Today, in spite of the continued love for Eva Peron and the Peronist Party from the ’50s, there’s very little faith in the government. The peso is doing lousy, beef is no longer the major export (soy holds that place) and the porteno often think only about themselves and don’t feel they can do much to change things. It’s not that they’re lazy by nature, and it’s not that there isn’t opportunity. It’s that too many of them feel it will not do any good to work because they can’t see any future resulting from that work. It’s been like that in Argentina for a long time. The only safe place to turn is inward, and it doesn’t matter if the resulting behaviors make a lot of sense or not. Sooner or later, the steam from that simmering self-contained pot needs a place to go. In Buenos Aires, Argentines grasp for every opportunity to define themselves 118 Premiere 2010 A ARGENTINE PASSION is hard to explain. From it pervades everything. It’s like trying to hold onto air. You don’t do it, you feel and live it. It’s there. Everywhere. I honestly think politics come into play here. Over the years, the average Argentine porteno (the port people of Buenos Aires) hasn’t had a lot of control over much of anything. A little over 30 years ago, their own govern- ment killed them by the thousands. They threw people out of helicopters and into the River Plate next to the city. Over 30,000 people disappeared off the streets. Imagine that reality on the streets of Middle America, on the streets of Chicago or St. Louis. (Above) Tango dancers at a milonga embrace. (Right) Sensuality rules the night in tango. TANGO TANGO passion, in a word
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Today, in spite of the continued lovefor Eva Peron and the Peronist Partyfrom the ’50s, there’s very little faith inthe government. The peso is doing lousy,beef is no longer the major export (soyholds that place) and the porteno oftenthink only about themselves and don’tfeel they can do much to change things.It’s not that they’re lazy by nature, andit’s not that there isn’t opportunity. It’sthat too many of them feel it will not do
any good to work because they can’t seeany future resulting from that work. It’sbeen like that in Argentina for a longtime. The only safe place to turn isinward, and it doesn’t matter if theresulting behaviors make a lot of senseor not. Sooner or later, the steam fromthat simmering self-contained pot needsa place to go.
In Buenos Aires, Argentines grasp forevery opportunity to define themselves
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AARGENTINE PASSION is hard to explain. Fromit pervades everything. It’s like trying to hold onto air.You don’t do it, you feel and live it. It’s there. Everywhere.I honestly think politics come into play here. Over theyears, the average Argentine porteno (the port people ofBuenos Aires) hasn’t had a lot of control over much ofanything. A little over 30 years ago, their own govern-ment killed them by the thousands. They threw peopleout of helicopters and into the River Plate next to thecity. Over 30,000 people disappeared off the streets.Imagine that reality on the streets of Middle America,on the streets of Chicago or St. Louis.
(Above) Tango dancers at a milonga embrace. (Right) Sensuality rules the night in tango.
TANGOTANGOpassion, in a word
You hear it everywhere: in the back seats of cabs;through open apartment windows; around open-air cafés
and neighborhood markets; drifting on the perfume of the small hours in the early morning; riding the thermals in the radiant sunand the languid humidity of midday.
It’s the heartbeat of the city.
Dancers at milongas early in the morning in downtown Buenos Aires.
Tas individuals because so little of theirsurroundings improve over time. Theylook to the simple things as those thingsare close by, predictable and real, andthey can get their hands on them andhold onto them, almost like a child grab-bing for a parental pant leg, reachingtoward definition and a sense of securi-ty. These things are not in an idealizedfuture. These are the things from rightnow. Things such as soccer, family, con-versation, wine, food, friends and sex.Everything goes into this rather desper-ately steaming teapot and it all steepsand simmers at the constant tempera-ture of the passions of the moment.
Some porteno have even tried to con-tain and embrace all of these passions atthe same time. Some porteno even have aword for this embrace and a physicalmanifestation for it.
It’s impossible to describe, so call ittango.
Call it life.
