Tango and Gender Equality

Some people think that the traditional tango danced in close embrace is politically incorrect, and the open-embrace tango of Europe and North America is the distilled and sanitized version of tango that meets modern requirements. A book I read recently expressed the following opinion:

“In Europe, the idea seems to be that harmony in dance is arrived at by mutual consent and that men and women are equal partners. I get the distinct impression, however, that even today, in Buenos Aires, the idea is that the man is in complete control; every action has its lead and the progress of the dance is a series of well-established consequences… A recent article from a tango web site in Argentina touched on the relationship between the man and the woman. It used the phrase ‘The woman’s attitude of surrender’… I am not at all sure this notion would find much acceptability with the women I dance with. I can see how it might be interesting to look at the undoubtedly macho flavour in history of tango and perhaps derive some ideas from it for our dance-play today. I am less happy to accept this idea as the essential feeling of tango in the modern world. I am more attracted to the idea that tango evolved out of a lucky fusion of multiple cultures, mostly European in origin. It seems that it received a transfusion of refinement in Paris in the 1920s, and it looks to me as if it is benefiting today from another shot in the arm all over Europe. Tango is growing apace here and is being distilled to meet the requirements of today’s relationships. I believe it may be losing its narrow, even parochial feel and is becoming truly international in the hands of a new and more cohesive European people. We are not frustrated, homesick, stressed Europeans, seeking love miles from home with too few women to share. We are a new breed in a new world. Though the passions we bring as individuals to the dance will be the same basic feelings all men and women have shared since the beginning of time, the intensity must be different, and the balance between the sexes has altered most of all. It may also be the case that our societies in Europe are evolving at a different pace from that of Latin America, though not, I suspect, in a different direction. In the Europe today women have immense power, status and influence and they express their needs very clearly. The modern European woman is unlikely to respond too positively to macho posturing… It seems women like their men to be positive but they also want finesse and thoughtfulness. Women hate to be bullied. They prefer to be invited and to feel that they are in full control to accept, or decline, as they feel. Accepting an invitation is not ‘surrender'... When you think about tango being danced way back at the beginning of the 20th century by earthy men in bordellos, hungry for a woman’s touch, closeness between a man and a woman was the business they were in. It was in the ‘sanitising’ of tango for the more genteel public and the wider world audience that the open embrace evolved.”

The author's superiority over things he apparently has little understanding is absurd. The traditional tango is not bullying, neither is the open-embrace tango all genteel. To suggest that people who dance in close embrace are somewhat dirty and less civilized than those who dance in open embrace is ridiculous and hypocritical.

What concerns me most, however, is his view on gender equality. I am afraid it could indeed reflect the bias against the traditional gender roles in tango and the attempt to change tango to a gender-neutral dance by some people in Europe and North America. We fight for the rights of those who are uneasy with their sexual orientations, and we should because they are human beings, too. But most of us do not have a problem with our own gender. Most men that I know are happy with their manhood and masculinity, and they behave, function and dance like men. Most women that I know are happy with their womanhood and femininity, and they behave, function and dance like women. Men and women are different. They need, complement and complete each other, and they are attracted to each other because of that. Women bear and nurse offspring. Men help, support and protect them. They play different roles in life and tango, which nobody, certainly not modern men and modern women, should feel ashamed of. True modern people do not think that women must behave like men in order to be equal with men. They can be women and still equal with men. True modern people believe that the relationship between men and women is love-based and not power-based. They do not regard decent intimacy between the opposite sexes as filthy, and they are not chauvinistic, especially toward a people whose art they are deeply indebted to and whose culture they may not yet fully comprehend. (See Tango and Interdependence between the Sexes.)

As I said in another post, “The idea of tango is to welcome another person into your personal space, to accept them, to be considerate, cooperative, yielding and accommodating, to surrender and be one with them, to enjoy the intimacy, to listen to their inner voice and feelings, and to bring love, comfort, pleasure and contentment to them. It is a different idea from what our culture stands for, that is, individualism, independence, self-interest and aggression.” (See Tango - The Art of Love.) Contrary to what the author thinks, the surrender in tango is mutual. It is in surrender that we stop to compete and start to adapt. Tango becomes popular in the modern world because it has the power to sublimate people, completing them by allowing them to be one with each other in an intimate relationship void of judgmental criticisms of the last century. Tango is the opposite of hypocrisy. In tango we become better, healthier, more authentic, natural, connected, cooperative, accommodating and coherent people. Those who prefer political correctness to decent humanity, gender neutralization to gender expression, segregation to integration, distance to intimacy, egoism to humility, power struggle to love, and individuality to partnership live in the shadow of the past. They are evolving at a different pace from that of Latin America, and are not in the same direction as the author thought. They certainly do not represent the future of tango. (See Femininity and Feminism in Tango (I).)