Tango is a Man's Business
All the sources coincide in saying that the fancy steps of the tango were started as a personal ‘embroidery’. The compadrito showed off his skills in the corte and the quebrada, in a street corner, to his friends or to the woman he wanted to impress. These filigrees were the creation of a solitary man proud to exhibit his creation.
Later, the tango was danced only between men, although there are some authors who resolutely deny this saying that the tango, as the milonga before and the dance even before that, was always danced by a couple of a man and a woman. However, tango as a dance for a couple, started being danced by men, even though this seems absurd.
There are numerous photos and testimonies of compadritos dancing together. Some authors base this in the machismo prevalent in the barrios and in the whole of society at that time. Tango seemed to be only ‘a man’s business’. But it would be wrong to attribute to this even the smallest homosexual implication. It was a question of demonstrating a skill, a showing off of one’s ability.
Even later, when the tango finally attracted the woman to dance, she would not be the most important ingredient, but the dance itself, the ostentatious showing of knowing how to dance. It is only when the tango turns nocturnal, when it becomes part of a cabaret that it becomes, sometimes, a pretext for an ulterior amorous escapade.
Even when the woman accepts the tango, the first ones to dance it would be the prostitutes and ‘pupils’ in the brothels. The narcissism of the compadrito will pay more attention to the tango itself than to his occasional partner; he won’t even mind too much if she is not pretty, the important thing is that she dances well and partners him well in the demonstration of his skill.
So it would be better to say that it is danced between men because always, even now, it has been danced by couples of men but in almost every case as a sort of training to dance it later with women. Then, when at a later stage the tango was danced in cabarets, the women would dance it among themselves, while they waited for their clients.