A few blunt words for anyone who’s done the lessons, bought the shoes, and still feels like a fraud on the dancing floor.

Here’s a thing nobody at the milonga will say out loud.

You’ve done the beginner course, the improvers course, the workshops. Maybe a festival or two. You own the shoes. And some part of you has noticed you’re not actually getting better at the thing you came for — dancing with another person, to the music, in a way that feels good for both of you.

You’re getting better at classes. That’s a different thing.

And every time you notice the gap, there’s a reason waiting. More workshops. Your axis is off. The right maestro. Go deeper on the fundamentals. The goalposts slide out of reach again, and the course never quite ends. Funny how that works.

It’s not a coincidence. It’s the business model.

Outside Buenos Aires, the tango scene is run by teachers — the milongas, the Facebook groups, the lessons, the shoes, the dresses, the festivals, an endless river of products that have nothing to do with dancing with someone you’ve just met. Tango slop, top to bottom. The incentive underneath it is to keep you in the loop: never finished, never good enough, always one workshop away.

Then you stop buying the tango product, around the eighteen-month mark, and the teachers quietly lose interest and move on to a fresh batch of beginners. Experienced dancers get treated as a nuisance — or at best, practice partners for the current cohort of students.

Here’s what I came to believe, after nearly 30 years of watching it. The problem isn’t that you had bad teachers. The problem is the whole teaching system itself.

People learned tango for a century without any of it — by turning up and dancing, with a variety of partners. Watch the old milongueros in Buenos Aires talk about tango and they never mention their teachers. They didn’t have any. They had a floor, the music, and each other. What comes out of that is convivial social dancing — the real thing, the thing at a packed night at Salón Canning that the whole global industry is supposedly imitating, and isn’t.

You don’t need the teachers. That’s what my book is about.

It won’t teach you how to dance tango. No steps, no technique, no system — that’s deliberate, because the argument is that the method is the problem.

So if you’re after tips, or your next teacher — this isn’t your book. Save your money. But if you’ve already suspected the whole apparatus is a racket, that the lessons were never going to get you there, that you’ve been sold guarantees by people with something to sell — this will explain why and what you can do about it.

It’s $25 on my store. There’s a private ten-minute movement video tucked in at the end, for readers. Use it or don’t.

Read the preview and grab the book here.

Or don’t, and take more workshops. Up to you.

However, the 1940’s was already relatively late in the development of tango music.

Some people actually regard the 1910-20’s as the real golden era of tango.

In order to understand what we’re listening to today we need to understand th…

Read more

The first is the idea that tango is a uniquely Argentine folk music — a self-contained ethnic tradition without antecedents or external influences.

This is straightforwardly false, in the sense that tango as an identifiable musical genre emerged around 1890 out of the collision of se…

Read more

It’s more useful to categorise tango as natural vs. mechanical.

To learn mechanical tango you need mechanical movements learned by demonstration and rote repetition, and technique correction with a lot of explanation.

To learn natural tango …

Read more

She literally uses the word mechanics in her teaching.

Her videos on “Essential Body Mechanics” tells us exactly what this mechanical model means.

Let’s listen to her for a bit and see what she says in her intro to Ess…

Read more

But what does that actually mean?

Does improvisation mean you go crazy and do whatever?

And how do you learn to improvise?

The Standard Approach Doesn’t Work

The standard idea among dance teachers is to teach fixed patterns, and then students are supposed to improvi…

Read more

This question assumes the classroom model of teaching/learning—in the case of dance, the studio model. You know how it works: a teacher demonstrates, students copy, then practice through repetition (first individually, then with a partner), and finally the teacher goes around making corrections. It’s the demonstrate-drill-correct model, and it’s completely unnatural.

This model emerged in the 20th century, and now people are searching for alternatives because it has been genuinely harmful to human development. This applies to schooling generally, including learning to dance.

The Somatic Approach is Different

In my recent article Tango and Eastern Martial Arts, I mentioned that my focus is going to be primarily on movement learning and teaching, using the concept of ki or chi that I get from Steve Paxton. So it might look like I’m assuming that the standard Western teaching model is suitable—but I’m not.

The somatic approach doesn’t actually teach particular movements. The assumption in somatics is that we learn movement naturally. If people have trouble moving, it’s not that they need to “learn” movement—it’s that they failed to fully develop their movement skills, or perhaps they had them and forgot them.

The problem isn’t learning specific movements. It’s restarting or recovering the process of moving freely and in diverse ways.

Why Movement Freezes

People fail to naturally develop movement skills (or their movement freezes up) because they don’t move enough in everyday life. They don’t walk enough. They sit constantly—in cars, in offices, in schools. When they do walk, it’s on flat surfaces, not the complex terrain of a hiking trail where you’d move in varied and adaptive ways.

Traditional dance teaching just adds more of this unnatural pattern. You’re teaching movement that’s mechanical, which causes people to further forget their natural movement.

“Experienced” Students Have a Harder Problem

If you have experienced students, the problem is they’re experienced in the wrong thing. They’re experienced in mechanical movement. They need to forget all of that. Beginners are actually better off than so-called “experienced” students.

This includes you as a teacher. If you want to help people move naturally, you have to forget the idea that you’ll teach mechanical movements first and then somehow stick the somatic approach on top of that as a sort of bandaid. They’re mutually incompatible, and teaching them in this way will lead to cognitive dissonance in the dancer.

A Different Goal

The goal of this approach is completely different. Yes, it teaches some movements, but only very few basic ‘pedagogical movements’ to rediscover what is natural movement. Once beginners learn these movements, they will naturally learn tango.

The Problem with Performance-Focused Teaching

A major problem with the standard teaching approach is its focus on output—performance. Students see the instructor, imitate them, and start dancing.

In my book, I argue for an input pedagogy. That means spending most of your time getting input: looking and listening.

In Buenos Aires, you can get a lot of incidental exposure to tango—listening to the music (which your brain needs time to process) and watching people dance. If you’re a beginner, other than the somatic movement exercises, most of your time should be spent observing other people.

The problem in the West is that if you’re watching other dancers, you’re often watching the wrong stuff—mechanical dancing. You’re better off watching videos of milongas in Buenos Aires. You want to see natural dancing.

