Tango Espectáculo

The Argentine tango music and dance was born from several intertwining sources, including the candombe drumming of blacks in Uruguay and Argentina, the Carribbean habanera, and the waltzes of Europe.  At first it was danced in streets, bars, and occasionally brothels.  Transplanted to France it entered more elegant venues.  Here is how it might have looked in the '20s and '30s in France.

France's adoption of tango legitimized it for the Argentine middle and upper class.  During the 1940s it was hugely popular in Argentina.  Dance halls might cover an entire city block and hold several thousand people.  But it declined after that.  By the '70s it was almost dead.

In 1983 the music and dance show Tango Argentino appeared in Paris for a short run.  Its success encouraged its creators to travel to other cities with it.  In New York normally acid-tongued critics raved, the show was sold out, and tickets were scalped for outrageous sums.  The show went on longer runs, in Europe, back to New York then to other major US cities, to Japan, and elsewhere.  Other traveling productions followed in its wake.

One of those shows was "Tango X 2" - Tango por Dos, created by two dancers from Tango Argentino,  Miguel Angel Zotto and Milena Plebs.  Here they perform an elegant and sensual tango and a fun energetic one.   Jesus Velasquez and Natacha Poberaj do a sexy tango. Other popular tango shows included Forever Tango, Tango Pasión, and Tango Fire.  Here to "La Cumparsita" - the most famous tango of all time - five couples of Fire's Estampas Porteñas dance company mirror each other.

Some performances in tango shows are more dramatic than acrobatic. This is called Tango Fantasia.  And they may be humorous.  Here Eduardo Cappussi and Mariana Flores enact a vaudeville version where a mustache-twirling vampire toys with a helpless victim - or is she?

Everywhere the shows went performers held short classes for dancers who wanted to learn the dramatic and intricate figures done on the stage.   However, students found that show tango does not translate well to the dance floor.  Its movements are done by Olympic-class athletes, in choreographed routines timed to the split second, in motions space-consuming enough to be clearly seen from the highest balcony, and include kicks with near-lethal force - often delivered by stiletto heels.

Local Argentines found themselves pressed into teaching dancers how to dance Tango Intimo - social tango.  As time went by dancers began to be less enchanted with complicated figures.  They began to learn basic techniques of dance: the alphabet and words and grammar needed by two people in an intimate embrace to speak to each other with the silent language of the body.

Learning and dancing tango became easier and more popular.   Expert tango dancers in Argentina began travelling the world to teach.   And tango dancers all over the world traveled to Argentina, especially to Buenos Aires.  Many of them had embraced social tango.  Wanting to learn subleties as well as acrobatics, they took classes from famous milongueros and milongueras - men and women who had done tango for decades, such as Pupi Castello.  Here he and Geraldine Rojas dance to Di Sarli's El Jaguel.

Another sought-after teacher is Pedro "Teté" Rusconi.   Here he is during a visit to the popular weekly milonga (tango dance party) Corazon in New York City, dancing to "Desde el Alma" (Out of the Soul), the most famous tango vals .   Besides being fun to watch, it also shows several important aspects of tango dancing.  Couples in Argentina, used to literally shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, often dance in circles.   Women can add to a dance with adornos such as the little taps and flicks of her feet that Silvia Ceriani does. And (by dancing without using his arms) Teté shows the importance of the connection between partner's upper bodies in leading and following. 

Here Ney Melo and Eugenia Russo dance together for the very first time. They first dance slowly and simply to get to know each other.  They move along the line of dance, unless forced by obstacles to dance molinetes - the woman circling around the man - or even to backtrack.  As they get to know each other better they try trickier movements.   Eugenia adds adornos like toe taps (golpes), flicks of a foot behind or across in front of her knees (boleos and amagues), and drawing circulos on the floor with a toe.

Perhaps by now you would like to learn the Argentine tango but are also intimidated by it.  You should not be.  Tango is the easiest of all the partner dances to begin dancing.  The basic rhythm is SLOW SLOW and the basic figure is walking.  In fact the hardest part is learning the tango style, which is a smooth, flowing, almost cat-like movement.  If you do that, keep time to the music, and do not bump into anyone, anyone watching will think you simply favor elegant simplicity when you are dancing.

The tango community is a fairly small and friendly one.  Go to a local milonga and see what you might be getting into if you learn the tango.  You will likely enjoy watching others having fun, meet some nice people, and have some pretty good snacks.  So try this.  Bring up this Google maps web page and enter into the search box the name, state, and country of your city.  You will likely find a list of tango dance parties in that city and pointers to them on a map.  If not, try the name of the nearest bigger city.

