Judgment and Acceptance while dancing Argentine Tango
A data-driven approach to explore the inner experience of tango dancers
Welcome to Awaken Tango’s new Substack. We are proud to publish the Inner Experience of Tango report. I’m grateful to the tango community for your participation in the research project and your patience. I hope this leads to productive new conversations. Please feel free to share this with your community. Mitra
Introduction
Argentine Tango is a misunderstood dance. People who don’t dance tango have difficulty imagining what the experience is like. Because of visual media, outsiders may have limiting stereotypes about what tango entails, which may cause those who could benefit from tango to turn away from it, inhibiting tango’s potential to grow and serve communities.
Against this backdrop, tango dancers struggle to describe the inner experience of tango. Practically every tango dancer knows what you mean when you say “tango bliss” — a kind of ineffable, spiritual/sensual, explosively joyful, profoundly connected unfolding moment. Could this state be described in a more precise, data-driven way, and could it help tango teachers and organizers as they teach and grow their communities?
Finally, dancing tango is complex, and our lived experience of tango isn’t purely blissful. There’s also “tango hell.” Tango dancers have many competing pulls on our attention as we dance: technique, the music, our partner, and increasingly (with the advent of competitions, YouTube, social media and tango photography) our appearance; this can all be very stressful. Implicitly and sometimes explicitly, tango competitions assert that a perfect tango is not only a beautiful experience for both partners, but also must be beautiful to an audience. Is this true? If we believe we must look a certain way to observers, how does it affect our inner experience?
We set out to learn more about the inner experience of tango, both to make it more legible to outsiders and to help dancers, teachers, and organizers foster less tango hell and more tango bliss. Over the past four years we donated over a thousand hours to this project. We developed a questionnaire, surveyed 981 dancers, carried out factor analysis and thematic analysis to understand what the data say about the inner experience of tango.
1. Why explore the inner experience of tango?
What is a good tango? Shifting values prioritize the visible
Tango is a social dance, and when we are not dancing, we are often observing dancers on the floor, sometimes with admiration, curiosity, or good-natured teasing or heckling.1 The external, visible form of a tango is just one of many things that have been valued by dancers over the decades. Invisible, inner aspects of the experience have been important too,2 but can be harder to talk about.3
Many social dancers who began in the late Tango renaissance remember the freewheeling bohemian culture of the early 2000s,4 celebrating individuality and playfulness combined with an investigative orientation to the dance.5 Then, in the 2010s, the pendulum swung in the other direction, with more focus on presentation. Tango championships, YouTube culture, and milonga photography started to play a bigger role in US tango society. The visual appearance of a tango became an increasingly important way of determining how “good” a tango was.6
In tango competitions, judges are tasked with comparing dancers’ quality based on certain criteria,7 and ranking them from “worst” to “best” in each of these criteria.8 Social dancers who choose to develop their career through competition attempt to embody a tango that synthesizes both the orientation to visual beauty as well as inner and shared experience.9 As influential dancers highlight the importance of the appearance,10 it can be hard not to think about this, with more and more dancers becoming interested in making sure their dancing is appealing to observers.
The tango dancer’s double bind
A double bind is a situation in which a person is confronted with two irreconcilable demands. What if trying to maximize both “looking great” and “authentically connecting” simultaneously creates a difficult, even impossible situation for some?
One is advised to be authentic, free, and genuinely oneself —while also conforming to exacting external standards. One is encouraged to engage fully and deeply and truly with one’s own partner, sharing an experience some describe as intensely intimate and even profoundly holy! — and at the same time manage the experience such that the result pleases people looking on from the outside who want to see something very specific.
Doubtless this is possible, perhaps it’s even easy for some people — how common is that? Are tango dancers generally able to attend to both at the same time? We thought our research might help us answer this.
Towards an articulation of the inner experience of tango
In 2020, Avik Basu shared with me11 his curiosity about the inner experience of tango, as something that can be elusive and hard to talk about but vitally important and in danger of being devalued by the visual culture surrounding us. We realized how little we really know about what people experience while dancing, and how interesting it would be to find out more about that. Drawing on his social science background, Avik sketched out an idea for a research study that would help us understand more about that interior dimension. That’s how the Inner Experience of Tango research study came about.
