Tango in South Korea / 한국의 땅고(탱고)

Friends have asked me about the Tango scene in South Korea often, so I have decided to write down a few of my impressions here.  For your information, I have lived in Seoul for two and half years and I plan to continue to live there for the foreseeable future.  I work full-time as a Tango teacher and organizer, and I visit the local milongas often.

 

 

Tango in Korea started around 2000 and it has grown rapidly since then.  In Seoul, the capital city, there are 3 venues solely devoted to Tango and they open 7 days a week.  There are also other weekly or semi-regular milongas and practicas, and an assortment of annual events and parties.  on a good night of a popular milonga you can easily find between 80 to 100 dancers.  Special events can draw up to a few hundreds or more.  Outside of Seoul, there is also Tango in half a dozen other cities, including Busan, Daegu, and Daejeon.  Tango in these places are not as big, but they are healthy growing communities with plenty of activities as well.

   

A distinct feature of Tango in South Korea is the dominance of Tango clubs (동호회, Dong Ho Hoi, or "Common Interests Association").  The bigger Tango clubs are very well-organized, with an elected staff and regular member meetings.  Membership is usually obtained by joining the beginners/initiating classes that the clubs offer.  Each series of such classes typically last 2 months, during which the club also organizes plenty of out-of-class social activities for the participants to mix and mingle.

 

 

Each series of classes is labeled by a number called "Gi".  When a member from 30 Gi meets a member from 36 Gi, he will know that he is 1 year more senior than the other member because they are separated by 6 Gi's.  After the 2-month beginner's series, the club typically offers a program of more advanced classes for the members to grow.  Some clubs have designated teachers who teach all the classes (in some cases they are the founders of the clubs), and some clubs have the more senior members rotate as teachers.

 

There are also smaller clubs which do not follow this structure.  They are based on other purposes such as coming together to practice and study, or they are all students of a particular teacher or style.  New members of this kind of clubs usually have already danced for a while.  Whether big or small, most clubs are not for profit and are organized by enthusiasts who volunteer their time, which helps to keep prices low.  In Seoul, there are about a dozen such Tango clubs, with half of them being the bigger kind.

 

Members of the same club generally tend to socialize and dance with each other.  In fact, club membership offers a kind of social identification that many people find essential and natural.  For example, when a person introduces himself in public situations, he often mentions his club affiliation together with his name.  There are of course exceptions - some people do not belong to any club (or do not advertise which club they belong to) and carry themselves as "independents".

 

 

 Most Tango dancers in Korea are of a younger generation, say people under 40.  This may have to do with the fact that social dancing was not well-accepted (or even legal) in Korean society until recently.  I have met people who have visited milongas for years but they never tell their family or co-workers about their interests in Tango.

 

Like any other big communities, people in Korea dance in many different ways.  In the milongas, especially when it gets crowded, people generally dance close embrace.  In recent years many top-level teachers have visited Korea and they bring with them their distinct influences.  It has been very exciting for me to be a part of Tango in Korea for the past couple years, and I look forward to see how it grows in the future.