Uncovering the Histories and Pre-Histories of Queer Tango: Contextualizing and Documenting an Innovative Form of Social Dancing

Abstract

Attempting to uncover and document the history, or rather histories and pre-histories, of queer tango is difficult. Superficially, the history ought to be easy. The term “queer tango” barely existed before 2001 when it was first used by LGBT dancers in Hamburg, Germany. It was perceived of by them as a riposte to “hetero-normative” leader-follower relationships in mainstream Argentinian tango, proposing instead women as leaders, men as followers, same sex couples and “active” rather than passive followers. Queer tango has subsequently been characterized by the emergence around the world of queer tango organizations, of international festivals, and an international community of dancers, thriving by contact through social media. Yet as the author, who is collaborating with writers and dancers Birthe Havmøller and Olaya Aramo in editing The Queer Tango Book, an online anthology of writings about queer tango, has found out, there is still no settled agreement as to what, precisely, the term means; there is disagreement about the premise that “hetero-normative” tango was quite as oppressive to women in the ways it was originally made out to be, and there is no agreement—indeed so far, precious little discussion—as to which dance practices in Buenos Aires and beyond from the late nineteenth century onward might legitimately be enlisted as forming the pre-history. Were the men-only prácticas, which ran for decades, a part of it? Or women teaching each other at home? When so little was written down, how is one to find out?