The Dialogical Dance: Self, Identity Construction, Positioning and Embodiment in Tango

Dancers

Luca Tateo – Aalborg University, luca@hum.aau.dk

Abstract

Argentine tango music and dancing are phenomena involving hundred thousands people

worldwide. In this article a history of the development of tango as dialogical social object is

sketched. Studying tango could help psychology to develop a dialogical way of theorizing and

a dialogical methodology, taking into account both the genetic historical and eso-systemic

dimensions and the individual experiencing. As any other product of human psyche, tango

creates an universal and abstract representation of life starting from very situated and

individual acts. Such institutionalized representation, which is at the same time

epistemological, ethical and aesthetical, becomes a tradition -that is the framework distanced

from the individual immediate experience- within which the meaning of the experiences to be

make sense in return. To illustrate this epistemological and methodological stance, an

ethnographic study about the Self actuation in a community of Italian tango dancers is

presented. Results show how participants construct and actuate their identities in a dialogue

between their I-positions inside and outside tango community.

Keywords: argentine tango, Self actuation, Identity, embodied knowledge, dialogic

epistemology, I-positioning
The Dialogical Dance: Self, Identity Construction, Positioning and Embodiment in Tango

Dancers

Introduction

This study was born some years ago as a divertissement. I was invited to a symposium on

performing arts and at that time I was dancing tango. I decided to explore the psychological

aspects of this dance and found that very little work had been done before. The more I got

into the subject, the more I realized that tango was not just an interesting cultural phenomenon

but also the context in which several psychological processes could be studied. Tango is an

activity in which embodied knowledge, intimacy, empathy, gender relationships, affect, Self

actuation, and group dynamics express their very interesting dialogical form, to mention but

few. As any other product of human psyche, tango creates an universal and abstract

representation of life starting from very situated and individual acts. Such institutionalized

representation, which is at the same time epistemological, ethical and aesthetical, becomes a

tradition -that is the framework distanced from the individual immediate experience- within

which the meaning of the experiences to be make sense in return. Studying tango could help

psychology to develop a dialogical way of theorizing and a dialogical methodology, taking

into account both the genetic historical and eso-systemic dimensions and the individual

experiencing. Dialogical theory and methodology, in the sense I understand it, means to

account for the opposites that form a concrete whole in process.

Tango as a social object to study

Argentine tango music and dancing are phenomena involving hundred thousands people

worldwide. Since the 1980s, the worldwide spread of this social activity was exponential. It is

incalculable the number of people taking lessons and dancing in the five continents. There are
hundreds of communities, websites, magazines, an Academia Nacional del Tango founded

Buenos Aires in the 1990. Tango became the first touristic resource of Argentina, and in the

sole Buenos Aires there are nowadays more than 2500 tango instructors, with more than

35.000 people dancing and about 3000 tourists attending a tango show per week (Barrionuevo

Anzaldi, 2012). Some dances seem to represent a sort of “embodiment of the style and spirit

of the period” (Luckmann, 2008, p. 277), and tango progressively interested psycho-social

and anthropological research in this large scale social phenomenon, which seems to be not

just a playful activity rather a way of life, discipline, an holistic life’s philosophy (Labraña

and Sebastiàn, 2000). Olszewski (2008) argues that “popularity of tango across the globe is

largely a function of its authenticity” (p. 63). To some extent, the socio-historical conditions

that constitute the cradle of tango at the end of the 19th Century have something tremendously

familiar, a context of large-scale social, economic and technological urban change, with

millions of people migrating in search of better life conditions. “In the case of native

Americans they had given up their beloved countryside, the wide-open spaces, their families.

For foreigners the dislocation was even more of a shock. The subculture of the suburbios

became one of disorientation, mistrust and alienation. Their work, when they found it, was

dehumanizing. Human relations were tenuous and life was at best insecure. This is the

atmosphere from which came the dance known as the tango” (Salmon, 2000, pp. 859-860). At

the same time, tango became the representation of the cosmopolitan Zeitgeist, of what one

could call the developing globalizing world as the other side of the coin of workforce

emigration flows (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000). Emigration and cosmopolitanism are the

first two dimensions in dialogue with respect to tango that seem to be still topical. They

always accompanied the development and diffusion of this popular form of art, that is in its

own nature dialogical or trialogical, as I will argue in the following. For this reason, the

theoretical aim of this work is to use tango as a dialogical field of application for sketching a
dialogical epistemology. In my understanding, such a way of conceiving the creation of new

knowledge about any human phenomenon should lead to the creation of a conceptual

inclusive whole including and accounting for the opposites (Markova, 2003; Valsiner, 1987).

For instance, subject and object are inclusively separated into an epistemological whole, that

becomes the real universe of discourse of cultural psychology. Tango involves several

dimensions in dialogue, such as mind and body, intimacy, empathy and introspection, gender

relationships, technical performance and affective experience, improvisation and rules. The

man and the woman “mutually choosing and accepting, they submit to an agreement which is

governed by a very strict system of rules, including the way of embracing” (Siegmann, 2006,

p. 54). The dance is performed without prearranged choreography, in the frame of different

triadic relationships (Markova,2003) between the Ego, the Alter and a third object which is

from time to time the music, the spectators and the significant Others. For this reasons, tango

is a fitting object of study to experience a dialogical epistemology.

