TANGO: effect of tango Argentino on cancer-associated fatigue in breast cancer patients—study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background The majority of breast cancer patients suffer from persistent impairments after completion of their primary oncological therapy. Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) in particular is a multidimensional syndrome having a profound negative impact on the quality of life. To counter CRF symptoms, physical activities are suggested as first-line interventions, mind-body therapies have been shown to be effective, and music therapy can also reduce anxiety and stress in breast cancer patients. Tango therapy that combines various elements can have an impact on physical, psychological, and cognitive abilities and could therefore have a beneficial effect on breast cancer patients. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a 6-week tango module is suited as a therapeutic approach for people after primary breast cancer therapy to favorably influence their quality of life, especially CRF levels. Methods Sixty patients with a diagnosis for stage I–III breast cancer 12–48 months before enrollment and with CRF (age > 18) will be recruited and randomized 1:1 to a tango or a waiting-list group. Movement concepts using elements of Argentine tango (self-awareness, musical and spatial perception, self-perception, playfulness, shared experience) will be examined with the participants during six consecutive weekly 1-h tango sessions. The primary outcome will be the improvement of CRF (German version of the Cancer Fatigue Scale), and the secondary outcomes will be the improvement in sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index) and quality of life (EORTC-QLQ-C30). Patient-reported outcomes will be measured at baseline and 6 weeks later; follow-up will be performed 6, 12, and 24 months after baseline. An evaluation will be performed by means of descriptive data analyses. Discussion Argentine tango, as a music-based movement therapy, can influence different skills and may improve several outcomes. The therapeutic use of Argentine tango in the care of breast cancer patients has not yet been reported. It is anticipated that participants receiving the tango module will have improved CRF, sleep, and quality of life scores compared to a waitlist control. Trial registration German Clinical Trials Registry (DRKS) DRKS00021601. Retrospectively registered on 21 August 2020

A Tale of Sound and Fury Signifying Everything: Argentine Tango Dance Films as Complex Self-Reflexive Creation

This article equates the multidimensional artistic form of Argentine tango (dance, music and song) with the innately hybrid form of film. It compares Argentine tango culture to the height of French cinephilia in the 1950s Paris, France, arguing that they are both passionate, erotic and nostalgic ways of life. In Carlos Saura’s Tango (1998) and Sally Potter’s The Tango Lesson (1997), the intertwining of the related skills of tango practice and filmmaking are an audio-visual treat for the senses and a cognitive challenge for the mind. Their self-reflexivity promotes excess and the result is a highly expressive and complex form. They evince a cross-fertilization of reality and fiction, of art and life, typical of a perfect mise en abyme as described by Christian Metz. These films are also art musicals, although they depart from the Hollywood musical conventions. Yet, one cannot speak in their case of intermedia reflexivity, according to Petr Szczepanik’s definition, because both of them retain their qualities in a symbiotic relationship of likeness that highlights their mutual aura.

A Neoliberal Semi-Public Space in the Era of the JDP: Tango in Istanbul

How has Argentine tango dance, that appears to represent publicly an erotic relationship between the female and the male, found the space to expand in Turkey pioneered by urban Istanbul despite the conservative JDP regime? While the tango dance shifted to a global entertainment and culture industry in the 21st century providing global belongingness, it locally became one neoliberal semi-public space of secular upper and middle class Turkish Muslims to reflect and reproduce their self-identity by distinguishing themselves from new Islamic bourgeoisie as well as lower social classes. This character provided the grounds for its spread even under the conservative government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and it is still on practice despite such a conservative rule, even existing online during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Synchronization in demonstrations. Multimodal practices for instructing body knowledge

Demonstrations are a central resource for instructing body knowledge. They allow instructors to provide learners with a structured perceptual access to the performance of an activity. The present paper considers demonstrations as inherently social activities, in which not only the instructor but also the learners may participate. A particular form of co-participation is that learners synchronize their own bodily actions with the demonstration of the instructor. The paper examines two practices of synchronization in demonstrations. In emergent synchronizations the instructor invites the student(s) to synchronize, rather than request them to do so. In orchestrated synchronizations teachers actively pursue the students’ bodily synchronization. The two practices are typically used for different instructional purposes. While emergent synchronizations are typically used in corrective instructions, orchestrated synchronizations are typically used to instruct new knowledge. Based on a large corpus of instructions in dancing Argentine Tango, the paper uses multimodal interaction analysis to characterize both practices regarding their interactional organization, their functional properties and the resources used by the participants to establish synchronization.

