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Many of you have asked that I make my thesis on tango available online. Here are the first two chapters, slightly rewritten.
INTRODUCTION
In a rich, first-world
Argentina, with work full of happiness and solidarity, tango would die. (Giardinelli 1998: 155, my translation)
I sat at my table at Niño
Bien, watching the other tango dancers, and noticed a woman leading another woman,
expertly dodging other couples and snaking her way around the packed dance
floor. What was she doing?! Women didn’t lead at tango nightclubs in
Buenos Aires! True, I had seen a few
women leading from time to time in bohemian night spots, where most people wore
jeans, were under thirty, and sprawled on sofas at the edge of the dance floor
smoking marijuana, but at a dressy, brightly lit, established dance hall full
of older dancers? This was not
something that I had expected to see in Buenos Aires.
After that night, I began to
notice women leading at many of the clubs and classes that I attended. Even the most talented women, who led better
than most men dancing, rarely danced the lead role at the dance club. Female leaders drew much attention and
discussion from the other tango dancers.
Many people loudly condemned the practice of women leading. Very few people found it unremarkable or
completely acceptable, and most had much to say on the subject.
As an female dance teacher from the United States who both leads and
follows, I was already interested in exploring the roles of lead and follow and
the gender politics attached to those roles before I arrived in Buenos
Aires. From my own experience and previous
research in the United States on couple dancing, I assumed that women were
leading either because they enjoyed leading, or because women’s rights had
caught up with the male-dominated atmosphere of tango.
What I found in Buenos Aires
did not fit my expectations. I felt
shocked to discover that many of the dancers I knew (including women who led)
did not separate the dance from the gender roles traditionally associated with
the roles. Even liberal, young,
feminist women said they would rather follow than lead, and suggested that
women can’t lead as well as men. How
could I reconcile this information with the perception that these women led
better than most men with whom I danced?
Why were people so set against women leading or other versions of
role-switching? If everyone felt so
opposed to non-traditional role-switching, why would women learn to lead and
dance the lead role at the dance club?
Changes in the role of the
lead, including women leading, have been noted in passing by several researchers. Tobin (1998) documents isolated incidents of lead-switching among
heterosexual couples (women leading men). Taylor (1998) mentions a dance class
where women led and men followed for part of one class. Trenner (1998)
theorizes that lead-switching and same-sex dance couples in tango are a wave of
the future that will overtake traditional pairings. I have found no studies in Spanish that address this issue.
Most people I interviewed had seen women dancing with women at
nightclubs. Very few had seen women
leading men or men leading men. A
typical conversation on the topic of role-switching followed a predictable
course: first, denial that the phenomenon occurred; then admission of
infrequent occurrence, complete with an example; and lastly, criticism of the
practice. Sometimes an interviewee
would tell me that women never led in a specific milonga, only to have me
remind them of a time when we were both at that venue and women were leading.
According
to most scholarly and popular literature, the main focus of tango is the
performance of masculine and feminine identities and sexuality. Taylor (1998) writes that “the tango refers
to men and women, masculinity and femininity . . .” (Taylor 1998: xxi). Salessi (1997) considers it an element of
“the Argentine discourse on sexuality” (1997: 141). Savigliano notes that gender and sexual identity as parts of Argentine
identity are mediated via tango (1995: 5).
Salas (1995) links archetypes of Argentine masculinity to tango (Salas
1995: 70). Role-switching, such as
women leading, at tango venues questions what is performed in these situations.
Are people sending subversive messages about their gender identity? Are there
other issues that these people are foregrounding? Is this something that has
always occurred? If so, what are the posited reasons for doing this? If this is
a new phenomenon, is it due to the influx of Europeans and North Americans who
seem to switch lead and follow roles more often than the Argentines, or is it
due to a local cause? Why is it
happening now?
Both tango and gender roles
in the larger society are in flux in Buenos Aires. The past four to five years of economic crisis have brought about
changes in the work force within Argentina, and engendered the need for more
people to work outside Argentina in order to survive. As tango is one of the few marketable commodities that can take a
worker out of Argentina into the better-paying areas of Europe, Japan, and the
United States, the number of people teaching and performing tango has expanded
rapidly.
From my fieldwork and
interviews conducted during July-September of 1999, 2000 and 2001, I have found
that women learn to lead tango because of the economic opportunities available
outside of Argentina. In order to
compete for jobs, women must know how to lead well enough to be hired
independent of a male teacher. This
seems to be the reason why, in the past five years or so, women have begun to
lead in the Buenos Aires nightclubs.
Therefore, the negotiation of altered roles for men and women both in
society and in tango, can be seen on the dance floors of Buenos Aires.
This study focuses on the
contemporary practices of the Buenos Aires tango community with respect to lead
and follow roles in tango, especially the breaking of traditional roles by
having women lead, men follow, or same-sex couple dancing. It documents these
behaviors at formal evening dances in nightclubs, informal practices, and dance
classes in the Buenos Aires tango scene and analyzes the various value systems
behind these behaviors. Focusing on gender and work, it also explores how
social and economic change are reflected in current tango practices in Buenos
Aires, and how changes in the dance practice alter its socioeconomic context.
Several other researchers
have dealt with gender identity and tango (in English, Archetti 1999; Salessi
1997; Savigliano 1995, 1998; Taylor 1998; and Tobin 1998). They have written
about the history of tango and how the performance of gender identity has been
a part of dancing tango throughout its development and history. Savigliano
(1995) has explored the economics of tango as a commodity traded between
Argentina and the world. None of them
have explored switching of gender roles in detail, or the factors leading to
the current phenomenon of women leading, although Taylor (1998) and Tobin
(1998) document the existence of this behavior. Virtually nothing has been written about the resurgence of tango
in the late 1980s and the last fifteen years of tango history. My research includes an oral history of the
development of “new tango” in the 1990s (a style combining social styles of
tango with performance styles and having a strong pedagogical structure) and
the growth of a new young group of tango dancers. Many of the women who lead come from this school of tango. Therefore, my work will complement and
extend existing English-language work on Argentine tango.
My text aims to provide
students and tango dancers with an understanding of the opinions of Buenos
Aires residents about the spreading practice of switching lead and follow. I hope that my presentation of this information
encourages a discussion of lead/follow role switching and of same-sex couple
dancing within tango. Because the people I met, danced with, and interviewed in
Buenos Aires are part of this discussion, I have promised to make my findings
accessible to them as well. This will
probably occur via the internet because some have left Buenos Aires. Their current teaching jobs in Germany,
France, Spain, Austria, and the United States bear witness to the widespread
repercussions of the phenomenon I document here.
Some of the historical and
introductory information comes from my interviews rather than from the
literature. Whenever I use an informant
as my source, his or her pseudonym will appear in parentheses without a date or
page. All of the interviews were
conducted from July-September 2000.
Published sources are cited with dates and page numbers.
In couple dancing, there are
two roles: the lead and the follow roles. The leader, traditionally the man,
decides what steps to do, tells the follower what to do via body cues,
navigates around the room, and usually moves forward in a counter-clockwise
direction around the dance floor. The follower,
traditionally the woman, allows the leader to direct the couple around the
room, performing the steps requested by the leader.
Tango is a couple dance in which the two people remain facing in a circular
embrace during the entire dance. It
consists of walking steps, turning combinations, and footplay (contact between
the feet and legs of the couple).
Although there are many styles of tango, the space is so limited in most
dance clubs that usually people dance a body-to-body style with small steps,
many short turns, rock steps, and pauses. This is called close-embrace, apilado,
or milonguero style. Other
popular styles are salon, which is danced further apart; nuevo tango, a form of tango that
began to evolve in the mid-1990s; and combinations of these styles.
A porteño, something
pertaining to a port area, is the term used for people from Buenos Aires. Tango is a porteño dance, and forms part of
the porteño identity more than the Argentine identity. A porteño takes pride in being from Buenos
Aires and in tango, whether or not he or she dances it.
A tanguero/a is
someone who dances tango. People of all
ages attend milongas, but most tangueros are between the ages of twenty to
thirty-five, and fifty to seventy. As
an entire generation grew up with rock music, and did not learn to dance tango,
there is a dearth of middle-aged dancers.
A milonguero is a
term for someone who frequents the milongas (dance clubs). This term is usually used for the older
dancers who have danced for a long time.
The Oxford Spanish Dictionary defines milonguero as a “reveler”
(Caravajal: 414). The term appears to
be a lower-class marker. Several of my
more genteel interviewees stressed that they were not milongueros, but
that they did dance tango (Hector, Maria Elena).
There are three public
venues for dancing tango: the class, the práctica, and the milonga. A class, either group or individual,
is a relatively new venue for learning tango technique and steps. Until the 1980s and 1990s, learning tango
rarely included participating in classes (Amelia). Men taught younger men to dance in informal practice sessions. If an Argentine woman learned to dance, she
learned to dance at home, taught by male relatives. No formal method of teaching tango was developed until recently
(Rosario). By the end of the 1980s,
Rodolfo Dinzel had developed a pedagogy for teaching tango, and Gustavo Naveira
developed a pedagogy for Nuevo Tango (“new tango”) in the mid-1990s
(Jose). The class is the most socially
informal of the venues for tango and is also the place where one sees the most
women leading. Although there are early
afternoon classes, most classes occur between 7 PM and midnight, with more
advanced classes occurring later to accommodate the schedules of those who
attend advanced classes after teaching beginning classes.
Nowadays, some prácticas are
still attached to a specific club, but the práctica has changed because of the
growth of formal instruction. Once
attached to the milonga because it was held in the same venue and the same
people attended both events, now the práctica is linked to the class or to the
organizer. For example, the Cochabamba
prácticas attract the students of Mingo Pugliese on the days that he runs
práctica, and the same venue attracts Gustavo Naveira’s students on the day he
organizes the práctica. Other prácticas
are attached to a class, happening after the formal instructional component of
the evening. Still others happen right
before an evening dance, in the same place.
This is a recent development:
Before it was not this way,
before the milonga was the milonga, and it started at 10:30 or 11 PM. There were prácticas which were early and
you went to take class, and after the class, there was práctica . . . it was
nicer before. . . . And what you had
learned in class, you stayed [and] the professor would stop teaching and put on
music, then you would practice what they had taught you. . . . When you were
feeling more secure, those people would go to the milonga, but usually they
went in a group, and danced together. . . .
you quit work at eight and you went to the práctica, you warmed up a
little, and you went to the milonga to continue dancing. [Marta]
The open-ended nature of a
práctica allows for space to experiment with material and also with roles,
which makes it less structured than a class and more possible to try out
controversial things in a public place.
Most prácticas occur somewhere between 7 PM and midnight.
The term milonga has
several different meanings. A milonga
is a formal, evening or afternoon dance event.
Milonga can also be the physical room or building where tango is
danced. Milonga also refers to
another Argentine dance out of which tango developed. I am concerned here
mainly with the term as it applies to the dance event, although I will also use
the other two meanings of the word.
A milonga is where one goes
to dance after learning to do tango. It
is not a practice space, and traditionally no one went to dance who could not
already dance well:
[It’s] a different mentality. In the prácticas, one goes to [work on]
one’s movements, to correct oneself . . . it’s like a garage, where one goes to
get the car fixed . . . it’s like you’re going to oil the parts of your body .