What Beginners Should Actually Do

When beginners want to dance, they should start off with the ‘slow dance.’ This is something anyone can do: basically swaying side to side, then doing that a few times with a partner, moving together and turning gently.

The teacher plays fairly slow, easy-to-follow tango music. After a while, they might add something simple—a couple of steps forward, or a cross. But this will emerge naturally because it’s already embedded in the somatic exercises. When you do those exercises, you’re learning to turn and cross.

I’m not completely against teaching any programmed tango steps, but I wouldn’t teach any of the standard things like the ‘tango walk’, the ‘paso basico’, ‘cruzada’ or ‘voleo’. These are all completely counterproductive and if you learned them you probably want to unlearn most of that for tango milonguero.

Instead, I’d stick to movements that complement the somatic exercises, that are naturally emergent ‘crossing’ (not the standard ‘cruzada’ with the heel leading) movements in front and behind in various configurations. These are the same movements that you see in other vernacular dances like salsa or bachata.

Anything beyond that is counterproductive. Complex patterns will naturally emerge and don’t need to be directly taught. Students will see other people doing something and will try it themselves. They don’t need to stand in a line and follow a teacher for hundreds of lessons.

The Practice Milonga Model

The model I’ve developed is what I call the practice milonga, which could also be a pre-milonga, ie., a milonga for learners before the milonga proper. I don’t want to call it either a practica or ‘practilonga’. These are completely counterproductive.

The current practica/practilonga model says that before you dance at a milonga, you need to practice the steps and figures you learned in the lessons. It’s focused on practicing these mechanical steps. Then people are supposed to learn so-called ‘floor skills’ at the actual milonga—because they have these big movements, but now they need to learn to navigate the floor. And they never do. These people never really learn floor skills as long as they continue doing these big movements, and you get these freakish milongas with dancers doing performances swinging their legs around and elbowing each other. They have to abandon those movements to be able dance at a milonga with any effectiveness without swinging and elbowing.

My concept of the practice milonga is that you have all the elements of the milonga—you use cabeceo, you practice moving in the line of dance—but you don’t practice steps.

Students do the ‘slow dance’, then they move forward in the line of dance, then they go back to doing their slow dance. Their movement vocabulary with a partner will naturally emerge. At the beginning, it’s difficult to get through a whole piece of music just doing slow dance—it can be boring. So you don’t have the rule that you must dance a whole tanda. The rules are fairly flexible in this kind of practice milonga.

The idea is that you can do the slow dance, and then just sit down once you get bored with that. There’s no pressure on students to be doing a lot of movement (which is output). And there’s no pressure to dance either.

Removing the Pressure to Dance

The problem with the whole tango teaching scheme is that the teachers start pressuring you to dance. There’s this constant pressure to dance, and you have to get rid of that.

The point of my practice milonga concept is no pressure to dance. But if you do dance, you do it in the line of dance, you try to use the cabeceo—you try to do it within the rules. However, there’s no pressure to finish the tanda because at the beginning, people might find it challenging. A full four-song tanda is a lot of work, especially for people who are relatively inexperienced.

Basically, the practice milonga is just a very easy milonga with no pressure.

Creating a Comfortable Environment

You should play good quality music so that even if you’re sitting, you’re comfortable. This is why glass surfaces are a problem: if you’re not dancing, being inside a dancing studio with wall-to-wall mirrors or any space with highly reflective surfaces (eg., modernist cafes with large glass walls and tile floors) is acoustically uncomfortable (jarring). I have articles on acoustics on my Substack and everyone should read them.

You want to provide good quality, relaxing sound. If you can do it in a cafe, people could even buy their own wine or something like that. The dancing is not really the focus—but there’s good quality music, and when people feel like dancing, that’s when they dance.

It’s too academic and scattered.

Also, I want to move away from focusing on history and culture, and instead focus purely on movement.

My idea was to load it with even more information by adding stuff on tango music and DJing.

Big mistake.

The main issue really, at least to start off with, is the movement.

Why?

Movement is something that is learned naturally.

Dancing movement is something that is spontaneous and natural.

It can be adapted to specific styles of music (waltz, samba, tango) and social contexts (carnival, partner social dancing, etc.).

But at the basis it’s the same body and the same movement.

Not everyone develops their movement skills fully because of civilisation.

Especially, walking on flat hard surfaces and sitting for hours in the classroom.

This is not the natural environment in which our movement evolved.

Civilization means that we fail to fully develop all the neural connections.

We become stiff.

Then the Western objective scientific rationality makes things even worse.

We started to conceive of the body mechanically and 3 dimensionally.

We developed dances like the classical ballet that use the body in a way that looks amazing but is completely unnatural.

Then social partner dancing took on that schema in the 20th century to arrive at the grotesque ‘sports dance’ idea.

When tango was ready for global commercialization the whole conceptual scheme of the dancing studios with wall to wall mirrors was in place to reconstruct it.

You break down the movements, make them athletic and mechanical, and teach them by rote and repetition.

If people find it difficult you tell them that it’s a difficult dance and needs a lot of technique workshops.

The alternative conception of the body and of movement is found in Eastern martial arts practices like Tai Chi or Aikido.

These practices conceive of the body and movement in terms of a kind of energy called Ki or Chi.

This energy organizes movement in a particular way.

It begins at the centre of the pelvis and emanates out through the spine, shoulder, the underarm and the hands.

Steve Paxton, a renowned teacher of movement improvisation in the US, argues that you can feel this energy in the handshake.

You feel it just before grasping the other person’s hand.

This action organizes the body (the spine and the pelvis) in a particular way around this point of contact between the hands.

The push-pull is actually at the underside of the hand and the pinky finger.

This part of the hand actually connects through the underarm and the shoulder toward the centre at the pelvis.

It’s a very connected and integrated position.

This mechanism is not the disjointed, ‘mechanical’, image of the body that you find in contemporary Western culture.

Western culture conceives of the body in terms of conjoined units that can be trained in separation from each other.

This is the conception underlying the ‘steps’ ‘figures’ and ‘technique’ scheme.

Arms begin at the shoulders, and legs begin at the hips.

You need to learn ‘separation’.

Etc etc.

