Tango, Inc.

If you come to Buenos Aires as a tourist, you'll see plenty of tango. Tango shows -- "espectaculos" -- are hawked everywhere, and eager young dancers perform in major tourist areas.

But you can't appreciate the reach of the tango industry unless you come to dance. Then you'll seek out brochures and magazines filled with listings for every aspect of tango. On any given day there will be as many as 30 "milongas" -- tango social dances -- held all over the city. (And that doesn't include a number of more informal neighborhood milongas.) Often these start at 10PM and go until 3, 4 and even 5 in the morning, with the hours trending later as the week progresses. They are sweet affairs, held in big places and small, and mostly quite unpretentious.

There are also dozens of tango shoe vendors, clothing purveyors and guest houses. There is zen tango, gay tango and tango therapy. (The latter is redundant for all but the self-unaware.) From a small number of tango "maestros," the ranks of teachers has ballooned in the last decade, making for much discussion as to "authentic" versus arriviste.


And, as of this week, there is an official Tango Monument, unveiled in Puerto Madero, a new development on the river side of downtown BA, rather like Portland's Pearl District, but on a much grander scale. The product of collaboration between the city and numerous tango and neighborhood organizations, the monument was unveiled with much fanfare, music and dance this week. It takes its shape from a stretched bandoneon, the signature instrument of tango. The fact that, from many angles, it looks also like a giant metal Slinky, shall be but quietly noted.

So Tango, Inc. is building momentum. There are are now tango "competitions," a grotesque idea, since the soul of tango is a communion, or connection, between partners, and with the music and the floor, resulting in an improvised dance. I have no idea how one might fairly score that.

Still, there is an element in the tango world which seems to favor athleticism over connection. (Tango, well-danced, actually is more athletic than it sometimes looks; what I refer to here are very vigorous, acrobatic movements which upstage musicality.) There even has been talk of lobbying to make tango an Olympic event. Puhleeze. Tango as the new ice dancing? it's an abhorrent thought, but one with much more profit potential than the milongas we have now. Full-time dancers no more crave to be starving artists than the rest of us.

Everyone who dances Argentine tango probably has experienced the moment when, having just confessed his obsession, she hears this response: "Oh, yeah, I saw that on 'Dancing With The Stars!.'" Well, no. That would be ballroom tango. A different animal. But the differences, at least in some sectors, may be narrowing.