Dancing Tango: Passionate Encounters in a Globalizing World
... Mientras que el tango ejemplifica las diferencias jerárquicas entre hombre y mujer (SAVIGLIANO, 1995;CAROZZI, 2009;DAVIS, 2015a;KANAI, 2015;MONTES, 2017;PELLAROLO, 2017), el CI ha sido considerado como un paradigma de la igualdad de género (FULKERSON, 1996;FOSTER, 2001;DEL PONTE;SARAIVA, 2013;CURTIS, 2015;BRICKHILL, 2016;SINGER, 2020). Sin embargo, los dos extremos parecen atenuarse a tenor de las críticas, las contestaciones y algunas formas heterodoxas que se plantean actualmente en las dos danzas. ...
... La idea del machismo como ideología imperante en el tango ha sido abordada desde múltiples perspectivas (SAVIGLIANI, 1995(SAVIGLIANI, , 2010VILADRICH, 2006;CAROZZI, 2009CAROZZI, y 2019ARAMO 2013ARAMO , 2017DAVIS, 2015a;MONTES, 2017;PELLAROLO, 2017) pero sigue siendo contestada en la literatura y entre no pocos bailarines y bailarinas de tango. Para Varela (2016) es en las letras del tango donde se puso ISSN: 1982-8918 Llevar o ser llevada. ...
... Ciertamente, a lo largo de la historia del tango, los modelos de masculinidad son diversos, pero en todo caso la dominación y el protagonismo masculino apenas han cedido. Sin embargo, estudios recientes caracterizan el tango como una danza icónica del amor heterosexual elegida para intentar una transgresión más allá de los paradigmas culturales de género (MANNING, 2007;SAVIGLIANO, 2010;DAVIS, 2015a;RUFO, 2020); pero,¿ por qué es precisamente el tango una danza que baila gente con sensibilidad queer? Es como si las diferencias de género fueran componentes de atracción para quien busca deshacer dichas diferencias. ...
En este ensayo se estudian comparativamente las dinámicas de comunicación corporal del tango argentino y del contact improvisation desde una perspectiva de género. Siendo formas de danza improvisada configuradas mediante claves estéticas y culturales muy diferentes, ambas se enfrentan a los interrogantes que se están planteando desde los movimientos feministas y las teorías queer. Mientras que el tango se enfrenta a la contestación academicista a propósito de las jerarquías entre varón y mujer que lo definen, el contact improvisation, considerado como un paradigma de igualdad debido a la ausencia de roles, no ha conseguido disolver los sutiles mecanismos de dominación que operan a través del contacto. Se pone de relieve cómo los espacios de práctica –milongas y jams, respectivamente– operan como laboratorios de observación de las técnicas y de los protocolos sociales y, asimismo, reflejan cómo los códigos culturales locales se superponen, de forma compleja, sobre las normas coreográficas.
... In contrast to mainstream dances, which are based on the assumptions that everyone is heterosexual, gender is a binary, and "masculine and feminine occupy oppositional positions" (Butler, 1990, p. 52), queer dance applies the fluidity of gender identities and sexualities that queer theory proposes. In doing so, queer dance aims to liberate people from heteronormative rules and codes that constrain how people communicate and interact with each other (Davis, 2015). Moreover, queer dance also aims to create safe and nonjudgmental spaces welcoming all people regardless of genders and sexualities and contributes to restoring their agency (Batchelor, 2018;Blume, 2003;Havmoeller, Batchelor, & Aramo, 2015). ...
... After choosing, the students dressed in the typical gendered clothing, such as dresses, skirts, bow tie, and hats in order to facilitate their immersion in the normative gendered performances. Once the students were prepared, the leaders stayed at one end of the room and the followers at the other as in mainstream "tango salons" (Davis, 2015). With a gaze and a nod, the leaders chose their followers and walked toward them to embrace. ...
... Thus, the queer tango session was an "out-of-place activity" that limited men's abilities to perform masculinities in normative and desired ways. As tango organizes relationships between men and women (Savigliano, 2010), male students were involved in new negotiation processes of the hierarchical meanings of masculinities and femininities in contact and relation with other male and female students but also in contact with the instructor and the activity (Azzarito & Solmon, 2009;Davis, 2015;Wright, 1995). Many of them showed qualities related to dominant masculinities as a way of inhabiting the space and reproducing the regulative notions of heteronormativity. ...
Purpose : The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, and queer/questioning students normally occupy a marginalized and at-risk position in classes and especially in physical education. In this paper, the authors explore the ways in which queer tango can contribute to counteracting heteronormativity and opening up students to new interactions and identifications through the performance of different gender performances in Physical Education and Sport Tertiary Education. Method : A queer tango session was carried out with 111 university students (91 men and 19 women aged 19–22 years). Data were obtained from interviews, video records, and open questionnaires about the practice. Results: The findings reveal that the performance of dance roles that are contrary to the heteronormative order reinforced both heteronormativity and queer embodiments in Physical Education and Sport Tertiary Education. Conclusion : An isolated activity is not enough, and more queer pedagogical practices should be introduced in order to make meaningful changes to mainstream students’ ideology and behaviors.
... Több kiváló antropológiai munka etnográfiai leírása számol be finom részletességgel arról, hogy milyen mélységben hatja át és változtatja meg a világ különböző városaiban élő, a tangóval még ismerkedő vagy azt már régóta művelő egyének életét és önazonosságát a tangó tanulása: a tangó sétatechnikájának, a lépéskombinációknak, az improvizáció belső logikájának és esztétikájának elsajátítása (lásd pl. Davis, 2015), hogy csupán néhány példát említsünk. ...
... A legtöbb személyes tánctapasztalatból kiinduló vizsgálódás tárgyalja azt is, hogy e tevékenység miként alakítja át a tangózók személyes identitását (pl. Davis, 2015). Születtek írások a tangóról, amelyek egyes aspektusait kulturális viselkedési kódként igyekeztek megközelíteni (Kovács, 2016). ...
... Az amerikai feminista szociológusnő, Kathy Davis hosszú okfejtésen keresztül kísérli megérteni a tangóban rejlő ún. gender-paradoxont, azt, hogy egy feminista szociológus hogy rajonghat szenvedélyesen olyasvalamiért, amit alapjaiban jellemez a nemek közötti egyenlőtlenség (Davis, 2015;Kovács, 2015). Ugyancsak széles körben kutatták a tangót a migráció, a globalizáció és a turizmus vonatkozásában is (Viladrich, 2013;Törnquist, 2013;Stepputat, 2017). ...