The nearest equivalent of the Eastern conception is something like the Brazilian Capoeira, esp. Capoeira Angola.

But it’s also implicit in the convivial ‘tango milonguero’ dancing at places like Salon Canning Milonga Parakultural.

The problem is, when tango teachers try to analyze it for the purposes of teaching they go to the Western mechanical model.

They talk about ‘axis’ and ‘leaning’ as if we’re doing physics.

There are endless debates whether you should have your own axis or not.

These debates will be endless because they are framed in the wrong understanding of the body and movement.

The concept of Ki or Chi is part of the training in practices like Tai Chi and Aikido.

This concept is not ‘mystical’.

It just doesn’t fit into the Western objective scientific view of the human anatomy and movement.

But there’s absolutely no reason why it cannot form the basis for movement training for tango.

While my interest is tango milonguero, these are universal systems of the body that do not differentiate between dances or movement practices.

Either you’re using your body in a way that is natural or not.

Still, I don’t expect that the performers and teachers will find it interesting as it doesn’t really serve their commercial agenda.

There’s much money to be made, and attention harvested, providing eye catching floor shows, and selling ‘technique correction’ workshops.

The concept of Ki or Chi is fundamental to the training in Contact Improvisation (CI), which was created by Paxton to transfer this knowledge to Western movement practices.

It’s unfortunate that the teachers of CI often do not know that this, and don’t transfer this knowledge to their students.

My argument is that until the concept of Ki or Chi becomes part of tango teaching, in particular the teaching of tango milonguero, the practice cannot progress beyond its current state of commercialism, commodification and general dissatisfaction.

Acoustic Experience

Acoustic experience goes beyond just auditory perception.

While auditory perception typically refers to the direct perception of sound—how we hear and interpret it in the brain —acoustic experience can encompass a broader sensory and spatial engagement with sound as it interacts with an environment including:

1. Spatial Awareness: acoustic experience can include how sound interacts with physical spaces, like how echo or reverb occurs in a particular room. This interaction shapes the perception of sound but isn’t solely limited to hearing.

2. Vibrations and Tactile Feedback: Sound can produce vibrations that are felt physically, such as bass in music or the rumble of thunder. This tactile aspect is part of the acoustic experience but isn’t directly auditory.

3. Environmental Interaction: Acoustic experiences can involve how sound waves move through different materials, objects, and spaces, shaping the overall sensory encounter with sound, whether or not it is consciously heard.

So, while auditory perception is a central component of acoustic experience, the latter encompasses the full sensory interaction with sound and its environment, making it broader in scope.

Glass surfaces and room acoustics

Glass is generally considered bad for room acoustics for several reasons, mainly due to its reflective and rigid nature.

Here are the key issues glass presents in room acoustics:

1. High Reflectivity

Glass Reflects Sound Waves

Glass surfaces reflect sound waves instead of absorbing them.

When sound hits a glass surface, most of it bounces back into the room, creating echoes and reverberation.

This can cause sounds to overlap, making speech and music sound muddy or unclear.

Flutter Echo

Parallel glass surfaces (like two opposite glass walls) can cause a phenomenon called “flutter echo,” where sound bounces rapidly back and forth between the two surfaces.

This creates a harsh, repeating sound that can be very distracting.

2. Lack of Absorption

Glass is not porous or soft, so it doesn’t absorb sound.

This leads to an imbalance, where high frequencies (treble) are reflected more, and low frequencies (bass) are either reflected or pass through.

The result is often a room that sounds overly bright, harsh, or tinny.

3. Vibrations and Resonance

Glass is a stiff material, but it can still vibrate at certain frequencies.

These vibrations can contribute to unwanted resonances, which distort the original sound.

If the glass panes are thin or large, they may “rattle” or resonate with specific low-frequency sounds, introducing additional noise into the environment.

4. Uneven Frequency Response

Different frequencies are affected differently by glass.

High frequencies are usually reflected, while lower frequencies may pass through or cause the glass to resonate.

This uneven treatment of frequencies results in an unbalanced sound, where certain parts of the audio spectrum are emphasised or diminished unnaturally.

Solutions

To mitigate the negative impact of glass on room acoustics, people often use acoustic treatments such as curtains, carpets, diffusers, or absorptive panels placed strategically to minimise reflections.

Modern architecture and room acoustics

Modern architecture is often characterised by large rooms and materials with smooth surfaces, such as plastic, glass or concrete. 

As a result, room acoustics and speech intelligibility are severely compromised.

Rooms with low absorption sound “echoey” and are perceived acoustically as uncomfortable.

Good average reverberation times for speech are around 1 second, while for symphonic music they are about 2 seconds.

The reverberation time should be adjusted to the intended main use of the space.

Initial reflections are those sound vibrations that hit a wall first and are reflected back to the ear.

They can cause cancellation or overemphasis in a particular frequency range, i.e. interference.

Initial reflections occur on walls as well as on ceilings and floors.

Source: https://www.baswa.com/en/what-are-room-acoustics

Source

Mo, R., Wu, B., & Horner, A. (2015). The effects of reverberation on the emotional characteristics of musical instruments. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 63(12), 966–979. https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2015.0082

Findings

The paper investigates how reverberation influences the emotional characteristics of musical instruments. Key findings include:

• Reverberation Enhances Emotional Perception: Increased reverberation generally amplifies emotional qualities such as warmth, depth, and intensity in musical sounds.

• Instrument-Specific Effects: Different instruments react uniquely to reverberation. For instance, string instruments may gain a sense of richness, while percussive sounds might become more diffused.

• Impact on Listener Perception: Reverberation can significantly alter how listeners interpret emotions in music, making certain tones sound more expressive or immersive.

• Optimal Reverberation Levels: Excessive reverberation can cause muddiness and reduce clarity, while moderate levels enhance expressiveness without loss of detail.

Recommendations

• Adjust Reverberation Based on Instrument Type: Musicians and sound engineers should fine-tune reverberation settings based on the instrument’s natural timbre and emotional intent.

• Balance Between Clarity and Expressiveness: Avoid excessive reverberation that might blur notes, especially in fast-paced or highly rhythmic music.

• Consider Listener Context: Different spaces (concert halls, recordings, live performances) require varying levels of reverberation for optimal emotional impact.

