What is Tango?   Tango Argentino   Tango, a dance known as passionate, sensual and very elegant, was all the rage in the 1930's in Buenos Aries and Paris.   Tango is not only a dance but also an obsession. For the tanguero, it is as much as a part of life as eating and sleeping. Erotic and passionate, haunting and melancholic, it involves not only the body but also the soul. Yes, it is just feeling - but in one dance, you can express sad, happy, angry, relax, deep, shallow, cheerful, sorrow, painful, serious, intellectual or just playful feelings. Tango has captured the popular imagination for over one hundred years to become at the end of the twentieth century, no less than an international cult.  Birth Place Both music and dance were born in the brothels of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina just before the beginning of the 1880s. The word Tango refers to both a musical style and the dance performed to it. While in modern Argentina, tango is associated mostly with a style of music; the rest of the world sees tango as a dramatic, and sexy dance. It is generally accepted that the tango was borrowed from many nations: the relentless rhythms of the African slaves, the candombe - beat on their drums (known as tan-go); the popular music of the pampas known as the milonga; the combined Indian rhythms with the music of early Spanish colonists; and some influences of the Latin. Some say the word "tango" comes from the Latin word tangere (to touch). Ironically, it was the lonely immigrants and societal outcasts that sought to escape from their feelings, so they developed a music and dance that epitomized them. The wail of the tang speaks of more than just frustrated love but also of fatality of destinies, engulfed in pain and dance of sorrow. The dance was also developed as an "acting out" of the relationship between the prostitute and her pimp, or a man-to-man combat between challengers for the favors of a woman, that usually ended in the symbolic death of an opponent. Tango in Paris By 1910 the rich sons of Argentina were making their way to Paris, centre of the cultural and entertainment world. They introduced the tango into a society eager for innovation, and not entirely averse to the risqué nature of this import, especially as taught by the dashing, rich latin boys who brought it. In 1913 the Tango had spread from St Petersburg to New York, not without controversy, and had become an international phenomena, even if its heart was still on the Rio de la Plata and the cities of BsAs and Montevideo. The Argentine upper classes who had shunned the tango were now forced into accepting it, because it was fashionable in Paris. Hollywood glamorised the tango to a mass audience, with Valentino as the most famous if completely inauthentic tangoing gaucho. At this point a long conflict started between tango as the expression of the soul and experience of the Buenos Aires resident- the Porteño, and this being inaccessible to anyone else, and a universally practiced and meaningful music and dance. The First World War was a hiatus to the development, but during this time the first films were made, the tango lyric and music developed and recordings  made. After the War the tango was again taken up  and became the dominant music and dance of the fun and thrill seeking and culturally anarchic 20s. The development of tango in this period reflects its emergence from the small venues, where sex and machismo were the everyday, to become a mass entertainment, danced by thousands of respectable citizens in the caberets of prospering cities: Argentina was now one of the richest countries in the world. The dance was refined to the slick and elegant 'salon' style, the lyrics of the songs slowly moved from lamenting the poverty and loneliness of the immigrant men, to more generic love songs for the mass market. Many lyrics played on nostalgia for the "good old days" before the neighbourhoods were cleaned up (e.g. Manzi); lunfardo, the slang of the working class barrios was still used emphasise this. Stars were made, singers, notably Carlos Gardel, and many other musicians, dancers, lyricists and composers. They were not only famous in Argentina and Uruguay, but travelled the world, and became film stars. By 1930 Tango was out of fashion in Europe, a military coup in Argentina surpressed and censored it for 10 years, and Gardel died in a plane crash in 1935. But out of this developed the Golden Age of Tango, with a flourishing in music, poetry and culture, and the tango came to be a fundamental expression of Argentine culture. Indeed it was championed by nationist political movement of Juan and Eva Peron from 1946. New bandleaders, such as D'Arienzo, reinvigorated the tango as a popular dance by going back to the more rythmic roots (1936). The depression also changed the character of tango, and the lyrics reflected the renewed poverty and social divisions in the country, through poets and lyricists such as Enrique Cadicamo   and Enrique Santos Disce'polo (Cambalache, Yira Yira, Uno, Cafetin de Buneos Aires). However the Golden Age lasted through the 40s and early 50s and this is the period of its greatest development and expression. Tango changed with political and economic conditions, and we can hear this in the music. In poorer times, orchestras were smaller, and as political repression developed, lyrics become political too, until they started to  be banned as subversive, purged of the 'corrupt' language of lunfardo. The dance style changed, as large salons closed , and dancers were once again forced into small venues with less space. At the end of the 1950s Tango eventually went out of fashion, crushed like many other dances, by the arrival of America swing and rock and roll, and was repressed by post-Peronist nationalist government . From the 1960s to the 1980s it was only danced and played by a few of the older generation and enthusiasts The current revival dates from the early 1980s, when a stage show Tango Argentino, starring dancers such  as Juan Carlos Copes and other future stars of tango , toured the world creating a dazzling version of the tango and a romantisation of the early and golden ages of tango. This is said to have stimulated the revival in the US, Europe and Japan. With the arrival of democracy in Argentina, and a search for a national culture, tango interest was revived, and although still ignored by many young people, there is enough interest to supply the world with a steady stream of hopeful tango teachers and a market for musicians to rediscover and reinvent the music.                                                                                                                                            Tango Today The tango is enjoying a renaissance of popularity (Europe, US, Asia...). Keeping the fire of this daring art from burning brightly all around the world. The last decade has seen a worldwide explosion of interest in the Argentinean Tango. Tango clubs are springing up in the most unlikely places. In London you can tango every night of the week. In tiny towns in Holland, Germany, even Finland, tango aficionados gather together night after night. Japan has its own tango sub-culture. Tango shows play to packed houses on Broadway, in Paris, London, Berlin and Tokyo.               A & E Tango World 117 A Sadie Drive Matthews, NC 28105 704.814.8907