Furthermore, tango is considered an interesting object of study in itself because it is the place

where deep and meaningful psychological experiences of Self takes place (Budgeon, 2003;

Olszewski, 2008).

“Dancing can serve as a metaphor for some important aspects of social interaction.

Dances have a beginning and an end, individual dancers must synchronize their

actions, and between the two are sequences of steps in which rules are followed, and

improvisations made. In some dances, much improvisation is allowed; in others the

rules must be rigidly obeyed. Some dances, like the quadrille and square dancing,

involve large-scale coordination; others, such as the tango, concentrate on the dancing

pair. Some postmodern variants seem to consist of solitary gyrations of individual

bodies. But even these provide a collective representation of something else”

(Luckmann, 2008, pp. 278-279).

The scholarly interest in tango originates from the musical and literary aspects, through the

analysis of music and lyrics with respect to other artistic forms (dos Santos, 1978; Ferrer,

1960, 1980; Gobelo, 1980; Ulloa, 1982), then they extended to ethnographic studies on

dancers (Azzi, 1991; Viladrich, 2006), and its relationships with history and economy of

Argentina (Barrionuevo Anzaldi, 2012; Castro, 1991).

Tango is also an excellent metaphor, or a sandbox for the study of several psychological

topics such as Self actuation (Rosa, 2007) and developing sense of Self agency (Hamera,

2005), identity construction (Luckmann, 2008), intersubjectivity and embodiment (Olszewski,

2008), group dynamics (Hess, 1996), gender relationships (Savigliano, 1995a; 1995b;

Viladrich, 2006), wellbeing and dance therapy in geriatrics, cancer, torture (Dibbel-Hope,

2000; Haboush, Floyd, Caron, LaSota, and Alvarez, 2006; Lynn Gray, 2001; McKibben,

1988; Pinniger, Thorsteinsson, Brown and McKinley, 2013), psychoanalysis (Fieiro Pompo,

1991), and even behavioural addictions (Targhetta, Napals and Perney, 2013).

Tango as dialogical history

An inhabitant of Buenos Aires, a real porteño, would say that there is no tango but argentine

tango, and this is the only monologic aspect that can be found in the history of this dance.

Despite the origins of argentine tango are not yet fully unveiled, it is quite agreed that was

born by the end of 19th century in the area of the Rio de la Plata, in the suburbs of Buenos

Aires and Montevideo. These cities experienced a speedy increase in population, due to the

growing industries and port commerce and to the new residence law embedded in the

Argentinean constitution of 1853, that made extremely easy and attractive the immigration to

the country eager for workforce (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000). “The tango is the musical

expression of the melted feelings of a defeated mass” of Black and leftist Argentineans “with

other people that left their homelands seeking a promising life, in a new continent that was
offering everything, and who soon had their dreams broken in the overcrowding of popular

blocks formerly occupied by the Black community. For the immigrants coming from the

Mediterranean breeze, the Spanish rías, the French Midi, or from the Rhine’s plains, life

became a hell in the shape of patio, the patio of the conventillo1” (Labraña and Sebastiàn,

2000, p. 20). During this forced ghetto cohabitation, “Blacks, gringos and compadres2 learned

the law of living in common and intercrossed, they joined together, got married, children born

as well as new dialectal forms” (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000, p. 22). Thus, the tango

“originated in a process of hybridization that took place in a rapidly changing society”

(Cámara De Landa, 2007, p. 148), a society that was forcedly multivocal at different levels.

Multivocality expresses at the ethnic level, with the preexisting African-South American

population injected with a mass of immigrants, mainly Italian and Spanish, followed by

Middle and East European, Middle Eastern, Slavs and so on. All these ethnic groups brought

their native languages, their sounds and musical instruments, their systems of values and

everyday mythologies. Multivocality also expresses spatially, with the social practices related

to tango taking place mainly in public spaces such as patios, street corners, open-air dance

floors. This spatial location contributed to the development of the gaze as a fundamental

element of tango, as I will show in the following. Finally, the multivocality of the tango

milieu is expressed also at the socio-psychological level, with a number of characteristic

figures of men and women that have tried to achieve social mobility out of the neighbors with

alternate fortune, and soon enter the gender mythology of tango (Cámara De Landa, 2007;

Gobello, 1980; 1999; Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000).

The history of tango is also made of a dialogue between the two shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

Born tanks to the flow of people from Europe, at the beginning of the 20th Century tango goes

back to the land of (at least) one of its parents. In 1913, the first Argentinean orchestra, La

Murga Argentina, disembarked in Paris, following the flow of sailors that brought the new
music from their trips in Buenos Aires. The cultural atmosphere in the first twenty-years of

1900 in Europe was extremely favourable to everything that was somehow exotic, thus tango

soon became trendy. A tango-fashion spread, with a “color tango”, “tango-dresses” and even

a new French verb “tanguer” (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000). Europe went crazy for tango, or

at least for the European version of it (Cámara De Landa, 2007; Labraña and Sebastiàn,

2000). Artists like D’Annunzio, Rubinstein or Rodin were influenced by it (figure 1).

Figure 1 insert here------------------------

In Europe the tango dancing style was considered immoral and too sensual, “the

choreographic elements of tango shocked western society” (Cámara De Landa, 2007, p. 147)

also because of his freedom and creativity. “Dance teachers reacted by organizing conferences

and publishing handbooks in order to produce a standard code of steps and movements. One

of the most zealously and pursued objectives of the transformation of tango choreography was

to make it more acceptable and decent” (Cámara De Landa, 2007, p. 147). The purged version

of tango than came back to Buenos Aires and became in this way suitable also for the upper

classes, what was previously regarded as a mob dance (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000).

