From the backstreets of Buenos Aires to Parisian high society, this is the extraordinary story of the dance that captivated the world - a tale of politics and passion, immigration and romance. The Tango was the cornerstone of Argentine culture, and has lasted for more than a hundred years, popular today in America, Japan and Europe. 'The Meaning of Tango' traces the roots of this captivating dance, from it's birth in the poverty stricken Buenos Aires, the craze of the early 20th century, right up until it's revival today, thanks to shows such as Strictly Come Dancing. This book offers history, knowledge, teachings and in-sights which makes it valuable for beginners, yet its in-depth analysis makes it essential for experienced dancers. It is an elegant and cohesive critique of the fascinating tale of the Tango, which not only documents its culture and politics, but is also technically useful.

Argentinean tango is a global phenomenon. Since its origin among immigrants from the slums of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, it has crossed and re-crossed many borders.Yet, never before has tango been danced by so many people and in so many different places as today. Argentinean tango is more than a specific music and style of dancing. It is also a cultural imaginary which embodies intense passion, hyper-heterosexuality, and dangerous exoticism. In the wake of its latest revival, tango has become both a cultural symbol of Argentinean national identity and a transnational cultural space in which a modest, yet growing number of dancers from different parts of the globe meet on the dance floor. Through interviews and ethnographical research in Amsterdam and Buenos Aires, Kathy Davis shows why a dance from another era and another place appeals to men and women from different parts of the world and what happens to them as they become caught up in the tango salon culture. She shows how they negotiate the ambivalences, contradictions, and hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and global relations of power between North and South in which Argentinean tango is—and has always been—embroiled. Davis also explores her uneasiness about her own passion for a dance which—when seen through the lens of contemporary critical feminist and postcolonial theories—seems, at best, odd, and, at worst, disreputable and even a bit shameful. She uses the disjuncture between the incorrect pleasures and complicated politics of dancing tango as a resource for exploring the workings of passion as experience, as performance, and as cultural discourse. She concludes that dancing tango should be viewed less as a love/hate embrace with colonial overtones than a passionate encounter across many different borders between dancers who share a desire for difference and a taste of the ‘elsewhere.’ Dancing Tango is a vivid, intriguing account of an important global cultural phenomenon.

Regarding the Tango Dance Amalgamation, it includes the original Argentine Tango and its Genre which Musically featured its Bandonean sound, the American Tango, Continental Tango, and the International Tango, among others. This book is the story of Tango.

In the 85 chapters of this guidebook, you will find many ideas about waltzing, dancing, and living. Dance descriptions and tips to improve your dancing are accompanied by down-to-earth ways to find greater fulfillment in your dancing and in your life. 25 different kinds of waltz are completely described, including: cross-step waltz, Viennese waltz, box step waltz, rotary waltz, polka, schottische, redowa, mazurka, hambo, zwiefacher, and more. In addition, you will find 85 waltz variations completely described, and a concise compendium of an additional hundred variations, accompanied by 50 illustrations of waltzing through the ages. Then beyond waltzing, much of this book applies to all forms of social ballroom dancing. You'll learn how you can be a better dance partner, how to develop your style and musicality, how to improvise more confidently, how to learn new dances by observation, and how to create your own social dance variations. You'll also learn about the many ways that the practice of social dancing can enrich our lives. Drawing on the latest research in social psychology, Waltzing includes chapters on the essential benefits of: music, physical activity, connection, play, mindfulness, acceptance, conditional learning, and many other topics.

