THE BENEFITS OF TANGO DANCING FOR EMPLOYEE RELATIONS IN TECH COMPANIES

John Lowry
Sep 10
7 min read

Updated: Sep 16

Have you ever finished work at your office and thought: Wouldn’t it be great to have a yoga studio, dance space, or gym in the same building?

Only 20% of today's jobs require minimum physical activity.

This is especially true for tech jobs – from software to data analytics to fintech – that are particularly demanding. They are sedentary, involve long periods of solitude and inactivity; and often require you to be in an office setting.

Therefore, employees gravitate towards exceptional workplaces and those that allow them to incorporate exercise into their working day.

As physical and mental health is at the forefront of people’s minds post-pandemic, companies will have to be innovative in their approach to encourage employee retention.

Dancing, specifically Tango, has physical and mental health benefits – that’s a researched fact.

But teamwork and leadership skills are also enhanced through partner work and Tango’s close embrace.

In fact, if you have a maths, engineering or marketing mind, there is every chance you will be a good at Tango dancing.

But, if you are still feeling skeptical, here’s why it is beneficial to adopt Tango in the workplace.

Tango turns Emotion into Action

Neuroscience reveals that dance accesses non-verbal and non-cognitive dimensions of healing, unlocking the power of our brains to translate emotion into action. (Neuroscience of Dance)

Tango is Creative

Maths, computation and language tasks are left-brain dominant. It is well researched that the performance of cyclists, one-sided dominant sportspeople and those who work exclusively in engineering, maths and similar tasks can reduce without integrating the left/right sides of their brain. Techniques for integrating the brain include touching left hand to right ear, arms and legs. Have you seen a right-handed tennis player tap their left foot with their racquet before serving? It’s not to dislodge dirt!

Tango exists in the right-brain, your creative centre. Dancing Tango is known to rewire your brain, creating new neural pathways through the complex mental and physical activity required. Tango accelerates these processes, more than mindfulness and meditation, because it is aided by the release of "Happy hormones" the group of four chemicals—dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin—that are released by the brain to regulate mood and emotions. (It’s hard to have unhappy thoughts when dancing).

The cross system of walking in Tango represents more than a technical challenge. Cross system walking embodies the psychological principle of cognitive dissonance. Dancing in cross system requires holding two opposing realities simultaneously: your axis and your partner's axis, your intention and their response.

This mental stretch creates momentary discomfort that, when embraced, leads to enhanced neural plasticity.

David, a psychotherapist turned Tango dancer, observed: "In my practice, I help clients hold space for contradictions. In Tango's cross system, I physically experience this principle. My body learns what my mind has taught for years - that growth happens in the space between comfort and chaos."

The paradox of both partners simultaneously leading and following, advancing and yielding, mirrors the fundamental duality of human existence.

Entering a Flow state, the balance of challenge and skill, while dancing Tango is not unusual.

The ability to enter Flow at will improves personal productivity and satisfaction with work.

Tango Enhances Collaboration

Tango is a 50/50 creative, improvised collaboration in accelerated time, that produces immediate results and outcomes. It helps demonstrate that excellent collaboration is a two-way, ebb and flow, moment to moment communication of ideas and action.

Tango Builds Respectful Relationships

Navigating working relationships in business can be challenging - What do I say? How close is too close? How do I direct people? How do I build trust? How do I build a team?

These are all important elements of a happy, cooperative, productive working team.

Learning one’s place in space and time builds self-awareness.

Tango teaches you to be acutely aware of your body and how it reacts and responds to another, in real-time. Tango dancers develop a heightened sensitivity to subtle variations in movement.

When we speak of connecting with oneself first, we're really talking about what Carl Jung called "individuation" - the process of becoming aware of oneself as a complete, separate entity.

This self-awareness creates the foundation for genuine partnership. In the embrace, dancers often experience what psychologists term "coherence" - a state where heart rhythms synchronise, breathing patterns align, and neural networks begin to mirror each other. It is a well-researched phenomenon in transcendental meditation.

Learning Tango pushes limits of competence, connection and creativity.

Dancing Tango generates respect, consent, trust, teamwork, guidance and giving and taking opportunity, through its complex system of etiquette (manners), complex navigation and an innate understanding of working together as a dance couple in a clear 50/50 relationship, within a bigger team.

