Customer Reviews

Tango: Creation of a Cultural Icon

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Baim is to be commended for writing a book on a topic that is woefully ignored by English-language publishers. (The only allegedly non-fiction works on Tango published in English in recent memory are the academically dishonest "Tango: The Art History of Love" by Thompson, and the self-congratulatory "Kiss and Tango" by Palmer.)

Unfortunately, Baim seems to be confused as to the differences among Argentine Tango, which this book purports to be about, and the two forms of ballroom tango, International Standard Tango and American Smooth Tango. It appears that, while she is aware that there is a tango that's done in ballrooms, she isn't at all clear that (a) they aren't the same dance and/or (b) that the figures aren't interchangeable in some way.

In fact, the book is heavily padded with a lengthy appendix on ballroom tango figures, cribbed without comment from an almost-century-old book. The material is completely obsolete as a description of modern ballroom tango, and was never an accurate description of Argentine tango figures.