Roles, identities and… the catch

The common denominator

In most of the comments and arguments about roles, the common denominator is that when we involve the genders people tend to forget that we are talking about roles and not about identities. Take for example any actor in any movie. Let’s say Tom Hanks in the movie California. He played the role of a gay man. Is he really gay? As far as we know not! It is very easy when it comes to acting to understand the difference between acting and being. We never associate a role with the identity of an actor.

In Tango, still, people tend to forget the “role” part of the phrase whenever we talk about the role of a man and a woman. It is a role. It is not your identity. You may be a woman and identify as whatever you like but you are playing a role. This by no means changes who you are.

When does the problem start

As I wrote in the previous post, even the role names of a man and a woman are not accurate in describing the roles we play in Tango. Why? Because there are so many men and women with so different characters, histories and backgrounds. It is impossible to describe accurately what you mean by the “role of the man” or “the role of the woman”.

In acting any role has a more detailed description. It is the role of a man who lives there, has this family, this cultural background etc. In acting there is a whole part of films that helps the audience understand the role and the character behind them. Are they a criminal?… a family person?… a loner?… a lover?… a worker? This is done because each one of us has so many dimensions. We are colleagues, lovers, siblings, parents, partners, etc. We are multidimensional and all these dimensions intervene and influence each other creating the complexity and uniqueness of our identity.

Now, what happens in Tango? When you dance to a song, who is providing the plot for the role you play? For me, the answer is the music. The music sets the plot of your movie. It is the screenwriter who tells you if you are a broken lover, a happy friend, an innocent child or an evil revengeful lover. The music is creating for you the movie where you place yourself as an actor and play.

Tango stories

One of the beauties of Tango is that it has such a big variety of themes in its songs as a genre. Of course, a major part of it has to do with love and all the nice or ugly emotions that come with it. But you can also find music that sounds like kindergarten songs, like Monday morning in traffic, like a friendly chat or a roasting between friends. It’s all in there like in life.

As actors, we need to put ourselves in the role we want to play and act like it. This is where gender makes things complicated. Our gender has definitely defined part of our identity. Our experiences are in many cases perceived differently from persons of the opposite gender just because of it. For example, I see the anxiety that a walk through a dark street causes me in comparison to my life partner. That is normal.

So when you don’t perceive an experience as the other gender and you need to play it as a role things can get complicated. Because our acting in this other role depends on our empathy and how well we understand and can embody the behavior of the other gender person. It seems easy, but in reality, it’s really hard. Especially in a world where people try to find more and more dividing lines, being able to cross them and see the world from the eyes of another person, get in their shoes, is a tall order.

What story are you telling?

Changing roles

I have seen many times, women dancing between them as well as I have seen a few times men dancing together. It is an increasing phenomenon worldwide and as I already wrote I don’t have a problem with it. It doesn’t bother me at all. Yet, sometimes what I see looks… strange, and other times it looks wonderful (even from the same couple). I couldn’t pinpoint why that is so but I think I now have a possible answer.

The music. Yes. The plot of the movie. The music already plays a role in picking partners when the Tanda starts. It is the foundation for dancing. When the plot of the movie is based heavily on the genders and their behaviors things get more awkward while in music which sounds more innocent, childish or playful, I enjoy watching same-gender couples on the floor. Why is that? Because as much as we’d like to, we can never get 100% into another person’s shoes unless we have gone through the same experience and even so our reactions and characters will still make a difference in how we perceive it. Having the same gender as another person makes it a bit easier to relate with them, understand their emotions and act them. But when the gender is different there is just one more obstacle to cross and it gets more difficult. This means that whatever we try to project when we act in the opposite gender role is only our construct which might be far from reality. That is why sometimes dancing the opposite role looks wonderful and other times awkward.

The catch

Remember how I started this post? In acting we can do things that do not necessarily mean that we are like this in reality. Why do we get so confused in Tango? Why do we mix so much identity with role? All this quest and doubts on gender, the role names and our roles in dancing started from a video that I recently saw. It was the interview of Dana Frigoli to Pepa Palazzon. In that interview, she explains (at about 48:40) that although she knows the leader role she doesn’t dance it (from what I understood she doesn’t dance it socially). Paraphrasing what she says, she clarifies that for her it is a matter of authenticity. If we are supposed to bring ourselves in every step of our dance then how can her step be the same as a man’s when she doesn’t have the same experiences in life?

This part clicked in me. She has a point. I mean, if music plays a role when we dance because it evokes some emotions in us, then our gender can play a crucial part in how we perceive, experience and express them. The more these emotions are experienced and perceived differently because of our gender the more difficult it should be to do the switch. It is easy to switch to an opposite-gender role when you think of an innocent child playing, but it gets much harder when the song is about love and all that comes with it. Changing the role and trying to express the emotions from the opposite gender role in such cases is, as already mentioned, a tall order. That is why the result can oftentimes look like a caricature of the other role or a completely emotion-sterile expression that looks like gymnastics. It’s not impossible to achieve an authentic-looking result but it is very very hard.

But in the end, if we all look to find our Tango. If we want to be authentic and as Dana says, bring ourselves in our dance. If we want to bring our processed baggage as Oa mentions in another podcast with Dimitris, how can we say that our dance in the opposite gender role is authentic? Is it really when we don’t have such experiences first-hand?

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Let’s Co-Create

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Before I close this text with Tonight’s Goodnight Tango, here is another thought. The problem of gender imbalance in Tango is not new. In Buenos Aires during the Golden age of Tango, the imbalance was reversed. We know that men were practicing the woman’s role to understand better how to improve their skills in dance. But we also know that it wasn’t acceptable to dance between themselves in a milonga. Granted, we are talking about a different era and much different society but still one of the most valued traits of a dancer was their authenticity and uniqueness. There are many stories of milongueros who wouldn’t do a move that was someone else’s signature as it was considered akin to theft. Tango survived and the gender imbalance is now reversed.

So… here is the catch… in our quest for role balance and equality in communities is it possible that we are sacrificing part of the authenticity of our own individual dances?

Tonight’s Goodnight Tango

If you stayed with me up to this point you realize that the catch is about authenticity. I am not suggesting anything. I am not saying we should stop dancing both roles. I am just saying that maybe… just maybe… in all this search for more dances… for better dances… we should not forget who we are when we dance. Desencuentro is a song that discusses the existential struggle of feeling disconnected from the world and from oneself when we lose our authenticity by making compromises in our lives.

So what do you think? Are we sacrificing our authenticity in our search for more dances? Is the music an important factor in how authentic we feel when we dance the opposite gender role? in the end… would you feel equally comfortable dancing with a person of the same gender to a playful Canaro tanda as well as a deeply emotional Troilo one?

Do you have something to say on the topic?

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