TANGO OF THE TOURISTS
Tango is Buenos Aires. It’s the blood.It permeates the entire culture. You hearit everywhere: in the back seats of cabs;through open apartment windows;around open-air cafés and neighbor-hood markets; drifting on the perfumeof the small hours in the early morning;riding the thermals in the radiant sunand the languid humidity of midday. It’sthe heartbeat of the city.
Tango has always been fixated oncompeting interests: life and death; sexand war; to have and have not. Born inthe brothels of the poor southern barriosof Buenos Aires in the last quarter of the19th century, the dance began by mim-icking the street life of the docks and theviolence in the slums. During WorldWar I, Europeans popularized a morerefined tango, and since then, it hasseduced people all over the world. But itsheart is still in Buenos Aires, and overthe years it’s been constantly rejuvenat-ed, reinvented, reimagined and rede-fined by everything from its own classichistory to techno and hip-hop. Its man-ifestations fit the evolution of the cityand it’s capable of being whatever youneed it to be at the moment you need it.
Tango has a number of personalitiesand I saw two of those manifestationsduring my time in Buenos Aires.Tourists flock to tango shows all over thecity. There’s an entire industry built onthe time-honored traditions of Las
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Vegas and Radio City Music Hall. Givethe people what they want. Give them ashow. This is the tango of exact steps andform, costume and presentation, slitskirts with fishnet tights, sex-set eyes,slicked-back black hair and latino loverscrying and singing over lost love. If a LasVegas show is what you want, you can getit. The top of the line for this gig appearsnightly at the five-star Hotel Faena. A greatdinner and a show. It’s called Rojo Tango.A friend told me it was worth it to go tothe Hotel, sit outside the theater and justwatch the women walk around. AsMaurice Chevalier said, “Thank heavenfor little girls, they grow up in the mostdelightful way.” For a less expensive,
more intimate lower-key affair, tryEl Querandi Tangueria—a more tradi-tional tango restaurant built from an1867 house in the barrio of Montserrat.
That’s show tango. There are, however,other forms of the dance. There arethose who dance to exact requirementsof presentation: The tango masters. Theytake years to learn exactly how to move.They grace the stage with their expertiseand stand apart from the average porteno.There are also the newer forms of tangodanced by young people influenced byeverything from jazz to hip-hop to technoand rap music. All this evolved with ele-ments from the early forms of tango.
The porteno have their own version
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Tango shows fill the night in Buenos Aires to the delight of tourists and locals alike.
The woman drapes herself around the manwith her left arm around his neck, her head over his
right shoulder. She often closes her eyes; she surrenderscompletely. Silence reigns, but if there is any talking,
it’s simply a whisper in an ear.
T
of tango as well. They say show tango isthe tango of tourists. They say real tangolives in the heart and fuels the passion ofBuenos Aires. They say their tango is theclassical style born in the ’30s and ’40swith the music of people such asFrancisco Canaro and Carlos Gardel.They say theirs is the style of the originalstreet. They say theirs is the dance of life.They say that nothing but family is moreimportant than tango—and even thatmight often enough be called into ques-tion. They live every moment for thisdance. They call it milonga.
Milonga is a style of tango, a place todance and a mood of dance. Touristshardly ever see it. On any given night, asmany as 15 organized milonga dancesmaterialize at various clubs around thecity. Like an intact ecosystem, milongaexists in and of itself. It lives very late atnight and into the early morning hourswhen nothing else moves, with thecaveat that in Buenos Aires, midnight isvery early. The hotels know where someof these locations are, and you can getinto them, but it helps to hire a guide,and it helps to know the territory. Manytimes, there are implied codes of con-duct and unspoken ways to behave. Goto a milonga with serious respect, and havea look at a real slice of Buenos Aires. Berespectful with your camera. Be respectfulwith your presence. Dance if you dare.
