How the Tango could save your relationship

It takes two. It’s been called “vertical sex”. It’s enough to make a successful London publisher drop her career and head to the other side of the world, and now it’s being used as relationship therapy for couples. On the eve of a new series of Strictly Come Dancing, the tango is winning scientifically backed repute for boosting vigour, busting stress and getting lovers back in love. Tango may have its roots in the brothels of Argentina, but a wave of respectable research is highlighting its ability to heal relationships and create a heady glow of wellbeing. A study published last month, by Cynthia Quiroga Murcia, a psychologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, reveals how the dance boosts men and women’s sex hormones and emotions.

Her team tested dancers’ saliva before and after hitting the floor together, to monitor levels of testosterone and the stress hormone cortisol. The dancers also filled in mood questionnaires. Tango’s choreography appears to release stress and send testosterone racing, in women as well as men, reported the journal Music and Medicine. The study participants (most of whom danced with their usual partner) were left feeling calmer, sexier and more closely bonded. Previous studies have shown that other dances don’t have this effect.

Such findings have inspired the creation of the International Association of Tango Therapy, whose British representative, Martin Soletano, works with couples in trouble. “Most of the problems that partners have in relationships can be seen in their tango dancing,” he says. “For example, the man has to lead, as he is the one who can see where they are going when they’re moving forwards. The woman is going backwards; she can’t see, so she needs to trust her man. No man can push a woman into making steps she doesn’t want to make, or to move in a certain direction. He has to persuade her, to make her happy. If she can trust, she will follow. If you’re a couple who can’t trust each other, it’s going to get complicated.”

Soletano, an Argentinian who lives in Cardiff with his wife Karen, a therapist, adds: “The therapy looks like tango, but it is not like a normal tango lesson because the focus is different — it starts with exercises that are aimed at finding a better connection between the couples. Tango needs a very good connection. One of the things you need is confidence — in yourself, your dancing and your partner. The partner needs to help you to dance or it won’t work. So there’s a deeper meaning to the old saying ‘It takes two to tango’.”

Tango therapy for couples is also being practised in Argentina, France and Italy. “In the UK we are developing workshops with therapists so that we can set up networks and promote research into its effectiveness,” Soletano says.

The idea is enthusiastically supported by Vanessa Lloyd Platt, a divorce lawyer who recommends that potential clients try tango lessons before launching into painful and costly marriage break-ups. Since taking up the dance herself, she has starred in a documentary, London Tango, which had its premiere at this year’s Notting Hill Film Festival. Lloyd Platt says: “I tell my clients, if there is any possibility of a resolution with your partner, why not attempt to resurrect the relationship by dancing? One of the things that goes in the final year of a marriage breakdown is the physical relationship. If you can learn how to hold each other again, that can make a tremendously important difference. “I have saved two marriages,” says Lloyd Platt, who is twice-divorced. “Dancing is a lot cheaper than coming to me. Dance lessons are about £50 an hour; my fee is £285 an hour plus VAT. Next year, I plan to go to Argentina and learn the tango on a full course.”

Sarah Keller, 34, is already studying in Buenos Aires. A year ago, she took a sabbatical from her literary editor’s job at a large London publisher to learn tango in Argentina for six months. When the sabbatical was over, she returned to London — to clear her desk before going back to Argentina again. Not even the lure of a romance in England was enough to keep her here. “I’d got to where I’d always wanted to get in my dream career, but actually I found the whole London existence of work, work, work was stifling the life out of me. I’d always loved dancing, so thought that I’d try it while travelling on my sabbatical. In the tango, in the dancehalls of Buenos Aires, I found everything that I’d been looking for. Now I want to keep learning, to get better and better. I’ve got some freelance editorial work, which should be just enough to support me. My priorities have changed completely.”

