The dance of passion

"When you dance tango you must give everything.
If you can't do that, do not dance."
-Ricardo Vidort

Although there are some speculations that the tango was danced for the first time in Cuba, we all associate it with the Argentinean capital.

At the beginning of the 19^th century it was played in brothels and the impoverished areas of Buenos Aires. It was danced for the immigrants and the lower classes, but its popularity increased over the decades until it became associated with certain unspoken feelings and hurtful passions.

The first tangos had absolutely no lyrics, but decades later, the lack of words was replaced with vulgar sentences which described the life in the brothels. Pascual Contursi was the one who introduced poetry into the tango, and later Carlos Gardel brought the international fame and recognition to this seductive dance.

Tango is a dance which needs two partners: man leads woman, while simultaneously he lets himself seduced by her. He will protect her, while she will engage him in a sexual game. They play the game of timeless seduction, trying to express their unspoken passions.

Probably George Bernard Shaw’s words: dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire, are verbalizing the essence of tango best. You need to crave for your partner’s embrace or the heat of his body, and there has to be pure chemistry between the two of you, in order to transmit this passion to the audience.

The tango is still danced on the streets of Buenos Aires, but now it’s more a show for the tourists, getting closer to the American ballroom representation and further from its Latin origins.

“El Tango es la directa expresión de lo que comúnmente los poetas han tratado de definir en palabras como: la creencia de que la lucha puede ser un festejo”

Jorge Luis Borges.