The ‘Tango of Argentina and Uruguay’ was inscribed in the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the UNESCO in 2009 to be safeguarded as one of humanity’s outstanding cultural achievements. Controversies and shortcomings related with the inscription have been pointed out by several scholars working on tango as a social phenomenon. Criticism about the nomination document and the decision about the inscription targeted two principal focus areas and were expressed from two different standpoints both of which miss the inclusion of living grassroots tango communities and what they stand for from the heritage definition of tango. This paper intends to connect academic and community reactions given to its heritagization with personal observations of recent trends in the international, and especially in the European world of tango; particularly with the increasing presence of two-three-day international tango dance occasions commonly referred to as tango marathons or encuentro milongueros. In the complex, multi-layered and multi-vocal global tango world these events have been associated with essential, authentic milonga experiences, a sense of prolonged intimacy and community through shared dances and shared dance space.
... Dance unlocks dancers' affective, cognitive, and emotive experiences (Cancienne and Snowber, 2003) enabling embodied forms of introspection about their context. Embodied autoethnographic accounts have used dance as a metaphor to discuss the body as a medium for both reinforcing and transcending order (Mandalaki, 2019;Slutskaya and De Cock, 2008), while insights from salsa (Lucker, 2008) and tango (Davis, 2015) have helped explain the deeply affective, performative, and embodied nature of academic research and autoethnography in particular (Ronai, 1998;Spry, 2001). Indeed, dancing experiences share a performative nature with organizational experiences, which help understand organizational and researcher-field interactions in a novel way (Cornelissen, 2004). ...
... Because while on the dance-floor, one offers one's sensual self to the other's abrazo to experience intersubjective and relational encounters based on intercorporeal openness, care, and mutual trust that only an eroticized gaze freed from sexual stereotypes can encourage (Bell and Sinclair, 2014;Cover, 2003). The sensuality in tango (Davis, 2015) does not sexually commodify our bodies, liberating us from feelings of shame and obscenity. This brings forward the potential of inter-corporeal nakedness as the purest expression of "being-inthe-world" to enable humanly possible, affectively erotic connections with one another. ...
... As Davis (2015) argues, tango is so inherently bound with the passion making life meaningful, that feminists should not be an exception to that. Very hard to describe, yet fascinating to study. ...
Dance with us, on the dance-floor and with words, as we reenact our individual and shared tango autoethnographic experiences to develop an understanding of field inter-corporeality as a phenomenological experience of nakedness empowered by the transformational potential of eros. We write as we dance to discuss how eroticizing through the other’s presence our embodied nakedness, beyond sexual stereotypes, pushes us to meta-reflect on ourselves as organizational ethnographers and writers to reinvent our field and writing interactions as inter-corporeally relational and intersubjective. We problematize the sexual gaze that traditionally associates nakedness with shame and objectified vulnerability to stress the capacity of eroticizing our academic nakedness to enable free, embodied knowledge stripped of the traits of the dominant masculine academic order. In so doing, we join burgeoning autoethnographic and broader debates in the field of organization studies calling for the need to further unveil the embodied, erotic, and feminine aspects of organizational research and writing. Shall we dance?
... Dance unlocks dancers' affective, cognitive, and emotive experiences (Cancienne and Snowber, 2003) enabling embodied forms of introspection about their context. Embodied autoethnographic accounts have used dance as a metaphor to discuss the body as a medium for both reinforcing and transcending order (Mandalaki, 2019;Slutskaya and De Cock, 2008), while insights from salsa (Lucker, 2008) and tango (Davis, 2015) have helped explain the deeply affective, performative, and embodied nature of academic research and autoethnography in particular (Ronai, 1998;Spry, 2001). Indeed, dancing experiences share a performative nature with organizational experiences, which help understand organizational and researcher-field interactions in a novel way (Cornelissen, 2004). ...
... Because while on the dance-floor, one offers one's sensual self to the other's abrazo to experience intersubjective and relational encounters based on intercorporeal openness, care, and mutual trust that only an eroticized gaze freed from sexual stereotypes can encourage (Bell and Sinclair, 2014;Cover, 2003). The sensuality in tango (Davis, 2015) does not sexually commodify our bodies, liberating us from feelings of shame and obscenity. This brings forward the potential of inter-corporeal nakedness as the purest expression of "being-inthe-world" to enable humanly possible, affectively erotic connections with one another. ...
... As Davis (2015) argues, tango is so inherently bound with the passion making life meaningful, that feminists should not be an exception to that. Very hard to describe, yet fascinating to study. ...
Download full text here (open access): https://doi.org/10.1177/2F1350508420956321
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Dance with us, on the dancefloor and with words, as we reenact our individual and shared tango autoethnographic experiences to develop an understanding of field inter-corporeality as a phenomenological experience of nakedness empowered by the transformational potential of eros. We write as we dance to discuss how eroticizing through the other’s presence our embodied nakedness, beyond sexual stereotypes, pushes us to meta-reflect on ourselves as organisational ethnographers and writers to reinvent our field and writing interactions as inter-corporeally relational and intersubjective. We problematize the sexual gaze that traditionally associates nakedness with shame and objectified vulnerability to stress the capacity of eroticizing our academic nakedness to enable free, embodied knowledge stripped of the traits of the dominant masculine academic order. In so doing, we join burgeoning autoethnographic and broader debates in the field of organization studies calling for the need to further unveil the embodied, erotic, and feminine aspects of organizational research and writing. Shall we dance?
... In the fields of music and literature, see Bendrups's (2002) PhD thesis which explores the politico-cultural use of tango by Argentine elites and includes an opera libretto called 'Sindromtango' with the vocal scores for a grotesque piece written by the author. 3 See Taylor (1987Taylor ( , 1998; Azzi (1991); Goertzen and Azzi (1999); Cara (2009); Pelinski (2009); Merrit (2012); Petridou (2014Petridou ( , 2009. 4 See Villa (2006Villa ( , 2011; Olszewski (2008); Davis (2015aDavis ( , 2015b; Havmoeller, Batchelot and Aramo (2015); Aramo (2015Aramo ( , 2018; Batchelor (2018). 5 See Savigliano (1995Savigliano ( , 2010; Pegorer (2008); Polo (2018). ...
... Such research addresses tango dancing using gender and sexuality as key markers of identity. Feminist tango scholars such as Paula-Irene Villa (2006Villa ( , 2011 and Kathy Davis (2015aDavis ( , 2015b problematize the relation between dancing tango and being feminist and explore the construction of gender through dance in the cultural practice of the milonga. Along these lines, Polo (2018) analyzes gender conflicts in the experiential field of leading and following in the dance, calling for the possibility of another tango or of other tangos flowing under the surface of the milonga as a well-rehearsed system of social relations. ...
... In her work on the globalization of tango, Davis (2015a) asks the important question of whether a feminist should dance tango given the entwinement of passion, gender and patriarchal power relations in the historical, cultural and social manifestations of this practice. Davis (2015a) argues that the realities of tango on the ground are different from the way in which the cultural practice is marketed to the general audience in Argentina and around the world, especially through a performative model tailored for tourists and for exporting stage shows. ...