Tango Builds Confidence

Because Tango is bound by tradition, unwritten rules and etiquette, it is a safe, comforting place to build trust and confidence working in close proximity to other people. Tango requires both dance partners to be physicallly and mentally strong, whilst working closely together in an instant-to-instant exchange of energy. We have watched in awe, many times over the years, as people gain confidence from dancing Tango; people who were too intimidated to get off the chair can't wait for the next dance.

Tango can draw out long-hidden damaging emotions. Touching another person with gentle respect changes everything (Pierre Dulaine - Dancing Classrooms). Releasing damaging emotions in a safe, comforting embrace can be very empowering.

Tango Improves Focus, Concentration and Memory

Attention is more than just a mental process; it's deeply connected to the body and how we engage with movement. Understanding the neuropsychology of somatic attention will give you valuable insights into enhancing your focus and presence while working. Tango requires the participants to be present and attentive, every moment, not anticipating the next step, but being aware and able to instantly activate the next unplanned move - you will learn practical techniques to seamlessly integrate attention into your dance practice, transforming it from a mental burden into a natural part of your experience. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced dancer, these methods can help you cultivate a more effortless and enriching connection with your movements.

How Tech, Marketing, and Tango Go Hand in Hand

Digital marketing is a dynamic and energetic profession. Marketers work with data and research, know how to interpret metrics, build connections between brands and users, and work in a team.

Tango aligns with, and refines these skills: Not only does it have a sensual side to enhance communication skills, but it has a strong mathematical element. A form of numerical thinking is needed to make judgments about rotation and velocity, accurately predict where one’s partner is in time and space, and control one’s own body.

Marketing is also about communications, outward expression, looking at what makes people tick, and learning how to grab the attention of a particular audience. But what about you?

Tango allows for a reflective time where dancers can focus on internalising their experience of the music, engaging in the meditation of movement, and concentrating on the close embrace.

The embrace offers a physically intimate and inwardly oriented space for a silent conversation between two people. This is important, because it is a blank canvas to learn how to listen to, read and respond to people. You can take that back to work to help read clients, colleagues, and industry insights.

Tango Doesn’t Discriminate

Can’t imagine your introverted colleague Greg attending a dance class? Think again.

Many Tango dancers who work as scientists, doctors, engineers, IT specialists, software or web developers, mathematicians, and professors are attracted to the dance to relax, think in different ways and build relationships. When you work with computers or numbers all day, you also need emotional connections to balance and enhance cognitive connections.

The socialisation and working together aspects of Tango classes encourages the development of interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, which brings people together across departments.

When you look across the HR palette of a tech company, you’ll likely see talented business strategists, operations experts, and visionary marketers. But beyond their job descriptions are people with diverse backgrounds, characters, and interests. These may intersect in unexpected ways, and finding a way to connect a team through activity, such as a game or shared hobby, brings many benefits. Tango promotes connections between people from different backgrounds, regardless of gender, age, or whatever label society imposes.

Tango is the catalyst to start building relationships and learning about the people you work with to implement changes for the future.

De-Stress With Active breaks

Stress costs US businesses an estimated $300 billion a year. Tango could help resolve this as it has been seen to stimulate the area of the brain involved in emotional processes and release endorphins, lowering the risk of mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression.

Workplaces are highly stressful environments and navigating different norms and expectations only add to that. With dance, you can break down these barriers and cultivate easy, positive interactions across the team and internal hierarchies.

Furthermore, the intense focus required to follow the music, steps, and a partner exhausts and exhilarates simultaneously, which is why Tango is referred to as walking meditation.

The inward observation encourages people to become aware of the state of their body, allowing them to clear their minds when feeling overwhelmed.

Many technical innovations are characterised by transferability. Without that, they will not succeed or be scalable. You simply need to see the whole picture and figure out how someone with zero experience could feel looking at your work.

This is a huge aspect of what is holding back some innovations in the tech industry: distrust and misunderstanding. For example, code needs to be written immaculately so that others can add to it efficiently at a later date.

The fascinating thing about Tango is that you can never just think about yourself, just like creating a SaaS application or particular code. You are partnered with a specific follower or leader on a particular dance floor for a specific song. A whole moment is created on that spot, in that bubble, but you also have to acknowledge the 20 people on a dance floor and be aware of your surroundings.

As a leader in Tango or as a CEO, if a follower looks uncertain or lost, so does the leader. You must pay attention to the full picture and give accurate instructions at all times.

Colleagues that dance and laugh together, stay together.

As well as opening up endless opportunities for inclusion and a myriad of physical and mental health benefits, the required technical ability and improvisation attract people from many backgrounds and fields.

Tango supports many HR issues that office spaces face.