• Use Reverberation as an Expressive Tool: Instead of applying uniform reverberation, tailor its use to enhance the emotional storytelling of a piece.

Parametric reverberation

Parametric reverberation refers to a method of controlling and designing reverberation effects using adjustable parameters, rather than relying on natural room acoustics or pre-set reverb effects. This allows sound engineers and researchers to systematically modify aspects of reverberation to study its impact on perception and musical expression.

Key parameters that can be adjusted in parametric reverberation include:

• Reverberation time (RT60): How long it takes for sound to decay by 60 dB.

• Early reflections: The initial echoes that shape the perception of space.

• Density and diffusion: How sound waves interact and spread in a virtual space.

• Pre-delay: The time before the reverberation starts after the original sound.

In this study, parametric reverberation was used to systematically alter the reverberation characteristics of musical instruments and observe their impact on perceived emotional qualities.

Live Music: A Sensory and Emotional Experience

There’s something magical about a live performance. Whether it’s an intimate jazz trio in a small venue or a grand symphony orchestra in a concert hall, live music has a way of drawing us in. Scientists have found that live performances create stronger emotional and physiological responses than recordings. A study by Shoda, Adachi, and Umeda (2014) measured heart rate and skin conductance levels in listeners and found that people reacted much more intensely to live performances compared to recorded ones. The interaction between musicians and the audience creates a real-time energy that recordings simply can’t replicate.

Beyond emotion, live music also immerses us in the natural acoustics of a space. When musicians perform acoustically, the sound interacts with the environment—reverberating off walls, filling the room with warmth, and creating an organic, three-dimensional experience. Ullen et al. (2021) discovered that the reverberation time of a performance space significantly influences how we perceive musical emotion. The longer the reverberation, the more we perceive the music as warm, deep, and enveloping—qualities that are often flattened or artificially manipulated in recordings.

Recorded Music: The Convenience That Changes How We Listen

Of course, most of us consume music through recordings. It’s convenient, accessible, and allows us to enjoy music anytime, anywhere. But does this change how we engage with it? Research suggests that it does. Schutz and Vaisberg (2014) found that listeners tend to judge musical expressivity differently depending on whether they hear a live or recorded performance. Live performances often feel more dynamic, with slight tempo variations and expressive nuances that aren’t always captured in studio recordings. On the other hand, recordings, especially modern digital ones, are often polished to perfection—every note in tune, every rhythm perfectly aligned, every imperfection smoothed out.

This technological perfection has led to a shift in listener expectations. As Nicholas Prior (2018) discusses in Popular Music, Digital Technology, and Society, digital processing techniques like auto-tuning and dynamic compression have conditioned us to expect a certain “flawlessness” in music. While this can be aesthetically pleasing, it can also make live performances—where mistakes and human variability naturally occur—feel less “perfect” by comparison. The spontaneity and raw emotion of live music are sometimes lost in a culture that values precision over authenticity.

The Importance of Experiencing Both

So, does this mean one format is better than the other? Not at all. Instead, understanding how both live and recorded music shape our listening experience can help us become more conscious and engaged listeners. Recorded music allows us to access a vast range of artists, styles, and historical recordings that we wouldn’t otherwise experience. It also preserves performances for generations to come. But if we only listen to music through recordings, we may miss out on the full depth of sound, space, and human connection that live music offers.

Attending live performances, especially those featuring acoustic instruments, helps us reconnect with music in a deeper way. It trains our ears to appreciate subtle details, dynamic range, and the interaction between musicians and their surroundings. It also reminds us that music is, at its core, a shared, human experience—not just something played through our headphones.

Final Thoughts

If you primarily listen to recorded music, consider making an effort to experience more live performances. Whether it’s a classical concert, a folk music session, or a small jazz gig, hearing music in its natural, unfiltered form can deepen your appreciation and change the way you listen. And if you’re someone who loves live music but rarely listens to recordings, remember that recordings provide a valuable way to study, revisit, and discover artists across time and space.

In the end, balancing both live and recorded experiences can enrich our relationship with music. So next time you hit play on your favorite song, think about how different it might sound in a live setting—and, if you get the chance, go experience it for yourself.

References

• Chanan, M. (1995). Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music. Verso.

• Prior, N. (2018). Popular Music, Digital Technology, and Society. SAGE Publications.

• Schutz, M., & Vaisberg, J. (2014). Music expressivity and perception across live and recorded performances. Psychology of Music, 42(3), 317–333.

• Shoda, H., Adachi, M., & Umeda, T. (2014). Emotional responses to live versus recorded music: Evidence from psychophysiological measurements. Music Perception, 31(3), 215–223.

• Ullen, F., Madison, G., & Sörqvist, P. (2021). Reverberation time and musical emotion in recorded and live settings. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 150(4), 2256-2270.

These lessons might not be held in a dancing studio, but the system of teaching is conditioned by the culture of the dancing studio which has a mirror and so creates a bias toward the visual aesthetics of dancing.

Other than the visual aesthetics of a movement (how it looks), the other justification for learning a movement is claimed ‘authenticity’.

So latino teachers, whether from Argentina or some other South American country profess to have ‘cultural knowledge’ about the authentic way to dance tango.

These are ‘authoritative interpretations’ of tango dancing culture that are being taught.

If you object to this or that movement being taught, the question is, what is the basis for your criticism?

If you use the argument that some movement is natural or not natural, this will fall flat because naturalness is too abstract, and perhaps also too reductive.

Certainly, whether the movement of the tango dancers in Buenos Aires is natural or not, considerations of naturalness are probably not how they arrived at this movement.

So pointing to naturalness is not likely to lead the tango student any closer to understanding how to approach learning to dance tango, in particular, which particular movements would be appropriate or preferable.

So it seems that they have no choice but to fall back on what the teachers are telling them.

The analogy for their predicament is like the students of a language teacher of Spanish who defines the ability to speak Spanish in terms of performance on their test of Spanish vocabulary and grammar.

This is actually the reality of many students of English in South Korea, who are stuck reciting rigid formulas that they rote learned in their classes.

So you find with tiresome regularity stale milonga scenes with latino dancing teachers pumping out the same tired cliches to another batch of wide eyed students.

