Argentinische Feministinnen erfinden den Tango neu
BUENOS AIRES — Liliana Furió’s red flat shoes glided across the dance floor in swift, assured moves, making her baggy pants sway gently.
She and a lean young Russian man were clasped in a tight embrace as they circled counterclockwise with a few other pairs in perfect synchrony. But it was hard to tell who was leading whom. Some pairs appeared lost in a loving embrace while others swung back and forth playfully.
And that is what Ms. Furió had in mind when she created a weekly dance fest that would break all the rules of tango. She started the event earlier this year, calling it La Furiosa — or the livid woman. It’s part of a push by feminists to make tango less patriarchal.
In traditional tango, men invite women to dance through a subtle head-jolt gesture, a cabeceo, often signaled from across the room. On the dance floor, the man asserts control in a sequence of moves that range from teasingly sensual to uncomfortably domineering.
The women, who are expected to wear dresses and high heels, must hold tight for four-song sets. Veteran tango dancers say the 15-minute stretches can turn into agony when a partner’s embrace feels suffocating or when his hand wanders past the waist.
“It’s a bit of a game to test where the limits are,” said Victoria Beytia, who, along with Ms. Furió, is part of a loose coalition known as the Tango Feminist Movement.
In July the group published a protocol to make tango halls less dogmatic about traditional gender roles and more
assertive about rooting out sexual harassment and assault. It provides guidelines for tango organizers, including acceptance of couples who depart from heteronormative roles.
“Tango is a reflection of what is happening in our culture, and for a long time our culture has allowed men to touch you when they want to and if you complain you’re dismissed as crazy,” Ms. Beytia said.
Ms. Furió, a 56-year-old filmmaker, became acquainted with tango as a child. Her father, a military officer who later would be convicted of grave crimes committed during Argentina’s dictatorship, made watching “The Grand Values of Tango,” a television show, an obligatory family ritual.
“I had a fascination with the dance,” Ms. Furió said in the apartment she shares with her German wife. “That unique embrace, those sensual choreographies, it’s something that I remember vividly.” As an adult, she began attending the tango halls in Buenos Aires known as milongas. But her passion was deflated by rituals that struck her as sexist.
Argentine tango is the product of rhythms and traditions that intersected in the 1700s and 1800s in poor districts of Buenos Aires that were home to European immigrants, former African slaves and locals. Initially shunned by elites and the Catholic Church, which deemed it obscene, tango was embraced in the early 1900s.
The lyrics of many tango classics tell stories of love, longing and betrayal. But several are explicit odes to the subjugation of women and violence against them. Iván Díez’s “Amablemente,” or “Kindly,” tells of a man who walks in on his partner with another man. He demands that she make him a drink, leans over to kiss her and “kindly stabbed her 34 times.” Edmundo Rivero’s “Tortazos,” a screed to a female lover who has moved on, goes: “I don’t break you with one smack only because I don’t want to hit you on the street!”
Ms. Furió said, “For a while, those lyrics were second nature and I would just laugh at them.” But this subset of tango came under scrutiny as Argentina’s feminist movement grew.
Soraya Rizzardini González, an instructor who is part of the Tango Feminist Movement, said that while songs that explicitly condone violence may be a minority, tango has always reflected pervasive structural sexism in Argentina.
“The gender roles are fixed,” Ms. González said. “One person is leading and the other is not.” She added, “Tango is a caricature of the patriarchy.”
In the 1990s, gay Argentines began organizing dance collectives that created spaces in which women could take the lead and same-sex couples could alternate between roles.
In 2003, having recently come out as gay, Ms. Furió saw an advertisement for queer tango lessons and found the idea enthralling. “It meant being able to take ownership of a piece of heritage that is so deeply ours, but that had been accessible only to a segment of the population,” she said. “There was something very subversive about that.”
Ms. Furió said learning to lead in tango required coming to terms with years of feeling generally mistreated
Women lead, and take control of a dance’s heritage.
in her life. “As a woman, you realize that you can lead and that you can do it well,” she said.
As more women became tango instructors, milongas started embracing same-sex couples, women leading men and other breaks with convention.
But some remain committed to tradition. Héctor Norberto Pellozo, who heads the milonga Los Cachirulos, insists that guests dress elegantly and adhere to the courting rituals in which women must await interest from men. He scoffed at the suggestion that tango has perpetuated gender inequality, and said that while he respected gay people, the notion that they can tango was blasphemy. “Being chest to chest is not the same as it is between a man and a woman,” he said.
Having been expelled from Mr. Pellozo’s milonga once for trying to dance with another woman, Ms. Furió is no fan. But she can take comfort in the fact that she is drawing larger crowds at La Furiosa.
She said, “We’ve perhaps broadened it into something that is fraternal and not necessarily sensual.”