2. Methods
We started with the questions: What’s going on in our heads when we are dancing tango? Are there meaningful thought-based patterns that seem to be happening for people?
We decided to set out on a journey together to illuminate the dimensions of the inner experience of tango. What comprises the inner experience of tango? We wanted to look at patterns in mental talk, mental imagery, sensations, and other types of interior awareness.
Developing the survey
First, we did a literature review on awe experiences,12 ego dissolution, transcendent/mystical13 and flow experiences14 to ground our inquiry in other explorations of phenomenology.
Next, to develop the survey, we interviewed tango dancers who ranged in experience and interests, and came from different places, mostly in the U.S. We asked them to describe the kinds of inner experiences they had when dancing tango. Their responses included thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. These interviews formed the basis of our survey items.
To manage the length of the survey, we chose to focus primarily on thoughts, while excluding emotions and physical sensations. The 53 thought content phrases we developed included a wide range of items from the interviewees in addition to items we developed ourselves based on our own combined 40+ years of experience of tango. We asked participants to rate, on a 5 point scale, each of the items in terms of how often they experienced these thoughts while dancing. The rating-based approach allowed us to have people respond to specific prompts which is easier for respondents than to respond to open-ended questions, though we did still include two of the latter. Here is the whole survey.
Participants
The survey ran for one month starting in April 2023. We invited the tango community to respond via email lists (Awaken Tango’s list); social media (Facebook groups, Reddit, Instagram). We asked tango influencers to promote the survey to their lists and followers. In addition to our targeted promotion, we also used snowball sampling, inviting people to spread the word once they had completed the survey. We provided graphics and pre-written text for people to add to their emails. 1473 people responded to the survey. After removing those who didn’t complete the whole survey, we were left with 981 participants. Our analysis is based on N=981, most of whom were from the US or English-speaking countries, with many more follower than leader respondents. Here is a breakdown of who took the survey.
Analysis
Item responses were measured on a 5-point frequency scale, ranging from 1 (Never) to 5 (Always). For each item, means and 95% confidence intervals were calculated. To explore the underlying structure of the 53-item survey, we conducted a factor analysis using Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation. This analysis identified categories of thoughts based on the patterns of responses from the individuals. Factors were extracted based on Eigenvalues greater than 1 and examined using a scree plot to identify the optimal number of factors. To enhance interpretability, we applied Varimax rotation, a commonly used orthogonal rotation method. Items with factor loadings of 0.4 or higher were considered significant for factor interpretation. The analysis was performed using R to ensure accurate and replicable results.
For the open ended responses, all responses were reviewed to develop an in-depth understanding of the data set. This involved reading and re-reading the responses to identify preliminary patterns and ideas. Responses were then hand-coded, meaning each individual response was systematically labeled with descriptive codes that reflected the essence of the content. This helped highlight recurring patterns or unique insights, and identify themes that reflected the inner experience of groups of participants.
Limitations
The main limitation of this research is the form and range of thought items included in the instrument. Of course it is impossible to come up with a list of all the possible items anyone might think of while dancing a tango, but we may have excluded important categories. Additionally, some of the items may have been phrased in a way that created a negativity bias, causing people to opt to assign them less frequency than they actually experience.
3. Insights
The data revealed four main findings:
There’s a great diversity of thought while dancing. The data revealed an incredible diversity of inner experiences of tango. Each dancer’s experience is unique, and there is no single "typical" inner experience of tango. Even within a couple, one partner’s experience could be very different from another’s.
Music and partner thoughts predominate. Thoughts about the music and one’s partner were often part of the inner experience.
Certain thoughts are likely to occur together. When we analyzed the 53 thought items to discover patterns in their reported frequency, we discovered that certain kinds of thoughts go together and certain thoughts don’t go together.
There are 13 tango thought patterns. These will be detailed below, along with the thoughts they contain.
The thought patterns fit into two overall tango mindsets. One mindset is more judgmental and one is more accepting.
Role impacts one’s thought patterns in certain specific ways, and experience level has small effects. The role you dance, and how much/how long you’ve been dancing, can affect certain particular thought patterns.