. . working on your body, your movement, and . . . in the milonga, [you go] to
show yourself off. That is, to go with
the intention to dance with the most attractive girl . . . . They are two
different things, it’s like [going to] the mechanic’s shop so that on the
highway everything works well . . . [Martin]
Afternoon milongas can start
as early as 2-3 PM, get crowded around 5 PM, and end between 7-9 PM. Most milongas begin between 10-11 PM, get
crowded by midnight, and end between 3-7 AM.
The milonga focuses on the
social part of tango, rather than on acquiring technical ability: meeting
people, demonstrating one’s prowess on the dance floor, and perhaps meeting
someone new to date.
Tango . . . is a way of life, not just music, there’s a whole
psychology of the man, a psychology of the woman, there is a posture, there are
many rules . . . it has its own discourse . . . In order to go into a milonga,
it is necessary to know how to ask someone to dance, not just how to
dance. It is necessary to behave in a
particular way, it asks that you play a role . . . [Norberto]
People choose which dance
venues to frequent according to proximity in the city, where their friends go
to dance, dance style, and atmosphere.
I found that I changed which milongas I frequented when I switched from
living in San Telmo to staying in Villa Crespo, further from the center of
town. Often, a group makes plans to
meet at a specific club, ensuring that familiar dance partners will be
present. Some people choose dance clubs
according to the style of tango which is danced there. Atmosphere also plays a part in choice of
clubs. There are certain clubs that are
considered “in” and many people attend them simply to be a part of the “in”
scene. When a club falls out of favor
(for no apparent reason sometimes), those people desert it for the new favorite.
Salon Canning is considered
the ideal milonga in Buenos Aires because it has the best dance floor. Although many popular places to dance do not
have nice floors, this is an important consideration in choosing a dance space. Well-maintained wood floors are preferred
(as in Canning), but many places have tile, marble, or wood floors in bad
repair. An ideal space is lit well
enough for dancers to see the other side of the dance floor, in order to
facilitate attracting dance partners.
The ideal dance space has enough tables so that most people can sit
down, with space for people to roam in search of dance partners. The ideal space has a walkway around the
dance floor that does not interfere with dancing.
At a milonga, the music is usually played in sets (tandas). A tanda usually consists of three to five
songs. After each tanda, a short piece
of music is played to announce the end of the tanda (cortina). After several tandas of tango, a tanda of
other music will be played. In most
milongas, vals and milonga tandas (the other two dances that are
related to tango) are alternated with tango tandas. Before the mid-1990s, traditional milongas played only
tango-related dances (Miranda, Amelia).
Nowadays, a set of alternative dance music is often played once or twice
during the evening: tropical (salsa, merengue, cumbia), rock ‘n roll
(50s style swing), or folklorico (Argentine folk dances). The music mix is determined by either the DJ
or the organizer of the event, and I rarely saw anyone make requests for
specific songs. Due to the expensive
nature of hiring a band, live music is rare.
The organizers at Paracultural offered a live band once a week, and
Torcuato Tasso had live music once a week as well.
Until recently, the cabeceo was the only accepted form of
inviting someone to dance. This is an
inclination or tilt of the head that follows making eye contact with a
prospective dance partner. The use of
the cabeceo helped men save face: rather than walk up to a woman and ask her to
dance, risking public refusal, a man could initiate contact from a distance, thereby
guaranteeing that the woman would dance with them before any public risk
occurred.
For decades, the man makes a
tiny movement (cabeceo) this could have a macho origin, in order to avoid if
you go to the table and the woman says, no, and you have to return, it’s tough.
. . . Looking into their eyes, I make a
gesture, if . . . I go directly, I run the risk that she will say no. [Hector]
The practice of using the
cabeceo to invite a woman to dance is gradually losing ground. More men are coming to the woman’s table to
invite her to dance. Many foreigners do
not know the cabeceo, and neither do many of the youth who have learned to
dance in the past ten years.
The cabeceo gave the woman
the power to choose partners. By
avoiding the gaze of a particular man, she could signal lack of interest,
thereby avoiding dancing with men she did not like. She could also initiate an invitation by focusing her gaze on a
particular man until he had to either invite her or snub her by turning
away. Now a woman must either agree to
dance or publicly embarrass a man who comes up to her table to invite her to
dance, putting more pressure on her to accept any man who asks. However, it is now becoming acceptable for
women to ask men to dance, according to some of my interviewees.
When I started, tango was very macho, yes. . . . you would never ask a man to dance. Even if he were an intimate friend of yours,
in the dance place, it was like, if the man didn’t invite you to dance, you
couldn’t say let’s dance, and these days, in the past few years, three, four
years, it’s very normal that I arrive and I say to a friend, “Let’s
dance.” It’s normal, it’s become
general [practice]. . . . Before, even
if I was dying to dance, I couldn’t [ask]. . . [Marta]
I personally have not seen
this happening often, and my attempts to invite men to dance often led to a
refusal, or to a man dancing for one or two songs, but then avoiding me
afterwards as a dance partner.
Traditionally, women sat
with a chaperone until being asked to dance:
Women used to go dance with their mothers, you understand? . . . the
chairs used to be placed around [the room] with the women with their mothers
and/or their younger sisters and/or cousins and/or little brothers, and all the
guys would be in the center . . . my aunt. . . used to go dancing . . . she
danced with her uncle, with her cousin, and then, if someone invited her to
dance, no more than two or three dances [with them]. I think that’s what the cortina comes from, it’s a tradition, and
the changing of partners, it was required, you couldn’t dance all night with
the same one. You had to dance with
everyone! Then after a year, you could
dance with one and then, I don’t know, a few months later, he would go to your
house to ask for your hand from your mother.
[Serena]
By the 1980s, this had
changed. Both men and women sat at
small tables around the circumference of the dance floor. People came to the milonga in groups, but
sat separately. Men often sat together,
but women sat alone or in couples. The
cabeceo governed this setup, especially for women. Because men did not want to risk complications in the dance
invitation, they often danced with women seated alone at tables. When more than one woman sat at a table,
there was always a possibility of an invitation being misinterpreted, and then
either the wrong woman stood up, or both women, forcing the man to have to
embarrass one of the women.
A woman went to the milonga alone. . . . Why? Because the scene would occur where there were four women at a
table, three women at a table. And the
men would ask them to dance, and when they arrived, two would get up . . . This
situation is very difficult for the man who comes [to the table] and has to say
to one “I’m not leading you” . . . and the other one has to stay [at the
table]. It’s uncomfortable for the
man. Imagine for the woman who has to
sit down. . . . if there were three,
they wouldn’t ask you to dance . . .
They would ask other women.
[Marta]
In the past five to ten
years, this practice has again changed, as often five or six women share a
table. The change in the use of cabeceo
may be based on this change, but none of my interviewees suggested a causal
chain of events. Now, a group of
friends will often sit together and dance with each other. Even if people arrive at the milonga alone,
they often sit with friends, and usually dance with known dance partners
(Martin).
A couple who arrives
together and sits alone signals that they do not want to dance with
others. Couples who come and sit
together often rest between sets, but get up to dance together as the music
starts. If a woman is generally known
to be in a relationship, many men will not invite her to dance even if her
partner is not at the milonga. One man emphasized that men who ask another
man’s girlfriend to dance show a lack of respect for that man:
Tango is more serious than
other kinds of dance. There’s more
respect, a ton of things. For example,
if a chick is going out with another guy, and the other guy is not a friend of
mine, I’m not going to grab her to dance. . . . If we are friends, it’s another thing. . . . I’m not going to dance all night with his
girlfriend, but I’ll dance. Because
there is a friendship between us. . .
. If you are going out with a guy and I
don’t know the guy, he’s not my friend, I’m not going to grab you to
dance. Why should I? To bother the guy? [Victor]
One woman with an
established partnership told me that
“no one invites me to dance, they don’t even look at me . . . I am a
marked cow” (Serena). Women who are
less well-known (such as foreigners) often deal with this difficulty by sitting
at separate tables from their partners, or even by attending different
milongas. All of these conventions have
grown out of a hundred years of people dancing tango in public spaces,
negotiating for dances, and enacting the gender roles associated with the
leader and follower roles.
A
GENDERED HISTORY OF TANGO
Tango developed out of the
dances of the working class African-Argentines, poor European immigrants, and,
to some extent, criollo (people of mixed indigenous and Spanish blood)
culture, in the late 1800s in Buenos Aires.
It developed out of a dance called the milonga, which combined
the African-Argentine dance, the candombe, with European couple dances
and with Afro-Caribbean dance forms.
The candombe,
developed in the Buenos Aires area in the 1800s. After the international slave trade was banned in 1809, the
separate African ethnic traditions maintained in Argentina gradually merged
into a single dance form (Chasteen 2000: 45). By the mid-1800s, the candombe
was firmly established in the black community in Buenos Aires. It contained a movement called the ombligada,
where the bellies of the two dancers met, but otherwise was done without
touching. The dance had solo,
male/female pair, and group dance sections (Andrews 1980: 163-64). The dance form was, like many African-rooted
dances, “hip-driven” (Chasteen 2000: 46).
Candombe was done with quebradas, which meant that there was a
break in the line of the body at the waist “to generate a sinuous, subtle,
flowing motion, without bounding knees or flailing limbs” (Chasteen 2000:
46). Candombe contributed its rhythms
and torso and hip movement to the development of tango.
European dances contributed the dance embrace and
instrumentation to tango. European
couple dances came to Argentina with the original Spanish colonizers as well as
with the huge number of immigrants who arrived in the mid- to late- nineteenth century
from southern and eastern Europe. Because laws privileged rich landowners,
these new immigrants could not buy land easily. Many settled in Buenos Aires, thus creating a distinct porteño
subculture that differed from the creole and black mix in the provinces
(Salessi 1997: 142). The new
immigrants were mostly men, having left their families back in the old country
while they looked for work, which created a great imbalance in the number of
men and women living in Buenos Aires (Collier 1995: 38). These men lived in collective houses called conventillos
in the poor sections of town. The
commonly accepted history is that tango was a male dance, developed by these
lower-class men dancing together in the conventillos and on street corners.
However, tango did not
evolve solely in the streets among male immigrants. It was danced by men and women, recent immigrants and established
porteños. Various ethnic groups
met in the academias de baile, or dance halls, of the working class
neighborhoods in Buenos Aires where people gathered to drink, gamble, and dance
(Andrews 1980: 166). In the 1860s and
1870s, with the importation of new European dances such as the waltz,
schottische, and mazurka, a new dance form, the milonga, melded together
African and European traditions (Andrews 1980: 195). The Afro-Cuban habañera, which was the most popular dance
at African-Argentine parties in the 1880s, also exerted a strong influence over
the rhythm of the new dance (Chasteen 2000: 54).
By 1883, the milonga was very popular dance
among the working classes (Collier 1995: 45).
It introduced the European dance embrace (man and woman touching) into
the mixture that already existed, but the rhythms and instruments of the
milonga were still African (Andrews 1980: 166). Depending upon the source, milonga is considered to be either a
dance that the poor whites did to imitate and/or mock the candombe of the
blacks, or a dance that the black Argentines did to mimic the whites (Andrews
1980: 166). Collier (1995) and Salas (1999) say that the compadritos (or
suburban working-class white men) were the people who imitated the candombe and
took it to their dance places as the milonga (Collier 1995: 44; Salas
1999:5).
