Why do people do tango?
First, what does "do tango" mean? It's not necessarily dancing tango. Argentine tango is hardly what people who are never exposed to it thinks it is. Most such "outsiders" invoke images of extended arms and rose between someone's lips (oh the thorn!), and marching from one random place to another. Some who have been exposed to stage version of Argentine tango, and these often become the bad segment of the dancers, think about acrobatics and think about it even when they are dancing.
Argentine tango is a social dance, and people attend milongas, which are social settings where dancing happens. There are certainly tango shows where, as one friend put it, many scenes of the woman's crotch are unavoidable as she jumps up and down and swinging her legs wide open to see what her taste is in women's panties. On the contrary, in these milongas little jumping is possible and almost always frowned upon (sometimes by the same people who actually like doing them and do them at other times in other places). The vast majority of tango dancers across the world are dancing in small spaces, trying to be present with their respective partners.
But what do people do to be considered doing tango? Since it is a social event, much of the time is not dancing but sitting or standing, often chatting with someone, checking out the dancers on the floor, checking out other people not yet dancing. They also come for the music, for the atmosphere. Milonga organizers are not just responsible for getting a place and trying to make it profitable, but also give it themes, characteristics, and socializing with important and key people so that the popularity of the place could continue to increase.
Some people come with their partners and may even want to dance exclusively with them, but most people come to dance with as many good dancers as possible. Some come for just the enjoyment of the place, but others come with goals that have faces on them, checkboxes waiting to be ticked. And here in the milonga, on and off the dance floor, life plays itself out in the most simplified ways that are also felt most similar to the real world. There is a hierarchy of desirability that does not necessarily match with levels. Like in real life, skills and talent don't necessarily take you to the place you feel your hardwork and results deserve. There is a lot of falseness, a lot of pretentiousness, a lot of condescension, and above all, a lot of anxiety, no matter where you are on the hierarchy.
And to complicate this matter a little bit, like in real life, such assessment varies greatly in accuracy depending on which region of the world you are in, which day of the week the milonga takes place, and of course, which milonga you are going to. But the hierarchy exists everywhere simply because tango dancers are humans who forever will seek a place in society and will want to be liked. But also as humans, some of them, at least, seek a genuine fulfillment of their passion as a human being. This is the principle draw of tango, regardless of how bad, how pretentious, how miserable a dancer a tango dancer may be. It is the exhilaration of being with someone so close, to connect to them, either through sorrow, through fun, or through loneliness. For this reason a dancer wants to embrace another one, to laugh with the other one, to touch that person.
There are so few places where the extremes of reasons for being in tango are so pronounced than the tango scene in New York. There are creatures who go for the sole desire to rebuild their ego battered by some of the many hammers offered by a city whose livelihood is not about relaxation and stopping to smell the roses. These people come to the milongas to catch dances with those whom they deem too good for them but are worth the risk to further damage their egos. There are creatures who come hoping to be comforted after a long week, or even just a day, of feeling isolated in a city where connecting with someone is very difficult. A man wants to feel accepted when asking for a dance, and a woman wants to feel loved when waiting for a dance. And then, there are creatures who come to listen to the music, preferably while dancing. They understand the music, either because it's their background or because they've listened long enough to it that they feel connected to it. They come all dressed up, and they sit there with their glass of wine, and watch people dance. This last group is quite rare, but since it's New York, anything is possible.
The drama happens, therefore, more with the first two groups. When you step into a milonga, let's pretend you are invisible so your presence wouldn't cause any effect on the social behaviors. You see a man standing there, not really knowing what to do with his hands, putting them in his pockets, pulling them back out to draw them to his back, or fold them on his chest, and then repeating that sequence again, or some combination of it. His face is full of anxiety. He wants to dance, and not only that, he wants to dance with one of the people on his shortlist of targets. He purposefully ignores any glances from the undesirables, the old, the novice, the ugly. He finally musters the courage to go up to a woman from behind and taps her on her right shoulder, startling her to the point that she nearly spilled her wine on her white dress. She is visibly annoyed, and turns a little to make eye contact with the man who is by now extremely nervous. You see him twist his lips a bit in speaking, and she, maintaining her annoyed look, forced out a smile while shaking her head, saying probably a defiant "No!" His face, if there were light, would seem as red as a strawberry shake. He retreats from that table and walks with the world's shame hanging over his shoulders. He walks to the far end of the dance hall, not wanting to sit next to the person who had just humiliated him, even though no one knew him here. He becomes bitter, hates her, whoever she is, curses at her, and vows that when he gets better, when all the women desires him, he will have his revenge and never dance with her again.
