The performance. If you wander along to YouTube and search for tango videos what will be returned to you will be a selection of recordings of tango performances and perhaps a class or two. If you dig very deep you might find a shaky clip of a full floor of social dancing. There is a good reason for this, social dancing doesn’t lend itself well to filming and the performance has become the prime marketing tool of the tango couple. The issue is social dancing and performing are two different beasts.
Now we can think ourselves milongueros and shoot the breeze endlessly on how it is they are or aren’t but my typing isn’t that quick and I don’t have that much time. Either way performance pieces1 are what are placed in the window to attract in new customers or excite the newly initiated. Given that today’s marketing images are manipulated so far that they bear little resemblance to the original product I shouldn’t be too surprised. But a.) social dancing is nice, b.) it’s what you are actually going to teach them (usually) and c.) it might help people to learn what tango is better if you didn’t confuse them with all this spangly high kicking nonsense.
1Not show tango, performance piece. The almost de rigueur interruption in the middle of the milonga where the teaching couple display their ability to navigate an empty floor.
A Gordian knot, isn’t it Limerick?
Careful, my swordsman’s reflexes tend towards the Alexander Technique.