Tango noche

Last night, my roomates finally got me out to tango. Thursday nights, there's a place in our neighborhood that has a tango club in the back of the restaurant, and lessons and dancing are ten pesos (about $3). So, we all got dressed up, Aldo and I in our nice clothes, the first time I've seen Jamie in heels, and we took a quick cab over where we met two more friends of ours from studio, Jaom, a Brazillian who's visiting for a week, and Leia, a sixth year.

The lessons are public, so you just dance and they try to help you out after they show you a new move. It was fun, I've never been dancing with Jamie before, so she was shocked how tall I was becuase I usually have bad posture. She was also very impressed with my ability to lead on the dance floor. A year of dancing Salsa with Jen really helped me out in that regard. This was my second lesson since I've been here, so I actually surprised myself with what I remembered. Still, I didt get what they were trying to show as well, but I'm usually pretty bad with learning new moves. Anyway after about an hour of practice, they opened up the floor and people began coming in from outside and soon the place was comfortably filled.

Tango is facinating to me a cultural phenomenon. It has its roots in African beats, tempered with Spanish and Italian musical influences, and began to be danced in the early 20th century I think. It was danced in the basements of underclass brothels with prostitutes, as men were waiting for thier turns upstairs. It remained an underclass dance on the fringe of the city until it was introduced to Europe where it caught on as a trendy dance. At that point, the rest of society in Buenos Aires accepted and welcomed it back as thier own. During the military regimes, Tango was banned as too sultry, and things were so bad that no one wanted to dance, and so no one from that generation dance at all now.

On the dance floor, I saw an elderly woman in her 70's at least kicking up her heels, and I've seen many others her age at other Tango clubs. But there's no one really from mid 30s to late 40s. The thing that blows my mind is how the younger generation, basically everyone else, dances it. In the US, you can find ballroom dancers of a certain age, 20 somethings dancing Salsa, and teens dancing hip hop, but here you dance the dance of your grandparents, typically to the same songs they danced it to. Our professor here told us that there are about 12 tango songs and theyre sung by different artists, although he was referring to all the old recordings they platy at the more traditional tango halls. I actualy prefer the newer Tango music myself.

The dance is much more slow than salsa, and is more like a waltz. The dancers never spin away from each other, or do thier own things, but there's always this contact between them, at least always facing each other. The basic is on an 8 count, which is actually ealier since the dance is more about sweeping the feet across the floor instead of working the cuban hips like in Salsa or merengue. The main difference is in the music. Salsa has a very rigid four count in the music, but Tango is so layered, you can pick out what beats to follow and which to rest on, and which to move fast and which to move slow.

As the evening went on, more people showed up, around our age, and in all manners of dress, from tee shirts to dresses, and the only constant was the woman's heels. It was a fun night, I'll have keep up the lessons. The only funny thing is that Ive never seen anyone do the stereotypical march across the dance floor with the leading arm out, like you see in all the movies.