come to realize that it is less an intentional act than something that “happens.” How we approach the dance, our expectations and beliefs, our understanding of its potential, are as important as our choreographic abilities, arguably more important. We could say that tango finds us rather than being something that is directed or willed by us. It is, first and foremost, an attitude—not so much what we do but what we allow to transpire, about what we bring to the dance and our openness to possibility. And the place where the dance unfolds, where we allow it to happen, is—if Gavito is correct—the liminal space between our steps, where there is an expectation of change and fulfillment. This between-ness is, at least potentially, a moment of stillness and intense listening—to the music, to our partner—and it is in this interval of silence that communication takes place. It is then that we speak with one voice, one heart.

Tango has been called many things over the years—a theatrical spectacle, a signifier of passion, a louche pastime, an artifact of a bygone age. These are emotional and symbolic touchstones that are often hard to square with the reality of a social dance but they still contribute to its popular appreciation and acceptance. In practice, tango is none of those things. It is both simpler and more complex, guided far more by personality and emotional maturity than choreographic prowess. Yet why is it that critical features of the dance seem to be elided when it is taught and often forgotten as we progress as dancers? The desire to introduce greater and greater complexity into the dance often leads to overlooking all the things that make it so profound and that have allowed it to endure for over a century. Those features are what Gavito was alluding to in his oracular comment.

Our conception of tango seems to swing wildly between the poetic reading given to it by Gavito, the consummate showman, whose performances are a battleground of desire, an arena of conquest and surrender, and the mundanity of social dancing: surface and depth. Far too often we seem to skate tentatively upon the surface of the dance, never visiting its still depths, much less the murky, unexplored bottom. We are dazzled by complexity. Here, it is worth remembering what an older generation of dancers tried to tell us—that we focus on connection, listen carefully to the music, make do with simplicity, learn to introduce stillness into our dance. To the uninitiated, videos of social dancing in traditional venues often seem static, not at all what they have come to expect from the glamorous images of stage tango. From the outside it appears that not much is happening, there is little to draw our attention. What such images do convey is an absence of display, a refusal to cater to an audience. Instead there is a turning inward, with the couple rotating about the central core of the music, the supporting structure around which the dance revolves.

If this is so, flashy showmanship and displays of proficiency will always be inimical to tango as a communicative act. (With respect to Gavito, the great irony is that most of us know him through videos of him performing, most often with Marcela Duran or Maria Plazaola. How many of us know him as a social dancer? In spite of the explosive drama of his performances, he always claimed to be a “milonguero,” with all that implies, and had great respect for the generation of social dancers who came before him.) Performance, by its very nature, is directed toward an audience. It is defined by its ability to convey a sense of skill, technique, and mastery. Although performers are in dialog with one another, their interactions, their energy is directed toward a viewer. What they do is meant to be seen, must be seen.

What then of this space—entre paso y paso? What happens there? We can think of it as a transition, a state somewhere between departure and arrival, one that leads from a point of expectation to one of realization, and that is continuously reenacted until the music ends. The bardo of tango. This brief moment between is one of uncertainty, even of loss, for we move from a position of knowledge and stability toward an unknown, toward a place of temporary stasis, which then becomes the firm ground from which we prepare for a new departure toward a new unknown. The process is one of tension and release, of delayed movement and cathartic, if temporary, quietus. The move from one point to another is also a form of revelation, and we can think of the interval between as an unfolding of potential. In later life, Gavito placed great emphasis on this and the importance of the pause, to the extent that he became known as the “motionless” dancer. Yet, as he was careful to point out, a pause is not a void. It is not empty or devoid of music or musicality. It is not waiting for something to happen, it is a happening, an interpretive act in itself, and a moment filled with expressiveness. Tango is a game of approach and withdrawal within the confines of the embrace. And it is the silent, anticipatory moment between our steps that creates its complexity as well as its beauty.

At the end of Love’s Work by Gillian Rose, there is an unattributed (and incorrectly cited) quote from the French. In the corrected version it reads:

L’amour se révèle en se retirant.

Rose goes on to write:

If the Lover retires too far, the light of love is extinguished and the Beloved dies; if the Lover approaches too near the Beloved, she is effaced by the love and ceases to have an independent existence. The Lovers must leave a distance, a boundary, for love: then they approach and retire so that love may suspire.