The tango began as a slower, smoother version
of the milonga (Jakubs 1984: 138). By
the mid- to late-1890s, Argentine tango was considered a distinct dance,
separate from the milonga and other dance forms (Chasteen 2000: 54; Collier
1995: 47). It was mainly performed in
poor areas of Buenos Aires, by working class people, and did not hold a
widespread appeal elsewhere.
From 1890 to 1917, tango gained a larger audience in
Buenos Aires gradually. Popular
entertainment aimed at working and middle classes incorporated tango songs and
the dance into plays, the circus, etc.,
and thus spread tango to more people and made it more acceptable (Castro
1990: 7, 103-104). Tango continued to
be danced in poor neighborhoods on the tenement patios, but during the 1910s,
tango music and dance began to be played at upscale nightclubs in the richer
areas of town (Collier 1995: 55, 61).
Here, a rich young man (a niño bien) could develop a taste for
tango music and learn to dance it by visiting the dance halls and the brothels
of the working class areas. The
popularity of tango among upper-class men spread the dance from lower-class
brothels to upper-class brothels (Collier 1995: 48).
These same young men were sent to Europe on grand
tours and brought tango with them, introducing it into the Parisian demimonde
in the 1910s (Collier 1995: 61). During
the ensuing fad for tango, Europeans viewed the dance as a symbol of exotic,
Latin sensuality. They also linked it
to Argentine national identity.
Upper-class Argentines were scandalized that a lower-class, improper
dance was connected to their nationality: they did not want to be associated
with tango. In 1913, an Argentine observer of the Parisian fashion for tango
noted that “. . . the tango is nothing more than an exotic dance, vaguely
sinful, that [Europeans] dance for its sensual, perverted and slightly barbaric
context” (Cooper 1995: 97). The
Europeans simplified and codified tango’s steps, and adapted it to be more like
European couple dances, so that it easier to dance, less provocative, but still
exotic.
After tango won followers in Europe, it became more
widely accepted among the middle and upper classes in Argentina (Castro 1990:
92). By the 1920s, tango was popular
among most social classes in Argentina (Azzi 1995: 115). The middle- and upper-classes adopted the
more Europeanized styling as “appropriate” to more elite dancers (“tango a la
francesa”) (Cooper 1995: 97; Savigliano 1995: 149). The corresponding association of tango with Europe, rather than
with the Argentine underclasses, made it acceptable for the more moneyed
classes of people in Buenos Aires to indulge in tango. The support of upper-class male dancers in
Argentina also allowed the middle class to adopt tango with less of a
lower-class stigma attached to it (Vila 1991: 111). One of the older, male tango dancers I interviewed in Buenos
Aires pointed out that the introduction of big band orchestras with vocalists,
often led by middle- or upper-class men, contributed to the acceptability of
dancing tango among the middle and upper classes:
The origin of tango was
marginal. . . . In about the 1920s . .
. the orchestra of Martin de Caro [appeared] . . . since [he] came from an
upper-middle class family, and played tango very well, middle-class sectors of
the population, who before had seen it as some marginal music . . . . began to
dance tango. This included my parents,
who met each other dancing to Martin de Caro’s orchestra. [Hector]
Tango was not as readily available to women
as to men during this era. Many tango
venues were not appropriate for a woman of good reputation to visit. After prostitution was made illegal in 1919,
tango moved into the cabaret and the teatro de revistas, which attracted a more
middle-class audience (Castro 1990: 177; Guy 1991: 108). In these venues, middle- and upper-class
women put their reputation on the line if they danced: prostitutes still worked
these places, and "women who showed up alone were certain to have
suspicious morals" (Guy 1991: 150).
Thus, men often did not bring their female relatives along to dance in
public. This was still another example
of how women's place was seen to be the home.
Dancing tango at home was safe, but dancing it in public was
dangerous: "Submissive and kept at
home, they were no threat to men. Women
were evil or prone to seduction by false values if they left the house"
(Guy 1991: 151). According to Castro
(1994), nightlife (and tango) remained a mostly male space throughout the 1930s
despite new morality laws, restrictions on prostitution and the Depression
(Castro 1994: 69-70).
When middle- and upper-class women did venture into
the tango scene, they were careful to dance in a manner that reflected their
class level. Savigliano argues that
tango did not transcend class and social boundaries until the women of the
upper classes started dancing it after it came back from Europe as a proper,
imported activity (Savigliano 1995: 138).
Middle- and upper-class ladies wanted to demarcate the borders of class
within tango, and different styles were taught and practiced, maintaining class
borders via body movement (Savigliano 1995: 149). Because men were relatively free to dance all forms of tango with
different classes of women, it was the women who embodied the different types
of tango, correct behaviors, and class demarcations (Savigliano 1995:
164). Between 1920 and today, these
attitudes have faded. During the 1930s
and 1940s, the Golden Age of tango, many women danced tango. However, even in 2000, one older woman I
interviewed stressed her distaste for the “milonguero” style of dancing very
close, and said she personally preferred the more proper salon, or open style
(Maria Elena).
The late 1930s and the 1940s were the Golden Era of
tango. The upswing in the economy after
the Depression drew more people to dance halls (Azzi 1995: 156). World War II isolated Argentina from the
rest of the world, which contributed to the growing popularity of the
home-grown tango: "The dance
spread everywhere: in the neighborhoods, the carnival, the dance halls
organized by the radio stations . . .” (Vila 1991: 123). An elderly interviewee told me that “tango
was danced in all the clubs . . . and when Carnival came around, the clubs
would argue over orchestras [who would get to play where]” (Hector).
So many people danced tango that each neighborhood in Buenos Aires
developed its own particular dance style.
Tango as a dance was impeded
in its development by the changing population of Buenos Aires in the 1940s and
1950s, and also by the government’s adoption of folk music, rather than tango,
as the nationally supported dance form.
In the 1940s and 1950s, large numbers of people moved from Argentina’s
interior to Buenos Aires (Vila 1991: 107). For these migrants, tango was not an
integral part of their identity as it was for the established porteños:
they did folk dances. As the provincial
migrants were mostly mestizo (of mixed indigenous, European and
sometimes Afro-Argentine blood), they were darker than the mostly European
porteños, and they experienced discrimination in Buenos Aires. They were called cabecitas negras
(little black heads) by the city’s whiter residents, and tensions existed
between the two groups.
Peron was elected president in 1945 after
participating in a military coup which took place in 1943, and came to power
partially due to the support of these cabecitas negras. The rapport he built with them included his
support of folk music as the national music of Argentina (Vila 1991: 124). His values campaign included the
valorization of the interior and the gaucho (the cowboy) above that of
the porteño and city life (Castro 1990: 209, 219): "Argentina was . . .
being restored to the values of Hispanic and Catholic culture" (Castro:
208).
[Peron] called upon Argentina to seek cultural
synthesis from criollismo [creolism e.g. nativism], from costumbrismo
[native habits, customs, moral views, etc.], and from el folklore
[folklore]. This synthesis could only
be made in the interior where all of these elements existed and not in the city
. . . [Castro 1990: 221]
Therefore, folk music and the dances of the interior
were promoted as ideals of Argentine-ness.
In this light, tango was rejected as the primary symbol of
Argentineness. In supporting folk music
and not tango, the government contributed to the slow decline of tango’s
popularity (Vila 1991: 132).
From the 1950s to the 1980s tango continued
to decline in popularity. The
government’s active elevation of non-tango dance forms and intermittent bans on
gathering in large groups contributed to this decline. During the decades of restrictive/military
rule, when gathering in a group could create trouble with the political
authorities, meeting to dance tango was a subversive activity (Amelia). Few new people entered the tango scene, and
many people who danced tango avoided club gatherings and night clubs in order
to avoid the attention of the authorities.
Another factor that contributed to a decline in tango dancing was the
availability of rock and other dance music from abroad. An entire generation of Argentines grew up
without learning to dance tango (Miranda and Firpo). Thus, when the military dictatorship ended in 1983, there were
very few people involved in tango, and only a handful were younger than the
generation that grew up dancing in the 1940s and 1950s (Amelia).
Tango
renaissance: 1983-2000
Tango’s renaissance started in 1983. A touring tango show, Tango Argentino,
performed internationally and captured the imagination of many viewers. The show opened in Paris, and later toured
Europe, the United States, and Japan.
It featured a danced history of tango, complete with period costumes, a
piece danced between men, and dramatic, sensual dancing between men and women
(Martin 1995: 182, 183, 186-189). Tango
fever was re-ignited abroad and generated both interest and income abroad and
at home. Work opportunities brought young Argentines to the dance form, and
gradually the tango as a social dance gained new adherents.
In addition to Tango Argentino and the
economic possibilities of the touring tango shows, other factors contributed to
the renaissance of tango in Buenos Aires in the 1990s. One of these was the revival of interest in
tango music among the young people in Buenos Aires, guided by famous Argentine
rock stars, who honored their tango roots by inviting famous tango singers to
perform with rock bands.
The rockers,
the rock singers, included tango lyrics [in their songs] . . . and
supertraditional tangueros, like El Polaco Goyaneche, sang with Charly Garcia .
. . or that Albert Castillo sang with the Fabulous Cadillacs, a rock group. . .
. This helped a lot, in that men and
women . . . that liked jazz and rock [said], Ah! look at how great tango
is! Let’s go [do it]! [Amelia]
The people who attended these concerts began
to pay attention to tango, which before had been seen as an old people’s dance
and music.
Tango also appeared on the FM airwaves, drawing in a
larger, younger audience. In the early
1990s a group of rock musicians banded together and started a new radio station
dedicated to tango. According to one interviewee,
this was “the most important spark” that ignited the new tango fad:
In the ‘90s,
’91, came FM Tango, which is the first FM tango station. Up until then, tango was only on AM. . . .
FM Tango was run by Gustavo Nolla, who was a pioneer of Argentine rock ‘n roll
. . . all the people who formed a part of FM Tango . . . were people who came
to it from rock ‘n roll. . . . And they
set it up like a rocker’s station. Faster,
harder-hitting, and lots of young people started to listen to it. It was one of the most popular radio
stations between ’90 and ’94, more or less. They did a lot of tango shows to
which they invited the young tango people, musicians and dancers . . . and lots
of young people came to see these. I
think this was the most important change in tango, in the public who consumed
tango at that point. [Miranda]
FM
Tango sponsored festivals, performances and competitions that encouraged young
people to try the dance as well as listen to the music. By 1994, the new interest in tango had
produced many new dancers. From 1994 to
2000, the dancing population doubled or tripled (Rosario).
New dance spaces were created that invited new
dancers to enter the tango world. New
clubs in middle- and upper-class areas of town provided a learning space for
the new generation by offering group classes and an informal atmosphere to
dance. Because there was more tolerance
for beginners on the large dance floor, people who would not dare dance at some
of the older clubs could dance at these venues. In addition, these clubs played other kinds of music as well as
tango, which attracted a younger crowd:
[the
organizers of the] La Estrella/La Viruta milonga . . . are the ones who really
made a milonga that everybody could go to.
