Paso básico

All dances I know have some kind of "a basic step", a short sequence of three or four steps done first forward by leader and then forward by follower during next bar. These steps are usually symmetrical. English waltz, samba, salsa, rumba, Viennese waltz, polka, swing, jive... But not tango.

Basic step of tango (Paso básico or better Paso básico con salida atrás) looks very complicated, sofisticated and it's almost never danced in its "pure" form at milongas although teached in many tango schools. The question is why paso básico seems to be so important when being nearly useless for dancing. What is the reason? A historical context?

With the first step the leader can hit the couple behind because he can't see them. Doing the second one the couple crosses line of dancing of couples beside. This risky part is called salida. Steps 3, 4 and 5 (with cruce) are caminata; this is the most widely used part of basic step. Personally I prefer a little different version of caminata, walking with the same (R-R, L-L) foot but some people can like it as it is.

The last three steps are resolución. They are the strangest ones. Leader has to place his left foot in between folower's legs and in the end the couple is faced to the center of the dancefloor, it means in the worst position for following the line of dance. OMG why? It's so disorienting for inexperienced couples - they probably will crisscross all the dancefloor and drive others to despair.

I think this basic step was "invented" in two phases. At the beginning there were some common movements or short sequences of steps, stuck together but danced on different trajectory or with different directions at least. Afterwards a kind of standardization was applied to it - steps were transformed to linear form and became quite good exercise for practising some fundamental dancing principles (dissociation, cross, walking on right/left side).

Every tango guru has his own version of paso básico which is usable also for dancing at milonga, a version which is corresponding with his dance style. If not, he probably hasn't realized yet that paso básico performed as described above is just an EXERCISE.