The Definitive Guide to Responding to Tango Vultures: for Dancers
Disclaimer
The below information is for awareness and preventative purposes only; please do not use this article to diagnose individuals. If you are experiencing an emergency and/or are currently in a relationship with ongoing violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (800) 799-7233.
Argentine Tango and the communities associated with it is a great way to meet new people, physically challenge yourself, and improve your emotional health.
It’s also a microcosm of the larger world, which means you’re bound to cross paths with people who are unsafe.
These unsafe people are called Tango Vultures, and the abuse they perpetuate takes on a unique flavor in a tango context.
What are Tango Vultures?
Originally mentioned in my Tango Glossary post, “Tango Vulture” is a placeholder term for clinical narcissists and dancers with dark triad personality characteristics who use tango to abuse, coerce, and psychologically, spiritually, or physically harm others, often via covert, underhanded means.
Relationships with Tango Vultures may or may not be romantic, and Tango Vultures themselves are usually – but not always – experienced single men with insecure attachment styles. At least one exists in every tango community, but they are more numerous in scenes with divided, passive leadership and more single women.
Who do Tango Vultures target?
Tango Vultures look for vulnerability in their targets.
While abusive personalities might have a preferred physical, racial, or socioeconomic type, their victims tend to share one key trait – vulnerability.
Like with the word Tango Vulture, vulnerability is a placeholder term, one that increases a victim’s likelihood that they lack the resources or ability to fight back against an abusive tango relationship.
Vulnerability can include:
Autistic and neurodivergent dancers, who possess trusting natures, an inability to read social cues and social intent, and are more likely to be socially isolated.
Low economic status, which can make one susceptible to accepting offers for free private lessons and passes to multi-day tango events.
Previous history of trauma. Dancers with a history of abusive relationships and who come from dysfunctional family systems are at particularly high risk of being targeted by Tango Vultures, especially if they’ve never enrolled in therapy.
Insecure attachment styles, particularly anxious/preoccupied dancers with codependent tendencies and a strong need to be desired or included.
Single newcomers to tango communities (of all ages), who arrive with starry eyes, hopes of meeting a romantic partner, and who aren’t familiar with appropriate tango behavior.
Dancers with unique physical characteristics, such as racial/religious minorities in homogenous tango communities, the visibly disabled, and dancers at either end of the attractiveness spectrum.
Highly sensitive and empathic dancers, especially when coupled with porous boundaries and a history of trauma.
Dancers entering tango with delicate emotional states, such as the newly single, the bereaved, chronic disease sufferers, immigrants and refugees, and those recovering from addiction, eating disorders, and psychiatric conditions.
Understanding the Abuse Cycle
Abuse is like a circle; it repeats and never ends, so long as you remain in the relationship.
In a perfect world, abusive personalities would be apparent at first glance (and probably also have red eyes). Abuse, and those who perpetuate it in reality, however, never starts on day one, because the predator who cuts right to the chase is a predator whose victims never stick around.
To facilitate the bonding process needed to ensure victims remain in the relationship, all abusers engage in the following behavior pattern:
Love-bombing
The first phase of an abusive relationship, when a predator overwhelms their target with attention. Depending on an abuser’s personality type, love bombing may include constant texting, grand romantic gestures, gifts, words of admiration, and long, intimate conversations.
If dealing with a personality disordered individual, this stage also includes mirroring, where the abuser mimics your interests, mannerisms, goals, and identity.
Abusers typically love-bomb for up to three months before moving into the below tension phase.
Tension
An abuser cannot sustain their romantic mask for long, and tension, invoked by external and internal stressors, rises as the abuser becomes quarrelsome. Threats, arguments, negging, angry outbursts, coercion, and the sudden withdrawal of affection and availability are hallmarks of this stage.
Incident
The release of built-up tension, where psychological, physical, or sexual violence occurs.
Reconciliation
After a violent incident, the abuser offers apologies, kind gestures, and gifts.
Note that the reconciliation stage releases oxytocin and dopamine, bonding chemicals. These chemicals are why victims often stay in abusive relationships.
Calm
During this stage, the abuser justifies why the violent incident occurred and provides an explanation that minimizes the incident, your perception of it, and their responsibility for it (also known as gaslighting).
Hoover
After the victim leaves the relationship (breakups can be initiated by either party), the abuser attempts to suck them back into the toxic dynamic, usually after a period of separation and no contact, and usually after the abuser fails to find a new victim.
Sudden, unwanted texts, DMs, emails, and gifts are hallmarks of this stage. Hoovers tend to occur at random, from months to years after leaving a toxic relationship.
If the victim returns to the abuser after a hoover attempt, the abuse cycle restarts, with a shortened love bombing stage and more frequent and severe violent incidents.
Pull the Lever
Victims often find it hard to leave an abusive relationship due to a behavioral phenomenon called intermittent reinforcement. As the act of delivering rewards at irregular, unpredictable intervals, intermittent reinforcement provides an addicting incentive for victims to stick around out of hope for more rewards.
Examples of intermittent reinforcement in an abusive relationship include passionate sex after a rage incident, or a dinner date at an expensive restaurant after days of silent treatment.
What does abuse look like in argentine tango?
Abuse becomes harder to recognize in an Argentine Tango context.
While the abuse cycle generally looks the same in different relationship contexts, its contents change when Argentine Tango is thrown into the mix, especially since Tango Vultures don’t always enter romantic relationships.
Love-bombing
In the initial phase of an abusive tango relationship, Tango Vultures might dance multiple tandas in a row with you, provide excessive compliments about your appearance, musicality, and technique, and hold long, tableside conversations. Offers for private lessons, invitations to exclusive milongas, and proposals to make you their dance partner might also appear during this stage.