Dancers find certain kinds of thoughts helpful. Most said they “don’t think” while dancing, and instead simply focus on the music and/or their partner. Yet many shared examples of helpful thoughts, mostly related to the accepting mindset.
People like events that support the accepting mindset. When we analyzed the best-liked aspects of events, we found that the favored features are those which appear to support more accepting mindsets.
These findings are described in more detail below.
Insight 1: Diversity of Thought
The diversity of thought patterns among individuals is striking. No two individuals are likely to have the same inner experience while dancing tango. In the next chart, for each item (one item per row on the vertical axis) , a blue dot represents one individual’s response. A particular individual chosen at random is likely to report a very unique and idiosyncratic pattern of thought item frequency, which may or may not be congruent with the averages shown below in black. The only area in which there was complete agreement was around the thought of “connecting to the music.” Zero of the 943 respondents reported “never” being aware of connecting to the music, although some reported being more aware of the music than others.
[To see this and other charts clearly, you may want to open this link on your desktop browser.]
Awareness of music and partner dominate inner experience.
While there is a tremendous amount of diversity in people’s inner experience of tango, there are also some things shared across dancers. The chart above shows that dancers’ thoughts most frequently related to the partner and the music. The top five most frequently reported thoughts related to partnership and musical awareness, as did eight out of the top ten.
Other thoughts present in the tango experience
We also invited participants to let us know if there were other thoughts which were not listed in the survey, which were a big part of their inner experience. “Is there a thought that comes up for you often while dancing, that is not listed above?” We carried out a thematic analysis on these 369 open-ended responses.
Many of the write-in responses could be seen as elaborations or poetic restatements of the above thought prompts. The most often-mentioned write-in thought related to music. Participants also shared blissful thoughts and images, often relating to water, mindmeld, soaring or ecstasy.
“...just feelings of joy and gratitude...oh, and a deep intuitive understanding of my own humanity and that of others--an embodied realization of my connectivity with all that is and that extends to people and things beyond those with whom I immediately am dancing and that I carry with me for a time afterward.”
Time ceases to exist
Protecting my partner
Projecting decisiveness and confidence
This is love
Floating, swirling, being in another dimension
The two becoming as one, a very deep spiritual experience
Two types of thoughts were mentioned which were distinct from the thought prompts we provided: one related to negative community thoughts (mentioned by 30) and one related to partner issues (mentioned by 26). The negative community thoughts included thoughts concerning discrimination, lack of inclusion, and frustrations with those at the event. The partner issues thoughts related to disappointment, irritation, confusion, or anxiety in relation to the partner. The data sets are too small to include in the statistical analysis, but we believe it is important to mention.
Insight 2: Thought Patterns and Mindsets
Grounded firmly in an appreciation of the great diversity of inner experience, along with the common themes of music and partner, we then decided to explore whether there were groupings in what people think about as they dance.
13 thought patterns emerged
The data revealed patterns in the frequency of thoughts that tango dancers reported having as they dance. Factor analysis generated 13 thought patterns (groups of related thoughts) from the 53 thought prompts, which represent the common underlying traits across items in a single pattern. For example, the Self-Judgment pattern included items like “Dwelling on mistakes during the dance” and “A judgmental voice inside my head.” The thought patterns are statistically distinct from one another, representing unique dimensions of thought.
The table below shows all 53 thought items organized by the 13 patterns. We generated the names of the thought patterns based on the groupings of the items. The “Acceptance” and “Judgment” groupings will be explained in later sections.
It is helpful to consider how the 13 thought patterns relate to one another. Below is a network diagram of the thought patterns, showing each pattern’s closeness to another based on their inter-correlations. For example, Self-Acceptance is connected with a dark red line to Self-Judgement indicating that those two patterns of thought are not experienced together. Self-Judgement and External Appearance are connected with a light blue line, indicating that those who are experiencing thoughts of Self-Judgment are somewhat likely to also experience thoughts about their External Appearance.
With this lens of the 13 thought patterns, we can now identify which ones are, on average, most frequent, as in the chart below. Interestingly, the two top most frequent thought patterns related to things beyond the self: Music and Helping My Partner. Also, the more frequently occurring thought patterns are those with a more positive affect, and the relatively less frequently occurring thought patterns have a negative affect.
