For those of us who have been playing tango since childhood, it comes to us like a murmur given to us by our grandparents. If we were lucky, someone would dance with us to the beat of a milonga or hum Goyeneche songs while walking with their arms behind their backs. It was the grandparents with the demeanor of patriarchs, sitting next to the record players or listening to the radio with headphones until they fell asleep.
A few years ago it seemed that tango in our nationality was losing this substance. Foreigners asked and it seemed as if no one was dancing anymore, as if no one knew who Anibal Troilo was anymore. But our city, representative of the resistance in several strongholds, has different key points, so we understand why the tango is still alive.
The towers and dance in public spaces
On Sundays, public holidays and days off, Tower 1, the administrative building of the Buenos Aires Province at numbers 12 and 51, is full of dancing. On Sundays we can not only take lessons with tango teachers, but also spend the night at the milonga that takes place. Eugenia Vidal, dancer, told EL DIA that “it’s addictive when you can’t go out afterward.”
Additionally, he emphasized the importance of keeping in touch with each other in times when we all seem focused on technology. “It is a space that allows one to embrace another, to go beyond individuality. Here the encounter is necessary, to approach out of openness, to open up to the other out of curiosity, otherwise you cannot dance the tango,” he said.
Since the renovation of Plaza San Martín, 7 and 51, the Glorieta has become the protagonist of several events, including milongas and live tango musicians. This represents the need for politicians to be responsible for preserving, organizing and maintaining these spaces that maintain our traditions and community in our city.
In addition, hundreds of people gather every week to dance tango in Puerto La Plata in Ensenada.
The largest milonga in the world
In the city, the milonga is danced one day a week. For almost forty years it has been held every Tuesday on the 23rd between 43 and 44 in the heart of the La Loma district. At each of the meetings, Raúl remembers his tours through Latin America and Europe. Your explanation? The family as the fundamental support of tradition. His children and grandchildren are the ones who run the business, who cook and play with him. Blanca, his wife, about whom he speaks with the devotion of someone in love since childhood, is in charge of collecting the food.
Raúl is a legend, a man from another time, sitting on his bench and using his bandoneon to create something that cannot be described in words in this note. You have to be there.
Raúl, the same who studied technique, not only in singing but also in playing instruments and making them with his own hands.
Martín Obregón, historian, started dancing ten years ago as part of the La Plata Traditional Dance School. He says that the milonguero circuit is dynamic and that we have the opportunity to choose between many milongas in our city, with the peculiarity that Raúl’s does not exist anywhere else in the world. “Today alone there were between 500 and 600 people, it happens every Tuesday. The biggest milonga in the world,” he explained.
The need to change
The affordable prices and the opportunity to be in a time capsule were not only popular in the tango sector.
He called out to the young university students who filled the room in rows, sitting at long tables with red tablecloths and bathed in a dim, almost cinematic light. Instagram is full of posts and stories with a vintage aesthetic, many of them without dancing at the milonga. However, it is something that bothers those who have been part of the tango community for years.
Obregón understands that this explosion of youth comes from the attempt to connect with things, to connect with another time: “The return to the classic. Raúl’s, the Bacci pizzeria, the La Bastilla cafeteria… expresses the need to live in another time, in another historical temporality, you take refuge in something that is difficult to find outside,” he said.
Before and after the pandemic, young people who don’t necessarily dance come to the milonga to chat and eat cheaply. The conflict between new participants and those who have danced in the past lies in respect for space and tradition. But Raúl has also changed.
The tradition of tango, the mandatory clothing and gender roles in dancing changed with this wave of young people who began to conquer the space. Those who were very traditional found themselves in front of men and women who danced with the same sex or who danced in shorts.
Fashion, resistance or refuge?
Tango is part of our way of being in the world: nostalgia, love, loneliness and frustrations are the sincere and soulful poetics we hear in the milonga. Our nation is built on these foundations; the Argentine as the sensitive one who calls others to come closer.
Lucía, who has been dancing for six years, told this newspaper: “Tango has never been fashionable, it goes against the national essence. If we think about it, it is no different from Martín Fierro’s singing. It defines us.” Yael, who studied traditional dance, believes not that tango is in fashion, but that Gaggiotti’s space and everything it brings with it is in fashion.
A seated woman with neutral makeup joined the conversation and said, “I’m not in the virtual world, I’m not on the screen. Here there are people who look you in the eye, people who sweat, people who are dirty, people who smell good, people who have no grip, real people you can feel.”
At Raúl’s table on a Tuesday – every Tuesday – there is a debate about discomfort and the challenge of facing the other in moments when the individual seems to be in the foreground.
Tango does not die, even when we are beset by a context in which the superficial and empty seem to support everything. The strength of our community lies in encounters and patient interaction with one another, even in the face of a world that seems to be spinning at full speed.
Clothing and gender roles in tango dancing changed with the arrival of young people
On Sundays, public holidays and days off, Tower 1 (12 and 51) becomes a stage
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