Figure 23 here----------------

Anyway, a dialog between Buenos Aires and the European capital cities was established. In

the following years of the 20th Century, every time that tango went to Europe - following up

the different waves of emigration that left Argentina because of dictatorships or economic

crisis - it returned to its native country full of innovations and hybridization. It happened for

instance during the 1970s, when tango met jazz music and European contemporary classical
music, generating standing figures like Astor Piazzolla, or again during the 2000s, when the

electronic music of the Parisian scene hybridized argentine tango, generating the so called

electro-tango fashion. This dialogical relationship between Rioplatense tango and the

different countries it visited kept alive what otherwise would have been one of the several

forms of folk music. The children of exile and migration perhaps develop a deeper

understanding of human psyche and its ambiguities, richness and contemptibility, that’s why

tango preserves its strongly local origins while narrating stories with the universalistic flavour

of human nature. The history of tango is a specimen of the dialogical nature of any cultural

product, in which tradition and innovation constantly interact, sometimes exchanging roles, in

a reciprocal movement between “the socio-cultural context, the components of collective and

individual identity promoting the novelty, and the appropriation and reattribution of meaning

of the sound act, through which a social group, in its turn, enliven it” (Kohan, 2007, p. 83). To

understand this dialogical movement, it is required a dialogical epistemology that will take

into account for instance the conceptual presence of both opposites of tradition and

innovation, continuity and discontinuity, accounting for a whole process in which the pairs

are playing changing roles, as it happens, for instance, in tango music and dancing.

Dialogical music

Interestingly, the origins of tango music, and of the “tango” name itself4, always raised heated

debates. The reason is that any genealogy has of course identity, political and ethical

implications (Castro, 1991; Kohan, 2007; Gobello, 1999; Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000), and

the genealogy of Rioplatense tango is so complex that a number of parties is involved. It is

worth remembering that at the end of 18th Century, there was a progressive integration of the

African-South American population into the Christian culture. But the legacy of the slave

deportation was still alive, to the extent that it was common “in Buenos Aires and Montevideo
in the 18th and 19th Centuries to see the blacks escorting religious processions at the rhythm of

candombes5” (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000, pp. 25-26) organized in mutual aid societies

holding the names of their native countries, such as Angolas, Congos, etc. Labraña and

Sebastiàn, 2000). Into this substratum inserted the groups of European immigrants, with their

respective musical traditions and instruments. The place where these different musical genres

met and started to dialogue was the patio of the conventillo, where the creolization between

Afro-cuban and European immigrants‘ dances (candombe, habanera, milonga, tango andaluz,

vals, polka, contradanza, Italian canzonet songs, etc.) took place. In particular, the milonga, a

traditional way of singing of the Pampas countryside, made with improvised counterpoints

and dialogue struggles between two singers accompanied by the guitar, provided the newborn

with his typical multivocality. Besides, the word “milonga” will also designate the public

place where tango is played and danced. What I want to stress here is the fact that the origins

of tango, in a social and historical context somehow unique, are embedded in a social practice

of different ethnic groups that were forced to meet in the only public space of their blocks.

Some of the European immigrants were musicians, and they started to play their native

instruments to gladden the bitter evenings of a poor population of unqualified workers or for

some marriage or birthday. They started to observe each other and to learn, to enjoy the

other’s music, finding very appealing the percussion instruments and the sensual rhythm of

African-American music or the ironic battles of dialogue of the countrymen immigrated to

Buenos Aires from the interiors of Argentina. I will not go into the musicological aspects of

tango, but suffice to say that this original hybridization has been kept as a distinctive feature

of the music, in which rhythmic and vocal instruments are in constant dialogical interaction

(Ferrer, 1960; 1980; Gobello, 1980; Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000).

Dialogical dancing
But the fortune of tango is strictly related to dancing. It is in fact a couple’s dance with

established roles (leader and follower) but both dancers must cooperate to play steps. Tango is

largely based upon improvisation (no fixed sequences) and is learnt like a language (basic

movements that can be re-combined to infinity according to music, partners and mood). In the

dancing relationship, beyond the couple, enter two other relevant elements: the music and the

watcher. The way of dancing tango was historically related to the place of his performance.

The main innovation with respect to the existing couple dances was the prominence of the

improvisation and the creativity of dancers. In its original social context, tango was also a

way to show off one’s ability, in other words a way to attain a higher status. This implied that

the public played a role in the dance, as a third partner, and it still holds it. The man “in the

empirical and particular development of each dance piece, seizing his partner by her waist,

drove her zigzagging, anticlockwise, looking for the unprecedented” and this was the way to

show his qualities of dancer (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000, p. 32). This unexpected

movements “produced a strong effect on the public that, with their exclamations, fostered

more audacity in the dancing” (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000, p. 32). Then, the woman had to

develop her specific abilities in following and foresee the partner improvisations “being

careful in not losing the beat, because there was the danger to ridicule herself in front of the

public” (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000, p. 32). Again, the context of tango dancing developed

the dialogical character of this dance. The couple’s harmony in a very unpredictable

choreography and the role of a third virtual partner, the public, required the development of

specific ability, a sort of dialogical embodiment, that still constitutes one of the major appeals

of tango dancing. “The intimacy of tango is a product of the kinetic connection, music, culture

and history of the dance. Together, these facets accentuate the tango’s distinctively sensual

nature” (Olszewski, 2008, p. 64). This affected the posture of the dancers, with the couple

acting a strong connection at the level of the chest, assuming a slightly inclined position to
free the legs movements (figure 3). “Bodies are slightly offset, to the left, so that feet do not

get tangled, and turning (on a single axis) becomes easier” (Olszewski, 2008, p. 69).

