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Ethnographic Rendez-vous
let us perform in tango sites “as if” we were still there, in a theatrical
mise-en-scène of vernacular emotional spaces. Given the scarcity of
distinct Argentine social enclaves in New York City, nomadic milon-
gas have become unique reservoirs for Argentines in their search for
familiar vocabulary, flavors, and music. Unsurprisingly, my increas-
ing interest in tango also paralleled the acquisition of my migratory
habitus (Bourdieu 1984 ) that translated into my craving for Argen-
tine sounds, smells, voices, and places, even at the cost of idealizing
what I had left behind.
Entering the Field: A Non-dancing Tanguera
Very early in my ethnotango incursions (fieldwork at the milongas), I
had decided to do what my colleagues in the tango field would prob-
ably consider a profanity: I decided not to dance tango. Far from be-
ing a well-designed strategy, this decision resulted from an intuitive
assessment of the social dynamics I had witnessed in the tango mi-
lieu, where multiple layers of social hierarchies are intertwined in the
tango savoir-faire. As an insider–outsider (insider as an Argentine im-
migrant; outsider as one who does not enter the tango floor), my po-
sition as an ethnographer in the tango world has often been scruti-
nized not only by colleagues, who actually are tango ethnographers,
but also by some of my tango interviewees.
While discussing tango with peers (Argentines and non-Argentines) I
have often felt like an agnostic attending a ritualized ceremony, which
can be intellectually understood but not sensitively experienced. What
is the authoritative standpoint on tango from which I am able to di-
gress, if I have not yet submitted myself to the tango’s embrace? What
is the source of my legitimized knowledge if all I know is intelligible
rhetoric, which has not been triangulated (confirmed, validated) by
my bodily experience? Needless to say, tango, in its recent globalized
construction as Latino passion, is the ultimate oxymoron that has in-
creasingly attracted the interest of an eclectic international clientele,
which has often become frustrated when realizing that this author
(the tango lady) does not exercise the talents that interest her ethno-
graphic endeavors.
