ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how it feels to dance Argentine tango from an auto-ethnographic perspective. It enables attention to tango roles without seeking to essentialise gendered relations, through the exploration of what emerges within each embrace. The Argentine tango close embrace requires a specific kind of physical commitment between two bodies that is more intimate than other dances, before any other type of connection is made between the two people dancing. The chapter focuses on social dancing, experiences of touch within dance more widely, and the connections between dancing and Irigaray's perspectives on difference and subjectivity. It then turns to the Argentine tango embrace. Then, the chapter examines a series of embraces with different dancers in the social setting of a milonga to consider what it might mean to dance in a close embrace, how the embrace shapes relations between two people, and reflect on aspects of difference and subjectivity.