This study places Argentine tango dancing within the field of contemporary dance improvisation. It proposes a critical somatic framework to extend the practice and understanding of tango as a form of kinesthetic listening. New insights are offered on the feeling of touch and how this is transmitted between the dancers.
... Maestros tanga, historici a výzkumníci tanga, stejně jako množství lidí, kteří se tomuto tanci věnují ve volném čase, hovoří o jeho nostalgickém aspektu (Davis 2015). O argentinském tangu lze skutečně mluvit jako o nostalgické praxi, neboť technika tohoto tance (schopnost pohybovat se "promyšleně") a kulturní mýty s ním spojené ("tanec emigrantů"), spolu se specificitou hudby a prostředí milong, vytvářejí určité charakteristické rysy. ...
... První funkce. Procesy a mechanismy zapojení lidí do tanga tradičně zajímají pozorovatele tohoto tance (Davis 2015), proto je logické oddělit je jako samostatné celky pro pozorování v terénu. Fosterovou navrhované podkategorie (vyzvání k tanci, prostor tance a tanec jako spojení) pomáhají zaměřit pozornost na konkrétní detaily. ...
This article deals with the study of the Prague tango as a nostalgic practice. It presents the fragments and the findings from the ethnography that the author has been carrying out at the tango parties in Prague since autumn 2019. Emphasis is put on the forms of nostalgia, but not on its objects. The ethnography is based on the theory of body techniques by Marcel Mauss and the conception of dance resources by Susan Lee Foster. Kinaesthetic empathy – a methodology of movement observation – helps describe the narratives that the dancing couples create. as Also, Bakhtin’s concept of chronotopes is used to interpret the collected data. The article covers the Prague tango scene from 2018 to the present. One tango party and narratives of two dancing couples are described in detail. At this time, we can describe five forms (or techniques) of nostalgia in the Prague tango community. These include the ironic use of the vintage attributes of tango, creating and distributing romanticized stories related to tango, unconventional behaviour that helps local tango dancers escape from the normalized reality of the contemporary city, the specific way of listening to old music, and the polyphony of the dancing narratives. The study to which this paper is devoted to should become an example of how modern urban citizens can create new ways of gathering and feel an emotionally meaningful experience.
... Embodied knowledge refers to the knowledge and understandings of the world generated through the body and bodily practices in specific social (sports) encounters (Fassin 2011;Lock 1993;Pink 2011); yet, I also see hate speech and discourses as part of the experiences and embodied knowledge production in sports. Scholars of sports and the body have argued in favor of an approach to embodied knowledge, therein critiquing implicit assumptions of mind/body dualisms in sports research (Davis 2015;Roberts 2013;Wacquant 2015). They assert that knowledge is not only produced through linguistic or discursive modes, but it is also embedded in embodied practices and produced through bodily modes of knowledge and lived experience (Davis 2015;Pink 2011, 345;Shankar 2013, 233;Wacquant 2015). ...
... Scholars of sports and the body have argued in favor of an approach to embodied knowledge, therein critiquing implicit assumptions of mind/body dualisms in sports research (Davis 2015;Roberts 2013;Wacquant 2015). They assert that knowledge is not only produced through linguistic or discursive modes, but it is also embedded in embodied practices and produced through bodily modes of knowledge and lived experience (Davis 2015;Pink 2011, 345;Shankar 2013, 233;Wacquant 2015). Dance researcher Rosemarie Roberts (2013, 5) emphasizes that the body is not only a site of lived experience, but also of knowledge production; and in particular Black and Brown performing bodies are generating "social critique, commentary, and resistive stories." ...
This article discusses the role of race as it intersects with religion, gender, and class in Dutch public spaces through an ethnography of Moroccan‐Dutch Muslim girls playing soccer. Racialized Muslim girls are “othered” and portrayed as unemancipated and inactive in Dutch society, not in the least by politicians such as Geert Wilders. Yet, racialized girls resist their “othering” by appropriating public sports spaces for their own girls’ soccer competition. I show how soccer players deal with racist comments in sports and how they respond to right‐wing nationalism and racist populism by playing soccer. I argue that the girls’ embodied knowledge of such experiences is crucial for scholarly understandings of race, racialization, public space, and sports. This article demonstrates how race works in Dutch public sports spaces, and how gender, religion, and class are produced through racialization in sports.
... As an academic I have come to know power in relation to oppression, gender, race and limitation (i.e., Butler 1999Butler , 2004Foucault 1995;Freire et al. 2018), perspectives that have notably carried much traction in partnered dance research (i.e. Bosse 2015;Davis 2015;Ericksen 2011;Harman 2019;McMains 2018;Skinner 2008). And as a salsa dancer with a sustained, dare I say addictive, interest in the cultivation of flow (Lloyd 2015a(Lloyd , 2015b, I feel compelled to disclose that have never given the felt sense of power much thought. ...
... Looking back, I approached my role of following in a way that I would now consider to be somewhat submissive, similar to the imbalance described in Ericksen's (2011) ethnography -the man leads, the woman follows. I was not aware of my power, my motile agency (Sheets-Johnstone 2017) and in what ways I could contribute to the partnership (Davis 2015;Harman 2019;McMains 2018). My understanding was that if I were to be able to experience a consciousness where I could move in response to partner-initiated cues with complete openness, I would experience the pleasure of flow, a joyful feeling of being completely immersed and connected to one's experience as it is happening (Csikszentmihalyi 2000(Csikszentmihalyi , 2008(Csikszentmihalyi , 2014. ...
What might it be like to sense one’s motile power as a follower in salsa dance, particularly in moments when flow manifests? Does a follower simply go along with the lead’s flow or does a different kind of flow emerge? Such questions guided this motion-sensing phenomenological (MSP) inquiry into the felt sense of power experienced in the movements of interactive flow that features two-time world salsa champion, coach, and international judge, Anya Katsevman. Over the course of four years, interviews, observations and coaching sessions were analysed through theories purported by dance phenomenologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Daniel Stern, a psychologist who inspired much of Sheets-Johnstone’s writing on the primacy of movement, and the radical phenomenology of Michel Henry who provides a philosophy upon which one may frame the phenomenological ‘search’ for meaning in kinaesthetic terms. The conceptual structure that guided the motion-sensing gathering of data and analysis was the interdisciplinary Function2Flow (F2F) model with its constitutive dimensions of movement Function, Form, Feeling and Flow. As such, the MSP analysis organized in accordance to the F2F model afforded the emergence of micro nuances, detailed physical sensations of this practice, within this macro themed structure. Hence, in detailing the bodily functions and forms of the nuanced gestural communication in salsa dance, with particular attention on the motile sense of power experienced by a follower, a physical pathway to better understanding existential feelings of interactive flow emerged.