Why? Because tango is danced
there following the tanguero codes of behavior and the atmosphere of the
milonga, but there are people who go because they like to listen to tango and
they don’t dance, or don’t dance much, but since there is salsa, rock ‘n roll,
etc., they participate in the milonga.
And then they start to learn to dance tango. . . it started . . . maybe
four years ago. They were the ones who
let go of the formality. . . . one can
go in jeans, one can go in any type of clothing . . . [Miranda]
Having started tango after seeing stage-style
tango, many young people who came to tango in the 1990s focused on a more
dramatic, open style of dance than that which was originally done in the
milongas. The new style has many more
figures, or steps, compared to the old style, in which one danced as one felt
the music demanded (Victor). The new
style is much more acrobatic and demands more flexibility and body training
than the old style.
Nuevo
tango is characterized by a focus on tango’s structure. Taking traditional tango figures, Nuevo
tango asks questions such as: “If the leader can do that, can you lead the
follower to do it?” and “What does that figure look like backwards?” or “If I
reverse this part, what happens?”
Through experimentation and close analysis of the form, Nuevo tango has
transformed social tango and combined it with elements of stage tango to make a
flashy, but improvised, form of tango.
Nuevo tango also represents a new, egalitarian form
of tango in that the style is not limited to a specific class of people, nor to
a specific neighborhood, as earlier forms were. Both working class and middle-class dancers participate in the
form. It is not demarcated by gender. Whereas women’s dance style proclaimed their
class in the earlier years of tango, both men and women of all classes flock to
the new style.
The ringleaders of the new tango movement were two
young dancers, Gustavo Naveira and Fabian Salas, who gathered a group of four
to ten young people around them in 1994 to investigate the possibilities within
the system of tango. Most of the
non-tango dance world knows this style because Sally Potter’s film “The Tango
Lesson” starred three of the main male dancers in the new movement: Naveira,
Salas, and Pablo Veron. That small
nucleus of people expanded and now are among the most sought-after teachers in
Buenos Aires and abroad. Most of this
group of “new tango” dancers teach (or live) abroad. These dancers make almost all of their income by maintaining work
visas in the United States or Europe; very little money is to be made in Buenos
Aires, except by teaching foreigners.
Tango
originally spread out from Argentina in the 1910s, but foreigners did not begin
to frequent Buenos Aires in order to dance tango until the 1990s. The show Tango Argentino started touring in
1983 and, combined with the migration of Argentines to Europe during the
dictatorship, created an atmosphere that promoted and fostered tango in Europe,
the United States and Japan. Many
Argentines began to offer tango classes abroad, and international tango
festivals were organized, creating economic opportunities for tango dancers and
teachers (Miranda). In addition,
beginning about 1992, large numbers of foreigners began to visit Buenos Aires
to study tango (Martin). This resulted
in the proliferation of classes, prácticas, and milongas that cater to tourists
and a demand for the development of formal systems of tango pedagogy.
The
influx of foreigners into the ranks of tango dancers, teachers and performers
has changed both the structure of the dance, and how the tango world functions
in Buenos Aires. The presence of
foreigners means that the pecking order in milongas includes tourists as well
as regulars, and some tourists (especially better female dancers) rank high
(Savigliano 1998: 106-108). Male
dancers often choose a stranger to dance with them, compliment their dancing,
offer corrections, and hand the woman their card after a set of dancing,
offering dance lessons or a (paid) dance partner for the duration of their
visit. Dancing with foreigners is one
of few ways to make contacts that may benefit the tango dancer in the short
term (giving lessons) or result in an invitation to go abroad to teach.
Gender as a social
construct
Even within the small
subculture of tango in Buenos Aires, I found several different ways of looking
at men and women, and how men and women should act correctly in order to
perform ideal masculinity and femininity.
Often “sex” or “gender” is used as a term to demarcate a division
between the bodies and/or behaviors of “men” and “women” in such a way as to
create two (or more) categories of humans.
Although many people consider these categories to be biological givens,
most anthropological researchers do not.
According to Butler (1990),
both sex and gender are terms that are culturally constituted through discourse
(what we say and write about a topic) and practice (what we actually do and how
we act). She writes that “. . . gender
must also designate the very apparatus whereby the sexes themselves are
established” (Butler 1990: 7). Gender
is not a static, but a dynamic state, which is created by body practices and
speech acts. Therefore, a body is not a
given “man” or “woman” nor “male” or “female,” but rather a cultural
construct. How can we define
“woman”? For example, if we define
“woman” as a body able to reproduce, all people who are of post-menopausal or
pre-pubertal age, are not women (Butler 1996: 113). Even reproduction is a social institution, not a biological one.
The way we speak about the
construction of gender is itself based in the linguistic system we use, which
has (in both English and Spanish) a built-in binary slant. This limits discourse and predisposes the
speaker to divide people into only two gendered categories. For example, “Is it a boy or a girl?”
is the first question usually asked about a body, illustrating our tendency
towards a set of binary categories which we use (Butler 1990: 111). This example also shows the extreme
importance placed on sexed or gendered difference in society which we impose
from the moment of birth. At birth, the
doctor says “it’s a boy/girl” and thus
begins that
long string of interpellations by which the girl is transitively girled: gender
is ritualistically repeated, whereby the repetition occasions both the risk of
failure and the congealed effect of sedimentation. [Butler 1997: 48]
In
other words, by calling the baby a girl, and by treating that human as a girl,
we make a culturally conditioned state of being a girl that the child learns to
follow and thus becomes a girl. The
fact that this is repeated constantly creates the reality of that child being a
girl. This is a dynamic state of
affairs: the “girl” must keep acting “like a girl,” and is continually called a
“girl” in order to fit in culturally with a group of humans who expect certain
girl behaviors from that child.
Although it is difficult to imagine the body before it is described in
language—a blank slate, as it were (Butler 1990: 130)—the body’s identity is
completely socially and linguistically constituted:
Language sustains the body . . . it is by being interpellated with the
terms of language that a certain social existence of the body first becomes
possible. To understand this one must imagine
an impossible scene, that of a body that has not yet been given social
definition, . . . [so that] an address, a call, . . . constitutes [the body]
fundamentally. [Butler 1997:5]
Therefore,
the body with which one is born does not dictate the personality or behavior
that person as a gendered being.
Rather, people expect specific behavior and react to the perceived male-
or female-ness of the body.
Repetition, not nature, creates social reality. As acts are repeated (or spoken about,
because speech is also an act) (Butler 1997: 10), they gain a social legitimacy
that a single act does not have:
“Language gains the power to create ‘the socially real’ through the
locutionary acts of speaking subjects” (Butler 1990: 115). Through “repetition and recitation,” acts
and speech about those acts becomes accepted as a set of social norms (Butler
1996: 112). Eventually, these social norms become accepted as “facts” of the
natural world and are not viewed as socially constructed (Butler 1990: 115,
141). Meaning is constructed through a
continuing discourse, and gender, rather than being a given, is a process of
repeated performances:
If gender is something that one becomes—but can never be—then gender is
itself a kind of becoming or activity, and that gender ought not to be
conceived of as a noun or a substantial thing or a static culture marker, but
rather as an incessant and repeated action of some sort. [Butler 1990: 112]
If gender is not a physical
entity, what is it? I agree with
Stølen’s (1996) view that “gender” is based on our beliefs and views of what
men and women should be like, how they differ, and how they should interact:
Gender entails, on the one hand, men’s and women’s roles and relations,
and, on the other, their values and ideas about maleness and femaleness. What
men and women do and how they relate, together with the ideas and
interpretations of gender differences, constitute a gender system. [Stølen
1996b: 18-19]
I also agree with Stølen
that no one gender system dominates an entire culture. Within a culture, there are competing belief
systems, including those about gender (Stølen 1996a: 159-160). This explains the fact that much information
gathered about a culture’s views on gender, conflicts with other data
collected. Although there may be an
accepted “official” discourse, the performance of gender roles provides
alternative realities and beliefs that often do not agree with the official
version (Butler 1997: 157). Within any
group, “discourses with multiple and diffuse points of origin” compete with
each other to construct the norms of
that society (Butler 1990: ix).
Accepted rules of behavior can be enforced either
through force or via an acceptance of these beliefs by the majority of the
population. According to Cowan, the two
main ways for the society to control the individual are through domination or
via hegemony (Cowan 1990: 12). Hegemony
is a non-violent method, where one way of seeing reality is dominant, accepted,
and internalized to the extent that the oppressed choose to follow a system
that oppresses them by consenting to follow the rules (Cowan 1990: 12). Stølen defines hegemony, referring to the
definition by Gramsci, as:
. . . meaning a social ascendancy achieved by consensus through
institutions of the civil society such as the family, the Church, and the
educational and legal systems, and thus, articulated at the level of the whole
society . . . it refers to dominance based on common values or shared meaning
rather than on the use of force.
[Stølen 1996b: 212]
Educational, religious and civic institutions help
to inculcate the belief system that individuals adopt (Cowan 1990: 12). Groups of people accept social norms and
reenact them daily, often without being aware of the process either of choosing
those rules, or of enforcing them:
In Language and Symbolic Power, Pierre Bourdieu
cautions . . . [that] the recognition of the legitimacy of the official
language has nothing in common with an explicitly professed, deliberate and
revocable belief, or with an intentional act of accepting a ‘norm.’” [Bourdieu,
as quoted in Butler 1997: 134]
Hegemony is a dynamic process, shaped by the people
participating in the culture: "Hegemony . . . has continually to be
renewed, recreated, defended and modified.
It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by
pressures . . ." (Cowan 1990:
14). Such a system is not monolithic:
the very presence of individuals within the system means that each person will
try to manipulate the status quo for their own benefit, “accept[ing],
manipulat[ing], us[ing], or contest[ing] hegemonic (that is, dominant) ideas”
(Cowan 1990: 13). The arts, including dance, can reinforce the hegemonic belief
system by providing space in which those rules may be enacted through discourse
or nonverbal means, or can challenge dominant views.
Heterosexuality provides an excellent example of a
hegemonic embracing of a social norm to the extent that it is accepted as part
of nature. Butler writes that our views
of accepted “male” and “female” behavior are based in part not on nature, but
on culturally ancient practices, including the “regulation of sexuality” to
appropriate “compulsory heterosexuality” (Butler 1990: 136). Therefore, heterosexuality may be a norm,
but it is not the “natural” order of things (Butler 1996: 114). The discourse concerning sexual orientation
helps to reify the accepted norms, and this continued discourse must happen in
order for the social norm to continue.
. . . acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect
of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the
body through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal,
the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, and enactments, generally construed, are performative
in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to
express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal
signs and other discursive means. . . .
If that reality is fabricated as an interior essence, that very
interiority is an effect and function of a decidedly public and social
discourse . . . [gender is] an illusion discursively maintained for the
purposes of regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive
heterosexuality. [Butler 1990: 136]
As heterosexuality is a basic tenet underpinning
Western culture and gendered ideals, a change in discourse about “male” and
“female” interactions threatens the norm much more than if heterosexuality was
indeed an inborn given for humans. This
makes changes in behaviors that are linked to “male” and “female” potentially
dangerous, such as changing who leads in a traditionally male-female dance
interaction. In a couple dance that
traditionally has had a man leading a woman, a woman leading challenges the
accepted, hegemonic ideals about “male” and “female.” Change, in action or discourse about that action, threatens the
status quo because it can lead to changes in what is accepted culturally.