The data suggest that, as in the case of the thought items, there is a diversity of experiences across the thought patterns. People seem to have an idiosyncratic mix of thought patterns that vary widely from person to person. So it’s not as if there is a distinct group of mind-wandering people, or expansive people, or self-accepting people. These patterns work more like neighborhoods in the tango thought-space that we all move around between, depending on what’s going on for and around us.
The impact of role
We also differentiated the thought patterns based on role to determine if there were significant differences between those who took the survey as followers vs leaders.15 Two areas that were significantly different were those that likely come about as a result of the leader’s role including responsibility for navigation (Predicting and Milonga Stressors). Leaders also thought a little bit more about about Helping My Partner than do followers. Follower thought slightly more than leaders about Improving, Expansion, Noticing Details, and Self-Acceptance, External Appearance, Comparing, and Mind-wandering, suggesting that followers may have more slightly more bandwidth to think while dancing.
The (small) impact of experience level
We also looked at whether experience level impacted the frequency of the appearance of thought patterns to determine if there were significant differences between dancers with different amounts of experience.
What stood out here was the degree to which dancers with less than ten years of experience are more likely to have thoughts related to Improving and Self-Judgment than more experienced dancers. They also tend to be the most focused on External Appearance and Comparing. In contrast, dancers of all experience levels experience Intimacy and are Noticing Details roughly equally — and have just about an equal amount of Mind-wandering. Dancers with more than twenty years of experience dancing think significantly more about Music than dancers with less than ten.
The patterns are similar, but more pronounced, when we look at the data through the lens of the level of experience teaching. Teachers with more than ten years of experience are thinking about the Music almost all the time, significantly more than non-teachers, and are thinking thoughts related Self-Judgment far less frequently than less experienced teachers and than non-teachers.
Finally, the sheer amount that a dancer participates in the scene corresponds to some small differences in thought patterns they are likely to experience. Dancers who participate the most think least often about Improving and Self-Judgment, for instance. To measure participation, we asked participants which tango-related activities they had done at least three times, beyond just dancing. The list included nine possible activities including organizing events, teaching, performing, competing, and playing live music. We then grouped dancers into three categories based on how many of these activities they'd done at least three times: those who stuck mainly to dancing (None: 0 additional activities), those who dabbled in a few extra roles (Some: 1-4 activities), and the deeply involved dancers who embraced many aspects of tango life (Lot: 5-9 activities).
Common thought patterns fit into two mindsets
Based on our interpretation of the data, we organized the thought patterns according to two mindsets. Although these two mindsets are not specifically determined by cluster analysis, we believe it is a valid way of interpreting the patterns of proximity and distance across mindsets.
This quote from a participant sums it up beautifully:
“I am either in the dance fully and joyfully or outside myself, observing and being critical. First happens in smaller, more intimate events, the latter - in larger, less familiar settings where there is sense of competition, being judged, etc. Needless to say, I will take a small milonga with just a few friends over large festival any night. First is pure joy. Second feels like work.”
The Acceptance mindset, anchored in the Self-Acceptance thought pattern, contains patterns of thinking related to Music, Expansion, Intimacy, Noticing details, and Helping my partner. The thought patterns in the Acceptance mindset are more likely, in our experience as tango dancers, are associated with the joyous state that tango dancers commonly refer to as tango bliss.
The Judgment mindset, anchored in the Self-Judgment thought pattern, contains patterns of thinking related to External Appearance, Comparing, Mind-wandering, Predicting, Improving, and Milonga stressors. We refer to this as “judgment” in the Myers-Briggs sense of seeking order, planning, and organization. From our own experience dancing tango, these are less likely to foster the deeply connected state many people aspire to find as we tango.
Insight 3: Helpful thoughts
When we asked dancers to share specific thoughts that helped them as they dance, many (but not all) of the thoughts they shared fell into the Acceptance mindset.
We asked, “Do you have any particular ways of thinking while dancing that help improve your tango?” Many said they “did not think” or “tried not to think” while dancing. Out of 377 write-in answers, the largest group (about 34% or 129 individuals) wrote that thinking was not relevant to their dancing, or that it was unhelpful. These respondents explained that it is more helpful for them to focus outside themselves, on the music or their partner.