... Recent books offer multiple lenses through which to explore tango music and dancing in dialogue with theories on global cultural production, worldwide tourism and migration trends (Dávila 2012;Fitch 2015;Karush 2017;Luker 2016;Miller 2014;Törnqvist 2013;Viladrich 2013). More intimate, in-depth ethnographies (Davis 2015;Merritt 2012) have delved into the contemporary tango dancing scene in Buenos Aires, spotlighting the role of passion as both pleasurable addiction and emotional currency, a topic examined early on by Savigliano (1995). A growing literature on queer tango has challenged the genre's traditional heteronormativity (Carozzi 2013;Liska 2016) while critically addressing the current commodification of queer culture (Kanai 2015;Savigliano 2010). ...
... They mention the influence of Broadway styles and a preference for acrobatic and hybridized moves, which, they claim, taint the practice of Argentine tango. As in other settings like Amsterdam (Davis 2015) Argentine tango in NYC is one of many dishes in a vast menu of genres aimed at satisfying New Yorkers' voracious musical appetites. ...
... Based on this distinction, social dance performed in ballrooms, nightclubs, discotheques, cabarets, and dance halls continues to be a popular, participatory dance form with further visibility provided by the televised dance reality shows (e.g. Davis, 2015;Harman, 2019;Malnig, 2009). Ballroom dance culture including DanceSport is instead commonly structured around competition including professional as well as leisure and amateur participation. ...
... Aligned with Harman's call for women's embodied agency, Davis (2015) interrogated how devoted Argentine tango dancers negotiate the meanings of heterosexual partnering. Against some previous feminist readings of tango as conflated with gendered hierarchies of power and globally structured inequalities (e.g. ...
This special issue on Dance, Movement and Leisure Cultures showcases theoretically informed articles illuminating different ways of knowing about the passions, actions, and practices within the economic, political, social, and cultural contexts of leisure-based dance. This introduction contextualises the content of the special issue within the previous dance research. Nuanced and detailed, these studies have examined diverse dance styles from ballroom to street dance, but share several main themes: the commercialisation of dance into popular culture; the increasing emphasis on competition in dance; gender roles in dance; community dance; and dance that has been recreated as an exercise form. To set the stage for the special issue, this introduction provides a closer reading of each of these themes.
... Recent books offer multiple lenses through which to explore tango music and dancing in dialogue with theories on global cultural production, worldwide tourism and migration trends (Dávila 2012;Fitch 2015;Karush 2017;Luker 2016;Miller 2014;Törnqvist 2013;Viladrich 2013). More intimate, in-depth ethnographies (Davis 2015;Merritt 2012) have delved into the contemporary tango dancing scene in Buenos Aires, spotlighting the role of passion as both pleasurable addiction and emotional currency, a topic examined early on by Savigliano (1995). A growing literature on queer tango has challenged the genre's traditional heteronormativity (Carozzi 2013;Liska 2016) while critically addressing the current commodification of queer culture (Kanai 2015;Savigliano 2010). ...
... They mention the influence of Broadway styles and a preference for acrobatic and hybridized moves, which, they claim, taint the practice of Argentine tango. As in other settings like Amsterdam (Davis 2015) Argentine tango in NYC is one of many dishes in a vast menu of genres aimed at satisfying New Yorkers' voracious musical appetites. ...
The renewed popularity of the Argentine tango has been spearheaded by Argentines’ reterritorialization efforts through which they claim their symbolic ownership of the genre. Two related phenomena are addressed here. First, the article examines the blossoming of the tango industry in Buenos Aires (Argentina’s capital), which is supported by both a foreign and local tango audience. Second, it explores the migratory careers of Argentine tango dancers and musicians who, particularly in New York City, have joined efforts to rebrand the tango as their authentic national product. In order to be successful in the worldwide tango field, Argentine artists must also accrue tango capital, defined as the combined effect of technical skills, social contacts and public recognition. Finally, this article reflects on the ongoing endeavours of Argentine émigrés to keep abreast of tango developments in Buenos Aires, as a key dimension for guaranteeing their success overseas.
... A konečně tangueros a tangueras se zajímají o to, jak tančili staří milongueras a milongueros, o texty písní a nuance provedení tanga, které charakterizují ty či ony orchestry z doby před sto lety, což jim v tanci umožňuje přesněji interpretovat nahrávky starých skladeb. Podobný zájem o detaily historie a kultury tanga může souviset s touhou zasadit se do prostorových a časových souřadnic alternativních k "pozdní modernitě" (Davis 2015). ...
This article examines the history and culture of Argentinian tango as a translocal social dance and emphasizes its revivalist component along with other characteristic features: nostalgia, listening, and experimentation. It represents the partial and the preliminary result of the author’s anthropological research that they are currently conducting as part of the doctoral programme at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague. The author concludes that both nostalgic beliefs and the desire to create something new contribute to the process of tango revival.
... What can be seen more often is considerably less dramatic and more intimate and, indeed, looks very much like what Cara (2009) calls home tango -that is, tango danced "from the heart". (Davis 2015) Davis's judgement is based on what can be seen. Melissa Fitch, in her chapter "Touch, Healing and Zen" (Fitch 2015), considers the many therapeutic uses for tango beyond the conventional dancefloor which have been developed to support, among others, the visually impaired, those with Parkinson's disease or those with terminal illnesses and in receipt of palliative care. ...
London Do queer tango dancers dance to effect political change? I don't think we do. In the moment, as we dance, like all tango dancers, we are probably in pursuit of the thrill, the transcendence which tango-all tango-has the potential to deliver, those ineffable sensations which we know of, acknowledge to one another, but struggle to describe to others. So, I want to ask how the fact of that personal pursuit of the transcendent sits alongside our oft-repeated assertion that, unlike mainstream tango dancers, we in queer tango pursue an overtly political agenda intended to change the wider world. It can be argued that queer tango is political to its very core. After all, didn't it emerge out of the late twentieth century feminist and "gay liberation" movements? Both fought for alternative sexual and gender identities and the right authentically to lead the lives they implied. Lesbians, straight women and gay men (the straight men were not then much in evidence) dancing tango together eventually coalesced into 21 st century "queer tango". Our political agendas developed. In the wider world, more nuanced gender or sex related ways of being were emerging-the varieties of trans identities, for example-not to mention those who sought to escape all the constraints of labels. Over time, dancers sympathetic to these concepts made their way onto queer tango dancefloors. Edgardo Fernández Sesma in Buenos Aires widened that political agenda still further, beyond groups primarily discriminated against for reasons of sexual identity or gender, towards the old, those living with disabilities and
... With music and dance at the core of Cuban popular culture, their transnational circulation and popularity abroad brought about processes of commodification that are simultaneously cultural and political and have played a key role in the development of the tourism sector. Anthropological studies have discussed artistic forms beyond their local anchors, and in the field of dance in particular it is possible to observe the creation of transnational "social spaces" around specific genres (Waxer, 2002;Pietrobruno, 2006;Davis, 2015). While in the Cuban context the dance business itself is by no means comparable to well-established private initiatives like casas particulares or paladares, 2 it does occupy a central position in processes related to the commoditisation of heritage and it illustrates the standardising regimes that situate dance between cultural heritage and leisure commodity (Pietrobruno, 2009). ...