Most of the Argentines I interviewed have a worldview
that includes a binary view of sex: “man” and “woman” are seen as naturally
constituted categories for them, not cultural constructions. A few interviewees discussed “el tercero
sexo” (the third sex), by which they meant homosexuals. In Argentina, most people accept that women
and men are physically, fundamentally different, and that their masculine or
feminine behavior stems from this biological base. They also accept heterosexuality as a natural, given part of this
male-female interaction. Therefore,
women enacting a role that is accepted as male, designed for a male body, are
challenging the status quo about correct male and female behavior in Argentine
and porteño society in a physical, visual, in-your-face manner.
The ideal woman in
Argentina, 1880-2000
Argentina differs from most Latin American countries
in that the majority of the urban population descends from Mediterranean
families. There is a lower
concentration of indigenous people than in most of Latin America. Consequently, the worldview of its
inhabitants more closely mirrors that of the Mediterranean area than many other
parts of Latin America.
Migration to
the New World . . . has not . . . led to a complete rupture with Mediterranean
culture, and the European linkage is still strong. This becomes evident . . .
especially with regard to conceptualizations of maleness and femaleness and the
strong emphasis on female virginity, chastity and domesticity. [Stølen 1996b:18]
In the late 1890s when tango developed, the family
was the principal unit of society in Argentina. Families were primarily self-sufficient and information was kept
within the family. A female belonged to
her family, and her sexual purity reflected upon the honor of her family. People who were not relatives rarely entered
a house, apart from the formal salon (Scobie 1974: 206). Therefore, a girl was under the eye of her
family, safe from the outside world at all times. They were carefully watched until their marriage, at which point
they became property of their husbands (Yeager 1994: xii).
The central roles of an adult woman were expected to
be that of obedient wife, homemaker, and producer of children (Filc 1997:
72-73).
. . . according to the 1871 civil code, the role of
good women was to marry and bear future generations. Mothers and children in turn were to obey the male patriarch who
would select their occupations, thereby linking the family to class and,
ultimately, through birth, to the nation.
[Guy 1991: 3]
Women provided the emotional center for the family.
This view of a woman’s role as the family’s “heart” still predominates in
Argentine society: “To maintain united families in a loving and secure
atmosphere is still seen as the mother’s responsibility” (Filc 1997: 74).
The Catholic Church’s teachings provided a religious
base and justification that supported a woman’s place as subordinate to men
(Stølen 1996b: 21). Just as God is in a
position of power over people, men are in charge of the lesser members of the
family, including women (Filc 1997: 71-2).
Since God created people, and, men can procreate, men are in the highest
position in the human hierarchy (Stølen 1996b: 248-9). Educational institutions reinforced the
teachings of the Church, instructing that motherhood was a “biological destiny”
and that marriage and parenting were what women were born to do (Lavrin 1995:
33).
The ideal woman did not work outside the home. In order for a woman to fulfill her role as
a wife and mother, she needed to be home-based. Also, in order to protect her honor, she needed to be chaperoned
or stay at home. Therefore, a woman who
worked, especially outside the home, was suspect. One of the main fears that society (men) had about women working
outside the home was the consequent lack of sexual control: “In a society where
working women were the exception, female wage labor in public places was
equated with sexual commerce” (Guy 1991: 46).
Argentines feared that women who worked with men who were not their
relatives would succumb to sexual advances (Guy 1991: 69). This fear of women’s freedom contributed to
the perception that working women were a social danger.
The immigration practices of the new
European-Argentines reinforced both the idea of the pure, secluded ideal for
women, and created a demand for the “bad” woman: the prostitute. As few women in comparison to men
immigrated, there was a perpetual shortage of female sexual partners. European women (especially one’s relatives)
were seen as pure, but other women were seen as “sexually voracious and
available” (Stølen 1996b: 154).
European-Argentine men saw native, creole and African women as
“vessel[s] for male pleasure,” so the rules of honor and shame did not apply
(Castro:66). All poor women were
thought to be of easy virtue, as their need of money reduced their will to be
“good” and respectable. Therefore any
working woman, out in public, was viewed with suspicion.
The economic reality of Buenos Aires did not mirror
this ideal of women staying at home.
Even at the beginning of the 20th century, many women worked
outside the home due to economic need.
Although there was a large contingent of women who did paid work at
home, many women also had to go out in public and work with men to earn enough
money to survive; they did not have constant watch kept over their activities
(Lavrin 1995:74, 90). They supported
their families by working as “servants, sellers and artisans” as well as
industrial workers after industrialization (Yeager 1994: xv; Guy 1994:115). By 1909, 32.6% of women had an occupation,
and women constituted about 24% of the industrial labor force (Lavrin 1995: 57;
Deutsch 2001:225-226). During the
period between 1914 and 1930, approximately 20% of the labor force was female
(Deutsch 1994: 129). By 1939, over 33%
of the blue- and white-collar jobs in the province of Buenos Aires were filled
by women (Lavrin 1995: 59). This points
to a constant, large number of women who broke “correct” codes of behavior in
order to survive.
The middle-class strove to separate themselves from
the lower classes by keeping women out of public employment and the public eye
(Lavrin 1995: 6). However, several
recessions between 1915 and 1930 forced middle-class women to work outside the
home in greater numbers (Lavrin 1995: 90).
Questions about honor and women’s exposure to the public were
exacerbated by the new situation (Lavrin 1995: 126-7): “the figure of the working woman . . .
evoked rancor and opposition among many men and women” (Lavrin 1995: 91).
Gender relations were thrown into flux by the end of
World War I. With more women working
and new ideas about women’s freedom, views of masculinity and femininity came
under increased discussion. Women were
said to have become more “assertive and demanding and thus less ‘feminine’”, of
“forsaking their gracious feminine personality, and assuming hybrid masculine
behavior [hombremiento]” (Castro 1994: 68; Lavrin 1995: 36). Women who worked a traditionally male job
were thought to undergo “a sexual inversion” (Lavrin 1995:36).
In opposition to more women working and the
“confusion” about a woman’s role, the conservative era from 1920-1940 continued
to stress women’s role in the home (Deutsch 2001: 236; Lavrin 1995: 94). The Church accepted women’s need to work outside
the home if necessary, and supported women’s education, but not at the expense
of men or the family (Deutsch 1994: 135-36): “The Church stressed women’s
maternal roles within and outside the home: nurturers, educators, and helpmates
within the family, women were also philanthropists, and guardians of purity in
society at large” (Deutsch 2001: 225).
Even in the 1950s, the educational system also supported this view:
textbooks of the 1950s present a similar image of the ideal girl and woman
(Stølen 1996b: 260). The mass media of
the 1940s and 1950s showed housewives and mothers at home: “passive, dependant
and submissive . . .” (Stølen 1996b: 263).
Although the 1960s were more liberal in terms of
women’s rights, the 1970s heralded a return to conservative gender roles. In 1974, after Juan Perón’s death, the
government imposed “antifeminist” measures that limited women’s rights, such as
prohibiting contraceptives and vetoing equal parental rights (Feijoó 1994:
110). Women’s roles as the housewife,
wife and mother were stressed as “the only legitimate goal for women”(Feijoó
1994: 111). When the military junta
took over in 1976, their repressive measures caused the standard of living for
poorer classes to decrease, again forcing more women to work outside the home.
Although more women needed to work to contribute to the survival of their
families, they faced discrimination in the workforce as women (Feijoó 1994:
111). Partly in reaction to this
situation, women organized politically, and were an instrumental part of the
overthrow of the dictatorship in 1983.
However, their political role was built on that of wife and mother, and
served to reinforce traditional gender roles (Feijoó 1994: 113, 120-21).
The end of the military dictatorship in 1983 ushered
in another period of increased economic crisis. High inflation rates drove both lower- and middle-class women
into the workforce. Poor women
increased their numbers in the workforce by 11% between 1974 and 1987, and
middle-class women increased their numbers in the workforce by 33% in the same
time period (Feijoó 1994: 110). Married
women, who traditionally had worked outside the home less than other women,
increased their numbers in the workforce from 1974 to 1987 by 53% for
middle-class, and by 33% for lower-class women (Feijoó 1994: 124).
At the beginning of the 21st century,
Argentina has many women from all classes who work in the professions (doctors,
lawyers, teachers, etc.) or own their own businesses (Foster 1998: 104). Women are heavily involved in “the cultural
industry” of theater, television, music, and dance, including tango (Foster
1998: 104). Many women are starting to
work in jobs traditionally thought of as male work. This has not reduced the expectation that a woman also be a wife
and mother:
Role
encroachments regarding work seem to be more acceptable for women than for
men. A woman who carries out what is
defined as men’s work may be characterized as skillful and hardworking,
positively valued qualities, as long as she does not neglect her house and
children.” [Stølen 1996b: 199]
The high percentage of women working since the end
of the 1980s has brought about changes in both the discussion of women’s roles
and women’s work. (Feijoó 1994: 124;
Stølen 1996b: 19). A new balance
between the sexes is being sought (Giardinelli 1998: 112). Today, Buenos Aires seems to have more of an
awareness of male and female roles because women inhabit the public space more
freely there than in the rest of Latin America (Foster 1998: 102).
One of the
truly distinctive features of Buenos Aires is the considerable degree of
freedom women have in identifying for themselves the right to occupy the city .
. . for most of Latin America, a combination of traditional feminine modesty .
. . and issues relating to personal security combine to maintain a gender
differential with respect to cohabitation in every reach of urban life . . .
[Foster 1998: 101]
I
experienced and saw this freedom, especially in terms of being able to travel
home alone at 4 or 5 in the morning after a milonga. However, with the current economic crisis, crime is on the rise,
and both men and women are becoming less prone to travel alone at night.
Who is the ideal or typical porteña of the 21st
century? The scholarly literature
provides several contradictory views.
According to Foster (1998), Argentine women are famous for being
assertive, compared to other Latin American women:
The Argentine
woman is legendary for her strength of character. While the perception of this strength may be expressed in
negative terms, such that the Argentine woman is reputed to be too strong and
aggressive, unfeminine, defiant, and confrontational, popular knowledge in
Latin America accords her a unique status.
Not even the alleged sexual freedom of Brazilian women comes close to
matching the mystique of the assertive Argentine woman. This is, of course, a stereotype . . . [Foster 1998: 104-5]
This stereotype contrasts strongly with the ideal
stated in popular press. According to
Giardinelli, the ideal woman of the 1990s in Argentina is still “silent,
passive, . . . decent, a mother, a goddess to be loved, capable of being
suffering, modest, stoic, resigned, . . . “ (Giardinelli 1998: 101, my
translation). This is the character
shown in commercials in the mass media, where the woman is still shown as a
mild-mannered wife and mother (Stølen 1996b: 263): “Popular stereotypes are
seen to be reconfirmed in the serials on television. which, good or bad, are
these days the most popular master educator of Argentina and of the entire
world” (Giardinelli 1998: 114). The
women interviewed by Stølen agreed that any woman who was assertive was not
following the accepted codes of behavior:
Women should
never take open initiatives to conquer a man.
