Moving Bodies, Embodied History: The Cultural Geography of Tango Argentino
Dance practices are an encyclopaedia of this world. They contain valuable information about the people they are practiced by - their history, their rites, their stories and beliefs, but also their community structures, gender roles, power dynamics and their relationship with the environment. Dance is neither a static nor a value-free practice. As many social norms are being re-written around the world and new ones are being introduced, these transformations are also reflected through dance. I have danced Tango Argentino in 21 countries and in each place I visited and danced I have observed how tango acts as a mirror of societal processes and political issues.
In Turkey, my parent’s country of origin, Argentine Tango is almost exclusively danced by the secular upper-class elites, it follows strict gender roles and adheres to the rules and songs of classical 1930s orchestras from Buenos Aires. In Berlin on the other hand, this type of music is less popular. Instead, younger couples, blurring traditional roles of lead and follow by allowing same-sex couple, dance Argentine tango to modern music with underlying hip hop beats. London presents a mixture of both, yet here the demographics reflect a significantly older group of tango dancers. The steps and framework of Argentine tango are universal, but the execution and interpretation varies greatly, allowing us to study a society through dance.
The arrival of a new dance practice and its rising popularity in a place is never accidental and in the age of technology and globalisation the way we conceptualise dance, how we engage with it and the role it occupies in a community changes.
In this multi-year project I will be documenting and sharing what tango means to different communities around the world.
Background
Arzucan has been dancing for as long as she can remember, in genres as varied as ballet and the folk dances of her native Turkey. Following a lifelong love for Tango music, owed to her grandfather’s work as director of the Turkish orchestra in Berlin, she took her first lessons in Argentine Tango under the guidance of Leandro Palou and Maria Tsiatsiani in London. As her “artistic parents”, she imparted to them not only her knowledge of dance but also the yeites — a word derived from Lunfardo, meaning “the secrets of Tango steps”.
She continued her studies in Tango in the UK, and later in Turkey and the United States with renown maestros from Argentina, including Mauro Caiazza, Diego Ortega & Aldana Silveyra, Los Totis, Carlitos Espinoza & Noelia Hurtado, Javier Rodriguez, Horacio Godoy & Cecilia Berra, Miguel Angel Zotto & Daiana Guspero, Stefania Colina & Juan Martin Carrara.
Her journey as a researcher and dancer of Tango Argentino has taken her across the globe and to places where one might not expect to find tango, such as Morocco, Israel and Cuba.