History of tango dancing: from the arrabal to the world stage

Tango was a way of dancing before it was a fixed style. The same steps were used for tango, vals and milonga, even though the three have different rhythms, and they still share one vocabulary today. This page follows the dance through seven stages, then looks at the places where it was danced and the dancers who shaped it.

Seven stages of the dance

1. Beginnings

In its first years the dance had no music of its own. Figures were improvised and seen as a statement of freedom, and the partners danced very close, which was daring at the time. That is why the young tango was danced only in the outskirts of Buenos Aires and by the poorest classes.

2. Canyengue and orillero

The dance and the people who danced it grew together. Attention shifted to the drawing the feet made on the floor: figures such as the media luna (half moon) and the ocho (eight) appeared, and movements became more precise. Partners danced head to head, perhaps to see what their feet were doing. This style is known as canyengue or orillero, after the orillas, the edges of the city where it was danced.

3. Salon tango

The upper body and an elegant line became important. El Cachafaz (Ovidio José Bianquet) set the model of dancing fully upright with a straight torso. Because this refined style developed in dance halls, it became known as tango de salón. European influence changed the attitude of the dance, and contests and exhibitions came into fashion.

4. The Golden Age

Tango was now danced by every social class. The higher it climbed socially, the more elegant it became, but different versions lived side by side in different settings. In the 1940s there was more dancing, writing and filming about tango than at any other time.

5. Hooks and new figures

The last major change to the vocabulary: ganchos (hooks) were added and feet began to leave the floor. Both partners used hooks on equal terms, and improvisation stayed part of the dance whenever there was room for it.

6. Back to the people

Most popular dances start on the stage and are passed down to the public. Tango went the other way: it was born in the outskirts and later adopted by the upper classes. In this stage it returned to ordinary people and was danced in clubs away from the city centre, and a younger generation took it up.

7. Tango conquers the world

Tango settled in the world’s big cities. Without taking anything away from singers and musicians, it was the dance that won over audiences abroad, above all after the stage show Tango Argentino toured Europe and North America from the 1980s.

Where tango was danced

Candombe and the first dance halls. In the carnival of 1877, Afro-Argentine candombe societies from the Mondongo neighbourhood paraded in costume and danced for hours. Rivalry between the societies led to street fights, and several were dissolved. Dance venues took over their music and movements, and an early form of tango grew out of them. Couples first danced apart, imitating candombe figures; by around 1880 they danced in a close embrace, head to head, which made the dance unacceptable to polite society.

Academies and peringundines. The compadritos practised in so-called academies: cafés where waitresses served drinks and danced with the customers, usually to a barrel organ. They were also called cafés de camareras and later peringundines, and many were close to brothels. Not only the poor went there: politicians, officers and members of Congress were known regulars. In the outlying districts, peringundines such as the one near the old Plaza Lorea were famous; the dancer Carmen Gómez was known there for her milonga.

Houses and private parties. Later, wealthy patrons rented houses for parties with a pianist, wine and dancing. Among the best known were the houses of Laura, of María la Vasca and of Adela “la Extranjera”. When a composer dedicated a new tango to a guest, the guest was expected to pay the musician. In poorer neighbourhoods parties were held in the patio of the conventillo, and guests paid an entrance fee to cover the musicians. Young men also practised in the street, dancing with each other to the barrel organ, and chose their partners at parties for their dancing rather than their looks.

Cabarets. By the end of the 1910s the tango craze had moved into cabarets such as the Abdullah, the Royal Pigall, Montmartre, Tabarís and Chantecler.

It took at least 20 years for tango to be accepted in middle-class homes. There it lost much of its acrobatics and became a dance in which elegance and timing mattered most.

Dancers who shaped tango

Dancers were essential to tango culture but rarely earned what singers and musicians did. From around 1885 the pioneer was Filiberti, followed by dancers such as El Mocho Urdaz and “La Portuguesa”, El Flaco Alberto, Pablo Lento, José Gambuzzi, Atilio Supparo and “el Vasco” Aín (Casimiro Aín), who danced in Europe early in the 20th century. El Cachafaz (Ovidio José Bianquet) is widely considered the greatest tango dancer of all.

In early tango the dance was full of figures; from the 1940s it became smoother, simpler and more elegant. Later generations included Lalo Bello, Virulazo and the teacher Antonio Todaro, and stage couples such as Juan Carlos Copes and María Nieves, Gloria and Eduardo Arquimbau, and Mayoral and Elsa María.

Based on the dance section of El Portal del Tango (2001–2004), revised and expanded.