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Where does Argentine tango exist? Does it rightly belong to some more than others? How will dependency upon global interest and tango tourism impact the dance over time? Do government efforts to market Buenos Aires and Argentina through tango curb innovation? Why is it that foreigners so vehemently protest the dilution of tango's purity? Can contemporary trends find their place within this beloved tradition, or do they represent rupture-not only with the past but also with the romance of culture and place? This chapter presents the political economy of contemporary tango. While government patrimony policies, tourism campaigns, and advertisements often reduce the tango to stereotype, foreign desires to preserve and consume authenticity bespeak equal parts reverence and arrogance. Discussing my own journey in tango and across continents, and my evolving feelings toward experimentation in the wake of a life in Buenos Aires. I highlight the enduring significance of place, and I argue that the evolution of the dance represents continuity through transformation.

Is there truly a new tango? How does today's nuevo differ from earlier incarnations, circa 1940 and 1960? Why do there exist countless interpretations of the term, and what exactly is at stake in global debates over defining the dance? How has Argentina's economic crisis positioned tango and the country itself for revitalization via foreign consumption? Disentangling aesthetics from mechanics, this chapter outlines the distinct foundations for local and foreign understandings of tango nuevo. Tracing elements linked to nuevo-including fusion, innovation, and foreign influence-throughout the dance's history, contemporary trends are revealed to be sincere to the historical essence of the dance while also relevant to contemporary minds and bodies. In conclusion, this chapter suggests tango as an ideal vehicle for examining the tensions between preservation and evolution in the survival of cultural phenomena, as well as today's increasingly interconnected, globalized world.

Surveying the parallel histories of Argentina and the tango, Chapter 2 highlights the particular place of the country and its most famous dance in the global imaginary, as well as the impact of globalization, fusion, and innovation upon the dance's development from its inception more than a century ago. From the 1983 Paris premiere of the stage show Tango Argentino to the post-dictatorship cultural programs that woke porteño dancers from a nearly thirty-year slumber, this chapter traces the tango's revitalization at home and abroad. Highlighting events leading up to the 1990s tango “investigations” that yielded a pedagogic and choreographic revolution in the dance, which many have argued resulted in a “new tango,” this chapter sets the stage for an in-depth investigation of the myriad meanings and interpretations of tango nuevo today.

What does tango's global renaissance say about contemporary life? Are addiction and therapy flip sides of the same coin, and is there a threshold for suffering in tango? Are new tango venues and practices more relaxed than their traditional counterparts? Or should we rank experience (and cathartic potential) according to “authenticity?” What does the growing tango industry mean for dancers seeking an experience traditionally described as priceless? This chapter frames tango as a form of resistance to the disconnect of modern life through moving portraits of “tango therapy”; these are juxtaposed, in turn, with vignettes of hierarchy and violence in tango venues old and new. Tango commodification is explored through the dance's global renaissance, contemporary desires to consume authenticity, and shopping as therapy, while the traditionalist emphasis upon quality over quantity is contrasted with the novice desire/necessity to accumulate experience. Reflecting on my own ambivalence towards a dance whose rewards are ever changing and whose culture retains vestiges of sexual violence, I argue that tango seduces through its endless contradictions and challenges.

To what extent is the growth of tango nuevo facilitating a more autonomous position for women within the dance? In this chapter, I examine the performance of sex and gender in Argentine tango. From “active following” to same-sex partnering to female professionalization, I highlight practices that speak to greater gender equality, tracing the influence of foreign sensibilities upon these developments. In turn, portraits of machismo in modern-day Buenos Aires are juxtaposed with vignettes that illuminate lingering macho attitudes in the milongas and prácticas, at once a product of the larger culture and foreign romanticization of the “authentic.” In Buenos Aires' milongas, I find an alternate lifeworld, where elderly porteños rule the roost, women over 40 are scarce, and headstrong foreign tangueras trade youth and beauty for three minutes in the arms of septuagenarian milongueros. Drawing on promotional materials, personal exchanges with local and foreign dancers, and observations of rising tango stars, I argue that new narratives of sex and gender demand that dancers transcend the romance and exoticism of tango's often consuming macho imaginary.

