The Tango Philadelphia Story: A Mixed-methods Study of Building Community, Enhancing Lives, and Exploring Spirituality through Argentine Tango

Abstract

Tango invites communication and creativity, it offers growth and community, and, in Philadelphia, it draws a unique cohort of dancers. What forces have driven growth of the Philadelphia tango community, who exactly are its members, and why do they dance tango? This qualitative and quantitative study recounts the community's history, reveals the people at its core, and explores what the dance means to them. It is a mixed-method, multi-layered integration of dance history, community profile, and individual narrative. Twenty-six instructors and event organizers provided data on the community's history. More than 100 dancers participated in a survey that gathered descriptive and demographic data, and nine dancers gave interviews on their lived experiences of tango. The community grew steadily from 1991 through 2006. Early local entrepreneurs modeled an ethos that placed a premium on tango's community-building capacity. This ethos remained a central force in the community's growth, drawing a unique cohort of dancers. Compared to Philadelphia census data, tango survey respondents were fifteen years older on average, more likely to be divorced or to have been born outside of the continental United States, better educated with higher incomes, and more likely to work in the arts. Ethnographic, quantitative, and mixed methods analysis reveals how tango may serve these unique cohorts and how many dancers perceive that tango enhances their physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social lives. Phenomenological inquiry explores dancers' concepts of spirituality and how some made spiritual meaning from tango experiences. Four central themes that emerged--tango music, tango dance, interactive experience, and internal experience--can be theorized to intertwine in a cycle wherein tango invites human interaction that leads to internal growth, which improves one's capacity to dance tango, thus creating a more satisfying interactive and internal experience. This research represents the first comprehensive study of tango in Philadelphia. It documents the creation of a popular social dance community in a major U.S. city and offers new data and theories on community building. It is also the first study to explore intersections between spirituality and tango and offers new insights into how tango improves adults' health and well being.