By Vasvi Oza (she/her), 25/02/2025
 

Vasvi Oza (leading in heels) at Bengaluru Tangothon, 2024. Photo by Jenya, BQT

Tango Joy from Bengaluru, India

Tango came as a coincidence in my adult life and has stayed as a very dear friend.

As a child, I always enjoyed dancing, be it at weddings or garba (a folk dance from Gujarat in India, performed during nine days of the Hindu Festival Navaratri). All my adult life, I have had this strong urge to learn a dance form that is not classical and allows for improvisation. In 2023, I happened to join a small-scale tango workshop for queer folks in Bengaluru. It’s been a year and a half now, and I have been cherishing the learning and dancing of tango in more ways than one.

What started as a small tango workshop with fellow queer folks, has grown-growing into a queer tango community in Bengaluru and we call ourselves, Bengaluru Queer Tango (BQT). BQT is a space for many of us to learn tango through building queer community in the city. Most of us do not come from any specific dance training per say so we support each other in working with our bodies, centring joy and expressions.

For me, BQT has been a very dear space where-through tango – I am learning to express myself through my body, with music, with a dance partner, without using words – all this in a safe space. It has been a challenge, this non-verbal communication through the body, because most of us are conditioned to work/live in spaces that prioritize mind/brain over body. It has also been rewarding in opening up another world of possibilities of experiencing safe physical proximity through tango.

The one element of tango that has struck me the most, is tango music. It is another world altogether. In our class, our teachers introduced us to Di Sarli, D’Arienzo, Canaro’s music. I remember feeling a mix of emotions while listening/dancing to the three of them at different points. Emotions of melancholia, longing, love, a bit of bumpy rhythms too… Some of this music reminded me of 1960s Bollywood songs such as ‘Hum Aapki Ankhon Mein’ from the movie ‘Pyaasa’ (1957) starring Pradeep Kumar and Asha Parekh. After attending few tango workshops specifically dedicated to tango music by Aurevan Lung (open role tango dancer, teacher based in Auroville) and Una Chen (open role tango dancer, tango DJ, tango music researcher based in Auroville) my fascination with tango music grew even more. They have inspired me to feel tango music as a main character rather than a background score and bring musicality into my dance. This bit has again been a struggle, but a rewarding one. It was a revelation for me to learn that in tango one can interpret music in more than one way, allowing space for self-expression and teamwork. I started making my own tango playlists, listening to the music on my way to work, while cooking, cleaning and walking.

Gender roles in tango
In my one and a half years of learning tango, I got to attend boot camps, festivals and workshops happening in Bengaluru and other cities like Goa, Pune, Bombay, Auroville and Hyderabad. Based on interactions with the larger tango community in India, I learnt that Covid created a deep low in the tango spaces but over the last few years, people are again into organizing tango learning spaces, workshops, festivals and more. There are inter-city connections that are building, along with a presence on social media.

While the learning experience in these cities has been interesting, the heteronormativity of these spaces has often made me feel a bit disconnected to the larger tango community in India. What I mean is that there is a strong undertone of heteronormative gender roles associated with dancing tango roles. Usually, men lead and women follow. And here, I want to talk about my choice of primarily leading in tango, as a cis-woman, and learning to dance in open role as well. Even though I started my tango journey by learning the role of follower, I quickly realized that it is the role of leader that I am interested in. I have discovered such joy in my dancing since then. And since I have basic skills to follow from my few months of learning, I now dance in open role with a few dancers. It is such a joy to switch the role in between, to merge the textures of lead and follow into each other and create something more fluid and dynamic.

At BQT I have received a very safe and inspiring space to learn to lead as a cis-woman, along with my classmates from a wider gender spectrum. Here we do not choose the role of leader or follower based on our gender expressions. We choose the role we desire to learn and we are open to learning/trying the other role without any sense of inferiority or hesitation. In fact, in our beginners’ groups, we are encouraged to try both roles and then choose to focus on one. Our BQT milongas are very special to me because that is where I have felt a complete sense of acceptance and invitation to dance as I am, without worrying about gender expectations, along with other queer folks. And let me also say that we, at BQT, are actively working towards building this safe space together. It is not a given.