While he vents, you look elsewhere and you find a woman in her late 50's trying to look young. Not only is there a centimeter-thick layer of makeup on, but also she has an outfit that exposes nearly the entirety of both her wrinkled breasts that have obviously had their disproportionate share of UV rays over the decades since her refining beauty as one that maximized the risk of melanoma. She has a red dress on, tightly squeezing her torso so that all the lumps of fat would exude a profile of their layers. The dress is cut in such a way that at least one of her legs is always exposed up to her panties, which you notice are black. The legs are a spectacle too; they are like long dying tunas trapped in these fishnet stockings that made sure you knew she had watched way too many videos and performances by stage tango, and anyone with just a little experience with tango dancers would know that such a woman would not care about dancing with you, but rather use you as an accessory to fulfilling some dream of looking like the performers on video or on stage. Her forearms are exposed until the hands, which are wearing slender, black, felt gloves. The little flesh exposed on the arms look even more gruesome than what you've seen on her exposed and propped up wrinkly breasts. On her head is a knot covered by some old lady's bonnet with a red rose on it, the same rose someone would have loved to put in his mouth to make a caricature of the dance. And you see her sitting there, all alone, watching with dismay at the dance floor, and wondering how cold the room is but that she couldn't put her shoal on lest men might miss the beauty of her exposed upper back, full of more wrinkles and brown spots that you hope, for her sick, will remain benign.
And then there is the old man who would never pay attention to such woman, but has his eyes fixed on the new girls. Those are the freshmeat, the neophytes whose dance skills' paucity can only be matched by the paucity in the social skills needed for a milonga. And you can see how the hyena focuses on his target and smoothly, with great ease, move in for the kills. The young woman's soft skin can be felt by this short, wrinkly man before he had her in his arms. Fresh meat is often softer, smells better, and less virulent than the dancers who had come just enough times to avoid his glances. May the innocent continue to endure such cruelty, for that was how you would learn your way to being the next group of people.
That is the cliquy group, the group you find in all but the most distant outliers of the tango milonga norm. They are the friends who dance mostly among themselves, having no faith in other dancers, and none for any newcomers, no matter how beautiful or how much Buenos Aires blood seemed in their eyes. They often dance among themselves so much that there is little opportunity for outsiders to come make any offer. But when they doesn't stop the outsiders, they feel much more at lease at rejecting. Cliques create an artificial sense of importance, plays on human desire for that which he can't have. Both men and women alike look to the clique with some measure of disdain, envy, but also an equal measure of desire. Many will work hard for the sole purpose of being wanted by the people who has established themselves with the rule of not wanting any outsiders. And their aura of loftiness often is reinforced by the fact that teachers, local or visiting, will often spend a lot of time in their niche, socializing, and dancing. The presence of these super stars raises the level of ire and desire to unimaginable levels. You turn and survey the room and find many eyes often looking at this corner of cliques with the same variety of contrasting feelings.
Even within the clique there is a hierarchy. The best ones are on the highest pecking order and will get to dance with the superstars. Because they are actually, and not just borrowing the reputation of someone else in the clique, teachers naturally love dancing with them. This generates envy not only in the general crowd, but also within the clique. And they all suddenly want to compete over the teachers, earning their boyscout badges to show off for later (soon later). This further isolates them, making them seem they are the only ones that exist in the dance hall.
So why do people go to tango? The reasons are nearly countless and difficult to categorize. One thing is for sure, not enough people go for the enjoyment, for their love of the music, of the dance, even if just by watching, for connection with someone. For many, it's an emotional channel leading from a sewer of their postponed emotions. For others it's an ego trip, a time to re-examine their place on the pecking order, to scheme ways to get the prize he least likely will get. And for this reason New York isn't for everyone, perhaps not for many. But it's possible to still go there with the aim of enjoying the music, the atmosphere, and watch those who managed to hit it off to the dance floor.