Cross-Step Waltz is one of the newest social dance forms, spreading quickly because it's easy to learn yet endlessly innovative, satisfying for both beginners and the most experienced dancers. It rotates and travels like the original waltz, but the addition of the cross-step opens up a wide range of playful yet gracefully flowing variations. In this comprehensive dancer's guide to Cross-Step Waltz, you will learn: ● How to dance more than 250 variations of Cross-Step Waltz, including basics, turns, grapevines, pivots, Tango-inspired figures, variations in cradle and shadow position, and ways to conclude a dance with flair. ● How to become a better dance partner, whether you dance as a Lead, a Follow, or both. ● How to dance more musically, and how to create your own Cross-Step Waltz variations. ● How to dance Cross-Step Waltz to a wide variety of music, and how to transition between Cross-Step Waltz and other dances. ● Finally, in a series of essays by our students, you'll learn how dancing Cross-Step Waltz can change your life! In addition to being fully described in writing, each of the 250+ variations is illustrated by a demo video on a companion website.

The Argentine tango is one of the world’s best-known partner dances. Though tango is much admired and discussed, very little has been written on its ongoing evolution. In this innovative work, Carolyn Merritt surveys tango history while focusing on the most recent iteration of the dance, tango Nuevo, and the práctica scene that has exploded in Buenos Aires since the early 2000s. After starting with an overview of tango, Merritt leads readers on a great adventure through the traditional dance halls and the less formal prácticas of Buenos Aires to tango communities on both coasts of the United States. Along the way, Merritt’s personal observations show the dance’s emotional depth and the challenges dancers face in tango venues old and new. Her investigation also demonstrates how innovation, globalization, and fusion, which many associate with nuevo, have always been at work in tango. Combining sensuous prose, provocative images, and often heartbreaking stories, this book takes an unflinching look at the complex motivations driving the pursuit to master this intricate dance. Throughout, Merritt questions the "newness" of Nuevo through portraits of machismo, violence, and elitism in contemporary tango. The result is a volume that highlights the tensions between preservation and evolution of this--or any--cultural art form. Members of the global tango community as well as students of dance, folklore, anthropology, and the social sciences will embrace this book. For those who are devoted to Argentine tango as dance, this book will be indispensable to understanding its most recent transformations.

Argentine Queer Tango: Dance and Sexuality Politics in Buenos Aires investigates changes in tango dancing in Buenos Aires during the first decade of the twenty-first century and its relationship to contemporary social and cultural transformations. Mercedes Liska focuses on one of the proposed alternatives to conventional tango, queer tango, which proposes to rethink one of the alleged icons of a national culture from a feminist conception and to imagine social transformation processes from bodily experiences. Specifically, this book analyzes the value of bodily experiences, the redefinition of the mind-body relationship, and the transformation in the dynamics of the dance from the heteronormative movements of tango. In doing so, Liska addresses the ways in which bodily techniques and gender theories are involved in the denaturing and corporeality decoding of tango and its historical senses as well as the connections between different tango dance practices spread throughout the world.

If you are interested in Argentine tango you know that, as Veronica writes in one of her essays, "Tango, no matter your involvement in it, becomes a kind of a world separate from the rest, with its own particular joys, sorrows, difficulties, rules, goals and pleasures." And in this world there are both happiness and suffering. Whether you are a total beginner or an experienced dancer, in Veronica's essays you will discover a rich source of knowledge and inspiration as she tackles complex psychological, social and pegagodical issues in tango as a social dance and a performing art. Her essays offer a profound and well articulated reflection on the contemporary tango scene, supported by insights from psychology, neuroscience, biomechanics and bodymind techniques. What is the most effective way of learning tango? Why do we suffer so much while trying to learn it? How to stay happy and healthy while engaging intensively in this activity? Why does tango bring us so much joy and how to cultivate this joy no matter your age, looks and physical capacities? These are just some of the questions the author touches upon in this book that includes her first nineteen essays written between November 2013 and December 2014. Her essays, published as a blog on her Facebook page, are shared by tango people all over the world and translated into 14 languages so far by enthusiast volunteers.

This manual is an excellent source for ragtime era dances including the one step, tango, Brazilian maxixe, and hesitation waltz. The book is richly illustrated with more than twenty photos of many famous exhibition ballroom couples such as Irene and Vernon Castle, and Maurice and Florence Walden.