On the other hand, accessing the non-queer tango learning spaces have been a bit of a challenge. The non-queer tango learning spaces around me have been very much rooted within the gender-binary defined roles where men mostly lead and women mostly follow. In these tango classes or workshops, when the facilitators ask leaders to be on one side and followers on the other, one could see the clear gender demarcation. And they mostly stick to their roles. There are very few learners in these spaces who are okay with trying the other role. Once in such a classroom, due to shortage of followers, I asked a gentleman next to me if I can lead him and he sternly refused my request by saying “I only Lead”. Interestingly, I did see this man dance with his male friend as a follower a few minutes back, but he refused to be led by me, a woman leader.

In non-queer milonga spaces, I find it difficult to cabeceo followers (mostly women) in a new space, where usually leaders are assumed to be men and most followers are looking in their direction. For me, long-distance cabeceo doesn’t work, hasn’t worked so far. I usually have to walk up to the followers and make a very obvious cabeceo (sometimes using words too) in order to get dances. At few such occasions, I am met with pleasantly surprised eyes of women asking “Oh, you lead?” and I say “Yes, I lead”. Sometimes, some women-followers have also come looking for me to lead them which I felt was very sweet. At some occasions, my dance partners described my leading as “different”, “delicate” and “nice”. I wonder where these descriptors are coming from? Are they only for a cis-woman leader or do cis-men also receive such feedback? I am not quite sure.

In my conversations with my fellow queer tango mates at BQT, we have also discussed how cis-gendered gay people can still access such straight spaces somewhat comfortably, as opposed to trans or non-binary or gender non-conforming or disabled bodies. These considerations of sensitive inclusion are strangely assumed to be on the shoulders of the queer community and not with straight spaces. I find this division of labour quite perplexing. Is it not the responsibility of each and every tango space – be it queer or not – to create an inclusive and safe space for everyone?

A way to find queer acceptance in tango
Thanks to the social media, I am able to get a glimpse of the thriving queer tango communities around the world – mostly in Germany, the US, South America and Turkey. At BQT, we have managed to arrange online zoom calls with two amazing queer tango dancers, organizers and teachers, Karen Curtis from Abrazo Tango in SF and Ezgi Turmus from Samsun, Turkey, where they shared their tango journeys, experiences of organizing queer tango spaces and importance of open role learning in tango. To watch tango dancers such as Ezgi Turmus and Corina Herrara lead and follow beautifully has been very inspiring. I have also had a chance to have a long one-on-one conversation with Astrid Weiske, an open role tango dancer and organizer of Queertango Festival Berlin, about her vivid tango journey. Listening to them has been very inspiring and reassuring. I also want to mention Yelizaveta Nersesova’s podcast The Tango Banter and Humans of Tango podcast by Liz Sabatiuk where I was able to listen to queer and non-queer tango dancers/teachers/organizers engage with the challenges of dancing tango in a heteronormative society.

In the larger tango scene in India, queer tango is seen as some kind of an extension to the “original tango”, like an extra finger on someone’s hand – evoking a spectacle but rendered non-essential. However, there is more than enough evidence about the history of tango being QUEER. In the early 20th century when tango emerged from within the immigrant community of Buenos Aires, it was often danced between men-men and women-women couples. In the amazing Queer Tango Image Archive by Ray Batchelor (tango dancer, scholar and writer from the UK) one gets to see much evidence of same-gender couples dancing, occasionally with some cross-dressing.

The origins of tango from the early 20th century have shown us that this amazing social dance tradition has little to do with gender role-dictates and more with acceptance/expressions. So how far have we arrived in the 21st century in our tango dancing/learning/organizing journey?
 

About Vasvi Oza
Vasvi Oza is an artist, educator, tango dancer based in Bengaluru, India. She loves teaching design, tending to her plants, taking long walks and doing tango on weekends. You can write to her at vasvioza@gmail.com to have extended conversations about tango joy.