This is the 200th post of Tango Chamuyo.  It’s purpose is to write about the milongueros of Buenos Aires.   I had no idea when I began taking photos of them ten years ago that I would be using them in this blog.  Each post has unfolded on its own for sharing with readers.  I will continue to write as long as there are milongueros dancing, and people interested in reading about them. 

One thing I have learned about the milongas is that a person could know other dancers for thirty or forty years, but they can’t tell you their names.  This may seem strange for those of us from other cultures, but this is the way it has always been in the milongas.  Those who performed or traveled years ago became known through videos or publicity.  However, those who danced every night in the milongas remained anonymous.  Names weren’t important in the milongas.  People greeted one another without knowing anything about each other.  Many are known only by a nickname.  All that matters to them is that they come together for one common purpose — to enjoy listening and dancing to tango music.

The milongueros are married to the milongas.  They have no commercial interest in tango.  The milonga is where they go to breathe tango and share an embrace when they dance. 

These anonymous men who have danced for decades have helped to preserve tango as a social dance.  Their love of the music and the way in which they feel it are unique.  Let’s hope that their legacy will remain with us for a long time to come.  The milongueros know the essence of tango. 

Roberto Bonavato, Mario Calorota, Ernesto Garcia, Jorge Uzunian, Hugo Belvisi, Miguel Angel Balbi

Alito in Centro Region Leonesa

Jorge Garcia, Ernesto "Dany" Garcia, Miguel Angel Balbi

Roberto Bonavato and Ernesto Delgado

When a milonguero hasn’t been at his favorite milonga for several weeks, I start asking others about him.  When Antonio Ignacio Cejas hadn’t been around for weeks at Lo de Celia, I wondered why. A friend knew that he was very ill.  Last Sunday, Antonio returned to the milonga.  It was a reason to celebrate, so I took this photo of him and his friends.

Adolfo, Antonio, Julio & Gregorio

In October, Alito was very ill and had to be hospitalized.  I visited him when he wasn’t able to walk.  Today I went to see him in the milonga.  I was amazed to see how he has gained strength and weight in the six weeks since I last saw him.  He goes to the milongas a few times a week and even dances several tandas.  I filmed him dancing in Maipu 444.  This was a reason to celebrate–the return of another milonguero.

- for giving me countless nights of incredible tandas;

- for teaching me that the embrace is more important than any steps;

- for educating me in los codigos;

- for inspiring me with their passion;

- for guiding me in my journey to discover the true essence of tango;

- for demonstrating how tango comes from the heart and not the head; and

- for helping me gain insight on why they are married to the milonga.

May 17, 1934 – November 22, 2009

I received word this morning from one of his daughters in Wisconsin that El Tano Guillermo died yesterday of a heart attack in Buenos Aires. 

I was privileged to learn from and dance with this milonguero.

Maria is no longer with us, but we can know her dancing thanks to this video in Teatro Cervantes from 1992.  I learned of Maria’s death in May.  She retired from going to the milongas many years ago and died on December 5, 2008.  The last time I saw her was in Lo de Celia. 

Maria and Tete dance in this stage production by directed by Marisa Galindo. They are my favorites among the eight couples.  They are on the left side of the stage in the video.  A much slimmer Tete is wearing a brown suit, and Maria is wearing a black dress and white shoes.  They are connected and feeling the music. 

Maria was a true milonguera.

Tango is the music of Buenos Aires.   It’s almost impossible to walk the streets of the city without hearing tango.  I’ve loved tango since I was a child growing up in Chicago. 

I recently attended a concert by Leopoldo Federico and his orchestra.  Federico recently won the Latin Grammy award for best tango album of 2009– Mi Fueye Querido (my beloved bandoneon).  Their concert program included one particular tango which struck a strong chord in me — Adios, pampa mia.   It almost brought me to tears while I listened to their performance that evening.

The tango is so familiar to me, although it is rarely played in the milongas.  It’s a tango I heard during my childhood in Chicago.  My parents had a collection of tango records, and this tango was one of my favorites.  I didn’t know at the time that the lyrics of this tango described a path I would take in my life–I said goodbye to my homeland for strange lands, never to return. 

You can follow the score while listening to this recording by Quinteto José Libertella on Todo Tango  and read the original lyrics with English translation.

This is the title of a new documentary on tango.  It shows how tango helps us connect with others in a time where fast communication via cell phone or the internet reigns.  Tango gives us the opportunity to connect heart to heart.

According to Helen Fisher, PhD, we are built to instantly size up a potential partner, an intuitive skill that likely developed millions of years ago as our forebears struggled to rapidly sort friends from enemies.  We regularly make up our minds about whether an individual could be an appropriate match within the first three minutes of talking to him (or her).  It takes one second to decide whether you find someone physically attractive.  The next checkpoint is voice which takes only seconds. 

We apply these same skills to sizing up dance partners at a milonga.  It takes only a split second to determine if someone is too tall, too short, too old, too young, too grubby, too whatever or not, for a tanda.  No one has to know our reasons for selecting a certain partner over another because we may not even be conscious ourselves.  Once we are in the embrace and begin dancing, we know immediately if it was a right decision by how it feels.  It boils down to the energy we share with someone in the music.

October 23, 1938 –

I went to the Geriatrico in my neighborhood where Luis has been living for three years.  He didn’t notice my arrival since he was walking down the hallway with his therapist Jorge.  It was a wonderful surprise to see his progress.  He walks every day and is gaining strength in his legs.  He and Jorge have a deal–when Luis is able to walk on his own, he has to teach Jorge to dance. 

Luis is usually seated in a wheelchair in the afternoon, listening to tango on the radio and drinking mate when friends and family come to visit him.  His wife Mirta and daughters live in Avellaneda, where Mirta teaches tango and organizes a milonga with Oscar Hector.  The sale of Luis’ instructional DVDs helps pay for his care at the geriatrico.

Scientists have discovered that when the brain is focused on the rhythm of music, the brain creates how the body will move.  This subject is explored in a television program on NatGeo entitled, Musical Intelligence.  It gives us something to consider, especially those who are focused on memorizing step sequences.  If our goal is to improvise our dance in the moment and express what we are feeling in the music, we can learn to rely on our brains.

Music and dance preceded language.  No human culture is known that does not have music.  Daniel Leviten, Ph.D. is a music psychologist at McGill University in Montreal who authored, This is Your Brain on Music: the Science of a Human Obsession.  He studied the brain of the popular singer/song writer Sting to see how various areas respond when hearing music and the creative process.  The big question is why do we like the music we like?  Answering this would help us understand why some tango dancers prefer to dance to music other than tango.  Sting said he remembers listening to his mother play tango at the piano.  He likes the rhythm of the tango and said it fed his muse.  His song Roxanne is a tango.

In the program, School for the Ear, Daniel Barenboim said: The music speaks to us when we are actively listening.  We have to become active listeners as dancers.  Then the sound, melody, harmony and rhythm make us dance.

Robert Jourdain says we don’t need an ear for music, but a mind for it in his book, Music, The Brain and Ecstasy: How music captures our imagination.  When music dissolves into ecstacy, it transports us to an abstract place far from the physical world that normally occupies our minds.  Sounds like a perfect description of what happens to many of us when we dance tango.