I was very curious when a couple told me that going to a Tango school together was a kind of therapy for various reasons. We tried to understand what are the peculiarities of the Argentine Tango that make us define it as an effective metaphor of a couple’s relationship.

Ali Namazi, the founder in 1991, together with Eliana Montanari, of the first permanent school of the Argentine Tango in Italy, and of the “Astor Piazzola” Argentine Tango Centre in Rome, speaks extensively about it. According to A. Namazi, the Tango is a dance of communication, but in good communication you first need to define yourself. A couple is made up of two distinct individuals; to communicate with each other, therefore, each member of the couple must first be aware of himself, of his own identity, of his own corporeality. The Tango helps to achieve this awareness through the so-called “grounding“.

Grounding yourself in dancing means knowing exactly how to put your weight on the ground and how to shift your weight forward, backward, to the right, to the left. Therefore, the rootedness of the Tango teaches each member of the couple to be aware of themselves but also to know how to choose in which direction to move in space, creating new balances over time. Being rooted, having emotional stability, feeling that you can count on yourself and at the same time move in space creating new balances is what the Tango teaches but if you think about it, they are also the essential conditions for building a harmonious couple relationship.

In the Tango there must be a space between the partners, the same goes for a couple, otherwise exactly as in the Tango we approach the other but only to be supported and we become a burden. Balance in the Tango is achieved by putting your feet firmly on the ground, feeling the central axis of your body. First you ground yourself and then you bring your axis forward towards your partner and embrace him. Your partner does the same and at some point, a new balance is formed. Isn`t it the same when a couple is formed? Each one is enriched by the presence of the other.

It can happen in a couple that one partner goes towards the other, but he/she does not respond with the same energy but rather pulls back! When this happens in the Tango and one partner does not respond energetically to the other’s approach, the dance is not fluid, the steps become tiring. Exactly the same happens in a couple: if only one of the two makes contact with the other and he/she does not respond with the same intensity, the couple suffers. It is interesting that the partner who does not respond correctly may respond too mildly to the other’s energy or be overwhelmed and recoil, but in both cases the dance is not smooth: in the Tango as in life.

The embrace in the Tango deserves a separate consideration. As A. Namazi writes, “the embrace is an open embrace without using strength, there is no effort. There are points of contact that serve to feel the other, but you must always leave a space for your partner, as well as taking your own space; never invade the field or be invaded. “This is also very useful for the life of a couple: maintaining points of contact so that the other understands that we are accessible and responsive but without entering into symbiosis with the other.”

“The Tango also helps us to understand how important it is that everyone plays their role clearly in a couple… In the dance, the man leads the woman, gives signals of the direction in which to go and the woman, listening to her partner, follows him. But both make different movements. Diversity is the basis of tango. There is no imitation of the movements by the man or the woman. Everyone has their role, but never one of submission to the other.” This is also useful in the life of a couple! Not opposition, not power struggle, not uniformity but rather a game of complementarity and reciprocity.

One last interesting aspect concerns the changes of pace that take place in tango. If one of the two partners wants to change the direction of the dance, either he stops or gives a little pressure and brings himself and the other into suspension. It would be useful for this to happen in the life of a couple as well. In fact, we know that the couple proceeds through many changes during their lives and that some changes can strongly destabilize the couple.

Even here, the Tango can teach the couple to tune in when one of the two partners is changing. As in the Tango, when there is a change of pace to be made for the arrival of a child, a new job, an emotional or economic loss, for the departure of a child and for many other things, it is necessary that you can stop for a moment to understand which new direction to take. And that one of the two partners somehow communicates to the other that things are changing and does not go ahead alone in his steps but together with the partner lives the suspension of novelty, of change.

If you can communicate your needs by tuning in with the other, as in the Tango, you can start together just like two dancers on the wave of music. And we cannot fail to conclude with what Sue Johnson says about the Tango as a metaphor for the couple’s relationship: “Relationships between partners are like in a dance, a pas de deux, a harmony and a balance in trusting and entrusting each other”.
<i>(www.cittanuova.it – Lucia Coco-De Angelis)</i>