Figure 3 insert here------------------

Once assumed this posture, the kinetic of the dance is that the man’s chest is driving the

woman’s legs, while the opposition of the woman’s chest creates a tension, or an energy,

between the partners. As the dancer and choreographer Rodolfo Dinzel puts it: “It’s a dance

of displacement. What happens in the lower part does not happen in the upper part. The

expressive apparatus: the people dancing do not gesticulate, the expressions are made by the

legs” (Azzi, 1991, p.33). A sort of cross flow is generated (figure 3), that makes the roles of

leader and follower complementary rather than hierarchical. “Ultimately, the process of

leading and following is more of a conversation between partners, rather than a kinetic fiat

issued by the leader” (Olszewski, 2008, p. 70).

The emphasis on improvisation accentuates the need for the dancing pair to establish a strong

empathic and bodily connection. While they are walking or turning and spinning, with a

typical syncopate sequence of movements, they must be very attentive to the other’s feelings.

This dialogue, mainly occurring through the inflated chest contact, is often described by the

dancers and the instructors as “energy” (Siegman, 2006). But the dialogue is not limited to the

couple and the spectators. “Good tango dancers (both leaders and followers) listen to the

music viscerally and respond to it in the act of kinetic improvisation. Focusing on both

moving smoothly with another person as well as in harmony with the music takes a lot of

muscle memory and practice, so ‘dancing to the music’ is something for intermediate and

advanced dancers” (Olszewski, 2008, p. 72). The music of tango is mainly structured as

dialogue between the different instruments in the orchestration, complementing “the precise
and aggressive movements of the dance perfectly” (Olszewski, 2008, p. 72). I will not go into

the history of the musical development of tango music. Suffice to say that, although in general

the music is played by a musicalizador (the tango DJ) and just sometimes by a live band, the

composition of the tango orchestras varied during the 19th and the 20th centuries (dos Santos,

1978; Ferrer, 1960; 1980; Gobello, 1980; Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000), the basic sounds of

traditional and contemporary tango music are of violin, bandoneón6, piano and bass. The

musical structure is a continuous alternation, or dialogue, between the rhythmic carpet and the

melody, with the instruments often exchanging their roles in carrying out the two functions.

Thus, the dancers can choose, according to their own mood, to follow the rhythmic,

accentuating the syncopated and passionate kind of steps, or either to fluctuate at the

mellifluous and romantic melody, underlying the romantic and melancholic side of the music.

This feature of tango leaves further room to the performing and creative ability of the dancers,

to the extent that the way a tango is interpreted by the pair also becomes object of comment

by the spectators.

The Milonga as dialogical embodied space

It is time to introduce another partner of this dialogical interaction: the space. In particular, it

is worth describing the venue of the tango dancing, called “milonga”. It is of course a

dialogical space, not a mere “context”, that contributes to shape the specific type of

interaction described. The milonga can be conceptualized as an “embodied space”, that is the

material and conceptual place where body, space and culture intersect and interpenetrate

(Low, 2003). The milonga can be a closed or open-air space with a dance floor in the middle,

surrounded by concentric circles of chairs and tables (figure 4).

Figure 4 insert here-------------------------------------

This disposition is extremely relevant, because it underlines the relevance of the gaze in tango

dancing. In fact, the gaze is culturally codified in tango etiquette, playing an important role in

the initiation of dancing, which is usually made by the man seeking eye contact with the

woman he wishes to dance with. The woman can choose in return to reciprocate or avoid the

eye contact, in a constant dialogue of glances. Furthermore, everybody is aware of being

observed, especially the dancers, whose bodies move through the space of the dance floor full

of gazes’ cobwebs (figure 5). While dancing, it is generally prescribed that the woman lays

with the forehead on the man’s shoulder, keeping her eyes closed, walking back and

concentrating on the music and the partner’s guidance. The man, instead, is dancing forward,

with the eyes well open to avoid bumping into other pairs, but also looking at the reaction of

the spectators.

Figure 5: insert here ---------

This complex dialogue of gaze and body movement establishes a social and cultural space

“binds the participants by constituting an emotional and a moral commitment to a culturally

specific way of being and moving” (Duranti, 1997, p. 352) in a space inhabited by other

members of the tango community. The milonga is thus an embodied dialogical space in which

the experience of dancing tango, involving the Self as well as agency, feelings and

consciousness, takes a specific material and cultural form, and which is in turn shaped by the

actuation of the dancers’ Selves.

