Paper short abstract:

The paper uses applied observing participation of tango teacher-training to reflect on the transmission of walking as a form of intangible heritage, the nature of embodied research, and the difficulties around writing about the doubly virtual nature of dance as intangible cultural heritage.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines teacher-training in tango as the communication of walking with tradition. It is a rhythmic walking ethnography with suspension, pause and a partner. This apprenticeship took place in Wimbledon, London, over an intense period of two years and involved training, practice and instruction in the movement of the tango body, tango history and development from Buenos Aires to London, as well as the distinct style of the tango teacher's school or style translated for a British audience. This is a gripping tale of metatarsals, migration, and violent folklore that changes the landscape in which we move - not just the dance floor, and alters the ways in which we move through it - not just with our feet. There is a virtual and imaginative quality to this orally and physically narrated subject matter that engages and frustrates the dancing public and has now been accepted as a distinct tango school or franchise in the UK specialising in improvised movement rather than rehearsed choreography. The paper uses this applied observing participation to reflect on the transmission of this technique of walking as a form of intangible heritage, the nature of embodied research as a neophyte tango teacher, and the difficulties around writing about the doubly virtual nature of dance as intangible cultural heritage.