There are plenty of videos that teach the tango.  One I recommend can be gotten through Amazon - Tango Fundamentals by Fabian Salas.  Here is a short clip from the video.  A wide selection of videos is from Daniel Trenner's Bridge to the Tango web site.  And Steve Brown has many reviews at his Tejas Tango web site.

Another resource is my short online book - Tango Corazon: How to Dance the Argentine Tango.  I wrote it so that one or two people can quickly and easily learn the essentials of tango.  It includes links to music on the TodoTango web site which you can use for practice.  (TodoTango has much more, including many interesting articles on tango history, people, and music.)

Once you become comfortable dancing tango you will likely also want to learn the milonga, tango's direct ancestor.  It is bouncy and a bit faster than the tango but uses the same figures (though usually simplified).

Here Ney Melo and Jennifer Bratt show how the milonga might be done at a dance party - if you were very good!  First is a slow-paced milonga, then a faster milonga.  Then Javier Rodrigues and Geraldine Rojas show some fancy footwork that borders on show milonga.

Here are three actual show milongas, one with a Halloween-themed performance, some frisky stealing of a hat back and forth , and a performance by Oliver Kolker and Luna Palacios of a milonga AT a milonga!

A good many tangos are written in 3/4 time rather than 4/4.   Because the tempo is fast dancers mostly step on the ONE of the ONE-two-three beats.  Some of the most beautiful tango music ever written are waltzes, and they are popular at milongas.

Here is a simple but elegant tango vals by Melina Sedo and Detlef Engel from Germany.  The music is "Tengo mil Novias" from a CD by the tango orchestra of Enrique Rodriquez.

Here Murat Erdemsel and Sharna Fabiano dance to "Amor y Celos," a very popular tango vals.

On the frequently crowded dance floors of Buenos Aires often you must dance in place.  So to many Argentines the "basic" is the molinete (wheel).  Usually (but not always) the man is the hub of the wheel.  In this performance to tango vals "Ilusion Azul" you can see molinetes used creatively.

Another very popular tango vals is "Corazón de Oro" danced by Daniela Pucci & Luis Bianchi. It is on a CD of tango music by Fancisco Canaro, which also includes "Desde el Alma."

Unlike most ballroom dances, which have rigid standards enforced by an organization, tango is a continually evolving dance.  One of the newer styles is called Nuevo tango and is often danced to neotango music.

Here Mariano "Chicho" Frumboli and Eugenia Parilla dance to "Plano Secuencia" by the band Narcotango.  And a tango version of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" inspires Sebastian Arce & Mariana Montes.

Tango music has been evolving since its beginning, when music was made by a tin whistle and a drum and musicians were strictly amateurs.  When tango became popular enough to support professional musicians they played on the street and in bars and thus carried portable instruments (likely a flute, guitar, and small button accordion called a bandoneon).   When it became still more popular classically trained European immigrants began playing it.  The flute and guitar were replaced by the violin and piano, and a bass violin was added.  The somewhat frail sound of the older bands became the full strong voice of the orquesta tipica.

The complexity of tango music also evolved, from strictly rhythmic to rhapsodic - more free-form and layered.  Even the traditionalist "King of Rhythm" Juan D'Arienzo experimented, as in his "Este es el rey" whose drama, abrupt stops, and fast pace appeals to performers such as Diego Blanco & Ana Padron.

Osvaldo Pugliese experimented with changing tempo during pieces of music, such as "Zum" performed to here by Esteban Moreno and Claudia Codega.  Pugliese's composition "Gallo ciego" inspires Javier Rodrigez and Geraldine Rojas.

In the last few years there has arisen yet another development in the evolution of tango music: neotango, meaning, basically, any musical innovation applied to tango.  This includes non-tango music performed by tango orchestras and using electronic and other non-traditional instruments in tango orchestras.  It also includes any music that has the tango rhythm but otherwise has nothing to do with tango.  Examples include "Cornflake Girl" by Tori Amos and "In the Death Car" performed by Iggy Pop.

Tango dancers use the same movements when they dance to neotango music as they do to more traditional tango music.  Here Mariano and Cosima Diaz Campos of Amsterdam do a tango to "Tango to Evora," composed and performed by famed Celtic singer Loreena McKennitt.

To find other interesting videos use the You  Tube   search page. You can enter complex Google search terms to look for exactly what you want. (Here is an example: tango natacha fabian OR gaucho -beso.  It means to look for "tango AND natacha AND either fabian OR gaucho but NOT beso".) Click to do a YouTube search.