Two to tango and good times

Ballroom dance

As kids growing up in the cantonment, we often heard 78 rpm shellac records being played on the gramophone.

One particular record had magnificent violins, accordion, piano and double bass that turned out La Cumparsita.


The heavy melody, driving rhythms, invariably got us to abandon games and shinny up the window to take in the excitement. Years later, we saw couples dancing to this music in the movies. Gorgeous long-legged women in shiny scarlet dresses, interlocked with intense hollow-cheeked men with shiny sleek closely combed hair, and swept, swirled the dance floor.

Later, we watched Hugh Wilson’s Police Academy 1 (1984) and the hilarious El Bimbo-Blue Oyster bar scene. At about that time, Gigliola Cinquetti sang that number and three sets of professional dancers performed a tantalising dance to it on the stage.

Recently, I got a chance to fulfill a life-long dream. I not only watched a live tango performance, but also got a chance to do the dance. And it was right there in the city where it was born, Buenos Aires.

The delightful immersion into the tango happened at the end of the day at a business conference. Delegates were given free lessons by a tango instructor. Before that a pretty assistant and the instructor demonstrated the dance. “It is like walking,” he said,

“Simple, forward and backward walking movements.” That night, following the lesson, we got another bonus. An Argentinean meal complete with the ice-breaker drink, mate, barbecues, al-asador, and mixed grills, parallada and fine wines. In between, we were entertained by local musicians and spirited dancers who put out an exquisitely choreographed tango.

Next morning, on an exploratory walk of the city, I saw more of the cultural icon on the street. Known as milonga, the gathering place of tango dancers, there were several old and young energetic couples doing it. The romantic nuances seemed to cement the performers with the audience. There were approving smiles, applause, sighs and tears.

“To make that impact, irrespective of whether it is in the street, stage, or cafe,” explained our interpreter-guide, “it is vital that dancers develop a rapport with the music, the dance and the audience.”

That unwritten code seems to prevail everywhere in the capital. So much so the ‘tangopolis’ authorities have a good reason to smile. Tango and tango tourism are booming. Buenos Aires’s revenue from it is more than $500 million. “There are direct and indirect benefits to the economy,” You have businesses that have opened up that sell hats, striped pants, shoes. I mean, last year, there were 6,00,000 copies of tango records sold. It’s a growing trend,” says Nicholas Tozer of the Argentine National Academy of Tango.

How did it all start? Tango really started in Argentina in the 1770s. African slaves brought in to work in the farms, often got together during their leisure period and pined for the home that they had left behind. This was expressed both sorrowfully and joyfully in song and dance, accompanied by drums and native rhythms.

The meeting place came to be known as ‘tango’. Later, when poor immigrants from Italy and Spain came to work in the fertile pampas region — in cattle rearing, meat, wool and hide industry, mines and in the railways, they were also nostalgic, and joined in the tango with their guitars and button accordions.

In the late 1800s, young, indigenous cowboys or gauchos looking for action, veered into Buenos Aires’s bordellos, bars and dance venues such as those in the old slaughterhouse district. There, girls danced and entertained the customers. With that the tango of the African slaves further evolved. Argentine milonga music and fast paced polka seamlessly blended in, resulting in quick steps and pace.

Explained the instructor, “The gauchos, in high riding boots and spurs, would go to the crowded night clubs and ask the locals to dance. Since the cattle-handling horsemen hadn’t showered, the girl in full skirts would dance in the crook of the man’s right arm, holding her head back as far as possible! Her right hand was held low on his left hip, close to his pocket, to make sure he had the money for the dance. The man moved in a curving fashion because the floor was small with round tables crowded with people, so he danced around and between them.”

‘Ballroom Tango’ further evolved when it caught the imagination of Paris and Europe. By the early 1900’s, western high class society which first shunned it began to experiment and finally embraced it with passion. Rudolph Valentino was greatly responsible for popularising the dance in the movies as ‘illicit passion’. With time, tango was considered respectable enough to be performed in public in its birthplace.

As tango progressed, so did Argentina. In the early 1900s, it was one of the world’s richest countries with a per capita income higher than that of France and Germany. That is amazing considering the fact that in colonial times, it was a struggling nation. With the setting up of the railways and refrigerated shipping, exports of the famous Pampas meat boomed.

In addition, corn, wheat and flour along with silver and minerals’ exports contributed dramatically to the economic turnaround. Fuelling this growth was new manpower. Immigrant workers and bankers, businessmen, administrators, academicians and such from the higher echelons of European society arrived by the shipload. Soon, there was considerable intermingling of people including the ancient Guarani tribes, to form neighbourhoods, barrios, and create great diversity and culture.

You see these highly evolved communities in a new light today. Known as porteños, they can be spotted at the plazas, queuing up at the opera at Teatro colon, movie halls, museums and exhibitions, relaxing at the Japanese gardens and sprawling green open spaces by the muddy Rio de la Plata, at the Hipodromo de San Isidro’s races or polo game and soccer stadium by the thousands, at the subways and railway stations, glass-roofed fine restaurants, bars and at roadside eateries, at the exquisite upmarket shopping mall, Galerias Pacifico, or the flea markets that mysteriously appear at dawn and disappear by afternoon.

The face of Buenos Aires is visible too at the neighbourhood milonga, on theatre stages, posh centres on the waterfront of Puerto Madero, and open air spaces of La Boca or San Telmo. There fedora-hat veterans lead pretty young things by the waist or talented performers move in the spotlight at the tango world championships.

Annually, some 500 couples from far-flung corners of the world take part in these competitions. The local aficionados throng the venues in huge numbers — to observe, to take in the evolving tango. As the traditional African-Spanish-Italian rhythmic strains get turbo-charged with Nuevo electro, a revamped La Cumparsita explodes into the night.

Heads are held high. Nobody talks. The male right arm slides behind slim, curvaceous backs and fingers are placed on delicate spines. The lady bends her exposed right leg and lifts it to caress her partner. Vamonos! The tango and the good times continue like there’s no tomorrow!