If the students decide to go to Buenos Aires themselves, they’re either going there to find the authentic thing or they’re merely searching for teaching material for their own classes.

Either way, they’ll find that the stuff that Argentinians actually do is not suitable for classroom material.

If they want to dance the real thing they’ll probably drop out of the milonga scene in their home country, scales having fallen from their eyes as to the fakeness of it all.

If they decide to get into teaching, they’ll have follow the latino teacher’s strategy of cynically pumping out lies to their students.

It seems that the strategy of appealing to naturalness is probably too limited and ineffectual, even if it’s not wrong.

The other strategy is to draw attention to the history of tango as a way of providing a context for the understanding and interpretation of tango culture.

The reasoning behind this strategy is that the movement will naturally follow a contextual understanding

That is, the movement is really just a form of naturally emergent interpretation, and from a psychological point of view, this is how Argentinians themselves arrive at the movement that you see at milongas in Buenos Aires.

So the question is, what is the historical understanding that leads to the naturally emergent movement/interpretation, and how does that differ from the sort of understanding that leads to what we see on the global tango scene?

A major problem is that if you try to explain tango milonguero you’re instantly losing.

It’s not just that the latino and studio teachers have control over the physical and digital territory.

It’s also that, all the formal classifications of approaches to dancing tango are based on people who are performers and teachers of these ‘styles’.

Tango milonguero is thus associated with certain famous personalities who have a personal style and who are seen either performing or teaching this style.

Only a person familiar with convivial social dancing at Buenos Aires milongas will be able to discern which aspects of the teaching or performance are essential to the style, and which aspects are mere superficial aspects or individual expression.

Trying to imitate these dancers will invariably lead to learning by rote and superficial imitation rather than an individual expression.

Keys to the lock.

It seems that there are certain elements that are key to understanding the tango milonguero approach.

In approaching tango movement, the focus should be on (a) natural ‘integrated’ turning from the centre, and (b) optionality or adaptation.

This is what Steve Paxton teaches in his Material for the Spine.

In terms of music, on the other hand, the preference is for emotionally evocative early ‘tango romanza’ recordings rather than ‘tango orillero’ pieces.

Unlike the tango orillero, tango romanza is heavily influenced by romanticist approaches in classical music.

I feel that this type of music and this type of ‘natural’ movement form a natural fit.

By contrast, the latino and studio teachers will always prefer a focus on the rote learning of stepping patterns with emphasis on visual appeal, an unnatural hip swing with ‘separation’, and energetic and rhythmic tango orillero type music that has less emotional content and more energy.

With a syllabus of tango romanza, together with a relatively natural, minimalist and adaptive approach movement, tango milonguero type dancing will emerge naturally.

By contrast, milongas connected to latino and studio teachers will always be characterised by high energy ‘tango orillero’ type music, emphasis on steps, energetic hip swings and emphasis on movement with visual appeal.

Corporatism is a political and economic system in which various sectors of society, such as business, labor, and other interest groups, are integrated into the government to participate in policymaking and regulation. Instead of relying on individual or free-market interactions, corporatism emphasizes collaboration and structured relationships among groups to ensure that policies reflect the interests of society’s different sectors. While corporatism aims for harmony and reduced conflict among competing groups, critics argue it can lead to inefficiency, reduced individual autonomy, and entrenchment of elite interests.

Third spaces are social environments distinct from home (first space) and work (second space) where people can gather, connect, and build community. These spaces include places like coffee shops, parks, libraries, and community centers, where the focus is on social interaction and fostering a sense of belonging. Third spaces are often informal, inclusive, and neutral settings that encourage casual conversation and connections among people from diverse backgrounds. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who popularized the concept, emphasized that third spaces play a crucial role in promoting civic engagement, reducing isolation, and strengthening community bonds by providing a relaxed venue for socializing outside of structured, purpose-driven settings. (Source: ChatGPT)

Last night I attended a branch meeting of the New South Wales Libertarian Party to see who these people are. I wasn’t surprised that most of them were basically ex-Liberal Party (the Australian version of British Tories or American GOP) boomers with a background in finance, and everyone was clueless as to what libertarianism actually is. All these people wanted was to get rid of Nimbyism in order to be able to build high rises in what are currently single home burbs.

Now, I don’t have a real problem with medium density urbanism. The problem is that I know exactly what they will build, because you see it everywhere: soulless modernist concrete and glass apartment blocks and big box shopping malls. That is now the cookie cutter modern urban planning.

There was guy from an Argentinian background telling us about his recent trip to Argentina and Milei’s libertarian reforms. Of course I mentioned that I’m interested in tango.

I mentioned that I think tango has a certain political significance for libertarians because it represents a sort of ‘third space’ where people can freely interact which allows for building social capital in a way that is outside of the control of the corporate state. I think that the corporate state has a vested interest commodifying these third spaces and turning them into little more than vacuous consumerism devoid of any real cultural value.

I noticed for example that in communist China all cultural activity is sort of ‘approved astroturf culture’. They build these mass cities full of high rises and then they’ll reserve a large block for a ‘creativity space’ full of ‘creaivity companies’, like some sort of interior design stuff, modernist hipster cafes and art galleries.

All of this seemed pretty cool and hip but after a while I noticed that all of this stuff is completely top-down astroturf and fake state funded pseudo-culture.

It became pretty obvious that none of these cafes or galleries are actual money making businesses and for the most part they stood empty despite large footage filled with arty furniture, fake antiques and retro deco.

The people staffing these establishments did not look like they have any real interest in this stuff as they had a blue collar look about them. It was all obviously nothing more than a background for the obligatory social media selfie for the corporate office workers on their weekend outing.

Arty cafe at OCT Loft Creative Culture Park in Shenzhen, China

This is what the centrally planned corporate communism looks like: fake state approved astroturf pseudo-culture. After a while I realised that it’s the same thing with tango in China. I was running some lessons and then one of the women asked us to do a performance at her company.

This actually reminded me of how my first tango teacher go me to perform tango at a singles event in Sydney. The whole thing struck me as really shallow and culturally disinterested. It’s basically the same shallow cynical corporate commodified culture, no different whether it’s corporate communist China or corporate capitalist Australia.

