Everyone Learns to Dance Tango |
| Christine Denniston is author of Dancing Tango - Unlocking the Mysteries and Secrets of the Tango - 1914 |
In the 1940s and the 1950s practically everyone in Buenos Aires danced the Tango. Generally those who did not dance Tango were the members of the upper classes, for whom the bulk of the population still represented the recent immigrants, whose culture was very different from their own. To the upper classes in Argentina, Tango, particularly the dance, was then, and remains today, at least as exotic and alien as it is to the bulk of people in Europe or the United States.
But for most of the people of Buenos Aires, Tango was very much a part of their everyday lives. I asked a friend of mine who began to dance Tango in 1940 how he managed to go out dancing every night when he also had a job to go to. He told me that he would go out dancing, then go home to shower and change, work from 6 or 7 a.m. until 2 p.m., go home and sleep, and get up in the evening, ready to go out dancing.
| Secrets of the Early Tango How was Tango really danced at the time when the whole world went Tango Crazy? Click here to learn more |
| Dancing Tango For Maximum Pleasure A clear, straightforward guide to dancing the Tango, ideal for beginners, and useful for the experienced dancer Click here to learn more |
Buenos Aires is a huge city, and in any huge city you will find a variety of accents, perhaps even dialects. That is how it was with the Tango in the Golden Age, when everyone danced. I have been told that in the 1940s and 1950s you could work out not just which part of town a leader came from, but which of the many, many dance halls he favoured on a Saturday night, by the time he had taken two steps at the beginning of a dance. This did not mean that people were doing a different dance. Just as a language has certain grammatical rules and basic vocabulary that are constant across all its accents and dialects, so the Tango had fundamental rules much more important than the specific Tango dance steps that were being done.
Tango Dance Styles of the Golden Age
© 2003 Christine Denniston
Christine Dennniston is author of Dancing Tango - Unlocking the Mysteries - how to dance Tango for Maximum Pleasure
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