It’s becoming more and more fashionable for the Kizomba and especially Urban Kiz dancers to import Tango Argentino elements in their patterns. Those who can, at least.

It’s becoming more and more fashionable for the Kizomba and especially Urban Kiz dancers to import Tango Argentino elements in their patterns. Those who can, at least.

Well, let me tell you it’s not just a question of fashion. This was to be expected. It was maybe even inevitable, for the simple reason that Kizomba follows the same technical path as Tango did over the last century. As the two dance styles share the same principles of dancing (leading and following), it is only natural that Kizomba is evolving by following the same pattern; in fact, it is virtually impossible for Kizomba to adopt in terms of footwork something that in Tango hasn’t already been done. The difference is only in the style of execution, which ultimately creates the difference between the two styles. But the footwork is identical, except Tango has had already at its disposal over a hundred years to discover and implement it while Kizomba is just beginning this exploration, especially through its newly sprung branch, Urban Kiz.

Urban Kiz also receives influences from afro, street dance and contemporary dance, but they can only shape its style and not its content, as long as Kizomba remains a social dance, based on leading and following, like its sibling Tango has always been and always will be.

The great technical difference between the two remains the hipwork, mostly absent in Tango and essential for Kizomba, Urban Kiz and their add-on style, Tarraxo. Tarraxo is essentially footwork transferred and lead into hipwork and upper body work. Just as Urban Kiz, it’s getting more and more complex and receives style influences from twerk, break dance and street dancing, but as long as the leading and following components are there, it will remain part of the social dance as hipwork danced in couple.

The naïve, amateur dancer thinks in terms of limited, memorized by heart, “steps” and “figures” and when they recognize more or less the same pattern of steps in another dance, they think it’s copycat, stolen or just imported. Moreover, they argue childishly over the “right” succession or pattern of dance steps, especially if they have something to defend: a commercial, personal, racial or nationalist position related to that dance. This copyright they try to naturally impose over others is already being accomplished by the specific names with local flavor given to the technical description. For instance, the “Saida” is technically described as a front cross exit to the side lane paired with the back cross of the partner. Depending on who is exiting the middle lane, there is man Saida and lady Saida. But its mathematics is the same in any style of dancing: if you do a front cross exiting the lane in front of your partner, it will be the same step in all possible systems, as there are always two possible legs and a partnership.

In terms of leading and following technology, Kizomba, being younger, is far beyond Tango; in fact, most Kizomba dancers are in the primitive stage of memorizing steps (beginning with the myth of “basic steps”, imported probably from Latin styles of dancing). This is why when it comes to “Tango influence”, the best dancers incorporate little trivial elements from Tango into demos and public shows and act like it’s a great deal, often performing them clumsy and with great effort. Having time to achieve cultural evolution, Tango teaches its dancers from the beginning a rather complex approach to dancing. Lacking the vertical axis of this complexity, the dancers of the young Kizomba evolve and specialize on the horizontal: as it’s clear that being sloppy is bad, they work on themselves in order to achieve absolute movement control and precision (acceleration, deceleration, styling, posture, attitude), which is generally considered to be the form, but the content is reduced to just a few step combinations. However, on the other hand, Tango dancers are in their turn incapable to perform and integrate the hip movement (ginga) which define the African styles and which makes Kizomba unique and unmistakable. In fact, I met Tango masters frustrated that the ladies dancing Tango have lost the ability to swing their hips completely, blocking the sensuous waving of the body at that particular level and becoming stiff. In Kizomba, on the other hand, in social parties, many ladies do not literally possess the ability to walk in couple, being limited to a few simple patterns and focusing on their hips.

We can say at this point that Kizomba sacrifices footwork for hipwork and Tango sacrifices hipwork for footwork, but ultimately the essential difference between the two styles, both coming from the same African place, is the music they are danced on. Although the step patterns are essentially the same for both Tango and Kizomba, the dancers look very differently because they mold themselves to what they hear and different sounds require different types of movement, attitudes and approaches to dancing. As Tango music is basically vintage and traditional (even Tango Nuevo has this imprint on it) and Kizomba music is, on the contrary, more and more urban and modern, this creates two very similar but at the same time very different dance styles.

Tango Influence works like some kind of Red Pill for Kizomba and especially for Urban Kiz dancers; they can actually discover that social dance is not about choreography (this is not social, it’s show), nor about memorized patterns, that any element can and should be lead in real time, and that the true art of dancing is about being able to do so. Should this spread among Kizomba dancers, then Kizomba will follow the steps of Tango, becoming a more and more complex, individual and cultural style of dancing. It’s the only way to pass the test of time anyways.