Understanding Tango Danceability by Accessing Embodied Knowledge: The “Harmonic Comfort Zone”

“The Tango Danceability of Music in European Perspective” is the title of a research project in which the translocal genre tango argentino is examined, focusing on its history and some of its manifestations in Europe. The broad objective of the project is to determine which factors in sound, movement, and social relations are relevant to the question of “tango danceability.” To access embodied knowledge of danceability by tango dancers, we designed an experiment in which tango dancers throughout Europe were asked to dance to newly composed pieces and write down their immediate reactions to it. Some of the outcomes of this experiment confirm inside knowledge I have gained as a tango dancer for more than a decade. Other aspects, such as the importance of harmonic structures, were surprising and led to insights impossible to uncover without quantitative, experimental approaches in combination with qualitative expert knowledge.