Tango: the beginning of a new era

Tango is one of the most popular dances in the world, recognized by its fire and its passion. In the 19th century as part of a development program, immigrants arrived at the border of Argentina and Uruguay, which was the Plata river, all they were expecting to get prosper and territory to work, instead, they found crime, prostitution, and started feeling homesick. That’s how people turned into music and dancing, to distract themselves from their disappointment. There, African and Latin dance styles blended with European influences like the Polka and the waltz; slowly but surely a new dance was born: the tango, accompanied by the sounds of the german bandoneon, an instrument similar to the accordion.

By that time since the many immigrants included relatively few women it was very common to see men dancing together, as a matter of fact, they gathered to practice their moves among themselves; that not only impressed the ladies but also scandalized the conservative upper class of the century, they considered it wild. Despite its rejection by many people, in Paris, it took off with great enthusiasm. As it was getting more socially acceptable it spread quickly and gained great popularity. However, it generated a set of codes and superstitions throughout its history, an example of this is “cabeceo”, which is in an invitation by a man to a woman to dance, it consists in a man raising his eyebrows and the woman accepts by smiling, and if she is not interested in dancing with him she avoids eye contact and pretends she didn’t see him.

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While dancing the Tango, the dancer’s torsos remain steady with the partners closely embracing. The woman feels men’s movements and follows them, taking steps that alternate between long and smooth and short and snappy. The dance expressed nostalgia and melancholy embraced by sensual passion. It’s an improvised dance comprising various elements including the walk, crosses, figure eights with the feet, leg hooks, turns, breaks, among others; if you would like to learn all tango steps and elements you can take our classes in StepFlix YouTube channel, for example, this tango class will show you how to walk, once you have this base solid you will be able to add much more things.

When it comes to social tango dancing, those gatherings are called “Milongas”, there, tango music is played in sets of 3 or 4 dances called tandas, and it is expected that one will dance the entire tanda with one’s partner. Between tandas, a cortina is played, which is a short piece of another type of music genre to let dancers know that the tanda is over so they can start looking to dance with someone else for the next one.

One of the earliest tangos was composed by Angel Villaldo around 1905, called “el choclo” or the corn cob, the original version was instrumental and lyrics were added later, by 1910 more songs were adapted with lyrics, with subjects about love, heartbreak and time lost.
Little by little this style started having worldwide recognition with hits like my “sad night” by Carlos Gardel, “A media Luz” by Edgardo Donato, “La cumparsita” by Gerardo Matos, and much more, the music became more popular, so did the dance, even to the point that both were featured in films. In 1930 Tango was already a phenomenon, everyone had been exposed to this dance and embraced it, from brothels to cafes, there wasn’t a place where you couldn’t find this music.

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By the end of the century, young people weren’t interested in dancing tango any longer since rock and roll had appeared. Here’s when Astor Piazzolla takes place in our story, he experimented with music, taking tango elements and putting them together with jazz and classical music, which end up becoming in “New Tango”, unfortunately his creation wasn’t welcome by Argentina’s tango fans, the critics hated it, however, in the United States new tango did very well. Today there are many variations of tango dance but they all share a common spirit of sensuality and passion.