TANGO - Effect of Tango Argentino on cancer-associated fatigue in breast cancer patients: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background The majority of breast cancer patients suffer from persistent impairments after completion of their primary oncological therapy. Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) in particular is a multidimensional syndrome having a profound negative impact on the quality of life. To counter CRF symptoms, exercise and physical activity are suggested as first-line interventions, mind-body therapies have been shown to be effective, and music therapy can also reduce anxiety and stress in breast cancer patients. Tango therapy that combines various elements may therefore have beneficial effects in breast cancer patients. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a 6-week tango module is suited as a therapeutic approach for people after primary breast cancer therapy to favorably influence their quality of life, especially CRF levels. Methods Sixty patients with a diagnosis for stage I-III breast cancer 12-48 months before enrollment and with CRF (age > 18) will be recruited and randomized 1:1 to a tango or a waiting-list group. Movement concepts using elements of Argentine tango (self-awareness, musical and spatial perception, self-perception, playfulness, shared experience) will be examined with the participants during six consecutive weekly one-hour tango sessions. The primary outcome will be the improvement of CRF (German version of the Cancer Fatigue Scale) and the secondary outcomes will be the improvement in sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index) and quality of life (EORTC-QLQ-C30). Patient reported outcomes will be measured at baseline and six weeks later; follow-up will be performed six, twelve and twenty four months after baseline. An evaluation will be performed by means of descriptive data analyses. Discussion Argentine tango, as a music-based movement therapy, can influence physical, psychological and cognitive skills. The therapeutic use of Argentine tango in the care of breast cancer patients has not yet been reported. It is anticipated that participants receiving the tango module will have improved CRF, sleep and quality of life scores compared to a waitlist control. Trial registration Trial registration number DRKS00021601. Retrospectively registered on 21 August 2020.

Implications of Argentine Tango for Health Promotion, Physical Well-Being as Well as Emotional, Personal and Social Life on a Group of Women Who Dance

Background: The aim of the research was to determine the effect that dance has on the promotion of health, physical well-being, as well as the emotional, personal and social life of women who dance. In addition, the impact of the physical activity of long, often all-night dancing events on women’s health was investigated. This included possible disturbances in their monthly cycle and circadian rhythm, taking into account symptoms of biological rhythm disturbances. Methods: The study involved 214 women: tango group: 109, sedentary group: 105. The Mann–Whitney U and chi2 tests were used to compare the groups, as well as multiple ordinal regression to analyse individual predictors of missed menstrual periods. Results: The tango vs. sedentary groups did not differ in the duration of menstrual bleeding, the degree of pain during menstruation, the regularity of menstruation, the number of regular monthly cycles per year, and amenorrhea. Intermenstrual spotting was more common in dancers (tango 12.8% vs. sedentary 4.8%; p = 0.038). The frequency of missed periods was not increased by any of the assessed aspects. In 59.6% of female dancers, milongas caused disturbances in circadian rhythms, including extreme fatigue and drowsiness (36.7%), 66.0% of the dancers mentioned only positive aspects of Argentine Tango’s impact on their personal life. Conclusions: tango plays a positive and multifaceted role in the lives of dancers and fulfils the need for social contact. The physical effort put into this form of physical activity does not significantly affect the menstrual cycle, and thus the reproductive functions, and can be recommended as an attractive and safe form of physical recreation for women.

Experience Affects EEG Event-Related Synchronization in Dancers and Non-dancers While Listening to Preferred Music

EEGs were analyzed to investigate the effect of experiences in listening to preferred music in dancers and non-dancers. Participants passively listened to instrumental music of their preferred genre for 2 min (Argentine tango for dancers, classical, or jazz for non-dancers), alternate genres, and silence. Both groups showed increased activity for their preferred music compared to non-preferred music in the gamma, beta, and alpha frequency bands. The results suggest all participants' conscious recognition of and affective responses to their familiar music (gamma), appreciation of the tempo embedded in their preferred music and emotional arousal (beta), and enhanced attention mechanism for cognitive operations such as memory retrieval (alpha). The observed alpha activity is considered in the framework of the alpha functional inhibition hypothesis, in that years of experience listening to their favorite type of music may have honed the cerebral responses to achieve efficient cortical processes. Analyses of the electroencephalogram (EEG) activity over 100s-long music pieces revealed a difference between dancers and non-dancers in the magnitude of an initial alpha event-related desynchronization (ERD) and the later development of an alpha event-related synchronization (ERS) for their preferred music. Dancers exhibited augmented alpha ERD, as well as augmented and uninterrupted alpha ERS over the remaining 80s. This augmentation in dancers is hypothesized to be derived from creative cognition or motor imagery operations developed through their dance experiences.

(Re-)engaging touch as a tango dancer: An experimental framework for kinaesthetic listening1

This article explores how the felt sense of touch, as engaged through the enabling constraints of the Argentine tango duet, can facilitate an experience of kinaesthetic listening in the spaces emerging between the dancer’s inside and outside worlds. The author’s habitual perception of giving and receiving touch as a tango dancer is destabilized by framing a series of somatic experiences in settings where customary tango conditions and assumptions do not apply. This involves experimenting with methods and tools of inquiry borrowed from contact and contemporary dance improvisation. The article argues that when practiced as a form of kinaesthetic listening, tango is conducive to a process of sensing and feeling together. In this process, it becomes possible to be touched both physically and affectively by the movement impulses negotiated between the partners. This possibility unsettles the reductive idea of one’s body as a separate entity preceding the encounter.