The dialogical triangle

A theory like the Dialogical Self stresses the linguistic organization of the multivoiced Self

(Hermans, 1996). The discussion about the social activity of tango dancing, shows instead

how the multifaceted Self also emerges with the performative body, through the repetition of

sequences of actions in a cultural space (Pollock, 2007). The improvisation in tango is a very

suitable example of how the repetition, guided by the rules and stylistic elements, “opens a

space between what is and what might be” (Pollock, 2007, p. 247). The process in tango is

also based on voicing the bodily Self, through the internalization of the Other in the form of

kinetic schemes. The encounter with the Alter takes place in the tension between one’s own

bodily awareness and the awareness of the difference with another body (Simão, 2010), which

is nevertheless strictly connected through the energy of the embrace. “As the point of overlap

between the physical, the symbolic and the sociological, the body is a dynamic, mutable

frontier. The body is the threshold through which the subject’s lived experience of the world

is incorporated and realised and, as such, is neither pure object nor pure subject” (McNay,

1999, p. 98). Furthermore, Otherness is also embodied in the gaze of the spectator and in the

voice of the Tango (understood as both a musical tradition and a philosophy of life), that

actively interact with the dancing pair. The Dialogical Self becomes then a complex

multifaceted and multilayered construct, involving the soma, the psyche and the Alter

(Dejours, 1989).

The process of learning tango can be understood as the progressive internalization of the Alter

in both Self’s soma and psyche, in the form of kinetic, rhythmic and semiotic schemes.

Developing the ability of dancing tango, the double embrace of the partner and of the

spectator becomes the space of improvisation, that is of unexpected repetition, or even error,

in which the Self can dialogically deal with both continuity and discontinuity. “This is an

ethical space: a space of mobilizing the difference between imagined and entrenched realities;

and it is a performance space: a space of mobilizing the difference in repetition for ethical
ends” (Pollock, 2007, p. 247). A fundamental epistemic triangle (Moscovici, 1984, Markova,

2003) is then emerging as basic psychological process, contributing to the actuation of

identification in a intertwining between different dialogical relationships. Tango is “inside and

outside the couple, the different existential experience, even if simultaneous, of the

relationship and the responsibility lived by the dancers and those looking at them” (Hess,

1996, p. 28).

A set of triadic relationships (figure 6) is established, forming the context for an actuation of

identification, that is a set of operations carried out in order to produce and experience the

Self through the experienced body (Markova, 2006; Rosa, 2007; Valsiner, 2007). This also

implies the sense of otherness that is the outcome of a psychosocial process with different

degrees going from a sense proximity and similitude to a sense of exteriority, from the

intersubjectivity to the total extraneousness (Jodelet, 2005; Simão, 2010).

Figure 6 insert here-------------------

The epistemic relationship Ego-Alter-Object is actuated at different levels (figure 6). The

triadic relationship involves the male, the female and the specific tango piece that they are

performing. But the single dance is attached to the cultural heritage of the history and

sociology of tango dancing. Furthermore, the pair is also relating with the belonging to a

present group of tango dancers community, and to the performers-spectator relationship. The

internalization of voicing, the elaboration and the actuation of the dancers’ Selves is inscribed

in this web of epistemic, identity and ethic relationships that generate different I-positionings.

Again the choreographer Dinzel: “I am talking of a third volume. There are three dancing, not

two. There are three volumes playing the axis of equilibrium and in the translations of the

body’s weight. The woman, the man and a third volume. Everyone feels it as he likes,
according to the dancing partner and the circumstances. Can be the other woman of the man,

can be the mother, can be another man. The man is facing this third volume and the woman

shares it. It depends upon the inner relationship taking place. Tango dancing is a dynamic of

articular perfections that leads to mental states similar to some disciplines of martial arts”

(Azzi, 1991, p.33).

From now on, I am entering an almost unexplored empirical territory, using an ethnographic

study about an Italian community of dancers, including interviews and observations; the

literary sources about dancers biographies; and the tango lyrics to understand the relationship

between the psychological experience of tango and the process of Self construction and

actuation.

An ethnographic study

In order to investigate the relationship between the activity of dancing tango, the belonging to

a dancers community and the process of Self elaboration and actuation, I conducted a study in

a group of Italian tango dancers during several months. I adopted an inductive approach

through direct participation, actually participating in tango’s community activities. Data were

gathered by semi-structured interviews and video observations. Significant episodes in both

sets of data were selected and compared. The analysis focuses on the dialogical identity

construction in novice and expert dancers, on their positioning in dancers’ community and

life’s attitude outside the community (Adler & Adler, 1987; Conquergood, 2002; Lave &

Wenger, 1991). Results show how participants construct their identity in a dialogue between

their I-positions inside and outside tango community. Besides, throughout initiation,

peripheral and central participation, dancers construct different sense of their whole life

experiences. During the study, I collected video-recordings and pictures of the dancers, field

notes and four interviews (two with expert dancers and two with novices). These data were
supplemented with secondary sources: biographies of tango dancers and musicians,

interviews from other studies (Azzi, 1991; Siegman, 2006). My role in the dance community

qualified me as member-researcher (Adler and Adler, 1987). Further, much of the relevant

data required an expert familiarity for access: knowing how to dance the tango is the

prerequisite for understanding its kinetic foundations. Such competence resembles Garfinkel’s

(1967, 2002) unique adequacy requirements, which are necessary when researchers are deeply

engaged with situations where data are elusive or difficult to access (Atkinson, 2006), such as

in the case of playing poker (Hayano, 1982) or jazz piano (Sudnow, 1981).