... While levels of tolerance towards deviating the heteronormative etiquette vary among different conventional milongas, they still follow a heteronormative standard. Queers (used here as a term that recognizes the plurality of non-heteronormative identities and sexualities) therefore created their own tango communities to have safe spaces to dance in whatever combination (Cecconi 2009, Savigliano 2010, Davis 2015a, Liska 2018. The queer tango movement emerged in the early 2000s if not even earlier (though citing any given date invokes certain definitions and conceptions [Batchelor 2015, p. 24ff]); by now it is a global phenomenon, with popular events in the Americas, Europe and Israel attracting queers from all over the world. ...
The central idea of this article is that bodily practices like queer tango contribute positively to societal change by facilitating the development of a more plurally oriented society. The argument rests primarily on queer tango’s inherent potential as a dialogic body practice. Along with what the practice implies in terms of subverting gender traditions and expanding freedom within the community, the case is made that it has an impact as well on the body schema. The body schema, understood as the individual’s initial, initiating point of action, is of course shaped by society and the individual’s history, but it is also open to change with every new experience. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, Eve K. Sedgwick, Steffen Kitty Herrmann and Hans Joas, the article discusses queer tango as a practice that is multiple in orientation, intrinsically reparative, transgressive and significantly creative – a set of qualities that support change insofar as participants in the practice broaden their qualitative experiences and encounter others at once both bodily and dialogically.
... This acknowledgment of the competency spanning from beginners to experienced indicates that varying strategies may need to be used for varying levels of proficiency within the partners (or family in the case of racial socialization). Recently, the tango has seen a change in who "leads" the dance, reflecting a shift in gender norms (Davis, 2015). Although racial socialization competency is not squarely focused on gender roles, the social norm shift of the tango can easily help us to understand the importance of viewing parent-child roles as malleable, reciprocal, and responsive to feedback. ...
Racial socialization has been a mainstay within the psychological literature for the past four decades, touted primarily as a protective factor buffering the negative effects of racism. How effective this factor is in preventing behavioral and emotional trauma and promoting resilience for Black and Brown families remains to be studied. While the literature has focused on family communication between parent and child, little attention has been paid to familial dynamics inherent within racial socialization processes. This paper seeks to advance the conversation of racial socialization as The Talk toward one that holds more promise toward the goal of resilience in the face of systemic racism. To do so, we offer a reframe of The Dance, drawing upon key aspects from the family- and multisystem-focused literatures (e.g., synergy, homeostasis, feedback, metacommunication) to expand and justify the utility, complexity, and efficacy of racial socialization among Black and Brown families as a resilient response to historical and contemporary systemic racism in American society. We include methodological and applied recommendations to promote resilience, resistance, and ultimately healing in the face of racial adversity and trauma.
... Con la música y el baile en el corazón de la cultura popular cubana, sus movimientos transnacionales y su popularidad en el extranjero propiciaron procesos de mercantilización a la par culturales y políticos y tuvieron un papel clave en el desarrollo del sector turístico. Algunos estudios antropológicos han debatido las formas artísticas más allá de sus anclajes locales, y especialmente en el ámbito del baile pudieron observar la creación de "espacios sociales" transnacionales alrededor de géneros específicos (Waxer, 2002;Pietrobruno, 2006;Davis, 2015). Mientras que en el contexto cubano el negocio de la danza por sí mismo no puede compararse en absoluto con iniciativas privadas consolidadas como las casas particulares o los paladares 2 , sí ocupa una posición central en los procesos relacionados con la mercantilización del patrimonio e ilustra los regímenes estandarizadores que sitúan la danza entre parte del patrimonio cultural y un producto de entretenimiento (Pietrobruno, 2009). ...
La crisis económica a raíz de la pandemia de COVID está poniendo a prueba el socialismo cubano. El gobierno de La Habana ha puesto en la agenda una reforma de la economía, la estructura institucional y el sistema de protección social. Este volumen reúne contribuciones de destacados expertos internacionales, así como de la propia isla, que analizan los retos económicos, políticos y sociales a los que se enfrenta Cuba en la actualidad.
... Con la música y el baile en el corazón de la cultura popular cubana, sus movimientos transnacionales y su popularidad en el extranjero propiciaron procesos de mercantilización a la par culturales y políticos y tuvieron un papel clave en el desarrollo del sector turístico. Algunos estudios antropológicos han debatido las formas artísticas más allá de sus anclajes locales, y especialmente en el ámbito del baile pudieron observar la creación de "espacios sociales" transnacionales alrededor de géneros específicos (Waxer, 2002;Pietrobruno, 2006;Davis, 2015). Mientras que en el contexto cubano el negocio de la danza por sí mismo no puede compararse en absoluto con iniciativas privadas consolidadas como las casas particulares o los paladares 2 , sí ocupa una posición central en los procesos relacionados con la mercantilización del patrimonio e ilustra los regímenes estandarizadores que sitúan la danza entre parte del patrimonio cultural y un producto de entretenimiento (Pietrobruno, 2009). ...
La crisis económica a raíz de la pandemia de COVID está poniendo a prueba el socialismo cubano. El gobierno de La Habana ha puesto en la agenda una reforma de la economía, la estructura institucional y el sistema de protección social. Este volumen reúne contribuciones de destacados expertos internacionales, así como de la propia isla, que analizan los retos económicos, políticos y sociales a los que se enfrenta Cuba en la actualidad.
... Feminist philosophy and epistemology have reclaimed emotions as proper grounds for producing knowledge (Code, 1993;Jaggar, 1989). Feminist theorists have engaged thoroughly with emotions, contributing centrally to the affective turn in social science (Ahmed, 2010(Ahmed, , 2014Davis, 2015;Ngai, 2005;Pedwell and Whitehead, 2012), and emphasizing the role of emotion in the practice of theorization. Emotions such as rage (Ahmed, 2014) and passion (Braidotti, 1991) have been identified as stimulating and sustaining feminist theorization. ...
