filamentosmovimentos

"the tango I explore here is improvised. Indeed, it is the improvised nature of tango that fascinates me and makes it possible for me to advance tango as an example of and a metaphor for a politics of touch. Since the movements of tango are always to come, it is impossible to speak of "a" tango, of an ideal gesture or a concrete politics of touch. Tango as a signifier, a dance, a metaphor, is an invested attempt to locate myself faced with an other, to locate the other faced with myself, not, first and foremost, a choreographed representation of desire played out on a stage.

(...)

Tango is an encounter that introduces us to a different way of living with the other. It is a movement that offers the possibility of improvising an encounter with the other. (...) the gesture of turning to the other, of inventing a movement with another whom I do not know and cannot anticipate. (...)
The movements of the dance are initiated_invited* by a lead, a direction, an opening to which the follower responds_improvises*_also questioning*. Tango is an exchange that depends on the closeness of two bodies, willing to engage_listen* to*_with one-another."

excerpts from chapter "Negotiating Influence: Touch and Tango" 

in "Politics of Touch, sense, movement, sovereignty" 

by Erin Manning, 2006

* added by Catarina