So in the conversation with the Argentinian guy I mentioned that I think that these corporatist governments have a vested interest in commodifying cultural activities like tango, as either therapy or corporate stuff like ‘corporate yoga’, because they want to control so-called third spaces.

When you look at shopping malls, these are essentially turning shopping into a completely boring alienating sterile experience that discourages human interaction. I don’t know but personally I don’t find myself mingling with people at a shopping mall than I do at an outdoor produce market.

And that’s exactly how the corporatist state like it. They pay lip service to ‘community’ all the while they will plonk a big box shopping mall in the middle of your neighbourhood on the grounds that it provides economic growth or whatever.

It’s fairly obvious that the general trend in modern globalised corporate governments is to control third spaces by way of consumerism and state largesse.

Tango is one of those activities that provides for social interaction among strangers in a convivial atmosphere and so the corporate state will view it with suspicion and caution. It’s culturally enriching and so reduces the propensity to engage in pointless conspicuous consumption thus having a negative impact on the all-important GDP number. The bureaucrats ideally want you to commute between home and work, and then if you do anything else it needs to involve consuming meaningless stuff.

If you want ‘culture’, ie., convivial cultural activity, then they want you to apply for state funding so that they will direct it toward therapeutic approved astroturf pseudo-cultural arty stuff that makes them look good and does not inspire you in the direction of building autonomous social capital external to the corporate state slave colony.

The term “cargo cult” describes a phenomenon observed among indigenous Melanesian populations, particularly after encountering Western goods, technology, and practices. During WWII, these islanders saw military forces arriving with abundant supplies, or “cargo,” which they believed to be gifts from the gods. When the war ended and the cargo flow stopped, some communities ritualistically mimicked the activities of soldiers—building imitation airstrips, radios, or control towers—hoping to attract more supplies.

The cargo cult is a misunderstanding of how the ‘cargo’ is produced. The cultists see the end product but don’t understand the process through which the product arrived. This can apparently also happen in developed countries, as when a government minister in South Africa stated that farmers are not needed to produce food because supermarket chains provide it. Presumably he believes that the way to provide more food all that is needed is to build more supermarkets.

When you look at dancing classes the students are laser focused on the demonstrations and explanation of the teachers and really want to ‘get it’. What you’re seeing is a cargo cult. It’s really no different from the obsession among many Japanese students of English with studying grammar. They study it as if through a microscope failing to see the whole thing. They believe, it seems, that learning English requires memorising the grammar book.

I recently went to a practica and saw the end of a tango lesson in which the students were laser focused on the explanation and correction, at the end of which they packed up and left, or if they stayed it was to practice their lesson routines. They assume that going through this ritual will get them to tango, and it never does.

In all their studying and practicing they never dance, just as the Japanese students of English grammar never actually use English for any real communicative purpose, even to watch an English language program. You try to have a conversation with the Japanese and they just go through the motions of practicing conversation, and you try to dance with these tango students and they go through the motions of practicing their workshop material.

Just as English speakers have little tolerance for boring conversation, so tango dancers have little tolerance for practicing tango with these students. Just as the idea of using the language instead of always studying it often doesn’t enter the grammar student’s consciousness, so the idea of just dancing seems not to enter the consciousness of the tango student.

What is lacking is the understanding of where dancing and dance culture comes from, which is music. The Western nations have been so effective at destroying their own cultural heritage over the past 100 years and replacing it with sports and exercises of various kinds, typically against the rhythmic background of modern music, that dancing has essentially became a sport. It’s become attached to some mechanical and completely unnatural movements essentially no different from what you do in a gym stepping class.

The idea of dancing technique is particularly cultish. Since the steps are unnatural and not easily executed with a partner, there’s need for a lot of explanation of technique as the necessary ritual to attain naturalness and enjoyment. Despite regular prayer and sacrifice neither naturalness nor enjoyment arrive. The students persist nonetheless, 18 months on average, by which time the Voodoo priests get a new batch of cult followers to exploit.

The concept of the dancing studio is completely a cargo cult idea. A room with a mirror and a source of music was required for stage dances, so the wall-to-wall mirror came to predominate as the marker of a dancing space. The problem is that a large glass surface completely destroys the acoustic experience (more on this here) or any naturalness in the sense of visual/acoustic space, and draws attention away from inner sensations that provide necessary feedback for partner dancing. There is nothing natural, organic or conducive to satisfactory social dancing in any of this.

Another one is the confusion of natural sound with the equipment of the DJ. Natural sound originates in instruments and resonates through the space to create a pleasant acoustic experience that motivates social dancing. However, most music has been produced in the last few decades through some sort of a DJ-ing gear and so producing tango music became associated with equipment designed for the reproduction of modern electronic music artificially produced using computer software.

Electronic music has virtually nothing in common with classical music like tango played for the most part on acoustic instruments. But when we see people staring at DJ-ing software on their laptop and manipulating EQ knobs on the mixer board we assume that we must be getting great tango music. Total cargo cult.

Natural dancing, in its basic form, is a movement that is most immediately associated with the slow dance, which is an embracing couple swaying rhythmically side to side and around. Whether it’s waltz, salsa, milonga or tango, it’s all slow dance expanded in various ways. You can’t dance naturally without this kind of movement as the basis of social partner dancing.

The movement of all studio ballroom dancing classes is unnatural insofar as the teachers prohibit, discourage or ignore this basic movement. On the other hand, once this movement is picked up you can learn all the ways of extending it in pretty much a handful of lessons (which is probably why the don’t teach it, not good for business).

The difference between tango and other dancing like milonga or salsa is that the latter mostly involve this movement back and forth whereas the tango cadence suggests a continual flow several steps before ‘returning’. Without the natural sense of swaying and turning, the dancing is feels disorienting and mechanical, with no natural beginning, ending or flow.

Other than that, it’s all about the music. But if you treat the music as mere rhythmic background emanating out of someone’s DJ gear, without giving it any more attention than that, and if you fail to start out with the pendular and rotational movement of the slow dance, then you’re basically participating in a cargo cult, or if you teach that way then you’re the leader of a cargo cult, which might be where you want to be. I feel that tango attracts aspiring cult leaders as ‘teachers’ and so what we get is a global tango cargo cult.