The excerpts will show the progressive construction and actuation of Self in the members

tango community, within the trajectory of participation from novice to expert dancers. The

internalization of voicing and the different I-positioning are mediated by the epistemic

relationship outlined in figure 6. Thus, I will show how the dancers construct the sense of

their life experiences inside and outside the dance community by voicing the tango, the group

and the Self. For the sake of summarizing, I will present the process concerning a limited

number of themes, such as the construction of Self (body and mind), the construction of

gender roles, the construction of performance and participation and the construction of life’s

attitude outside the dancing.

Tango as embodied knowledge

As a performative act, tango dancing is related to the kinetic competence which is

progressively developed by the person through an apprenticeship. Thus, the dancing

competence, the construction of the member’s identity and the Self are jointly elaborated

along the trajectory of participation. “Subjectivity and the material body are aspects of the self

which are irreducibly linked such that bodies are never just objects but part of a process of

negotiating and re-negotiating self-identity” (Budgeon, 2003, p. 45). Novice tends to become
self-confident first with reproduction rather than creation. The novice reproduces sequences

of steps learned before, while expert progressively masters a library of sequences and re-

presentations allowing him/her to focus on the active listening of the partner and the music

and to improvise (Hess, 1996; Olsewski, 2008). The ability to perform is directly related to

the participation trajectory within the community (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In figure 7 it is

possible to see how this kind of trajectory of participation is embodied in dancers’ posture.

Figure 7 insert here--------------

The pair in figure 7.a is led by a novice male dancer, the woman level is not known. The man

is keeping a quite loose embrace, and his gaze is oriented towards the feet. He is caring about

the steps, and probably avoiding to step on woman’s feet. He is not leading by his chest,

rather by his arms. This makes the experience of dancing more uncomfortable and less

intimate, especially for the woman. The pair in 7.b is instead composed by expert dancers,

their embrace is thigh, they are dancing cheek to cheek and their bodies are facing each other.

This allows a greater empathy and emotional experience of intimacy, increasing the

concentration and the flowing of the dance according to the music. “Together they must create

a third neutral space for the union to exist and thrive” (Siegmann, 2006, p. 54). This

development of the dancing experience is made possible by a progressive internalization of

the tango kinetics, but also of the tango emotional repertoire. As the 65 old Buenos Aires

tango dancer Victor Sasson elegantly expresses: “The man brings the woman inside himself

(…) in tango the man is not really willing to think of the woman as a sharer, rather than inside

himself. The porteño dances alone, but brings the woman inside himself” (Azzi, 1991, p.

226). The expert dancers progressively interiorize the Other both in the form of the concrete

dance partner of the moment and of the voice of tango culture which codifies gender roles.
The third element is the gaze of spectators in 7.c. Both dancing pairs are aware of the judging

public, but this gaze has a different meaning for them. Spectators, who are dancers sitting and

waiting to dance, constantly look at pair on the dance floor, commenting whether they are

novice, experts, good or bad dancers. This kind of group legitimating marks the participation

trajectory of the individuals within the tango dancers community. Thus the novice in 7.a is

relating to the spectator gaze as an element to care about, while the expert pair in 7.b is

relating to it as an element to grasp their performance. Both are understanding the public gaze

as a third partner to dance with.

Construction of Self (body and mind)

I will now discuss the different themes emerging from the interviews to the Italian tango

dancers, as specimens of the process of Self construction through the internalization of

different voices. For each theme, I present the excerpts in which the dancers position

themselves with respect to the dancing and the tango community, voicing the group, the social

representation of tango culture and the I-as-a-dancer.

The first theme is the process of Self’s construction within the activity of tango dancing (italic

added).

Voice of Group

Question: The most satisfying experience?

Answer: to follow not only my usual partner but others that invite me in milonga but

also to be often told ”you are changed” even by my dance teacher has been a great

achievement, but there’s a lot to do (Female)

In this excerpt, the woman is reporting a development of the Self through the gaze of the

dancers’ community. The group not only sanction the change but also set the future goals (but

there’s a lot to do).

 Voice of Tango

Q: Can you tell me a typical evening of tango from your point of view?

A: Not simply dancing, but also trying to transmit some emotion to the other dancers

let’s say that’s should be a scope of tango (Male)

In the excerpt, the man is voicing the tango as an entity for setting the goals of his own

dancing. The tango is acquired not only as a performative activity, an Argentinean folk dance,

but rather as a whole life philosophy, transmitted via the instructor narratives and the tango

lyrics.

Voice of Self

Q: Your objectives in dancing tango changed over years?

A: the need to follow different partners changed me in attitudes even outside in

interpersonal relations because well I don’t know I think I got used to let me go to

other person’s leading I mean trust because I ain’t really got it I mean yesss I am

sociable cheerful but there’s always a little part of me that is untouchable nobody can

get there because of fear and no tango changed me the problem is still there but I feel

more quiet mind more easy (Female)

The woman in this excerpt is positioning herself with respect to the voices of the other

dancers and of her Self. The two voices are in dialogue, recording a development in the Self

even outside the tango community, but also claiming for an internal border that cannot be

overcome.

Here takes place a dialogue between the Self as it is experienced by the individual (a sense of

continuity in constant development over time), as it is mirrored by the group, and a Self as it

is ought to be according to tango life philosophy.

