Tango

Salon tango

It is tango time in Buenos Aires, and over the last week we saw two very different types .  There is a tango festival on and part of the festival is the tango world cup.  So on Tuesday we went along to the exhibition centre where they were holding one of the competitions.  It was the first round of the Salon competition.  The Salon dancing is where about eleven couples dance at the same time, much as happens in the milonga salons, but they have a bit more space.  I say that, but the floor is still quite crowded and we witnessed a number of near misses as two couples almost collided.

I’m not sure how you get to be in the competition, but it seemed a bit like anyone could put their name down.  We were there for about five and a half hours and saw 22 rounds which was about 240 couples, but there were about 500 couples in total.  The standards varied immensely.  There were some couples who even to my untrained eye were clearly very good.  The proximity of the other dancers means that they use the close hold and there isn’t much room for showy moves, but still they danced with real flair, adding in the fancy footwork and leg flicks where they could.  And they were certainly dressed for the occasion.

Some others though were less polished.  They didn’t have fancy outfits, and their dancing was still perfectly respectable, but the moves were more basic and they lacked the finesse and style that the others showed.

Hopefully not drunk!

There were a few much older couples too and whilst some of them obviously had some skill, you could see that their movements didn’t have the same fluidity as the others.

There was one couple who actually looked like they might be drunk - although they managed the full dance without crashing anyone so I assume they weren't!

As we only stayed for half of the first round we don’t know who got through, but we certainly picked out some that we thought should, including couples from Italy, Russia and Japan, as well as the Argentinians.

the locals have a go too

As we left, we saw that there was a separate dance floor at the back of the hall, where anyone could get up and strut their stuff.  We considered having a go just so that we could say we had danced at the tango world cup, but as we would probably have bumped into everyone we decided that it was best not to.

Tango spectacular at Cafe Tortoni

The second event was a tango show at Cafe Tortoni, the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires, on Friday night with the Dragoman group.  This was completely different as it was show tango, where they have a lot more room to dance and so use a more open hold and do a lot of big moves.  The show dancing is much faster paced and they pack in the lifts and the leg flicks.  It is impressive, and fun to watch, but the ‘spectacular’ takes away from the intensity of the dance.  For me, the slower paced dance that we saw at the competition was more appealing.  It had a more dramatic and passionate feel to it that I found more powerful.

 

But the show at Tortoni wasn’t just about the dance.  In tango, the music is important too and the show had a number of classic tango songs interspersed.  But the highlight of the show for me was a routine done with balls on the end of a bit of string. The guys were doing the traditional dance, possibly the zapateada, that involves a lot of fast paced foot tapping and stamping, but at the same time twirling these strings around so that the balls clacked on the floor too.  The timing of the moves to the music was incredible, especially when there were two of them dancing at the same time and they were synchronised perfectly.

Overall, two good events, but the Salon tango gets my vote.