They may certainly use “invisible” methods of showing their interest,
but if these do not work, they should give up . . . “Women cannot choose, they
can only be chosen, and, if they are not they have no chance’ as one [woman]
put it. At the same time, [the women interviewed
by Stølen] stressed that they found it extremely disgusting if a woman took the
initiative, as in asking a man to dance. . . .
Since early childhood they have learnt that it is the man who should
approach women and that women who take the lead in this sense are defined as
prostitutes. [Stølen 1996b: 161]
Which of these images is “the” Argentine woman of
2000? From my knowledge of my Argentine
women friends, I would hazard a guess that all of these traits can be found in
a modern-day porteña. Almost all of my
female friends in Buenos Aires are assertive, outspoken, strong women. At the same time, I have seen most of them
defer to their male partners or husbands in public but express other opinions
at home. Most of my female friends in
Buenos Aires take great care with their appearance but at the same time are
highly educated and rely on their intellect to attract the opposite sex. Most of them do not have children but told
me they plan to have children in their mid- to late-thirties, after their
careers are established. Many were caring
and emotionally expressive. They all
demonstrated a lack of concern with male-female competition and told me that
men and women were naturally different rather than equal. Their performance of their femininity is a
delicate balancing act that aims to fit in with others’ expectations of them
while at the same time enables taking control of their lives and furthering
their own interests.
Historically, men and women have not been seen as
equal, but rather as complementary to one another in Argentina: “Men and women
inherently possessed different duties, rights, and abilities, and to categorize
the sexes as equal or unequal demeaned them both” (Deutsch 1994: 139). Rosa Scheiner, a 1930s Argentine socialist,
wrote that men and women had their own “respective biological and psychological
characteristics” (Lavrin 1995: 37). The
differences between ideal male and female roles were seen as “natural” and of “biological origin” (Stølen 1996a: 167, 174;
Giardinelli 1998: 104).
A man’s worth was measured by his public work and
image. If a woman’s role was to
maintain the emotional well-being of the family, the man’s role was to provide
for the physical welfare of his wife, children, and extended family if
necessary. A man’s concept of his
masculinity was linked to being able to provide for his family: “a man who
needs his wife’s economic help to make ends meet [was] not a ’real’ man”
(Stølen 1996b: 197).
Masculinity is a performance, rather than a given
(Foster 1998: 67). Masculinity is often
defined in opposition to femininity. A
male is supposed to give an appearance of being strong and assertive. A man is supposed to be active, while a
women is supposed to be passive. A good
man is active, independent, and goes his own way. Even as a child, males learn that to be docile and sweet means to
be teased. If a male child exhibits
accepted “female” behavior instead of fighting and being aggressive, his
parents worry that he might be homosexual (Stølen 1996b: 151-52).
What is considered
appropriate behavior for boys such as manifestations of tenacity and physical
strength, is disapproved of in girls, who are expected to be sweet, soft, and
neat. If a boy exhibits what are defined
as feminine qualities his parents become anxious about possible homosexual
inclinations and start punishing him with jokes and mockery. [Stølen 1996b: 151-152]
In addition to acting in
ways that are seen as feminine, a man who carries out what is defined as female
work “. . . is exposed to mockery. He
will be seen as . . . ‘dominated’ . . .”
(Stølen 1996b: 200).
Several stock characters of Argentine literature,
film, and theater contribute to the idea of the stereotype of the ideal
Argentine man: the gaucho, the compadre, and the compadrito. The gaucho or cowboy, was a figure
much like that of the North American cowboy: silent, courageous, lonely, and
self-contained, who demonstrated his masculinity by his willingness to fight,
his fighting abilities, and through a display of invulnerability to feelings
and sentiment. His values were: “generosity, lack of interest in material
things, skill in the complicated art of horsemanship, the endurance of physical
hardship and the acceptance of a hierarchical society . . .” (Archetti 1999:
39). This was especially true vis-à-vis
women:
The legendary gaucho, although he might venerate his mother, viewed
other women primarily as objects of physical desire. Sentiments or attachments represented unacceptable weaknesses or
softness in a virile world. [Scobie 1974: 228]
Although
not perfect, the gaucho represented the best of Spanish and Indian blood
(virile, proud, independent) and thus was presented as an ideal Argentine (as
opposed to lesser races intermixing due to immigration) in popular lectures in
Buenos Aires in the 1910s (Archetti 1999: 36-7). There was a concerted effort to connect the ideal of Argentine
maleness to this gaucho image as a way to counteract the changes to Argentine
identity produced by large-scale immigration around the turn of the century:
The Argentinian nationalist writers of the 1910s,
attempted to recreate the ‘national, the essence of the ‘nation’ and of argentinidad,
in the figure of the gaucho, a romantic male free rider and heroic figure of
the Argentina of the wars of independence . . . The authors were reacting and
pioneering in resisting immigration and the cultural effects of Argentinian
modernization. . . . a study of Argentinian national male images needs to
problematize the continuity of the rural and the contemporary exaltation of the
pampas and the gauchos. [Archetti 1999:
18]
The image of the compadre
is also linked to ideal Argentine masculinity.
A figure of the late 1880s, the compadre came to signify an archetype
from the outskirts of Buenos Aires, whose actions were based upon “honor,
loyalty, and respect for one’s word of honor” (Salas 1995: 68; my
translation). According to Collier, he
was characterized by “fierce independence, masculine pride, and a strong
inclination to settle affairs of honor with knives” (Collier 1995: 37). Compadres were seen as the epitome of
masculinity:
At the top of
the virility scale stands the guapo or compadre, who is a feared, envied
and respected figure in the barrio. He
has made his name due to his courage and he has won it without stridency or
strokes of luck. [Salas 1999: 14]
More urban than the gaucho,
the compadre was still untamed. Many of
the compadres worked as bodyguards for political chiefs (Salas 1999: 15). These men frequented the brothels and so are
linked in the public mind with tango (Salas 1999: 21). Salas (1999) writes that the tango was the
mouthpiece of the arrabal, or outskirts of town, where the compadre
lived (Salas 1999: 13). They are
immortalized in the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most famous
Argentine writers, as well as in the tangos of Homero Manzi and Cátulo Castillo
(Salas 1999: 23).
Another late nineteenth
century character linked to the popular image of tango is the compadrito,
called the “compadre’s son” in the film Tango: La Obsession (1997). Salas (1995) quotes Leopoldo Lugones’
definition: “a hybrid of the gaucho, the white and the black.” (Salas 1995:
70). Compadritos were “mostly
native-born and poor . . . street toughs . . . [but] not criminals” (Collier
1995: 38). The compadrito was the
urban/suburban equivalent of the ideal male in porteño minds who “brought
together many . . . Spanish, criollo and Italian values on masculinity” (Scobie
1974: 229). The early images in tango
are of tough, outwardly resilient men in the mold of the street tough, dressed
in a dark suit with a white neckcloth, heeled boots, and a hat to hide the face
(Salas 1995: 70-1). Scobie (1974)
writes that tango “gave the compadrito a perfect stage on which to parade his
postures and attitudes” of masculinity (Scobie 1974: 229).
Borges argues [that] the aggressive man, the
compadre or compadrito—one of the archetypical figures of tango lyrics, is
imagined as a rebel denying the legitimacy of an abstract judicial system
regulated and administered by the modern state. The social destiny of this rebellious man was thus based on a
kind of ethic of “the man who is alone and expects nothing from others” (Borges
1956:8). [Archetti 1999: 142]
Many films depict the tango
dancer as a tough, lower-class, independent compadrito. These films, as well as popular literature,
serve as a reference point for tango dancers and the general public.
The characteristic traits of the compadrito
are to dance the tango as a master and play the guitar. He is an elegant
seducer whom no woman is able to resist; he has been in prison and is admired
because of his courage, physical strength and capacity to cheat where
necessary. The compadrito has a defiant and hostile attitude towards other men.
. . . He is a character of the outskirts, not the center of the city; he is not
a man of the cabaret and most of the time he roams a local territory inhabited
by other men like him. [Archetti 1999:
152-3]
On a real level rather than an ideal, men who strove
to emulate the ideal Argentine man competed for power against the other males
around them, and against men of different social classes. Performing accepted masculine behavior aided
a man in the competition for power over other men.
Since masculinity is an assumed identity, it must be sustainedly
exercised in order not to fall away, and no challenge to it can go unanswered,
because to do so would be to open a fatal breech in its façade. Masculinity,
even more than femininity (which is, of course, also a closely guarded façade),
must be constantly affirmed in a masculinist society. Since power is in the hands of masculine subjects, who compete
mightily for its benefits, an imperfection in one’s inscription into the codes
of masculinity weakens his right to compete and endangers is success in
competing by moving him closer to those social constituencies (for example,
“women” or feminized men) that are excluded from competition. [Foster 1998: 67]
Part of men’s competition was for sex and
women. Men were believed to have a
rampant sexuality which drives them toward sex. In Argentina, prostitution was not only legal until 1919, but
believed to be necessary to the healthy functioning of society. With the large number of available men at
the end of the nineteenth century and the small number of available women, Guy
notes that early Catholic Church leaders thought that “. . . prohibiting
prostitution might . . . lead to homosexual practices” (Guy 1991: 13). Competing for women was encouraged as
healthy, male behavior because it was seen as better than competing for the
sexual favors of other men. The links
between the brothels and tango forged a strong connection between gender roles
as performed in tango and the enactment of masculinity in Buenos Aires.
The image of the “ideal” man changed over the course
of the twentieth century. As the city
grew, , there was also a movement away from settling the score with
violence. The rural/suburban compadrito
was replaced with a more cultured, urban masculine model who took emotions into
account:
Moral attitudes based on understanding the feelings of the ‘other’,
uprightness, honesty, loyalty and lack of extreme passion replace the primitive
reactions based on masculine bravery, vengeance and extreme courage. [Archetti 1999: 156]
As the reality of women
working emerged, a model of male-female relations evolved that allowed for more
female emotional autonomy and greater emotional scope for men. However, the core ideals present in the
gaucho, the compadre, and the compadrito still figured in the public mind as
how “men” should act.
Men’s roles, like women’s
roles, have changed at the end of the twentieth century in Argentina, but not
entirely. Men experience more
allowances to be emotionally sensitive and open. They reveal more of their “feminine” side than before
(Giardinelli 1998: 114). At the same
time, men are still expected to act in a traditionally masculine manner. They still pay for the woman on dates, open
doors, and are expected to support the family. Women still want a manly man who
“. . . behaves like a man, who can ensure the maintenance of the family, who is
strong, determined and able to make decisions on their behalf and is
outstanding and respected by the community” (Stølen 1996b: 225-226). Like modern women’s roles, the list of ideal
traits in a modern, masculine man create a series of complex images:
Cornwall and Lindisfarne
argue, with justification, that the
different images and forms of behavior contained in the notion of masculinity
are not always coherent and can appear contradictory and indeterminate (1994:
12). . . . masculinity cannot be
treated as something fixed and universal. . . . they refuse to accept that there is only one way of ‘being a man’
(1994: 3) . . . [Archetti 1999: 113]
My male acquaintances and
friends in Buenos Aires present a similarly confused picture of what a modern
man should be. Some continue to play
the compadrito: tough, untouched by sentiment, crude, treating women as objects
or expecting women to be subservient. Others
cook for their partners, write poetry, talk of their love for their
wife/partner, and open up emotionally on a very deep level. One treated me as an equal intellectually
and on the dance floor, but insisted on paying my bus fare and always walked on
the street side of the sidewalk because he had been taught to treat a woman
that way. Many of my male friends
expressed some confusion as to what role women wanted them to play. Most seemed very aware that a performance of
some sort was central to being “male.”