Construction of gender roles

The second theme is gender roles, a very sensitive issue to the extent that tango is often

accused to be a “machist” dance (Viladrich, 2006). From the excerpt we see how the persons

are able to develop a more articulated dialogue with respect to gender roles, negotiating

between the different voices.

Voice of Group

Q: Could you compare it with other dances?

A: ee beautiful ee I mean well it’s a dance of passion so there’s the commonplace of

dancing tango with the fiancé or else picking up someone (Female)

The experience of gender roles is here accounted by voicing the group norm. In fact, the tango

community is also providing a set of norms regulating the relationships between men and

women. Singles and engaged pairs hold different status and etiquette. The violation of this

implicit norms can lead to the labeling of “gigolo” (for the man) or “easy” (for the woman).

Voice of Tango

Q: Your objectives in dancing tango changed over years?

A: In tango the man must be well the stronger part let’s say must be elegant must be

someway sweet with the woman but at the same time must lead and instead woman

(Male)

In this excerpt, the dancer is voicing the representation of gender roles in tango culture. As

above mentioned, in the practice of tango dancing, this roles, that are the legacy of a specific

social and historical moment (the Argentinean culture of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries,

are almost meaningless. Nevertheless, they still play a role in structuring the social

interactions within tango community, and the dancers must negotiate their genders role

relating to it, even outside the milonga. This leads to a complex dialogue between the

different voices as presented in the following excerpt.

Voice of Self
 Q: What about the relationship between tango and your other life experiences?:

A: well everybody has his own experiences but tango made me more malleable that is

coming out my femininity well in other things I had to fight of course here too but well

I fought not to draw out but to put away weapons as I am too much independent by

nature even with men (Female)

In this answer, the woman is reporting the complex relationship between the development of

the Self -that incorporates the voice of the tango, in which the woman is required to be more

feminine and seducing- and the voice of Me-as-an-independent woman. The interviewed

seem to narrate how her independent and pugnacious Self allowed her to support her

emerging feminine side.

Construction of performance and participation

The development of a performative Self in tango is very important, to the extent that its

actuation is the main process of legitimation within the group. In the following excerpts wit is

possible to see how the different voices construct the border of the group belonging and the

relationship with the world outside.

Voice of Group

Q: What are the most important aspects keeping together your dancing group?

A: You can understand some things only with those you dance with I mean with

friends at the university we joke they seem interested but they definitely can’t

understand so they tease me “ee it’s a sensual dance, eee you show the leg

Q: these are external people?

A: yes external but it’s different from the relations with dancers because they definitely

know what you do and the interest for the type of music (Female)
Progressively, the inside- outside dynamic establishes, leading to a multiplication of the Self

positioning of I-as-a-tanguero (tango dancer) and I-as-a-student.

Voice of Tango

Q: Could you compare it with other dances?

A: It’s a couple dance so all that a couple can transmit all the emotion so iiits a couple

dance with all the emotions and sensuality you can see in a tango (Male)

The triadic relationship between the Self, the Other and the Object, in this case the tango, is

related to the acquisition of the status of expert dancer, owning the performative ability to

transmit emotion and sensuality.

Voice of Self

Q: The most satisfying experience?

A: The most satisfying experience is the performance but there’s also the satisfaction

of doing something beautiful for those looking (Male)

In this excerpt, the triadic relationship is established between the Ego, the tango and the

Others. The actuation of the Self is related to the satisfaction through the performance, which

results from the sense of self-efficacy mediated by the Other’s gaze.

Construction of life’s attitude

Strictly related to the inside-outside dynamic, the value of tango as a life philosophy emerges

through the voicing of the person inside and outside the milonga. One of the reasons of tango

worldwide success is the fact that it developed a way to look at life, treating universal human

themes in a poetic and abstract way, beyond the social and historical situatedness of its birth.

Thus, tango become a powerful metaphor of life, whose philosophy can be also applied to the

everyday way of living, a “tango vision of the world” (Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000, p. 109).

Voice of Group
 Q: What are the most important aspects keeping together your dancing group?

A: tango has been a moment to make the group growing even beyond tango itself

(Male)

The excerpt shows the distinction of the experience of tango within a specific group, this

generates a border that is crossed, by bringing the group “beyond tango itself”. Once the

experience of tango and of the community is internalized, the Self needs to negotiate its

meaning with respect to the other positions in everyday life.

Voice of Tango

Q: Can you identify some turning points in your dancer trajectory, your mind and

feeling with respect to tango?

A: Yes because leading it’s something that makes you take the initiative or naturally

leading the woman physically in some steps and this reflects upon leading woman or

other things in everyday life (Male)

How to harmonize the internalized voice of tango with the other I positions? The man answer

seems to be to try to generate an alliance between the I-as-leading-man in the tango dancing

with the I-as-man in everyday life. This excerpt shows how the epistemic triangle has a strong

ethic and aesthetic commitment, to the extent that the construction of a performative Self

through the relationship with the Others and the Objects implies a value-led dimension of how

is ought to be and how to deal with the others.

Voice of Self

Q: Which moral of the story can you draw?

A: it start like a game but then it will be with you all life long and I wish I’ll never stop

dancing it (Female)

The last excerpt clearly shows the accomplishment of the Self development experienced in

tango dancing. The perfomative identity of I-as-tango dancer as been integrated in the
preexisting organization and a new organization of the woman Self emerges, in which a new

equilibrium is achieved with respect to the different I positioning in the whole aspects of life.

