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...
¡La Vida Es Un Tango!