Dance and biography: Or why should a biographical researcher be interested in tango?

This paper is situated in the emerging field of the sociology of popular dance, a field which explores the relevance of dance in people’s everyday lives, its significance in the construction of identity, and its entanglements with power, and subversion. Taking the recent craze of  Argentinean tango as a case in point, I argue that sociologists should not – as is perhaps our first inclination – dismiss dance as a frivolous leisure activity of little scholarly importance. I will show that tango has much to offer for biographical research. It can help us understand the role of passion in people’s everyday lives, the possibilities for agency which subcultures provide, as well as enable us to explore the complicated intersections of gender, class, ethnicity and national belonging which emerge when embodied social practices transverse national and cultural borders to become global phenomena.