“I don‘t think while dancing. I listen to the music and feel my partner. No space for thinking”
“I don't think; I feel our connection and our center of gravity (shared axis, I think it's referred to at times) and I listen to the music.”
“I try not to think. I try to let my body feel the flow, and my partner with the music, and I am sensing”
“I don't think while dancing, I don't have the ability to think and listen to music at the same time”
“Just trying to focus upon the music and my partner. Not so many thoughts.”
“I don’t really think while dancing. The feeling of flow and complete absorption and feeling of connection and intimacy is why I dance.”
“Don't think too actively or too consciously. I dance best when I focus completely on listening to my partner and letting the music flow through.”
In addition to these “I don’t think” write-in answers, the second largest theme mentioned was related to music, with about 26% or 97 of the write-in thoughts related to that. Then, connection, and partner, with about 15% or 56 writing in thoughts in each of these themes. Other than these themes we’ve seen in previously in the data, the next largest groups of write-in answers related to technique (about 15%), focusing on the present moment (about 12%), and having a positive attitude (about 11%).
Just about a sixth of the respondents said they attended to technique while dancing. These could be seen as instances of the Improving thought pattern, a part of the Judgment mindset; however, most of these thoughts don’t seem to be judgy in tone, but rather directional. Many said it was most helpful to focus on something simple and specific, sometimes using a guiding image:
“Focus on one or two single goals in technique that will help me keep up with my partner’s way of dancing”
“I try to always have 1-2 things I've been working on lately in the back of my mind”
“If the dance is difficult: Choosing a single aspect of technique to focus on”
“I try to keep several thoughts in my head- ie. to stand tall, to turn out my feet, to not look down, to move smoothly.”
“I like to use a repeating check list to work on my dance.”
“I often actively feel or "look for" my muscular activity around the body, and sometimes think of pictures/metaphors to help my technique.”
“I think of being heavy, think of movement in my joints, think of and organic being that floats with the partner.”
“My thoughts go through body scanning to check into how different body parts are feeling and engaged.”
“disciplined in posture, relaxed in mind, tranquilo.”
The next largest group of write-in respondents said they practiced being present, by applying a meditative principles, such as focusing on breath, letting go, being present.
“Say Buddhist prayer of gratitude: ‘I say 'yes' to everything that happens to me today, as an opportunity to give and receive love without reserve.’”
“Being open to what arises, self reflecting and non judgmental”
“I practice mindful awareness in that I accept the thoughts that arise while dancing.”
“Let go of thoughts and be in the moment, like a moving meditation.”
“Not too different than being present in sitting meditation. When I catch myself drifting I make the effort to come back and be present. Sometimes I feel like rather than settling into my own breathing to be present I am settling into my partner's movement.”
Finally, a group of respondents shared thoughts that helped them create a positive attitude, related to cultivating gratefulness, self-acceptance, appreciation of partner, or loving regard.
“I try to think about and convey a spirit of openness and compassion and playfulness towards my partner.”
“I try to think of at least 3 things that I absolutely love about my dance partner and really savor that enjoyment of those things.”
“Holding the thoughts ‘I can do this. I know how to do this. I dance well.’”
“Focus on gratitude!”
“I think to myself ‘we are all connected, I am him and he is me.’ Or ‘god (art) is here (creating and inspiring)’”
“When I think 'I love you' the dancing seems to go better.”
Insight 4: People like events that support the Accepting mindset
We asked respondents what elements of events they liked most. Below, you can see all the elements organized from the most well-liked to the least-liked.
The elements that were the most universally well-liked are perhaps those we commonly associate with a successful tango dancing experience that supports the body and tango technique: Wood floor, Drinking water at the venue, Milongas (e.g., the event, not the musical genre), and Traditional music. Participants also liked Afternoon events and Practicas.
