Body language exists with its own codes. Like any other language, it is related to the history and the culture of the people.
We will mention what we understand by language, as a milestone, to start to think the dance of tango like a true dialogue between two that, in an embrace, communicate with no obstacles of race or origin.
For the Psychoanalysis it is fundamental that the expression of ideas is not only understood in the use of the language, also a more than important place is given to the language of the gestures and any other form in which the individual can express his state of mind.
The own body, and anything that concerns the sexual life will be considered, then, as a privileged source of that symbolism.
According to Freud, the neurosis recalls, in the use of certain symbols, some paths already passed by the whole mankind in ancient ages of culture.
The existence of the turns of phrases, the superstitions and the habits, give testimony today of this.
The ideas of Freud about symbolism and language are, “seminal ideas”, “keys” of a new way of thinking which we fully share. It allows us to study, observe and understand the body in tango that, from its birth was charged of symbolisms, of necessity of expressing frustration, solitude and anguish. The same way as the cry of a baby came to occupy a place of helplessness.
We maintain that tango is a language that contains information so valuable that those who receive it remain like tied to it waiting to know more.
We must clarify, beforehand, that we will refer always, along our project, to tango as a dance, not as a sport, nor as stage skills but to that one that means a bond beyond technique, pure communication, that one that we, search to explain, revise and recover in its own essence.
The mimicries, the gestures, the postures, the distance with the other, the way of touching him and avoiding him, the looks, are the matter of a language written in space and time, and refer to an order of significances.
They participate in a symbolic order, they are the signs of an expressivity that occurs when seeing, understanding or, better, that it let’s itself be glimpsed in the extent that it is never completely invisible to its significance.
The movements of the body reveal the mutual emotions of the persons involved.
Inside a given cultural community, people have to its disposal cultural somatic register in common that blends both the sensory perceptions and the gestures.
In tango we speak of steps, which integrate the figure that at the same time, entwined form the phrases, that speech that always lasts for about 3 minutes.
So…Can we keep on saying that tango is danced without speaking?
Mónica Peri.
Nota: We will publish the second part of this article soon in this same section.