... That movement, touch, sexuality, and violence should be so closely conjoined should not surprise us. Dance scholars writing of other contexts have suggested that in patriarchal settings, the sensuality of male-female couples embraced in dance can simultaneously reinforce power differences and the threat of male violence and enact a stirring search for not only the possibilities of heterosexual love and affection, but also interpersonal unity, harmony, and even transcendence (Davis 2015;Taylor 1998). As the anthropologist and dancer Julie Taylor (1998) remarks with respect to the tango in Argentina, dance both highlights the differences between men and women and throws them into doubt, provoking insecurities and fear as well as stoking desire and affection. ...
This chapter describes the world of sex and the erotic. It discusses movement and interrelationality by means of observing ballroom dance lessons, which is a required part of coming of age for many Czech youth. Following a daughter and her mother through the first steps of becoming a cultured ballroom dancer, the chapter looks at how sexuality, male dominance, and female sexual objectification are both encouraged and circumscribed on the dance floor. It considers the universality of sexual imagery and the prevalence of male violence across a range of domestic and public sites. The chapter also questions what sexuality means in terms of women's agency and whether or not, as Jan Patocka suggested, there is indeed an inherent liberatory potential to deeply intimate, erotic relations. It analyzes whether sex is a possible path to self-transcendence.
... Ballroom dancing, however, has become an interesting topic of sociological, ethnomusicological, and anthropological interest in the last two decades. The popularisation of ballroom dance television shows has attracted the attention of social researchers and resulted in various publications dealing with such topics as the origins of ballroom techniques [Davis 2015;McMains 2009;Taylor 1998], the researcher's own transformation while practicing ballroom dancing [Bosse 2015;Ericksen 2011;Picard 2002Picard , 2006], issues of beauty and appearance as a key characteristic of this genre [Bosse 2015;Ericksen 2012;Marion 2008], and the corresponding stereotypical gender division [Aldrich 1991;Lepecki 2006;Picard 2006]. ...
In this article the author sheds light on how dancers act towards their bodies in the exceptionally competitive environment of competitive ballroom dancing. I also show how constantly performing on the boundary between two worlds, art and sport, and reconciling conflicting requirements influences perspectives on the body, how it is used, and how it physically changes. Drawing on specific examples from the field, the author argues that competition, the use of objects, appearance, emotions, and charisma during a ballroom performance are all socially created, actively reconstructed through social interaction, and shaped by institutional rules. The social context of those actions, which is formed by institutionalisation, high competition, and the aesthetics of the upper social classes, produces a specific approach to the body: treating it as an efficient tool to obtain social status. This tool requires both sharpening (strategies for constructing its effectiveness) and polishing (strategies concerned with aesthetics and transforming one's appearance). The conclusions of the research include the finding that ballroom dancing involves the direct embodiment of cultural norms and the subordination of the human body to the ideas of the bourgeois classes. The above insights are based on data collected during a six-year ethnographic study in the social subworld of competitive ballroom dancing.
... Today, tango is one of the most important tourist assets of Argentina and the symbol of Argentine tourist promotion. In 2009, together with its music, it was included on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (Davis, 2015). ...
Nowadays, dance plays an important role in the modern tourism industry. Today, the craze for dancing creates great opportunities for cultural tourism. However, it should be remembered that there is a great danger of losing the most important meaning of dance by commercializing and reducing its essence. Dance tourism as discussed in the article is understood as travel for the purpose of learning about dance and its culture in places where given dance styles were born, or where they play an important national role as well as enjoying great popularity among the local community. This article is an introduction to the issue of dance tourism in an anthropological context. It presents potential attractions related to dance in the perspectives of cultural and sports tourism, it has an illustrative and descriptive character while its method is a literature review and presentation of popular examples.
... Entertainment venues offered a "visceral cosmopolitanism" (Davis, 2015). In these social environments, drug users were exposed to a circumstance in which sexually passionate behavior, a wide range of club drugs (meth is the most popular one), and fast-paced music are freely mixed. ...
China is a major producer and distributor of methamphetamine (meth) worldwide. Within the last two decades, China has seen rapid growth in meth use, especially among young men. However, patterns of Chinese male users' initiation of meth is rarely explored. To address this void in the literature, this study adopts China's mian'zi culture to explore Chinese male meth users' initiation patterns qualitatively. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 male meth users from seven Chinese compulsory drug treatment institutions. Thematic analysis was applied to data analysis. Most participants reported their beginning to use meth as a strategy or approach to handling peer influence stemming from structured social networking. The motivation to have fun with friends, colleagues, or business fellows to maintain these people's mian'zi, together with the curiosity about meth and lack of understanding that meth is a potentially addictive drug, contribute to male users' meth initiation. Moreover, we found that most male meth users' initiation occurs in enclosed locations, such as nightclubs, karaoke rooms, hotels, and private residences because these locations were considered "safe." Additionally, some participants initiated meth use because they perceived it could be a way of harm reduction from heroin or alcoholism. However, such perception neglects the harmful outcomes of the concomitant use of meth with other drugs or alcohol. We suggested social support programs for young Chinese men who are located in high-risk social networking where meth use is accepted as a way of interaction. Up-to-date drug education on meth is also necessary for school students, and mass media could play its role in educating the public about potential risks of meth use.
... I propose that the twenty-first century acceptance of same-sex dancing in Buenos Aires is due to the confluence of four factors: 1) the rise of tango commerce, 2) the continuing influence of innovations enabled through tango nuevo, 3) changing laws and social norms around LGBTQ rights, and 4) synergy between women leading in queer and straight tango communities. Several other scholars have recently linked the first three factors to the birth of queer tango (Davis 2015;Fitch 2015;Liska 2017), but none has examined the growth of queer tango in relation to concurrent rise of same-sex tango in mainstream tango communities. I argue that it is ultimately the synergy between queer tango and the rebellion of the wallflower that holds the most potential to make a lasting intervention into tango's gendered inequalities. ...
This paper interrogates the history of same-sex dancing among women in Buenos Aires' tango scene, focusing on its increasing visibility since 2005. Two overlapping communities of women are invoked. Queer tangueras are queer-identified female tango dancers and their allies who dance tango in a way that attempts to de-link tango's two roles from gender. Rebellious wallflowers are women who practice, teach, perform, and dance with other women in predominantly straight environments. It is argued that the growing acceptance of same-sex dancing in Argentina is due to the confluence of four developments: 1) the rise of tango commerce, 2) innovations of tango nuevo, 3) changing laws and social norms around lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, and 4) synergy between queer tango dancers and heterosexual women who are frustrated by the limits of tango's gender matrix. The author advocates for increased alliances between rebellious wallflowers and queer tangueras, who are often segregated from each other in Buenos Aires' commercial tango industry.
... 6 Following Savigliano, Davis states that tango 'feeds the fantasies and desires of the white European or American coloniser for the exotic/erotic Latin "other"'. 7 Yet, by drawing on her personal experience of self-determination and liberation as a Latino woman who dances tango within and against patriarchal and post-colonial structures, Savigliano explores tango's potential as an 'exercise of decolonization' -because tango is always an encounter with the other, and therefore a relational encounter which cannot be totally pre-determined or exhausted. ...