Tango’s allure lies in the fact that it is far more than simply a dance. It has a story, one that contains deep layers of drama and tangled complexities of desire, as well as all those dark Latin sexual undertones. It was born in the streets of late 19th-century Buenos Aires, where the macho young men of the city danced together. Theories about its precise origins are diverse and contradictory: some historians say it was developed from South American and European dances in poor areas of Buenos Aires by groups of immigrant men, and that it was considered unseemly for women to participate because of the dance’s sexual connotations. Others say prostitutes developed the tango in the brothels to pass the time, then the men practised it among themselves so that they could invite the women to dance — the flashiest males vied for the hearts of the hottest working girls.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that the tango itself has even been put on the couch by a group of Argentine psychoanalysts in the Freudian journal Vertex. The analysts’ study concludes that the dance mixes elements of “nostalgia, grief and loneliness, along with father-son rivalry, the conflict with the absent mother, the relationship between sexes, male chauvinism, infatuation, identity, the fear of death and the rebirth to a new life”. Heady stuff, and that’s without getting into the subject of tight suits, high heels and fishnets.

Back in chilly England, there are a few more down-to-earth issues to address. When, out of sheer curiosity, I went to tango classes ten years ago, my nascent shimmying was scuppered by two fundamental difficulties — a surprising dearth of women with any sense of rhythm and a lack of regular venues. The latter, at least, has improved a lot in recent years, with regular “milongas” — social tango nights — being held in London, Edinburgh and Belfast, as well as provincial towns including Cambridge and Malvern.

Eleonora Simoes, who has run milongas in Central London for a decade, says: “In the past five years, interest has grown immensely and it is continuing to grow. It has a lot to do with the physical and emotional wellbeing that you get from dancing. I think that it’s particularly true in this country because there is not much chance for this kind of social interaction. It’s usually too cold and people just go to work and go home again.

“Tango provides a healthy environment for sociability. Women and men may come thinking that they might meet a life partner, and that certainly does happen, but from that starting point they discover the excitement of tango’s social and emotional aspects — and the challenge of dancing skilfully.”

Simoes, an Argentinian, holds milongas in Holborn, Central London, on Wednesdays and Sundays that attract around 100 dancers (www.lamilongadelaluna.com). “On big events, we can attract up to 300 people.” If you are interested in meeting a life partner through tango, research by Gunter Kreutz of the Royal Northern College of Music sounds encouraging. His studies found that dancers tend to be characterised by a higher than average level of education and socioeconomic status. On the whole, they are more fun-seeking and sociable than most Britons, too.

And all the evidence suggests that it’s never too late to start learning. It was during a holiday at Reid’s Palace Hotel in Madeira that George Bernard Shaw learnt to tango at the age of 68. A photograph of him, white-bearded and in the arms of a glamorous, youthful woman attests to his achievement, of which he was extremely proud. “To the only man who ever taught me anything,” he wrote on a photograph he gave to the hotel’s dance teacher.

Tango can indeed work particularly well with old people. Researchers at McGill University, Montreal, reported this year in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity that tango works much better than conventional walking or training to reduce the risk of falls in older people.

Tango’s therapeutic powers are now being pioneered for young people, too, in particular those suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Gina Ward, of the Parkinson’s Disease Society’s youth branch in Leicester, recently began holding classes after reading scientific research on the dance’s benefits for people with degenerative brain diseases. Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine reported in May in the Journal of Rehabilitative Medicine how the dance’s rhythmic skilled movements may improve co-ordination in individuals with Parkinson’s by activating the brain’s motor-control centre, the basal ganglia. Ward says: “The tango is perfect for those with neurological problems that result in poor balance.” One of her dancers, Sudhansu Fatania, a dentist, says: “ I go as often as I can. It really does help.”

Back in the birthplace of tango, the dance is even being introduced as psychological therapy. On the fourth floor of Buenos Aires’ largest psychiatric hospital, the patients dance with doctors and nurses. A few months ago, some were too shy to talk and others could barely keep upright. Now they embrace cheek to cheek, gliding to an accordion’s mournful chords. “Treatment is not just about therapy and drugs, it’s about giving them a nice time,” says Trinidad Cocha, a psychologist who teaches weekly tango therapy. “They relax and all the labels disappear,” she adds. “We are not doctors, nurses, musicians or patients. We are just tango dancers.”