Why rush-hour commuters will be tangoing in London tonight

As a Londoner, there are certain things you expect on your route from office to tube to home. Too many people in your path. Grim faces. Tube riders with a tenuous grasp of personal hygiene. But tango dancers silently criss-crossing in front of you as you negotiate Westminster Bridge or weave across Waterloo concourse? Not so much.

And yet, if tonight’s rush-hour journey (between 6pm and 7pm) takes you over a bridge, or through a main station, be prepared for some unusual encounters. The metropolis’s tango community will be out in force: couples - young, old, new-style, old-school - will be plugged into shared iPods, and dancing to their own little tunes.

This is ‘Tango Commute’, the brainchild of Thomas Lindner, a German-born dancer who, quite simply, wants to cheer up the daily, communal troop homewards – oh, and demonstrate the fine art of “hugging musically”, as he rather sweetly puts it.

The first event was last month on London Bridge; tonight’s, part of the Major of London’s initiative, Big Dance 2008, is a more ambitious affair, involving seven bridges and seven stations (details of which can be found by clicking here ). It is, obliquely, a way of marking the anniversary of the 7 July bombings, but like the “flash mobs”, silent discos and tube-train parties that have gone before it, its main purpose is to inject some spontaneous pleasure into proceedings, a little bit of connectedness in an environment where interaction is generally limited to pointedly ignoring everyone around you.

And it works. Having been to a warm-up version of this event - on Blackfriars Bridge - I can vouch for the enjoyable incongruity of it all. Commuters, eyes fixed on their target - the tube station ahead – are suddenly confronted with dancers wafting into their vision. You can almost read their thoughts: What the hell are they dancing to? And why are they on the bloody bridge? First, they’re annoyed to have yet another obstacle to get round, then they’re begrudgingly intrigued; then, often, they grab a shot on their mobile phones.

Click on the picture below to watch last night's Tango Commute

Smiling also occurred, but only when absolutely necessary. Cars whizzed past, their occupants unaware of the tango dancers lurking amid the usual pedestrian melee - a line of cyclists was in danger of domino-ing, though, when a rider caught sight of us. Some passing musicians decided to join in – certainly entering into the spirit of things, but utterly confusing the dancers who, still plugged into their iPods, now had two different rhythms to choose from.

As a dancer, the whole thing’s a buzz – the reactions, the non-reactions, the fantastic views out over the river. Plus there’s the added intimacy of sharing the iPod, dancing to a tune no one else can even hear. It’s nice, too, to put tango in a more ordinary context, to show people it’s not the rarefied, slightly stiff art form they often assume it to be. Passers-by are free to capture it on mobile phones or cameras – and Tango Commute actively invite people to send in their photos and footage.

So if you’re homeward-bound between 6pm and 7pm tonight, watch your step and keep your mobile at the ready...