This article offers an examination of the aesthetics and philosophy of Argentine tango, arguing for tango?s contradictory power of resistance to the tendency of cultural commodification in contemporary society. The dancing couple achieves a sense of sovereignty and improvisational freedom which is in tension with the increasing commodification and standardisation of art in the age of globalisation. Written partly from an auto-ethnographic, experience-based perspective, the article foreground tango?s choreography of otherness, relationality, passion and playful improvisation in an attempt to elaborate on tango?s significance as a dance of intimate resistance to political economy. What is produced in tango?s ?space of touch? remains unproductive, unexplainable, and non-commodifiable. It is argued that Argentine tango might be able to resist total codification due to its improvisational nature and the politics of touch, passion and transgression that emerge from the ephemerality of the encounter, the ineffable ?tango moment?. Tango here is considered as a subversion of the social framing which it nevertheless needs in order to function; it performs the possibility of a transgression, intimately yet publicly.
... Also, this article contributes to the expanding area of tango research. Although intimacy is a central dimension in many academic tango studies (see Davis, 2015a;Manning, 2007;Savligliano, 1995;Taylor, 1998;Törnqvist, 2010Törnqvist, , 2012Törnqvist, , 2013Törnqvist and Hardy, 2010), the dancing culture has not been explicitly framed and put in conversation with the broader sociological field of intimacy research. 1 This article enters into dialogue with both fields by tracing the affective life of a culture that is often described in terms of temper and passion, not primarily from the dancers' psychological states, but from the social structuring of the milieu. ...
Although intimacy is an area characterized by great variety and complexity, both popular and academic discourses have traditionally revolved around a restricted number of associations, of which the family, the romantic couple and friendship bonds have resided at the very centre. In this article the author argues that an analytical shift that addresses intimacy in terms of a relational quality – a specific mode of interaction and a particular experience of closeness – instead of a set of relationships, may assist in exploring a wider range of phenomena. This approach is used to study Argentine tango dancing. Ethnographic fieldwork locates the search to the dim-lit dancehalls of Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Stockholm, and accounts for experiences of transitory semi-anonymous attachments. The study concludes tango to be a multifold intimate arena that unveils how complex webs of feelings are entangled with the social organization of attachments.
... One of the most intriguing lines is to take the corporal and emotional experiences in processes constituting social life seriously (Plummer, 2001) also taking in feminist theory, which has pointed at this dimension already for some time (Davis, 2007). The study of the biographical significance of the body and especially passion (aspects which are not easy to grasp from the sociological point of view) is new ground for methodological and theoretical reflection (Davis, 2014b). The incorporation of visual sociology into biographical research (Bell, 2010;Breckner, 2013;Dussel and Gutiérrez, 2006) also provides new impulses. ...
Within sociology, biographical research has expanded during the last 20 years. The common ground is still the interest in understanding the interrelation between societal developments (including those on a global scale) and the experiential world of people. How experiences are organized in specific social contexts in the perspective of a lifetime and its generational relations to get oriented in everyday life and in the world, is the core topic in biographical research. This article gives an insight into recent methodological developments in biographical research and its variety of contributions to major issues of globalizing societies, such as history and memory; collective identities; migration and transnational biographies; gender and intersectionality; and the search for new concepts of inclusion.
Tango music rapidly became a global phenomenon as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, with about 30% of gramophone records made between 1903 and 1910 devoted to it. Its popularity declined between the 1950s and the 1980s but has since risen to new heights. This Companion offers twenty chapters from varying perspectives around music, dance, poetry, and interdisciplinary studies, including numerous visual and audio illustrations in print and on the accompanying webpages. Its multidisciplinary approach demonstrates how different disciplines intersect through performative, historical, ethnographic, sociological, political, and anthropological perspectives. These thematic continuities illuminate diverse international perspectives and highlight how the art form flourished in Argentina, Uruguay and abroad, while tracing its international and cultural impact over the last century. This book is an innovative resource for scholars and students of tango music, particularly those seeking a diverse international perspective on the subject.
This chapter introduces practice theoryPractice theory and different views ofPractice architectures what practices are. The chapter then argues that transforming social life—including in education and other professional fields—requires changing practices and the sayings, doings and relatings that compose them, as well as the projects (or purposes) of those practices. On this view, cultural, material, and social transformation is not about changing alleged ‘social structuresStructures (social structures)’, but about changing the practices whose repetition and reproduction in patterns of everyday social life create the impression that ‘structures’ exist. In the next chapter, Chap. 5, it is argued that transforming social life—and practices—also requires changing the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political conditions (arrangements) that make the sayings, doings, and relatings of practices possible.
Le présent article se propose d’analyser comment des pratiques culturelles parfois dites mondialisées – le yoga, la fauconnerie, le tango, le flamenco et l’alpinisme – ont été promues, puis inscrites, au patrimoine culturel immatériel de l’UNESCO. Il étudie la rhétorique et les stratégies scalaires adoptées par les protagonistes de chacune des propositions, en s’arrêtant tout spécialement sur la mise en scène d’une forme de mondialité, revendiquée ou nuancée, pour arguer du bien-fondé de leur inscription. Il montre dans quelle mesure certaines ont été guidées par un souci de recentrage national ou régional (le flamenco, le tango, le yoga) quand d’autres ont cherché à souligner la dimension transnationale de la pratique et de la coopération interétatique (l’alpinisme, la fauconnerie). Il montre enfin comment la procédure d’inscription en pareil cas mobilise plusieurs imaginaires de la mondialité et que leur articulation joue un rôle décisif dans le succès d’une candidature.
The history of queer tango is an integral part of the history of ALL tango. In these strange times when queer tango dancers pursue the objectives of queer tango but cannot dance, there have been some wonderfully creative online activities – classes and discussion forums. In that sense, a new chapter in the history or histories of queer tango is being written. As we witness rapid and dramatic change, more than ever, it is worth asking: Where did queer tango come from? How did we get here? How are we to put what is happening now into perspective? As part of our contribution to this creative pause in the dancing of queer tango, the Queer Tango Project is publishing “Queer Tango Histories”. It draws together six years’ worth of papers I have been giving about the history (or histories. It seems to me that more than one unfolding) of queer tango at dance scholarship conferences around the world. Most of them are looking at the incredibly rich resource of historical imagery to be found in The Queer Tango Image Archive https://image.queertangobook.org/, while others provide contexts for these reflections.