Recently I’ve been immersed in the music of Astor Piazzolla. I’ve been working on some Piazzolla pieces for solo guitar, creating arrangements for both, my classical and electric instruments. Also, I’ve had a chance to attend a couple of ensemble performances of his music.

What struck me about the renditions of this music that you see in performances on the internet, as well as in live performances and also in many written arrangements, is that they don’t sound much like Piazzolla. They have their Piazzolla moments, but for the most part they do little more than replicate a lot of the ‘thumping’ stuff that’s become associated with this music.

Working on arrangements, however, I started to realise that the embellishments that you typically see do little more than cover up shortcomings in the harmonic interpretation of the music.

A composition either works or it doesn’t. A well composed and arranged piece doesn’t need these embellishments which, lacking harmonic interest, just become gimmicky, like noises made by slapping the piano or bandoneon, or by violinist scraping the strings on the far side of the bridge.

Similarly, guitar arrangements that follow the melody but fail to understand the type of harmony, that is, the type of chord, that gives it the unique Piazzolla-esque feel or vibe, force the player into virtuosic speeds and thumping of various sorts to mask the lack of harmonic interest.

There is nothing wrong with changes in ‘dynamics’, that is, changing the speed, loudness, rhythm, etc. to sustain interest. But the harmony needs to be there to provide the meat for the garnishes. Otherwise it’s all fluff and vaporware. You see the instruments huffing and puffing but there’s no bang for buck.

This lack of understanding of the role of harmony as the bedrock of music that holds everything together underneath the melodic movement and the embellishements, is what seems to drive people to the idea that it is the rhythm that defines this or that music. This idea seems to convince people that if there’s banging and scraping of some sort then this must be great music.

Rhythm or time defines the organisation of the notes in a bar of written melody which also provides a certain sort of pulse. But all that means is that there is a logical requirement for the music to be organised in this or that way, either two, three or four beats to a bar. Other than that, the music can be interpreted, or invites an interpretation, that is more or less rhythmic, and that emphasises some beats over others.

Other than the a priori logical requirement that the notes are organised in one way or another in temporal space for there to be a melody, ie., other than that the melody is just defined as the way that notes are temporally and tonally organised relative to each other, rhythm is often an interpretive choice.

However, what’s happened, is that the extreme harmonic simplification of modern music, basically the total reliance on major, minor and diminished triads, is essentially an impoverishment of music that then needs to be pumped up with some sort of a backbeat and a lot of volume and ‘mastering’ gimmickry.

Tango music is essentially an exploration of a space of harmonic and melodic ideas that overlap with other jazz genres. There’s good evidence that during tango’s development in the early 1900’s composers like Cobian were influenced by classical and jazz, and this can be seen most clearly in the ‘tango romanza’ compositions by the likes of Cobian himself, de Caro, Troilo, etc.

Piazzolla can be viewed as continuing this dialogue with jazz and classical, composing longer pieces that employ certain sorts of jazz and classical harmonic-melodic ideas that can be traced all the way back to romanticist composers like Frederick Chopin. Another example is Antonio Carlos Jobim, the strong association of Bossa Nova with a rhythm notwithstanding, whose compositions are really defined by a type of harmonic-melodic movement concept that traces back to Chopin.

What that means for the informed listener and musician is that getting ‘bang for buck’ musically, getting real musical satisfaction, requires seeing (or rather, hearing) beyond the gimmicks and the garnishes to the meat (or lack thereof) of what makes the music work. This requires harmonic understanding and education among the listening public as well as the musicians and arrangers.

Short answer:

They provide nothing that is qualitatively different from all the teachers and organizers who are ‘for profit’, and only succeed in increasing the quantity of milongas.

Longer answer:

Tango seems superficially easy: you learn some steps and technique, put on some music, and Bingo!

This is the illusion of the modern mind that, cultivated in sta…

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There are two apparently disparate statements you hear people make about their preferences in tango, and my goal is to show how they are connected:

(1) Tango is the feeling.

(2) The quality of the music at the milonga is a matter of the DJ’s selection, and the selection is more important than the quality of sound.

I’ve heard the first idea stated with little qualification, other than as a criticism of emphasis on steps and dancing skills.

The point seems to be that the important thing in tango is the feeling and not the steps that everyone is practicing in their tango lessons.

The problem is that, while it’s pointing toward an alternative frame of understanding tango, it leaves the tango student to figure out for themselves what this alternative actually means.

In particular, feelings are subjective and have a tendency to change over time and to differ between people.

How do I know whether the feeling I’m having right now is the tango feeling?

And how do I know that what you’re feeling is the same as me?

Without specifying some objective, interpersonal conditions, benchmarks or criteria, the whole thing is up in the air and too ephemeral to be of any use.

I have heard the second idea stated on the occasions when I pointed out the poor sound quality at milongas.

I take the position of audiophiles who invest money and effort in their audio setup in order to improve the quality of the music reproduced in their room.

It’s been a hobby of mine since I was a teenager.

From this point of view, my observation is that the tango DJs market themselves on their selection, but when you look at their gear it’s all cheap, low-end stuff.

Also there is no attention given to the acoustics of the dancing space.

When I point this out, I get a uniform knee-jerk reaction against such talk from the dancing crowd, which is completely incomprehensible to me.

I will persist in making the argument nonetheless.

Music is the language of emotion.

At least that was the view of music for centuries in Europe, and this idea really crystalized in the romantic era spanning early 19th to early 20th century.

If you look at how music evolved, a common context for musical performance early on has been some sort of religious festivity where it was an accompaniment to rituals and community dances, singing or theatrical performances.

European music emerged in the middle ages with the monasteries and Gregorian chants, which were written down, thus creating the system of notating music.

Eventually classical music separated from its purely spiritual or sacred role, and became an object of aesthetic appreciation in itself.

Sacred music became a specialized genre distinct from music for dancing on the one hand, and music for listening on the other.

Nonetheless, music has had these dimensions, the sacred-spiritual, the emotional-aesthetic, and as accompaniment to song and dance.

These aspects were not completely separate, but were fused in various ways.

Against this background, saying that ‘tango is a feeling’ suggests that tango music is more than a merely an energetic and rhythmic background to dancing, but that it also has the element of aesthetic appreciation and emotional intensity.

