tangophilia blog

Learning to dance the tango is like learning another language.

Lots of resources are available to teach you the “phrasebook for beginners” with lots of helpful ready-made phrases like “good morning", “how are you?", “one more beer, please", and “where is the bathroom?". If you find yourself in front of a bar on a sunny morning, these phrases become exceedingly useful because they are easy to say, and fit readily in the context you’re in. If they’re a little choppy or uncertain, you can slow down, use lots of hand gestures and still be roughly understood.

The problem arises once you step back into the street and have to negotiate with the taxi, or the hotel check-in, or the police officer wondering why you’re drunk at 11am. How do you handle these novel situations that weren’t covered in your phrasebook? If you were studious enough, and had a particularly good phrasebook, you might have been exposed to enough similar and varying phrases to build up some mental framework of the language. “I know that these three words mean ‘where is the’ so I can substitute another noun here if I can wrap my mouth around it…’library?’ ‘wombat?’ ‘hospital?’” You’re in better shape if you have a few verbs, a handy adjective, and a couple of well-intentioned curses (with gestures). But again, your knowledge is limited to a handful of possibilities which can only be used in very particular circumstances, and only if you happen to recognize the situation you’re in. Eventually, if you learn enough phrases you can fake a passing knowledge of the language, but still won’t be fluent.

This “phrasebook” model is the model by which most social dances are taught and learned. It happens to be a very popular and successful model if the number of teachers, schools, and students using it is any indication. A great many people spend many dollars attending many classes to learn and repeat many step patterns (phrases) until they can say those phrases/patterns “without an accent,” as it were. Eventually, some of them learn enough phrases or pay enough money that they can get private lessons and begin learning the grammar and rules of the language so they might be able to construct novel and unique phrases in particular situations. Of course, there is also some standards body that exists to make sure that certain phrases are standardized and popularized. Everybody will learn them and learn how to say them with the required accent, and this will ensure that everyone can tell that these students are speaking one language and not another.

Although this is the most popular model of instruction out there for social dances, I believe that Argentine Tango is best learnt by another method. The variations and possibilities inherent in tango are no less than those of any other language, and as such, it is something of a travesty to boil it down to just a phrasebook:"These are the phrases thou shalt speak, and thou shalt speak only these phrases.” Instead, I believe that tango can be built up from the same fundamentals as language: grammar, the parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective :: direction, movement, speed), how to conjugate verbs, how to form phrases, how to divine meaning from context, how to spell, etc. Of course, there are still some common phrases that everybody knows, but it’s one thing to parrot those phrases (phrasebook) and another to have built that phrase yourself with your own personal touches (grammar and improvisation). The first is an act of simple recitation, while the latter has meaning and nuance. For the listener they might be indistinguishable at first, but as the conversations continues, it will become easier to figure out which the speaker is using. [note: I’ll write a post later about my concept of a “tango Turing test“. Hmm, it appears that the metaphor has been mentioned in passing, but I’ll make it more complete.]

Building a language or a dance from the fundamentals and technique of speech can seem a little slower in the beginning because it requires a little more understanding than simply blind recitation of phrases, but it allows the speaker and the listener to enjoy much more power and flexibility earlier on. The grammar student will be able to say the same things as the phrasebook student, but will also have some capacity to construct novel phrases (either accidentally or intentionally) and be ready to understand a wider range of contexts and opportunities than the phrasebook student. The only thing that might be lacking is confidence in the choices made. The rote memorization of the phrasebook tends to lend the speaker a blind confidence that the grammar student might lack in the beginning (ignorance is bliss, after all). This discrepancy is rectified over time as the grammar student learns to trust the choices made, and comes to realize the utility of the tools that he or she now wields to create expression in the new language.

Naturally, there are some advantages to be found in both approaches, and my preferred methodology makes appropriate use of both: emphasizing the fundamentals and structure while providing ample opportunity for repetition and memorization. Neither approach stands well alone, but I would rather dance with a person that is able to express his or her own thoughts instead of one who can only quote the thoughts of others.