Argentine Tango consists of a variety of styles that developed in different regions and eras, and in response to the crowding of the venue and even the fashions in clothing. Even though they all developed in Argentina and Uruguay, they were also exposed to influences reimported from Europe and North America. Consequently there is a good deal of confusion and overlap between the styles as they are now danced - and fusions continue to evolve.

In sharp contrast to ballroom tango, Argentine Tango relies heavily on improvisation, and in theory, every tango is improvised. Although there are many steps and sequences of steps that a tango dancer learns, every dancer is free to modify them.

Argentine Tango is danced counterclockwise around the outside of the dance floor (the so-called "line of dance"); cutting across the middle of the floor is frowned on. It can be acceptable to stop briefly in the line of dance to perform stationary figures, as long as the other dancers are not unduly impeded. (There is a saying about this: "If you look down the line of dance and there is space for you -- you are probably keeping everyone else waiting behind you.") Dancers are expected to respect the other couples on the floor; colliding with, or stepping on the feet of another couple is to be strenuously avoided. There are two sides to this: on one hand it is bad etiquette towards the other dancers (and shows your "incompetence" from a strict honor based judgment) - but even more so the leader wants to protect his lady and give her a most memorable time while dancing with him, any collision would just disturb that.