In the most classic milonga, men siton one side of the dance floor andwomen sit on the other. All communica-tion prior to actually dancing is done byglances and turns of the head. There areno verbal signals and no one goes up toanother person and asks them to dance.
It’s all done with the eyes and expression,and it happens across the room. If a manasks a woman to dance with a glance, shehas the option of meeting his eyes andresponding in kind, or simply ignoringhim and looking away. It’s all very polite.It’s full of ritual and entirely amazing towatch. I took photographs, but had to beextremely cautious and nonintrusive.After all, that striking woman he’s danc-ing with might not be his wife.
My guides to the milonga were a 39-year-old dancer named Alejandro Geeand his mentor Pedro Sanchez, a 75-year-old master. Think a larger, graceful,more charming Yoda from “Star Wars,”and you know Pedro. A retired machin-ist, Pedro started dancing in the streetsof Buenos Aires when he was 15. To thisdate, Pedro remains the most energetic,vibrant person I’ve ever met. Imaginewhat you’ll be doing tomorrow at 3:30 inthe morning. There’s a good chancePedro Sanchez will be drinking wine,dancing and holding a woman in hisarms. Tango, wine, food, friendship andwomen. Pedro dances in order to live.The Yoda quote is appropriate: “Do ordo not. There is no try.” Tango is theblood in his veins.
A THREE MINUTE LOVE
The milonguero is a male dancer anda style of dancing in a milonga. The styleevolved to compensate for a large num-ber of people dancing in the small spaceof a club. The result is a form of tangothat allows for simplicity of steps whileencouraging a natural connectionbetween the dancers. The most striking
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u p s t r e a m m a g a z i n e o n l i n e . c o m 127
Pedro Sanchez teaching milonga-style tango at his apartment studio in the MontseratBario of Buenos Aires.
quality of milonguero style is the veryclose embrace and reserved leg move-ments that are a requirement of thedance. The couples lean forward to makecontact from the waist to chest and thehold does not change throughout thedance. The woman drapes herselfaround the man with her left armaround his neck, her head over his rightshoulder. She often closes her eyes; shesurrenders completely. Silence reigns,but if there is any talking, it’s simply awhisper in an ear. Pedro and Alejandrosay when it’s done correctly, the man andthe woman dance for three minutes and,in those three minutes, they fall in love.
They say the secret to dancing correctlyis in the freedom of allowing it to hap-pen.
Like love, there is no formula andthere are no proper steps as in showtango. The man leads, but the dancersallow themselves to be taken by themusic and by each other. Americanshave trouble learning this dance, becauseAmericans want a formula and steps.Dancing in the milonga is much more.
I sat at an out of the way table andwatched impassioned people dance thenight away, with fiery faces and steamythick air. Total strangers fell in love forthree minutes, pulled very slowly apart,
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smiled and went back to their tables. Itwas all passionately polite. Some youngwomen in their 20s and 30s were danc-ing with old men in their 70s or 80s.Men and women searched, stalked andhunted each other. They searched outthose who understood and those whodance tango in the milonga.
Pedro said, “age may take away somevitality, but it gives back experience.”
And so it appears. To the uninitiated,it’s an intimidating dance. Surrenderalways is. Pedro teaches milonga in hisstudio in Montserrat. He gave me a shortlesson one day.
“The secret to tango is the same asthe secret to life,” he said. “Don’t think.Just walk to the music and take it easy.”
Taking it easy is Pedro’s lesson foreveryone who wants to learn tango. Aswe all know, it is not easy to take it easy.The last day I saw him, I asked him howhe might like to die.
“I don’t think about death,” he said.“I want to live forever.” Since there is noblood in his veins—only tango—there’sa chance he might pull it off. So here’s atoast to Pedro Sanchez. God’s speed onyour path, my friend.
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u p s t r e a m m a g a z i n e o n l i n e . c o m 129
(Left) The tango embrace often finds older men and younger women together. (Above) At76, Pedro Sanchez has danced the passionate and intense milonga tango since he was 15.
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