To lead or to follow: gender constructions in Argentine Tango and contact improvisation

This essay comparatively studies the body communication dynamics of Argentine tango and Contact improvisation from a gender perspective. Being two forms of improvised dance, configured by very different aesthetic and cultural keys, both face the questions that are being posed from feminist movements and queer theory. While tango faces the academic response regarding the hierarchies between male and female that define it, Contact improvisation, considered as a paradigm of equality due to the absence of roles, has failed to dissolve the subtle mechanisms of domination that operate through contact. It highlights how practice spaces —milongas and jams, respectively— operate as laboratories for observing techniques and social protocols and also reflect how local cultural codes overlap, in a complex way, on the choreographic rules.