Two more well-liked elements of events were Being Welcomed by the Host, and a Code of Conduct. These stand out in light of the above discussion. We can theorize on Code of Conducts and how they may support Acceptance by establishing a commitment to respect, civility and kindness, and taking a stand against discrimination and othering, which a few dancers reported experiencing in tango spaces. When the host herself embodies a mindset of Acceptance through warm personal greetings and clear norms, this creates a culture that makes it easier for all participants to judge one another less and instead enter into the more blissful world of the Acceptance mindset.
Features of events that bring attention to seeing and being seen — e.g. Photographers and Mirrors on the wall — were among the least often liked. And, the group of elements that heighten formality, such as Performances and Reserved tables, were the least often liked. It’s possible that these are less liked because they heighten thought formation in the Judgment mindset and make it more difficult to access the Acceptance mindset.
4. Looking ahead
In conclusion, the data suggests it may not be possible to focus simultaneously on things like Intimacy and Music while also managing External Appearance, Comparing themselves to others, working on Improving, and so on. While aesthetic beauty may be worthwhile to cultivate, and while its cultivation is part of the unfolding history of tango, these findings suggest that thoughts connected to evaluation and judgment are, for many people, at odds with the beatific thoughts we associated with the improvisational flow state, the tango experience at its best.
As we’ve noted, the data also conveys an enormous amount of diversity within the tango inner experience. There are all kinds of folks out there. So, there are probably a few people for whom it does feel natural to be both externally-directed and internally-focused while dancing a tango.
For most of us, if we want to have a fundamentally Accepting inner experience characterized by the core six positive thought patterns Intimacy, Music, Helping my partner, Expansion, Noticing details, and Self-acceptance, there are some pathways that the data proposes: dance more, and stick with it! Those who are most immersed in the community and have more than a decade of experience under their belts seem to be in the Judgmental space the least often.
That said, the study also suggests that one can be more intentional about what thoughts they focus on when you dance, choosing those in the Acceptance mindset — e.g., thoughts related to gratitude, awareness, and love. We can support organizers who embody and create Acceptance, and we can create new kinds of events that place less emphasis on visual appearance. Finally, we can look for ways to increase Acceptance by showing up differently in tango space and by keeping an open heart.
Personal reflections: Healing the double bind
Taking it further, I believe there is a quality of beautiful, excellent, pure-hearted shared tango that actually inheres into appearance and phenomenology simultaneously. I don’t think it’s something we can see with our judging eyes or our eyes that compare or rank or seek improvement. It’s something we can sense, with all our physical and metaphysical senses — with eyes that see with love, wonder, appreciation, and curiosity. In mindfulness meditation traditions this is called a “soft gaze” or “soft eyes;” in the mystical Christian tradition, “seeing with the eyes of the Christ.”
As I’ve been working with this data set and applying it to my own experience in tango, I am attempting to look at myself, fellow dancers and community members this way. At festivals and marathons over the past two years, Avik and I have intentionally practiced watching the couples on the floor with acceptance, compassion, and appreciation — with a focus on potential and possibility. I have found that engaging an event with this attitude causes my own anxious, self-judgmental thoughts to recede while I am dancing.
Thinking bigger, what if we got in the practice of expanding this soft gaze off the dance-floor too? I believe our tango lives would be immeasurably enriched if we looked at ourselves, our partners, and fellow community members through eyes that see them in their potential, that hold compassion, understanding, and care. To me this is the true inclusiveness that will enrich and enliven our dance into the next decade.
Perhaps, more than anything, learning to perceive ourselves and each other differently is what will heal the double bind and invite us all into a new view of tango that is more fully in alignment with our mostly blissful lived experience, with room for everyone’s dance.
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Mitra and Avik lead in-person and online workshops designed to engage event participants in co-creating a positive inner experience for themselves and others in the tango world. Please contact Mitra Martin to inquire.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the 1473 people who took the survey and the 981 who completed it.
Thank you especially to the dozens of friends and organizers who went out of their way to post the link on social media and in their newsletters. This research would have been impossible without you. Thank you, thank you.
Thank you to the dancers who helped us shape the questions. I am grateful for the lively focus group conversations with Vidia, Tanvi, and Vivek, with Gary, Shane, and Dong Sung (go Mens Trio!), with Stanley and Rebecca, and survey walk-throughs with Korey and Daniel. Thank you Dar for the frank and so valuable feedback on the intro. All that said, Avik and I take full responsibility for anything missing or wrong with the survey and I’m sure everyone mentioned will have their own POV on the insights we’ve shared here.
