Neotangology

I first started to dance tango when I was in my early forties, and almost immediately became hooked. It was creative and expressive, and I knew that it would be a part of my life for a long time to come.

It would have come as no surprise to anyone who knew me back then, but as soon as I realised that there was more to tango than simply repeating a set of steps I began to research the history and techniques of the dance to try to understand it better. I am someone who likes to know how things work, and dance is no exception, especially as I already had some experience of other dance styles at that point and tango was nothing like anything I had already seen. Tango was dramatic but the lead was subtle, the hold was close but it allowed a wide range of movement, was it one dance with three rhythms or three dances with one name, and how come everyone knew its history but yet that history was widely contradictory?

What was the reality? How did it work, and what were its origins? And was understanding it at a deeper level the key to being able to dance it properly?

Studying the origins of tango was fascinating, especially as information from the early years was sketchy, often contradictory, and sorting out the probable truth from the romantic embellishments was a challenge. But understanding the mechanics of the dance itself was even harder, as isolating the details from the “just do this” approach used by many teachers was confusing. They would demonstrate something, and then describe it in a way that contradicted what they had just done. They would carefully explain that “all tango moves are led” and that you should “never anticipate”, and then the following week imply that the followers should “just complete this move because you know what comes next”. What they said and what they did was often at odds, and so I knew I had to understand more about this dance if I was ever to get any good at it.

One of my jobs in a previous life had been to run an in-house gym at the office social club and I had been trained as a fitness instructor. It had been some time since I had used that information but when trying to understand how tango worked my training into the mechanics of the human body turned out to be extremely beneficial. So I coupled that with studying the history of the dance and began to write down what I found out.

My notes grew longer and longer, and by about 2017 I realised that I had the beginnings of a book. So I started to structure it and sort it into something that would work in print.

For several years this became a project that I would re-visit from time to time, updating sections as I found out more, and changing things as my understanding of the dance evolved. But it never seemed to get any closer to being something that I could get ready for publication. It was a series of notes in small chunks, not a flowing volume of text that could be read in one sitting.

Then in early 2025 I had an idea. Why not serialise it and publish it online in episodes? I had done all that research and developed my own ‘theory of tango’, so why not share it so people could read what I had written?

It took a while to sort out exactly how I could publish in this way, and at some point I realised that adding a podcast would expand its reach and make it much more approachable. So here it is. Neotangology, serialised and with an accompanying podcast, graphics, videos, audio clips, and anything else needed to support the articles.

Episodes will be published approximately once per week, and the podcasts are available on all major platforms – just search for “Neotangology” and you should be able to find it.

I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

Graham.