The ability to dance tango
well was viewed as a sign of masculinity—a macho credential. [Azzi 1995: 118]
At the turn of the century, tango was not considered an appropriate
activity for a respectable woman. [Firpo]
Because dance uses the body, gender plays a large
role in how dance is negotiated in culture.
Tango began in an era when men greatly outnumbered women in Buenos
Aires. The larger number of men
compared to women led to the development of a visible gay population (Salessi
1997: 152-3). It also led to both male
and female prostitution on a large scale (Salessi 1997: 150-51, 160). The same period of time also saw the growth
of a female workforce outside the home, competing with men for work. All of these factors challenged the
“sex/gender system and the gender structure of the economy” (Salessi 1997:
147).
The criminal underworld was linked with the
“immoral” world of the homosexual, the prostitute, and with the immigrant
population in bureaucratic texts on public health and psychology (Salessi 1997:
161). Because tango was the dance of
the underworld and the lower classes, it was connected (in reality and
imagination) with these twin worlds of the criminal and the homosexual (Salessi
1997: 163). Salessi quotes Horacio
Salas:
At first [tango] was danced separately like the candombes; later the
partners came together and transformed the dance into one for partners
intertwined, preferably men; and thus it passed into the brothels. [Salessi 1997: 158]
In
an effort to control the lower classes, middle-class bureaucrats legislated
controls over tango. One element of the
new bureaucratic control over the lower classes was the development of a
discourse on sexuality that categorized “deviance” (Salessi 1997: 143). By defining the lower classes as other, low,
morally bad, and foreign, the new middle class bureaucracy could define
themselves in opposition as good, moral, and belonging to Argentina (Salessi
1997: 165). Tango was in part tamed by
the bureaucracy into a strongly heterosexual form as a means to reduce
“deviant” behavior.
Many dance halls still have an atmosphere that
stresses the performance of heterosexuality.
They are still places for men to find women to take home (Taylor 1998:
38). Jakubs (1984) argues that for the
early dancers of tango, the compadritos, tango was “the sure way to meet,
impress, and conquer women" (Jakubs 1984: 138). This suggests continuity of purpose within the tango community over
more than a century: the pursuit of women. Being seen with an attractive woman and preferably leaving with
her, also proves that a man is not homosexual, which continues to be a central
issue for many Argentines.
Men . . . must always demonstrate not only that they
are ‘real’ men, but that they are not queer.
This does not mean to imply that a woman’s femininity is never called
into question in societies associated with the tango, it only means that the
tango never makes an issue of femininity . . . the demonstration of
proper heterosexual urges . . . must take place in the public domain . . . with
large-scale public display . . .
[Foster 1998: 58]
This image of maleness created in tango is performed
for the other male dancers (Savigliano 1995: 46). The aim is not to impress a woman, but to impress other men with
maleness. It is not an emphasis on
heterosexualism, but about power plays between men: “Any interest in either
love or sex (with a woman) would corrupt the macho picture” (Savigliano 1995: 43).
Tango is not about sex—at least not about heterosexuality—it is about
love, but love and sensuality (according to our previous informants) are queer
preoccupations. Hence, macho men only
care about the true passion of male friendship . . . and they are obsessed by
the judgments of their male peers . . . which, in turn, frequently revolved
around their ways of relating to women . . .
[Savigliano 1995: 45]
As
discussed above, maleness needs to be performed because it is not a given, but
rather is constructed continually.
Therefore, a man must continue to act in a heterosexual way in public in
order to prove his masculinity and to disprove his homosexuality.
Salessi feels that these turn-of-the-century links
between homosexuality and tango remain “deeply embedded in the national
identity of the large Argentine middle class (Salessi 1997: 141). Tobin supports this view, noting that in the
film Tango Bar there is “the obligatory dance between the two male
protagonists” of the tango show. During
this sequence, the men say that they were “practicing” tango, not “dancing”
together, and that this was purely to get ready to dance with “broads” (Tobin
1998a: 81). Men I interviewed mostly
emphasized “practicing” as opposed to “dancing” with other men. Tobin studied tango with two male tango
dancers, both of whom demonstrated mastery of the follow role, but who denied
that they could dance the traditional woman’s role:
I noticed that Rivarola danced the woman’s role with great flare and,
apparently, gusto, but when I complimented him, or asked how he learned to
dance the woman’s role so well, he would invariably respond with false modesty,
denying that he was in fact dancing the woman’s role, or that he had actually
ever learned how to do so. . . . Similarly, Gómez, despite executing
particularly flashy figure eights, claimed, ‘I don’t really dance the woman’s
part, it is just for teaching.’ [Tobin 1998a: 92]
Tango can be seen as a mode of competition between
males in order to gain power and perform masculinity. Taylor writes that the tanguero sees himself as needing to prove
that he is not “stupidly innocent” and that he “sees the rest of the world as
mocking observers” (Taylor 1998: 5). He
wants to prove himself as a dancer and as a man to the other men.
Because tango is associated with the lower classes,
tango can be seen as a struggle for power between men who have very little real
power in society: “. . . the tango refers generally to men from a social class
with difficulty in acceding to political and symbolic power . . .” (Foster
1998: 82). Thus, being good at tango
might be even more important in terms of gaining power because no other outlet
is available to some of these men.
Savigliano connects this contestation of the male to the class and race
barriers that tango crossed in the form of upper-class, white men. Where class and race difference occurred,
the contestation of maleness gained more importance:
There is no such thing as pure, stable maleness . . . . Maleness and its counterpart, the unmale
(not necessarily the feminine), are products and records of gendered and
sexualized class and racial struggles and of the struggle over the ghostly
question of national identity . . . Machismo is not an essence; it is a
practice and a product of history.
[Savigliano 1995: 46]
According to Savigliano, the dancing female in
Europe in the nineteenth century was portrayed as a femme fatale who had
a sexuality that could disrupt and threaten, but also be powerful in a way that
was not entirely negative, and this sentiment was widely accepted in Argentina
as well (Savigliano 1995: 103-6).
Women’s bodies were seen as more passionate and closer to nature than
men’s: “Dancing was thought to reveal the instinctual nature of women, their
truth communicated by physical means” (Savigliano 1995: 103). Tango did not change this image, but created
the image of a man who was an equal to this image of women, a homme fatal
(Savigliano 1995: 106). This macho male
had control over the woman in tango.
Her power was not diminished, but his “virility” took control over her
(Savigliano 1995: 109).
New entertainment venues during the 1920s and 1930s
both reflected and helped shape emerging gender roles in Buenos Aires. The dancing academies, cabarets, and other
venues for dancing tango that arose at the turn of the century created new
spaces where men and women interacted publicly. As men dominated in these venues, they provided space for men to
construct a model of masculinity appropriate to the early 1900s. The women in the venues served as a feminine
foil against which masculinity could be contrasted.
Not many women were able to take part in the
nightlife of Buenos Aires in the beginning of the twentieth century, but those
few women provided alternative models of women (compared to the housewife), and
provided the feminine foil for the performance of masculinity via tango:
Between 1910 and 1930 . . .
the tango became the music of the cabaret. The cabaret provided an arena of
entertainment, dancing, shows, and informal social life that fundamentally
changed the leisure habits of many men and women in Europe and elsewhere. For the first time in Buenos Aires, in an
elegant and intimate atmosphere, men and women could enjoy informality in
public. The cabaret as a public institution represented a challenge to the cult
of domestic life, family feasts and celebration, and formal balls. . . . The cabaret became both a real and imagined
arena for ‘time out’, and, for many women, for ‘stepping out’. Women could
escape from the order of home, from the routines and drudgery of family duties,
and thereby be tempted by the excitements of the cabaret and nightlife in the
center of Buenos Aires. . . . [but]
only a minority of women moved into this space. [Archetti 1999: 139]
The women who moved in tango circles were artists, milongueras,
“who talk and exchange dances with clients” and mistresses. They presented alternate models of
femininity to that of the stay-at-home wife, and were considered dangerous
because of their independence, while at the same time alluring because of their
freedom (Archetti 1999: 139-140). The
simple fact that these women existed physically challenged the status quo
beliefs about women (Archetti 1999: 140).
Then, as now, tango provided a space where women as well as men could
negotiate society’s expectations and values.
Archetti notes that “The women of the tango have never been docile or
passive objects of desire” (Archetti
1999: 150).
Just as masculinity was presented against a foil of
femininity in Argentina in general, masculinity in tango performed against a foil of femininity. Most tangos were written by men, and
therefore the combination of the act of dancing tango and listening to the
lyrics that play during the dance, reflect “. . . the double function of the
tango as both a male discourse and a cultural code and mode of cognition of
masculinities and gender relations” (Archetti 1999: 134). Men were mostly responsible for the models
of femininity portrayed in the tango lyrics of the 1920s to the 1940s.
The construction of images and models of masculinity were intimately
related to the way men perceived, defined and imagined an idealized
femininity. The male narrative can be
seen as a male discourse on gender relations . . . [Archetti 1999: 136-7]
There was no one model of womanhood presented
because different kinds of women figured in different areas of men’s
lives. For example, the women who
danced tango were not the same women who stayed at home with the children: the
wives stayed home, while the mistresses went out to dance (Archetti 1999:
140). Likewise, there is no one male
voice that predominates, but “a variety of ‘men’ with different voices and
moral and psychological dilemmas” (Archetti 1999: 156). Through tango lyrics, one can see what a man
needed to learn, and how he was expected to feel/react to situations in
male-female relationships (Archetti 1999: 156)
“Alternative definitions of manhood” can also be found in the large body
of tango lyrics produced during this Golden Age of tango, displayed in contrast
to the qualities of femininity:
Masculinity without femininity, men without women, is perhaps
unthinkable. A man needs a woman to
reaffirm his own masculinity . . .The lyrics of the tango, a dance made for a
man and a woman, [shows] tension existing between a conventional morality that
defines woman as passive and chaste—the mother and the disciplined spouse—and a
romantic drive in which man is fascinated by the seductive power of the femme
fatale. . . . The coexistence in tango of different moral codes provides, in many
ways, alternative definitions of manhood.
[Archetti 1999: xvii-xviii]
In the 1990s, dancing tango
is a site of performing masculinity and domination and is also an Achilles’
heel for Argentine men: to challenge their tango abilities is to challenge their
masculinity. To have women leading
women (removing men from the scene) or to have a man follow, is a phenomenon
that brings up men’s fears about their masculinity and sexuality. One of Archetti’s (1999) informants told him
“the tango reflects a doubting masculinity, not machismo, and powerful women
like we have plenty of in Argentina” (Archetti 1999: 157).
