A number of studies on the performance of gender in queer tango have engaged with the critical examination of tango's traditional heteronormative grip in which woman's role as a follower and man's role as a leader are problematized. For instance, Ute Walter (Reference Walter2007), cofounder of queer tango in Hamburg, and Canadian academic and dancer Erin Manning (Reference Manning2009) reformulate tango respectively as “dialogue” and “relational movement” requiring action and reaction by both the male and female in which restrictive heteronormative roles come to loose significance and/or become undermined. Drawing on Judith Butler, Paula-Irene Villa (Reference Villa and Wetterer2010) also provides insight into queer tango practices as transgressive performances of the same gender, representing a radical subversion of the norms of gender, as it does not only de-naturalize gender but also de-genders tango. From a different angle, Marta E. Savigliano (Reference Savigliano2010) looks into tango as a (queer) commodity, composed of aesthetics and affects, which can be consumed globally, and thus interrogates how tango is globally marketed to queer culture. Mercedes Liska's Argentina Queer Tango: Dance and Sexuality Politics in Buenos Aires makes some important contributions to this scholarship as it is written from her embodied knowledge particularly in female-only queer tango circuits from late 2010 to mid-2012 in Buenos Aires. Liska's book specifically places emphasis on the value of bodily experiences and the mind-body relationship in queer tango. From a feminist perspective, she addresses the ways in which bodily techniques and gender studies inform the transformation of tango practices from heteronormative movements of tango. By doing so, she attempts to reveal “new lines of sociopolitical thought regarding dance within the framework of post-ghetto nocturnal socialization and its subsequent trajectories, conflict, and pleasures” (xi).

Liska begins with the revival of tango in the postdictatorship era of Buenos Aires in the 1990s as a form of resistance that sought to reconstruct the past rooted in the 1940s (151). She exhibits the ways in which the rebirth of tango paralleled with the sociocultural, political, and economic transformations brought about by neoliberalism. As this period was marked by the political and economic meltdown, including the deterioration of public education and the increasing job insecurity, milongas,Footnote ¹ Liska argues, became refugees from the neoliberal individualism (4) and a place as countering the predatory economic policies that undermined extant social bonds (5). Later, from a gestural and choreographic viewpoint, she examines how new dance corporealities and subjectivities came into being in the 2000s, such as therapeutic and de-heteronormativization (xi). After the 1990s, tango moves toward prioritizing dancers’ individual bodily experience and establishing a closer connection between tango and subjectivities (12). This includes the elimination of rigidity and the creation of greater bodily sensitivity in dancing (12–13). Yet this aesthetic renewal of tango in the 2000s is “accompanied by a conscious interpretation of gestural resources, posture, the pressure of the feet on the floor, and the mechanics of movements” (13). She argues that this mental process, including a fixed choreography and the perfectionist aspirations, “intellectualizes” tango whereby emotions are regulated by intellectual demands because the intention is for the body to appear natural, not “intelligent” (13–14). Liska makes a remarkable contribution in terms of addressing the tension between reason and emotion in tango and exhibiting how reason still reigns. Later, she argues that the modern rational matrix remains unchanged today: “well-organized minds in meticulously trained bodies with little margin for spontaneity” (112).

In chapter 2, in order to present the historical trajectory of queer tango, Liska takes us to the modernization era of tango between 1900 and 1920 in order to demonstrate how tango's aesthetic trajectory and the cultural matrices of the modern body are interwoven with sociopolitical development. Informed by Foucault, Liska argues that “the aesthetic transformation of tango can be understood as part of the social disciplining required for the development of the modern state” (22). Her historical account elucidates how tango was seen as a moral disease that “threatened the established order since social classes mixed promiscuously, eroticism was collectivized, genders inverted, and the dance itself was incompatible with the cultural requirements demanded by the new nation-state” (23). As this process also coincided with Argentina's effort to consolidate its national identity, Liska unveils how the Argentine state appropriated tango not only to consolidate its national identity, but also to subjugate and govern bodies through the state policies designed to transform and rationalize tango “by devising norms for socializing and controlling bodily instincts as a way of promoting healthy habit” (26). However, the rationalization of tango by means of the standardization of distinct choreographic figures and roles for male and female also gave away the possibilities of improvisation and de-heteronormativization (28). One of the most important consequences of this process is to see how it functioned as a mechanism for disciplining women by reinforcing female docility, as it assigned a secondary role to women in following men's lead in tango (37). This binary schema can be understood as a technology that facilitates “the confinement and surveillance of women,” according to Liska (39). In this chapter, Liska also briefly mentions that the queer tango practices (male-male and even female-female) were documented in this time period: “male couple dancing tango today is customarily justified historically” (39). However, one would like to hear more about these queer tango practices as the author sets up the historical trajectory for contemporary queer tango.

