The Geography of Tango

Copyright ©2018 Karlos Bermann

Below is an actual satellite photo of the Río de la Plata. Formed by the confluence of the Río Parana and the Río Uruguay, it is only 170 miles long, but 120 miles wide at the mouth, making it the world’s widest estuary. On the northeastern shore is Uruguay with its capital Montevideo, while on the southwestern shore is Argentina with its capital Buenos Aires. It was from this basin with its great port cities that tango emerged during the second half of the 19^th century—from the laborers and fishermen--in the waterfront dives, cafés, and brothels, in the streets of the “arrabals”—the poor barrios at the city’s outskirts. The word “porteños”—people of the port—appears in the lyrics of many a tango song. In Uruguay, when they feel the need to add any qualifier to the word tango, it is “tango rioplatense”—tango of the Río de la Plata.

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Tango—The Original "Dirty Dancing"

W hen, in 1866, a couple danced the first tango, it was a shocker. So much so that the other dancers cleared the floor and stood back gaping. These dancers were not the middle class elite. They were workers at a produce market, farmers, carters, casual laborers, and women who were there to sell the only thing they had to sell. As a class they were not overly fixated on propriety or morality. U ntil that day, dancing with a partner had been chaste—involving no physical contact beyond touching hands. But here in a rancho —a large thatch-roof stall, cleared on a Sunday evening for the weekly dance that had become an attraction at this recently established market, with a conjunto of two or three musicians playing a habanera , a man grabbed a woman and danced around the floor with her pressed tightly to his body. Given the provocative appeal of this new approach to dance, the onlookers quickly mastered their surprise and joined in. Two weeks later they celebrated th...

Tango in Havana

I t was a year or two ago that a woman who’d just returned from Cuba posted in the “Stranded at an Airport Tango Meet-Up” Facebook group. Said she’d danced tango in one of the Havana hotels. That post gave me the motivation I needed. I’d been to Cuba once, long before I became a dancer, and wanted to go back. But I’d been prevented by the US Government’s ban on travel to Cuba. That policy has been relaxed in recent years, however, and commercial airlines have resumed scheduled flights to the island. So, I decided, this year I’d go to Havana to look for tango. It’s still technically illegal For US citizens to go to Cuba as tourists, but I’m not a tourist. I go places to dance, to hang out, to see how the world looks from a different vantage point. Or in this instance to get information, do research, satisfy my curiosity. (The bizarre meanderings of my career, before I finally realized that I was meant to be a tango dancer, included several years as a journalist.) My plan to inves...

The Seven Pillars, or Foundations, of Tango Dance

© Copyright 2022 by Karlos Bermann Tango from the inside out The list below is based on my experiences dancing and taking classes and lessons in such widely separated places as Seattle WA, Providence RI, Raleigh-Durham NC, Oakland CA and Stowe VT, as well as Buenos Aires Argentina and Montevideo Uruguay. It is also the result of my experiences coaching followers and teaching basics classes. I think most experienced dancers and teachers would agree with much if not all of what I have put down--no doubt adding their own touches and spin. So I don't make any claims for originality--unless I was the first to put this in writing (someone else may have made such a list already, but if so, I’m not aware of it). What is it good for? Well, no list, no written instructions can make you a tango dancer. This is only a guide to what you need to master. To do that will take work—a lot of work—with practice, practice, and more practice on the dance floor under the guidance of experienced dancers....

Tango Locura

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