As evident from the
information above, gender roles in Argentina have been challenged continuously
throughout the past century and continue to change today. No one set of ideas rules, although the
traditional stereotypes continue to be widely accepted at the same time that
new ideas are encouraged (often by the same people!). Stølen (1996) suggests that when codes change, what looks like
new behavior is often based on a continuation of old ideas:
While
modification in behavior reflects responses to economic, social and structural
change, this does not necessarily lead to alteration at the level of ideas:
gender systems may be adapted or recreated, rather than transformed . . .. Often processes of change contain elements
of both a striving for continuity—new ways of behavior that preserve ”old”
gender values—and a striving to achieve “new” values.” [Stølen 1996b: 19]
I found this to be consistent with my data on the
tango world in Buenos Aires. New
attitudes about the equality of the roles of leader and follower existed side
by side with a preference for men to continue leading and women to continue following. Women have begun to teach both roles in
tango, and have begun to lead in public, but women are still supposed to
“surrender” themselves to the man when they follow. The changes in sexual division of labor have not entirely altered
the old values.
My guiding hypothesis is that social change can
generate change in dance and, conversely, that change in dance can be
identified, analyzed, and understood in terms of social currents and societal
conditions. [Daniel 1995: 1]
Cowan (1990) sees the body “not merely as a natural
object but as one socially and historically constituted” (Cowan 1990: 21). The body interacts with others within a
society, and that society “inscribes itself on the body of each of its members”
(Cowan 1990: 22). Through everyday
practice, such as standing and walking, the person brings into his/her body the
experience of being in that culture and of moving appropriately, thus
incorporating the belief system/value system directly onto the body. People learn to move in specific ways that
give others information about the gender, class, group, ethnic, and national
identities of that person (Desmond 1997: 36).
This is the central idea of Bourdieu’s “habitus”:
In Bourdieu's conception, mastery of the body is essentially the
successful in-corporation . . . of particular social meanings, inculcated
through various bodily disciplines . . . details of dress, bearing and manners
. . . [is a] process of gendering.
[Cowan 1990: 23]
The
body’s “. . . action . . . is a kind of incorporated memory” of the culture’s
rules (Butler 1997: 154). By repeating
accepted movement, the body cites “a prior and authoritative set of practices”
thus strengthening the norms of the society by performing them (Butler 1997:
51). The performance of dance expresses
cultural messages more strongly than other mediums. As a medium that includes
visual, aural, kinesthetic and emotional responses from the audience and the
participant, the messages it carries are far stronger than messages that are
sent only through one of these channels (Hanna 1979: 46).
The cultural information presented in dance in
social situations both contains strong messages and encodes cultural ideals of
behavior and is a site of resistance/agency by the individual: “Dance tends to
be a testament of values, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions” (Hanna 1979:
28). Certain movements are allowed
within a culture, while others are outside the accepted codes of behavior (Hanna
1979: 31). Who may dance and how they
may dance are culturally determined:
“Cultural patterning affects the sequence of interpersonal interaction,
that is, who dances and who interacts with the dancers and how, when the dance
occurs, how often, how long, and why” (Hanna 1979: 32).
Dance is not a separate entity, but embedded within
the life of a culture. Therefore, the
“work, economics, religion, and politics” of a group of people both affect and
are molded by the dance form/s of that society (Hanna 1979: 34):
The staples of anthropological analysis—considerations of social
function, symbolic systems, philosophical meanings, or political
implication—can apply powerfully to dance and are important because they are
often overlooked in aesthetically oriented commentary. [Cohen-Bull: 270]
Because
the body is used in dance, gender and sexuality can be separated from dance
only with difficulty. Thus, dance is an
excellent avenue by which to approach issues of gender and sexuality in a
culture:
Dancing
[is] an activity in which the body is both a site of experience (for the
dancer) and a sign (for those who watch the dancer) in which sexuality—as a
culturally specific complex of ideas, feelings, and practices—is deeply
embedded. [Cowan 1990: 4]
Through participating in dancing, a person embodies
the gendered rules of movement for that culture. Indeed, by dancing, the person embodies the gender ideals of that
society, strengthening them or challenging them through reenaction:
Gender ought not to be construed as a stable
identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow: rather, gender is
an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space,
through a stylized repetition of acts . . . the action of gender requires a
performance that is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment
and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established; and it is
the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation. [Butler 1990: 140]
Although a dance often
occurs in a specific venue, bounded by time and separated from daily life, what
happens on the dance floor informs daily life, and the meanings negotiated
there affect daily life (Cowan 1990: 5).
Changes in the culture will be both mediated by and reflected in the changes
in the dance (Delgado and Muñoz 1997: 16-18).
A change that occurs on the dance floor, a new way of dancing or a
change in the practice of dancing, opens “. . . new contexts, [dancing] in ways that have
never yet been legitimated, and hence producing legitimation in new and future
forms” (Butler 1997: 41). Therefore,
women leading as an act itself creates the context for legitimizing the
practice of women leading through repetition of the action:
The dance product changes in the eyes of viewers, who have different
understandings depending on their historical backgrounds, contemporary trends,
and the immediate environment of the performance. Change, as a result, is a significant part of tradition, but it
is a constant in dance. [Daniel 1995:
138]
By dancing, the participant
both forms a message and transmits it to their surroundings. The meaning of the dance varies depending on
the dancer and the setting, rather than having an inherent, static meaning: "the
physical act of dancing creates a kind of cultural meaning" (Cohen-Bull:
269). Simply participating in dancing
changes the practice, because each time a dance is done, “participants and spectators produce cultural
memory” (Delgado and Muñoz 1997: 17).
The dance is never exactly replicated, and negotiation of meaning
therefore is inherent in dance.
In addition, one person may have learned several acceptable ways
of moving, and may exhibit “body bilingualism” in switching between modes of
movement (Desmond 1997: 47). Therefore,
one person could dance in one way to perform being upper-class (or female, or
traditional), but also be able to dance in a way that performed lower-class or
male or modern). For example, growing
up in my neighborhood, I learned to walk and dance “black” in order not to be
called a “honky,” despite the fact that I am white. I learned not to walk “black” at school, where I was scolded for
not walking like a lady. The situation
would dictate which behavior was most appropriate to exhibit. In other words, different contexts would
demand different ways of moving. Thus,
cultural change is even more complex than looking at one way of moving for each
member of that culture (Desmond 1997: 43).
The
performance of dance is a heightened moment of self-reflexivity. The dancer is usually more aware of the body
and what it is doing than in everyday quotidian movement. The dancer experiences cultural messages on
a body level even if/when making a statement for or against the cultural values associated with the
dance and dance-event. (Cowan 1990: 24)
In many
societies, including Argentina, women have had fewer economic opportunities
than men. Stølen (1996) writes:
“Unequal access to the learning of skills and training is one of the mechanisms
by which the sexual division of labor becomes a powerful system of social
constraints” (Stølen 1996b: 187). In
tango, as in other sectors of the economy, men have had access to more
information and training, and thus to more power in the actual practice of the
dance. Stølen notes that “gender
divisions [of labor] are embedded in production itself” (Stølen 1996b:
188). She points out that economic
change, seen in changes in work, can affect the gender roles themselves within
a culture:
Social change
is often . . . associated with changes in the condition of work. If innovations build on existing gender
divisions, they may only cement differences that are already there, and not
represent a major challenge to the existing gender roles and perceptions. However, certain innovations may provoke
ruptures . . . Thus relationships may change, new forms of femininity and
masculinity may emerge and others disappear.
Cultural ideas about gender do not directly reflect the social and
economic positions of men and women . . . .
Nevertheless, there is a close relationship between what you do, or do
not do, and who you are, i.e., between work and gender identity. [Stølen 1996b: 227]
Therefore,
the act of teaching and learning dance, as well as the social practice of
tango, produce the gendered divisions in the roles of lead and follow. What is currently happening within tango is
the alteration of these classic divisions of work.
Role-switching
Men following women or women
leading men in the dance halls is a recent phenomenon that has been noticed by
several researchers. Trenner (1998)
notes that "more and more people, without regard to their gender, are
becoming competent leaders and followers at the same time" (Trenner 1998:
3). Trenner credits this to "the
women's and men's liberation movements . . . the influences of gay culture . .
. [and] the general mixing of culture throughout modern western [sic]
society" (Trenner 1998: 1). Taylor
(1998) also documents isolated incidents when women led and men followed, but
only in dance class. The women in the
class were asked/allowed to lead:
Now legitimized by the teachers, we could try this out in the center of
the dance floor, and the men would also have a chance to try. The laughter and astonished comments
suggested that everyone enjoyed this equally.
But once we stopped . . . the instructor asked the men for their
reactions and commented merely that now they would know their role better. . .
. This [having women lead and men
follow] had only served to enhance the men’s lead. [Taylor 1998: 87]
In
another class, the teacher reflected that “in the future” a woman might be able
to lead, but it would not be like a man leading because “it would have to be
from her experience as a woman: she could lead as a woman” (Taylor 1998:
86).
Tobin (1998) covers the phenomenon more carefully
than the other researchers: either he has paid more attention to, or has seen
more evidence of role-switching. He
notes that Argentine men practice together, but do not dance together at
milongas. Few women lead because of the
harsh reaction of the men, and almost no one switches roles so that the man
follows the woman unless it is in a playful manner:
Argentine men routinely teach each other how to dance in tango dance
classes, and they often practice and even show-off dancing together in tango
prácticas, but in the milongas of Buenos Aires and Montevideo men never dance
together. A few women, too, practice
with one another in tango prácticas, but they are often met with disproval. The common explanation is that a man must
learn the woman’s part in order to lead a woman, but that a woman does not have
to learn the man’s part to follow a man.
Many men even warn that once a woman has learned to lead, she is ruined
as a follower. Thus, if a woman in a
práctica dances the man’s role with another woman, she is unlikely to be asked
to dance by any of the men who are present.
The stigma of having danced the man’s part may even follow her from the
práctica to the milonga, where she is still less likely to be asked to dance,
and if she does dance, her dancing of the woman’s role is likely to be judged
harshly and to be held up as an example of the damage done by dancing the man’s
role. Conversely, a man who dances the
woman’s part at a práctica is not stigmatized in any way. Occasionally, at prácticas or very informal
milongas, or near the end of the evening, a couple will play at inverting their
roles—the woman leading and the man following—but this arrangement rarely lasts
for an entire song, and it is always accompanied by joking on the part of the
man who is dancing or on the part of other men who are witnessing the
spectacle. [Tobin 1998a: 93]
My
research agrees with Tobin’s data and expands on the reasons why changes in
leading are hotly contested.
Tango presents a strong case for serving as a
porteño identity symbol and as an international symbol for Argentine
identity. Fetterman defines symbols as
“condensed expressions of meaning that evoke powerful feelings and thoughts” (Fetterman: 26). A dance is the physical equivalent of a sound bite: a lot of
information is transmitted swiftly and economically. Hanna notes that “[c]ommunication occurs through symbols; a
symbol is a vehicle for conceptualization: it helps to order behavior and is a
transformation or system of transformations” (Hanna 1979: 39). As a symbol of porteño identity, tango
serves as a reification of gender roles.
Changes in tango are actively resisted; tango
mirrors the ideal “old ways” even if they no longer exist in people’s daily
lives. At the same time, as a symbol,
tango must reflect changes in society
for it to remain relevant. Therefore,
the changes in tango reveal the ambivalence of the community about changing gender
roles, the economic realities of the tourist trade, and adhering to the popular
image of the “old.”
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