It Takes Two to Tango?

As a beginner tango dancer, I am fortunate enough to be instructed by a dance teacher who emphasizes the gender roles and partnership communicated by the dance form as well as he does the techniques. I recently stumbled upon a blog post about the "gender roles" in tango, which represents a more traditional view on the roles of each partner collaborating in a tango dance. This view is very much at odds with the feminist culture, and tends to evoke biased opinions on tango as a dance form. The blog suggests a very patriarchal stance of the art form, in which the male is solely responsible for the situation and "protects" the female, while the female "completely surrenders". This is not only misleading in terms of the concept behind tango, but may also result in erroneous practices of techniques, where the follower leans her weight on the leader and the leader's movements are robust and rigid. In reality, the follower, generally performed by women, balances on her own feet, sets boundaries between herself and the leader, and controls the pace of the dance. My instructor makes a very vivid analogy between leader-followership in tango and the magician and his female partner. The audiences sees that the magician "makes" the girl disappear and reappear, when the whole show is an illusion. She is the one who does all the work, and he gets all the credit. She willingly surrenders the applause to him while she gets the thing that she wants the most--beauty. This is precisely the beauty of tango. The leader leads with no more effort than standing on his two feet and walking, but the audience sees that he makes the dance happens. She, who can dance just as effortlessly without him, is made beautiful by altruistically dethroning herself.

Credits to: Daniel Trenner