To change the world in 10 years

Where was I? Right, tango teachers being able to dance both roles because it made them more atractive and talented teachers (read my previous blog: 100 milongas in 100 days).

Learning both roles was a question of learning a technique, being a better teacher and being able to teach both men and woman. 

So when and how did the change of roles as a social and public phenomenon begin?

  

If you know some tango history you also know, that the Tango was born in the lower class of the argentine society. You know it was hidden away and a place where men from the higher class would lie to their wifes to go and dance with their young lowers in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. Love and passion made history and created a dance that survived and turned into a living legend. 

The history repeats itself 100 years later. Tango between same sex was born hidden away from the public in the subculture of Buenos Aires where you would lie to your family to go and dance with your love.

Its all very simple actually. A person falls in love with a tango dancer of same sex and starts to think: How to dance tango with the one you love when love between same sex is forbidden? You create your own hidden place where everybody can dance with whoever they want. And so it began - changing the tango into the gender free dance that it was actually born as, but 100 years of moral educations made so difficult to return to. 

The first hidden queer tango places in Argentina was born more or less 10 years ago. The name queer was first related to the phenomenon years later, and still people discuss whether queer is the right name for this type of Tango danced without predetermined gender roles. 

But Queer tango has to do with a lot more than love between people of same sex, it has to do with persons with an indifferent view at gender roles. People who are blind to gender and to the moral public education. People making weird normal and everything natural. 

It has to do with a generation longing for a place to express themself, it has to do with international influence it has to do with a society changing faster than you can ever imaging. Some say its about loosing values other say it´s the creation of ultimate freedom. 

The people who 10 years ago started a journey in search of new gender identities, freedom of expression, and an end to a lot of prejudices, who put their face in the public spotlight to change a public moral education in Argentina, have now let go of what they started and left it in the hands of the public to take to whereever it will go.