Concluding remarks

I outlined the tango as a dialogical social object, discussing the development and diffusion of

this popular form of art between people of different cultural contexts. I tried to sketch an

approach that could stress the dialogical nature of a phenomenon from its historical and eso-

systemic dimensions to the individual experience of dancing, in the attempt to the “concrete

totality” (Bakhtin, 1990), understood as a whole in process. Genetically, tango has developed

as a form popular art and a social practice in which different instances of social groups has

been voiced through the articulation of instruments, music styles, body movements and

psychological characters. This led to a multivoiced and stylized artistic expression, through

which the concrete human experience has been elevated to a specimen of the universal human

experience. Thus, the very situated experience of the Rioplatense immigrants, sailors,

prostitutes, criminals, workers, mothers, lovers in the late 19th and early 20th century became

“the philosophy of tango, this metaphysical atmosphere in which the man ask himself through

the lyrics about the meaning of life, its meaningless, its caducity, the cruel passing of time

(Labraña and Sebastiàn, 2000, p. 113). This product of human activity is strictly related to the

performativity of the person, thus to a form of embodied Self, but also the relationship with

the Other. A dialogical epistemology should than help to understand these phenomena as

inclusive wholes in process, accounting for the opposites (Markova, 2003; Valsiner, 1987). In

particular, I outlined how the experience of tango dancing can be understood as the process of

development of a performing Self, but in which subject and object are inclusively separated

into an epistemological whole: the epistemic, ethic and aesthetic triangle (figure 6).
Despite the study limitations, I tried to stress how the process of Self actuation (Rosa, 2007) is

taking place within a complex web of relationships between the Ego, the Alter and the Object,

that are epistemological dimension of the triangle, but are actually instantiated in different

meaningful actors (e.g. the dancing partner, the group, the tango, etc.). The process

dialogically includes the actuation of my Self, of the Other, of my Self with the Other and,

finally, of my Self with respect to the Other. All these different dimensions of the actuation

can be found in the epistemic triangle as distinct features that are nevertheless part of the

whole experience of actuating the Self in tango.

The results of the ethnographic study show how participants construct and actuate their

identities in a dialogue between their I-positions inside and outside tango community. This

dialogue is embodied in dancing practice and then elaborated in meta-reflections, at a more

general level, that lead to the elaboration of a normative Self, including the ethical dimension

of what is ought to be with the Other and with respect to the Other.

This process takes place throughout initiation, peripheral and central participation trajectory

within the tango community. Dancers progressively construct different senses of their life

experiences through the kinetic performance as well as through the symbolic repertoire of

tango culture. It is the person dancing, but also the tanguero/a, that is the internalized voices

of the group and the tango culture. This narrative elaboration of the experience affects the

performance, which constructs the narration in return, generating in a sense-making loop. The

triadic relationship is both embodied (glances, embrace, spatial positions, muscular

knowledge) and narrated (voices of Self, group and tango lyrics). But this relationship, or this

concrete totality, is basically an aesthetic experience of development, rather than the nostalgic

repetition of memories. In the words of the poet Leopoldo Marechal: “El tango es una

posibilidad infinita”7, just like life.

 Acknowledgments

This work has been funded by the Marie Curie IEF-2012 grant “EPICS. Epistemology in

psychological science, the heritage of Giambattista Vico and the cultural psychology” at

Aalborg University (Denmark).

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1
The “conventillo” is a typical kind of popular overcrowded block of the second half of the 19th Century. It was
a multi-storied building with a dark central courtyard, called patio. All the small apartments, often one room,
where disposed on an internal balustrade facing the courtyard. This kind of very poor housing forced all the
social activities to take place in the common open space.
2
“Gringos” is the generic Argentinean name for European immigrants, while “compadres” are the immigrants
from the inner countryside of Argentina.
3
The texts says: Conventions are the fences society has built to protect you and the race. Familiarities arouse
dangerous desires. They waste your power for the finest human companionship and love. Physical attraction
alone will never wholly satisfy. Complete and lasting love is of the mind as well as of the body”. Source: Social
Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota, retrieved 2014 October 10 from
http://digital.lib.umn.edu/IMAGES/reference/swhp/SWHP0081.jpg
4
There are at least four different theories on the origin of the name tango: from the Ancient Latin verb
“tangere”; from the Spanish tango; from the African-American word “tangò”, a particular type of drum used in
the celebrations; from the Quechua Indian word “tambo”, distorted by the European colonizers; and finally from
the phonetic deformation of the name “Shàngò” or “Sàngò” belonging to the Afro-American pantheon, the
divinity of the storms and thunders, lord of the percussion instruments (Castro, 1991; Gobello 1999; Labraña and
Sebastiàn, 2000; Kohan, 2007; Salmon, 2000). Of course, this is not just and etymological debate , it is relevant
that the opposing reconstructions point to different social or ethnic groups.
5
“Candombe” is a traditional African-American form of cadenced music played with different kinds of drums.
6
It is the king instrument of tango music, similar to, but also significantly different from an accordion, it was
invented in the 1835 by the German Heinrich Band. The amazing story is that it was initially conceived as a
portable substitute of the church organ in German countryside. It was brought to Buenos Aires by the German
sailors and was soon adopted and modified by local musicians to carry out a more worldly activity (Labraña and
Sebastiàn, 2000).
7
“Tango is an infinite possibility”