Tension
The Tango Vulture withdraws the initial positive attention you received. Hallmarks of this stage include forbidding you from dancing with other people, mean-spirited critiques about your dancing and appearance, triangulation, where the Tango Vulture brags about better tandas with other dancers or how popular they are with their preferred gender, and fake cabeceos, where an abuser intentionally looks you in the eye, only to withdraw their gaze when you mirada.
During the tension phase, the victim feels insecure, as though they aren’t a good enough dancer. They’ll also feel anxious and confused, as they try re-win a Tango Vulture’s affections and wonder what went wrong.
Violence
Tango Vultures are adept at using tango’s social codes and the shadowy environment at milongas to perpetrate covert acts of violence, which can include abandoning you without cause on the pista, using the embrace to compress your ribcage, and intentionally making you collide into objects and other dancers. Tango Vultures might also sabotage your dancing, by purposefully making you look less skilled so other milongueros won’t invite you.
Reconciliation and Calm
Gifts aren’t usually part of this stage in a tango context; apologies, excuses, and playing the victim, however, are.
“I had a bad night”, “You were busy dancing with someone else”, and “I was going to cabeceo you, but…” are common excuses and justifications for a violent incident.
Hoover
This phase is complicated in a tango context, as the victim might still see the offending party in their tango community after leaving the relationship.
Based on others’ and my experiences, unwanted messages and gifts tend to get replaced by persistent cabeceos, appearances at social events you like to attend, and engagement on social media when someone tags you in a tango photo. If dealing with an introverted Tango Vulture, they might also dance with people who look like you to make you jealous.
If the victim accepts the Tango Vulture’s hoover attempt (such as accepting an invitation to dance), the love-bombing phase restarts.
Why do Tango Vultures abuse?
Like the settings they operate in, an abuser’s motivations are diverse. They can be summarized into three core reasons:
Attachment needs. All humans need secure attachment; due to childhood modeling, likely through a controlling, insecurely attached parent(s), predators have learned to meet their attachment needs through abusing others.
Inverted social reward. This recently discovered phenomenon typically occurs in individuals with strong antisocial traits; while a healthy brain releases feel-good chemicals when its owner is collaborative and kind to others, an antisocial brain releases feel-good chemicals when its owner invokes pain and suffering in others.
Desire for power and control, which is driven by a litany of personal motivations, including social status, financial gain, sexual gratification, low self-esteem, misogyny, and the above attachment needs and inverted social rewards.
Responding to Tango Vultures
Have fun during your tango journey, but don’t forget to keep your eyes open for unsafe people.
Listen
The silver lining to Tango Vultures is that they seldom change; they repeatedly engage in the same behavior patterns and they burn through people quickly.
For you, tango newcomer, this means that the teachers and established dancers in your community are likely aware of the village Tango Vulture(s) and their bullshit. Hence the value in getting to know the long-standing members of your community, asking questions, and listening to what they have to say.
Take heed if three or more people warn you about the same individual(s), and never believe abuse can’t happen to you.
Slow Down
Another hallmark of Tango Vultures is that they move fast – they rush into relationships and fast-track the bonding process, romantic or otherwise.
To protect you from being monopolized by a Tango Vulture, pump the relationship breaks. Get to know new prospective dance partners over a period of at least three months before deciding to commit, be wary of anyone who pressures you into making a partnership decision, and remember, that as a beginner, your priority should be to experience multiple body types, orchestras, and tango styles.
Observe
My former tango instructor told her students that “you dance who you are”; no matter how charming a Tango Vulture’s mask appears, their true nature always reveals itself through their dancing.
When evaluating new partners, pay close attention to how they embrace and suggest figures, especially if they’ve been dancing for five or more years – rigidity, jerkiness, pulling, and pushing are physical causes for concern, while a vacant embrace, disregard for your comfort levels, and an inability to adjust to your skill level are emotional ones.
Be Realistic
Like a con artist, Tango Vultures take advantage of their victim’s dreams, such as their desire to find romance or be mentored by an advanced partner. I say this because I unfortunately fell prey to some unsavory characters when I started my tango journey, and my vulnerable emotional state at the time lead me to engage with them longer than I should have.
And while my brushes with Tango Vultures haven’t dulled my hope for finding love through dance, I’ve since learned to protect myself with realism. I understand that tango is a microcosm of the greater world, where some people are deserving of trust and others aren’t. And when it comes to romance, tango provides opportunities, not guarantees – great relationships, after all, are largely luck-based and they aren’t always apparent at first glance, and many dancers stay single for years before the right person comes along.
Beef Up Those Boundaries
Boundaries are kryptonite to predatory personalities, but tango’s intimate nature makes it easy to lose track of what you will and won’t tolerate. Doubly so if you have a hard time standing up for yourself once a boundary is breached.
For a more detailed overview on boundaries in a tango context, guidelines on how to determine yours, and how to practice saying “no”, refer to the below guides.
Ask for Help
Tango Vultures bank on their victim’s silence; break it by speaking up, by informing a trusted community leader about the perpetrator’s behavior and how it made you feel. When done in communities with strong, effective leadership, speaking up alerts stakeholders of problematic members. And once alerted, community leaders can monitor and dole out an appropriate consequence to a problematic member’s actions.
Sometimes, however, allies in your tango community aren’t enough; if you find that, despite knowing the warning signs and what abuse looks like in a tango context, you’re flitting from one Tango Vulture to another, it might be time to enlist the help of a mental health professional who specializes in trauma and relationships.
Have you encountered a Tango Vulture before?
