As venues became more crowded and dress began to alter, the Argentine Tango evolved into a diversity of styles that evolved across locations and times.
The goal of the Argentine Tango is to improvise the steps while matching the speed and emotion of the music.
The Argentine Tango is performed by two persons in an embrace that can be open (the leader and follower dance at arm's length) or closed (the leader and follower dance at shoulder height) (the dancer touch chest-to-chest).
The follower shifts their weight from one foot to the next, never resting on both at the same time. The leader directs the following to alternate feet by stepping outside the follower's legs.
Even though the Argentine Tango is mostly reliant on improvisation, there are a few fundamental steps that create the style's foundation:
Following the Argentine Tango's rebirth in the 1980s, instructors began delving further into the tango's precise moves. Gustavo Naveira and Fabian Salas began teaching dancers how to dance rather than what to perform after examining the mechanics of movement in Argentine Tango.
While not officially the Argentine Tango, this movement is known as Nuevo Tango and integrates many of the intuitive and improvisational qualities of the tango into this new form.
Nuevo Tango's music is influenced by the revolutionary style of the 1950s when instruments like the saxophone and electric guitar were introduced to tango music.
Because tango as a style is so prone to change and progression into other genres, it's no surprise that modern tango is far more diversified than other dances. While most people are familiar with the most prominent form of tango music, the tango dance, this musical style has evolved into a variety of genres that have been popularised by everyone from solo artists to big ensemble orchestras, each with their artistic characteristics.
The popularity of tango music in Argentina has resulted in not only this diversity but also several distinct tango music schools that have been kept to this day by several families who work as orchestras to promote tango music and dance. These are the Di Sarli, d'Arienzo, Troilo, and Pugliese families, all of which are descended from Italian immigrant families who got involved in the tango scene in the late 1800s.
While the so-called "Golden Age of Tango" (which spanned from the 1930s through the 1950s) is now a distant memory, new generations of Argentine Tango musicians have access to a wider range of musical styles. This encompasses not only Sal Piazzolla's incredible achievements in the tango nuevo style, but also numerous modern genres like electro-tango and tango that incorporates elements from other styles like rock, hip-hop, blues, and world music, and others.