El tango queer, como herramienta educativa, ofreció en clase la oportunidad de establecer debates sobre la construcción de los roles de género con alumnado universitario y posibilitó a éste formas de moverse y expresarse diferentes a las acostumbradas. Parole chiave Diversidad, universidad, heteronormatividad, baile, educación física. Resumen Queer tango, as an educative tool, offered at classroom the chance to keep debates with the students about the construction of gender roles and it made possible they could move and express themselves in different ways than used to.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) rarely appear in any analysis of the global diffusion of Argentine tango. Yet, writers, musicians, singers, and dancers from the MENA region have long contributed to and drawn from tango as a cultural phenomenon in complex and multi-layered ways, as this essay demonstrates through a select taxonomy of historical, literary, musical, and dance encounters that culminates with a cross-cultural dialogue between Borges’ analysis of the One Thousand and One Nights and the theology of Sufism in order to theorise the ineffable experience of the dance and the profundity of its music and lyric dimensions. Through a contrapuntal methodology that draws on my dual experience as a tango dancer and DJ, and as a literary and cultural historian of the MENA region, I explore these encounters and entanglements as opening new embodied pathways for South-South solidarity engendered through transnational “translations” of music and dance.
This chapter outlines and reviews some of the most significant examples of research that bear on the ethnography of teaching and learning taking place in “non-educational” settings. It considers a number of analytic topics that include: aspects of apprenticeship that reflect discipline and drills; embodied expertise; repetitive schooling of the hand and the eye; the implicit curriculum of technology and technique; the acquisition of personal, embodied, or tacit knowledge. The idea of communities of practice is predicated on the centrality of tacit knowledge within such a social and epistemic environment. One needs to pay careful attention to the multiple methods that are used in the socialization or enculturation of novices in esoteric systems of knowledge and/or practice. Communities of practice should be thought of as communities of pedagogy. They have distinctive ways of enculturing novices, initiates, and postulants into esoteric, skilled competence.
If you are invited to laugh at two men dancing tango with each other, what are you invited to laugh at? In a c1965 episode of the US TV series The Addams Family, Gomez attempts to teach Lurch the tango. With a rose between his teeth, Gomez is the "beautiful señorita" and Lurch "her" suitor. They are replicating the well-worn, heterosexual tango creation myth used to explain the countless images of men dancing tango together that historically, they "practised" with each other, the better to secure the favours of women. Of course they did. The Queer Tango Image Archive (an online collection of historical imagery relating to the themes addressed by queer tango) includes many images of male-male couplings devised for comic effect, ranging from the amiable to the vicious. Can this variety be accounted for by the varieties of contexts in which tango was danced, and out of which the images came? Or by the differing themes and ideas found in those contexts? Or by the different comic effects aimed at by their creators, in order to comment on those themes and ideas? I consider in detail two such images, both created in Paris in 1913: a tango sheet music cover and a 'Sem' cartoon. By setting each into particular contexts and using a simple model of how humour works, I build a methodology for considering Gomez and Lurch's tango, the better to reveal, more precisely, attitudes towards masculinity, sex and sexuality, as well as the homosocial and the homosexual.
This paper examines the role of dance in identity construction among young descendants of Okinawan migrants who settled in Colonia Okinawa in Santa Cruz, Bolivia in the 1950s and 1960s. Ryūkyūkoku Matsuridaiko, a modernized form of eisā dance that is traditionally performed at the Buddhist soul festival Obon, offers a new way for these young descendants to reconnect to their ancestors’ culture. For most observers and some practitioners, the colourful dance represents Japanese culture and values that in a Bolivian context are commonly related to the socio-economic success of this immigrant minority. However, my analysis of Ryūkyūkoku Matsuridaiko will demonstrate that the dance furthermore serves the need to negotiate issues of identity among the younger generation of an ethnic minority of Okinawan ancestry within the Japanese descendant minority. Drawing on participant observation and interviews from several stays in Santa Cruz between 2013 and 2016, my analysis illustrates how this dance is used to express and negotiate identity issues between Bolivia, Okinawa and Japan and how it connects to larger discourses of a multilocal Okinawan community.
Argentine tango tends to be associated with highly gendered images of women and men locked
in contorted embraces. These images constitute a tango imaginary that is removed from the lived
experience of the dance. Remaining close to the experiential core of tango, this paper provides a
Heideggerian-inspired phenomenological account that re-imagines tango as a mode of being-inthe-world.
By situating us in direct and constant relationship with an attentive partner and
furnishing a complex grammar of constraints, tango generates a frame for creating and sustaining
worldhood. By examining the how of dance, the kind of experience it offers up, we approach the
dynamic emergence of Being. In what follows, I draw on my years of dancing tango to elaborate
an understanding of the experiential dimensions of the dance, and how these relate to the
development of shared focal practices that disclose insights associated with embodied being-inthe
world.
Early 20th century imagery of men dancing tango together is endlessly reproduced on 21st century tango websites around the world. Tango “began with men dancing with each other” so the oft-repeated assertion goes. Perhaps. Late 19th and early 20th century society in Argentina famously consisted of young, largely immigrant men outnumbering women seven to one. But if they danced with each other, what exactly were they doing? And to what extent can these images help us find out? Were they just ‘practicing’, as Tobin’s (1998; 2009) and Denniston’s (2007) 20th century male informants assert? The tango origin myth says (Davis 2015 among others) that they practiced with each other, the better to secure the favors of women on the dance-floor and beyond? Possibly. Were they gay? Presumably some were. Another explanation might be that in a society where physical intimacy of all kinds was in short supply, some of these images show men who found in tango a ‘safe space’ to hold and to be held. Yet, how are we to know?
The Queer Tango Image Archive – an online, digital collection of pre-1995 historical imagery – was set up to stimulate debate and address questions like these. Queer theory, among other things, would have us escape the woman-man, LGBT-straight binaries. ‘Gay’ might be irrelevant. Might this contemporary freedom help support alternative interpretations of historical imagery? And might that credibly alter and enrich our understanding of what we think we see?
This study explored drug initiation among 46 Chinese women in a compulsory drug treatment institution. The study adopted a mixed method with a strong emphasis on qualitative techniques to capture the perspectives of women in long-term treatment regarding their drug initiation experiences. A complementary analysis of quantitative data was used to help interpret, refine, deepen, and extend qualitative findings. Participants were divided into two groups according to their main drug of choice: 27 used methamphetamines and 19 used heroin (11 of them used methamphetamines occasionally). Four main themes were identified in the analysis of participants’ drug initiation narratives: (1) involvement in high-risk social networks; (2) lack of family love and support; (3) relationship problems; and (4) male partner influence. Findings indicate that the younger generation preferred starting their drug career with methamphetamines rather than heroin, due to the changes in the drug market and broader changes related to globalization. A lack of family love and support had a strong effect on the initiation of methamphetamine but not heroin users; however, male intimate partners and relationship issues showed strong influence on heroin initiation. Having high-risk social networks was a common narrative in the drug use initiation of Chinese women across methamphetamine and heroin groups.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.