This introduction seeks to meet the reader at a common point of reference by beginning with a discussion of popular conceptions of tango in all its dimensions of practice (music, poetry, and dance) throughout the world. It then narrows its scope to tango’s many faces in Argentina. It sets a context for analyzing Argentine tango music by discussing the birth of tango and the art form’s rise at the turn of the twentieth century. It then discusses the development of the art form in terms of poetry and the tango canción (tango song). It concludes by offering an overview of tango dance.

This introductory chapter briefly explores how the Argentinean tango became a global phenomenon by describing the dance through the eyes of the aficionados and aficionadas for whom tango is more than a hobby and, at times, even a way of life. It also explores how the differences in gender, social class, age, ethnicity, and national belonging seemingly affect the image of the tango as a dance of passion. As a global dance, tango increasingly involves transnational encounters. It has always been a global dance, moving from Argentina (where it was also the dance of immigrants) to Europe and back again. However, international tourism and a growing contingent of relatively affluent individuals with a cosmopolitan lifestyle in search of a specific kind of touristic experience have made tango one of Argentina's most important export items as well as a significant source of revenue at home.

This chapter discusses how queer tango has changed tango as a dance, the interactions between the dancers, and the regimes of the salon. Drawing upon interviews with aficionados, it addresses why some dancers opt for queer rather than straight tango and show how queer tango attempts to unsettle the gender hierarchies that have been central to Argentinean tango. Queer tango entails more than changing the way partners dance with each other. It also offers an escape from the traditional straight regime of the tango salon. For the dancers, queer tango provides a venue in which anyone who wants to dance tango can feel comfortable, relax, “just be him-or herself.” In addition, the chapter examines the question of whether or not queer tango has made tango, the most heterosexist of all dances, “politically correct.”

Why do dancers in Argentina insist that there is “no such thing as tango nuevo”? How is it that flying limbs, gender-bending, electronica, and bell-bottoms are all cited as evidence of something new outside of Argentina, yet defended as part and parcel of an evolving tradition known simply as tango by young porteños? What does it mean when these same Argentine dancers reluctantly employ the nuevo label to market themselves to foreigners? This chapter introduces the reader to contemporary tango near and far, and to the paradoxical act of labeling an art form whose essence is improvisational movement. Traveling from milongas in the United States to Argentina, this chapter culminates with the horrific nightclub fire that killed 200 residents of Buenos Aires in late 2004, the ensuing shutdown of dance clubs in the Argentine capital, and the period during which the city's prácticas (alternative tango venues hosted and populated by young local and foreign dancers) secured their move from underground to mainstream.

The prologue introduces the reader to the topic of tango nuevo and to the tensions between preservation and evolution in contemporary Argentine tango. Beginning with tango's global reach and transformation into national/local symbol, lucrative commodity and famous export, the prologue also highlights the place of Argentina and Buenos Aires in the global imaginary, contemporary approaches to ethnography, the research methods employed in studying nuevo, and the benefits of anthropological analysis to the study of culture. The prologue concludes with a chapter overview and notes on the text.

The epilogue addresses recent changes in the dance through another “new” generation of dancers, based upon observations in the U.S. and Buenos Aires since 2008. Interviews with young porteño dancers and musicians reveal a contemporary emphasis upon tradition and efforts to cultivate a local community of tango lovers through populist/nationalist language. Outside of Argentina, tradition also serves as a legitimizing counterpoint to advertising images and media representations that reduce tango to exotic/erotic Latin dance. Drawing attention to the circular nature of artistic (r)evolutions, I highlight the interplay between progress and tradition in cultural forms including tango. In conclusion, the epilogue underscores the insufficiency of labels in describing landscapes of movement and sentiment.

This concluding chapter disentangles the normative assumptions that make tango and feminism incompatible. The first assumption concerns the relationship between passion and tango. Argentinean tango invariably evokes the image of a woman being swept off her feet and forced by the passion of the dance to surrender herself to her male partner. The second assumption concerns the relationship between gender and tango. Women and men who dance Argentinean tango seem to be locked in the performance of the most traditional and hierarchical gender relations imaginable. The third assumption concerns the relationship between transnationality and tango. Taken together, these assumptions place tango and its recent global revival in an explicitly political perspective—a “politics of passion.” The chapter addresses the politics of passion and the assumptions that underlie in light of the analysis studies the previous chapters.