Don Juan Ventana, tour guide and tow truck operator, insists that Marionette learn to dance the tango at the posh Tango Azul, a bar in one of San Vidarenza's grander hotels. After drinking several fruity concoctions with several liquors - the South American equivalent of Long Island Iced Tea - Marionette rises from her table and moves to the dance floor. A few martinis later, and she's actually dancing on the bar, but that's a different story. Let's stick to the tango for right now.
Curiously enough, a reference to the tango first shows up in America in
Ball-Room Instructor, a dance manual popular around 1856. The dance described in the manual bears little resemblance to the steamy dance we have come to know as the tango. It was labeled a dance in 2/4 time. In pre-Civil War times, even a waltz was considered scandalous in some places (and hence the need for cotillions one sees in movies, where handsome men about to dash off to battle promenade around the room, only occasionally coming into polite contact with flirtatious belles).
So, where in the world did the tango come from, and how did it get to the US of A?
First, one needs to understand that most Argentines are descendants of
people who emigrated from Europe, with the occasional mixing of bloodlines with the native Indian populations. Argentina, therefore, was a very cosmopolitan place. People liked to do the polka and the waltz. (Even today, Buenos Aires is known as the "Paris of South America.") With the passage of time, African rhythms crept into this dancing bouillabaisse, and viola!-the tango began to emerge as a sultry way to get two bodies together on a tropical Saturday night.
Not surprisingly, the tango was condemned by conservatives and religious leaders who said that the dance would lead to moral depravity, as well as arthritic joints in later life. For some inexplicable reason, the tango survived these attacks and began to positively thrive in the western hemisphere. Nothing like a good public condemnation to firmly establish a cultural trend!
The decades following World War I were considered to be the golden age of the tango in Argentina, where the most influential practitioner of the dance was Carlos Gardel (1890-1935). His interpretation of the tango was the one which set the world on fire.
The tango was partially eclipsed by "swing" and World War II, after which big band music itself would be eclipsed by something called Rock-and-Roll and the Jitterbug in the 1950s (when, once again, religious leaders and conservatives would declare the coming Apocalypse, citing that Elvis' hips were certainly to be found in the Book of Revelation if one looked hard enough). When the Beatles arrived on US soil, the conservatives threw up their hands, realizing that they were outnumbered by millions of screaming teens.
The tango has managed to survive, however, and is alive and well on most continents. (It is unknown whether the scientists buried in Antarctica
get funky when the sun disappears for six months at a time.) The famous composer Astor Piazzolla composed much tango music in the 1960s, although his music has a decidedly classical twist. Yo-Yo Ma recently recorded some of Piazzolla's music on CD. As far as the dance, look up "Dance Instructors" in the Yellow Pages and you are likely to come across a qualified tango instructor. He may not be as colorful as Don Juan Ventana, but you never know. Truth is stranger than fiction.
