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Tango Styles
- Teo Bartek

     Not all tango dancers are the same. They come in several different varieties. “tango” means different things to different people.

     Milonguero-Style Close Embrace Tango

     This is the style danced by many social dancers in Buenos Aires. It is danced primarily for your partner, the music, for the joy of the dance, with little concern for those who are watching. This is also referred to as the apilado-style or club-style tango. This style of tango is characterized the man and woman leaning into each other to establish close upper body contact. Basic tango steps, ochos, molinetes, simple boleos, simple paradas, calicitas, giros and advanced syncopated walks are done in a myriad of patterns without breaking the heart connection. The connection is primary and the movements are secondary. Dancers do not break apart in order to do more complicated steps. 

     This is tango that comes from the heart. It is subjective, man and women, very personal. Once the basic skills are mastered this is easy to do. After one becomes more advanced you can relax and go deeper into the feeling of the music your partner, the room, and drift into a “tango trance” which is very enjoyable. It is like going to another state of consciousness where time stands still and you are immersed in the now moment. What a high! I have had great success and enjoyment dancing this form of tango in Buenos Aires, New York, San Francisco, Montreal and Paris where space is limited and dances floors are very crowded. It is easy to dance with women of any size shape age or skill level and have a wonderful dance. Because the women love the connection and don’t have to worry about the steps. They just want to be successful with you. They don’t want to have to worry about making a mistake and looking bad or giving the man a bad experience.

     Salon Tango

     This is another style of social tango danced in clubs in Buenos Aires. The couples do not embrace as closely as in milonguero-style tango and break away frequently to make room for complicated figures. This style includes all the basic steps that are done in milonguero style, plus more complicated giros, boleos, erosques and sacadas. The emphasis is elegance, smoothness and precision. Both partners must have good balance and technique to do these figures with elegance and grace. The connection, established through a strong upper body frame instead close body contact, is more difficult to maintain and leading and following requires more skill. 

     These steps can easily go astray and not look elegant or smooth if the dancers have not trained to attain a certain skill level. Dancers advanced enough to do this form of tango sometimes can maintain a heart connection with their partner. But, generally, this style of tango tends to be more objective and intellectual. For, even intermediate dancers have a difficult time keeping focused on both the complicated steps and figures and the heart connection with their partner at the same time. This is especially difficult in a crowded milonga where people are coming at you from all directions. Usually one or the other must be sacrificed to do this style of dancing. Usually the mind takes over and this style of tango is done from the head instead of the heart. 

     But it is a lot of fun to do this style of tango at certain times to certain music in less crowded dance floors, where the venue allows it. I love to do salon tango or even performance tango to Pugliese late at night when the floor is less crowded. It is usually acceptable in some milongas in the US where the floors are less crowded, like Miami, or Chicago. But I wouldn’t do it at La Belle Epoch or La Nacional in New York. And in Buenos Aires I started to do this and nobody else was dancing this way and it just didn’t feel right. So I went back to milonguero-style tango, because that was what the Argentine people were doing. And my partner was much more comfortable dancing close to me, with a heart connection

     Tango Liso

     Tango liso is an early form of salon tango. In Spanish it means tango smooth. In the early days of salon tango only the most basic simple steps were performed in a ultra smooth way. There were no giros, sacadas, enrosques, or boleos in the early form of salon tango. This style of salon tango is not as complicated and easier to do. You can maintain a heart connection with your partner while dong this simple elegant form of tango in a crowded dance floor..

     Performance Tango

     This a creative art form of tango that is seen most frequently on the stage, and sometimes on the dance floors in milongas. It is exciting to watch and to do. It requires a lot of skill and a lot of room. It is not welcome on a crowded dance floor. It sometimes people will show off using these performance steps to music that is inappropriate for and in no way relates to the steps. In performance tango not holds barred. You can do just about anything as long as you do it gracefully and beautifully with the right music and in the right venue. This involves, basic tango plus ballet, ballroom, gymnastic and acrobatic moves, kicks, lifts, spins, ganchos, secadas, boleos and whatever else the chorographer dreams up. Although this is sometimes done with heart connection steps definitely take precedence over the connection. Attention to the way one looks distracts from the relationship between the two partners. This requires that the participants have natural talent, dance training in the past or undertake a regimen of dance training now. It is not practiced by ordinary social dancers. 

     New Tango

     New Tango is a hybrid style of that incorporates elements from performance tango into salon tango. The main teachers of this form of tango are tango stage performers such as Fabian Salas, Gustavo Naviera, and Pablo Veron. New tango became popular when many stage dancers taught tango workshops after touring the US and the world in the hit Broadway show, Forever Tango. Interest was heightened when Sally patter’s movie The Tango Lesson came out in 1998. The standard postures and conventions of tango were opened up to allow for more artistic expression. I has many elements of performance tango and has its some limitations, as described above. It is a form a tango practiced by natural dancers, professional dancers, or social dancers with a high level of skill. You can’t go up to any dancer at a milonga and expect to do this form of tango. You have to be very careful in your selection of partners to do this dance.

Click here for  are some insightful commentary about Tango Nuevo from Ogor Polk, a San Francisco-based tango aficionado.


     A Milonguero

     A milonguero or miloguera is a man or woman who is a tango fanatic who se life revolves around tango. This is someone who has mastered the tango and has immersed him or herself deeply into the philosophy of tango and embodies the essence of tango. It usually refers to those people who feel the tango and experience a deep heart connection when they dance. They usually dance in the milongeuro close embrace style of tango.

     A Tanguero

     This is a person who is passionately interested in tango, its poetry, its history, its music, lyrics, etc. A milonguero can also be a tanguero. But someone can be a tanguero without even dancing tango. And someone can dance tango and be neither a tanguero nor a milonguero. 


     Stage Dancers

Stage dancers are very good dancers who also dance tango in performances. And some of them are neither milogueros nor tangueros. Some stage dancers are milongueros, such as Carlos Gavito and Miguel Angel Zotto. But most are not. Some of them don’t identify themselves with tango; they identify themselves as performers or dancers. They know about every form of dance, ballet, modern, jazz, tap, rock and roll. They don’t go to milongas. They are not fanatics about tango dancing as a way of life. They don’t study tango history, music, lyrics or poetry. Be careful about learning to dance social tango from a performer. For they will only teach you what they know—performance tango.