In chapter 3, Liska jumps to describe the trajectory of queer tango from early 2000 to 2012 and discusses how it has challenged the prevailing hetero-centric culture with its plural perception of gender (47). She writes about the meaning of queer tango and how it is seen as a form of cultural activism aiming to subvert heterosexual mechanics of the canonical tango (62). She attempts to establish a solid foundation between queer tango and cultural embodiment. Yet one might want to hear more about the development of tango between 1920 and 1990 in order to be able to reach a better understanding of the historical and cultural trajectories of both canonical and queer tango. For instance, what implications did the 1976 Argentina coup ďétat have on the cultural transformation of Argentina and queer tango?

In the next chapter, Liska explores a dialogue between music and dance and particularly between queer tango and electronic tango music (“electrotango” or “tecnotango”) in the early 2000s and demonstrates how electrotango reaffirms “transgression” on the dance floor, which could be seen as subversion of heteronormative norms (69). With her analysis of ethnomusicology in regard to the examination of tango orquestas, she offers an in-depth analysis of how electrotango affects bodily stylization, gender relations, and erotic modalities in queer tango (80–81). Yet her analysis of the relation between electrotango and gender is not fully persuasive and convincing, since the focus is much more on specific details about orquestas rather than the electrotango's impact on queer tango. Liska expands its impact in chapter 5 while addressing internationalization, the cosmopolitanism of queer tango, and the growth of tango tourism in Buenos Aires, seen as a “gay-friendly” city abroad.

Based on her ethnographic fieldwork in Milonga Tango Queer (one of the cities two main queer tango venues) from late 2010 to mid-2012, she finally takes us to the inside of the world of female queer tango in the very last chapter titled “On the Dance Floor,” which I find to be the most significant part of the book. She investigates the subjectivities at play in female queer tango. Liska coherently reflects on the ways in which tango is taught and who accepts and takes pleasure in existing guidelines, such as being led. She also touches upon the erotic textualities produced on the dance floor.

In her examination of female-only tango, Liska seeks to tease out the effects of the female as leading role, which is usually associated with masculinity or machismo. When women occupy this presupposed “masculine” leading role in queer tango, it shapes their subjectivities, bodily self-perception, and femininity (116–117). Although the link between the role of leader and masculinity held more nuance in the queer milonga (121), Liska addresses the masculinization of women, in which the role of leader might cause intersubjective tension among female tango dancers during attempts to seize a position of power (122). Liska suggests that “women need to develop a way of leading that differs from the dominant model practiced mainly by men” (123), yet she does not suggest an exact way to do so.

This chapter's subsection, “Fear of Fascination,” is impressive in its focus. Female queer tango was premised upon the everyday difficulties of being a woman in a milonga: “the woman that is led is taught to follow the lead from the start, and the less resistance offered, the greater the pleasure” (124). Given pleasure and passivity derived from the normative characteristics of feminine corporeality, Liska lucidly demonstrates the entanglement of pleasure with the docility of women, brought about by technical repetitive bodily practices. It is quite striking to see in her work that pleasure is a residual feature of corporeal disciplining (123). Also, stemming from her own experience, she herself makes a confession about her preference for the “traditional” role of the women and expresses her feeling of guilt in doing so. By showing this “inappropriate” pleasure (127), she makes a brilliant analysis and contribution to scholarship on female queer tango in terms of the fallacy of the Cartesian mind-body dualism.

Besides her invaluable empirical insight, the design of the book has some shortcomings. Firstly, despite the fact that queer tango constitutes the heart of her inquiry, she does not fully cover it until the very last chapter. While she does a good job at tracing the historical trajectory of the canonical and queer tango in the first three chapters, she does not really incorporate the examination of “female” queer tango into these chapters. Secondly, sometimes the uniformity across the chapters seems to get lost, as there are a few quick jumps across the chapters. For instance, after discussing the modernization of tango in the first two decades of the twentieth century in chapter 2, she immediately continues with the emergence of queer tango in the late 1990s in chapter 3, titled “Gender Activism in Dance Forms.” These sometimes make it hard to follow the author's line of thought. Similarly, the book's writing is sophisticated and might not be found to be quite accessible, especially to those who have no experience in tango training.

Yet taken all together, there is much to recommend in this work. Although it is not a groundbreaking study, it still makes a significant contribution to performance studies on queer tango. Thanks to her ethnographic research in female-only queer tango circuits in Buenos Aires, she pushes the reader to think critically about the “appropriateness” of bodily practices imposed by heteronormative imperatives. While those already in performance and gender scholarship might not find the book rooted in theoretical inquiry, the reader will appreciate her research from the embodied perspective as dancer and the conclusions she comes to through her experience in female queer tango circuits.