In this, it’s hard not to see the influence of romanticist composers.

The romantics departed from the earlier baroque and classical styles by placing greater emphasis on intense emotion, individuality, and personal expression, seeking to convey feelings such as love, longing, despair, and awe.

They favored more emotionally and songlike melodic lines, and explored more complex, nuanced emotions and emotional shifts within a single piece.

They employed richer harmonies, frequent modulations, chromaticism and dissonance to heighten emotional tension.

In contrast to this, modern music (including pop, electronica and rock) is mainly focused on providing an energetic rhythmic background.

It does share some of the aesthetic features with classical music, like emotive melodic lines and lyrics.

However, the melodic lines, as well as the underlying harmony, are simplified, and if it’s not sappy (80’s style pop and glam rock) it’s pretty much devoid of emotional content (disco, hip hop, rock and electronica).

There is a rhythmic backing, a lot of bass, and a catchy melody line floating on top.

It still has harmonic and melodic features of classical music, but these have been demoted and replaced by technological gimmicks.

Importantly from the point of view of tango appreciation, electrical and electronic instruments and reproduction equipment are not designed to replicate the nuance of acoustic performance that is quite central to the experience of classical music.

If tango music is to be regarded as a vehicle of emotional experience then the point of reference (ie., the objective interpersonal standard, criteria or benchmark) needs to be a live classical performance.

This should be a small to medium size ensemble at least comprised of the piano, violin or two, a bass or a cello, and a solo vocal.

In other words, satisfactory reproduction of tango music from a computer file requires that the person curating the acoustic experience is familiar with the sound of a classical ensemble in a properly sized and designed concert hall.

In particular, the person in charge of curating the auditory experience at the milonga needs to have an ear for that as a result of a certain amount of ‘ear training’.

This is important, because it is now apparent that people in the music reproduction business—including audio equipment designers, performance space managers, as well as the DJs— are not familiar with the sound of live classical music performance.

Instead, they use other criteria for making decisions:

• measurements using electronic instrumentation, eg., a flat response curve,

• subjective preferences not based on experience with classical music, typically, using the EQ to boost certain frequencies such as the low end,

• economic considerations, typically because they wouldn’t know whether the cost of high end audio gear is worth the money.

Because of the assumption and the focus of marketing is that the main skill is choosing the music, and the idea that the music ought to be ‘danceable’—which I can only guess means having rhythm and energy,—the end result is acoustic experience devoid of emotional content.

The equipment used by tango DJs is all cheap low-end stuff.

Also, milongas are often held in empty, highly resonant spaces, with no sound absorption or diffusion of any sort, often low ceilings, often in studios or modernist bars with wall-to-wall mirrors, large windows and glass walls.

I guess people haven’t spent enough time in their soulless corporate offices and need more of that in their social dancing.

The reframe here is that, if you want feeling in tango then music selection is actually the least important element in delivering tango music.

Virtually all tango recordings prior to the 1950s are reasonably transparent, meaning that there was no processing of the sound, and what you’re getting is a fairly direct facsimile of the original performance.

If there is no excessive noise (such as clicks and pops due to the wear and tear on the record), and if the transfer is of good quality, then the tangos will provide an emotionally satisfying experience for the dancers.

However, this will be only if there is an adequate audio set up in an acoustically suitable space.

What you need is the following:

• a venue with decent acoustics - reasonably high ceiling, no large smooth and hard surfaces (such as wall to wall mirrors, large windows or glass walls, tiled floors), some absorption and/or diffusion (surfaces that absorb or redirect the sound waves in different directions to soften and mix the sound)

• two or more decent quality PA speakers with large drivers (10-12” for medium to large spaces) that are facing both the dancers and the non-dancers

• suitably rated power amplifier (100-200w for medium to large spaces)

• audiophile grade music player capable of upsampling such as Audirvana Studio

• audiophile grade DAC such as Chord Mojo 2 designed specifically for reproduction of classical music from the computer and capable of processing high resolution music files

• reasonable quality USB and audio cables

• high resolution 16bit (CD quality) or 24bit (Hi-res) music files of high quality transfers sourced from TangoTunes, Qobuz, etc.

What you actually see at these milongas are:

• poorly selected venues with awful acoustics (usually dancing studios with wall to wall mirrors, modernist restaurants with glass walls, or white cube art galleries with low ceilings) see Acoustic Experience and Glass Surfaces, and Effects of Reverberation on the Emotional Characteristics of Musical Instruments

• speakers that are too small given the size of the space, often facing away from the people sitting who then have to listen to second hand low energy sound with no direct sound at all

• underpowered amps too small for the speakers and/or the space, delivering low energy, poorly defined sound

• low-end ‘convenient’ music players (iTunes, Traktor, Mixxx) designed for lo fi listening that might sound ok on person headphones but are completely inadequate for sound amplified in a large venue

• either no external DAC at all (audio cable plugged directly into the audio jack), DJ gear like Traktor Kontrol designed for processed electronic music, or a USB instrument interface like Focusrite designed for converting from analog into digital for recording onto the computer

• cheap cables or bluetooth

• low quality mp3 music files

If that is the case, which it is >90% of the time, then you’re pretty much guaranteed the absence of emotional aesthetic satisfaction.

All the different elements compound, in an additive manner, to produce the poorly defined, compressed, low resolution sound.

So you get large rooms (often church halls or function rooms) often with decent acoustics, but add the low resolution signal pumped into underpowered amp/speaker combo you get a low energy ‘mushy’ vibe that puts you to sleep.

Alternatively, you’re in a dancing studio with wall to wall mirrors and low ceilings, or a modernist cafe/cocktail bar with glass walls and tiled floors, which combine with the low resolution laptop setup to give you loud, brittle ‘shouty’ effect that turns you into a raving freak.

Either way, the milonga experience will have the vibe of an aerobic stepping class in a gym, as the participants either struggle not to fall asleep and die of boredom, or the studio setup drives them into a frenzy.

What you really want is the concert hall vibe, where it’s 70% classical honey, and 30% dancing drive.

It follows that, if there is to be feeling in the tango, the focus needs to be on sound quality first and foremost, and only then on the selection and organization of the specific tracks.