This was a super ambitious project undertaken with zero institutional support, I am sure it’s not perfect and yet I hope it contributes something positive to your tango life.
Forever thanks to Korey Ireland, Daniel de Kay, Tracey Peever, and Mara S. for helping to create the Awaken Tango container and for Meredith Klein for contributing to the first Awaken Tango research project, proving it was possible.
Thank you to Michael for ongoing support of my work and the Awaken Tango impulse.
[I hope that this paper fosters high quality conversation with excellent listening, ideally in person with local community members. I do not have the capacity to create space for and moderate those conversations online, which is why Comments are not available on this post.]
In El Tango, Una Danza, La Improvisación, Gloria & Rodolfo Dinzel posited the existence of the observer as an essential part of the tango. Dinzel, Gloria & Rodolfo, El Tango, Una Danza, La improvisación, 2011, Chapter 10.
In The Meaning of Tango, Christine Denniston concluded that the core of tango wasn’t about the way it looks, but rather creating a beautiful experience for one’s partners. “This is the essence of what makes tango unique. Because of its environment, it evolved as a dance whose aim was the giving of pleasure to the other person, with the understanding that giving pleasure to the other person was the wisest road to pleasure for oneself.” Denniston, Christine, The Meaning of Tango, 2007.
Dancer and dance photographer Andrei Andreev describes this it thus: “As I was processing hundreds of photos of Tango dancers, I started recognizing a quality of presence that I hadn't seen anywhere else. An experience I could not resist. Something I could only know by dancing. I call this The Secret” See his compilation of images here.
Events like Project Tango’s San Francisco Tango Exchange, Tango de los Muertos, and Natural Tango, were expressions of these values.
In 2023, Rebecca Shulman’s Facebook post “The tango I've loved and danced for nearly 32 years is a social dance and art form that cherishes individuality” catalyzed conversation about less visually obvious values that many believe inhere within the form of tango and were very alive during this time.
For a compelling treatment of championships in Argentine tango, see Radman (Radi) Shafie’s 2019 paper Social Tango Dancing in the Age of Neoliberal Competition.
The criteria used in the Mundial, ATUSA, and SCTC, for instance are: Embrace & Connection, Floorcraft, Technique, Musicality, and Walking.
In a 2023 interview, London Hong described his quest to simultaneously create a peak experience for and with his partner, while also wanting to look good from the outside, suggesting that an emphasis on externally visible beauty enhances the inner experience for both partners. See Pragmatic Dreaming, with London Hong, 18:25-21:02, interviewed by Elizabeth Sabatiuk, Humans of Tango Podcast, August 8, 2023.
“To be an excellent tango dancer means to dance from the soul, pure-heartedly; to love the music; to really enjoy the dance and the moment with the partner; and, as well, to look aesthetically pleasing.” Yuliana Basmajyan, in an interview with Oxygen Tango, 2011.
In this paper, the personal pronoun “I” refers to Mitra’s experience. The content of the paper is co-authored by Mitra and Avik Basu with all quantitative data analysis contributed by Avik. Mitra carried out qualitative data analysis and interpretation.
David B. Yaden, Scott Barry Kaufman, Elizabeth Hyde, Alice Chirico, Andrea Gaggioli, Jia Wei Zhang & Dacher Keltner (2018): The development of the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S): A multifactorial measure for a complex emotion, The Journal of Positive Psychology.
Factor Analysis of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: A Study of Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin, Katherine A Maclean, Jeannie-Marie S Leoutsakos, Matthew W Johnson, Roland R Griffiths, December 2012; and, The Mystical Experience Questionnaire, Trippingly Peak Experiences, December 24, 2020.
Heather S. Lonczak, Ph.D, How to Measure Flow with Scales and Questionnaires, 28 Aug 2019.
Although we are both proponents of dancers learning and dancing both roles, for the purposes of the survey, we asked participants to take the survey either as a leader or as a follower. The goal was to understand how people’s experience of these two roles is similar or distinct as they dance.