THE BIRTH OF THE GOLDEN ERA

The birth of the golden era
By Alberto Paz
Copyright (c) 2000, Planet Tango. All Rights Reserved

The business success of the Argentine tango posed a threat to the American record and film companies following the Great Depression. An all out attack was launched to sell the entertainment products coming from the North to a new generation of Argentines, and one of the main ingredients of the strategy was to destroy the tango as a favorite pastime for many residents of Buenos Aires. The untimely death of Gardel in 1935 supported an orchestrated marketing campaign that resulted in the now legendary headline published in one of Buenos Aires dailies: “The Tango is Dead.” That was going to prove to be a major blunder.

A friend recently wrote from Buenos Aires to remind me that history is written by the winners, and that Americans and British tend to look at the world from a winner’s position and sometimes assume ownership of things that don’t belong to them. I’m not sure what to make of that. Maybe he’s been reading absurd messages on the Internet. However I agree when he added that the tango, being Argentine like the Pampas and the ombu, can tell its own history from a vantage viewpoint.

Even so, there are aspects of tango history which are biased depending on the agenda of those in a position to influence public opinion. Horacio Ferrer, president of the National Academy of Tango has written in his book History of the Tango: In 1935 Rodolfo Biagi, with his nervous pianist modality (harmonically elementary and rhythmically monotonous because of the invariable repetition of the same musical ideas), joined the orchestra of Juan D’Arienzo, contributing to define the interpretative style of the combo.

The dancing section of the tango stands knows not to trust those yielding power solely by the nature of their political or social affiliations, but many outsiders (metaphorically and geographically speaking) tend to repeat (and believe) as words from some sacred gospel, the obvious put down that elitist Ferrer dishes out to one of the musicians responsible for changing forever the history and fate of the tango music in the 1940’s. Dancers became a motivational force with a strong say in influencing the way tango music for dancing should sound.

Rodolfo Biagi played a very important part in the history of tango, particularly in regards to the renaissance of the dance craze that has become to be known as the Golden Era of tango. A pianist, Biagi seems to have been unjustly forgotten or maybe shortchanged when it comes to highlighting names in the gallery of tango’s greatest figures.

Perhaps the birth of the Golden Era of the tango was an unexpected stab of fate. Uruguayan composer Pintin Castellanos brought a new tango to orchestra director Juan D’Arienzo for his consideration. Members of the orchestra suggested that the piece would be more suitable as a milonga, so they rearranged it and one evening of 1935 they played it for the first time from the studios of LR1 Radio El Mundo. The vibrant sound of the milonga was accentuated by the unmistakable presence of the piano striking rhythm and melody through the hands of the recent addition to the Juan D’Arienzo orchestra, twenty-nine year old Rodolfo Biagi. La puñalada (The Stab) became an instant hit, and the sound of D’Arienzo with Biagi at piano caught the imagination of an entire generation of listeners. Soon dancers began to flock to the neighborhood clubs to dance to the compelling beat of the renewed two by four tango signature of the early 1900s, revived and polished by the diabolical arrangements of D’Arienzo and Biagi’s “harmonically elementary , monotonous rhythm of invariable repetition of the same musical ideas.”

With an undeniable talent and a spirit characteristic of the natives of the city of Buenos Aires, Rodolfo Biagi injected a much needed, and later to become a well-known and fruitful change, in the music of Buenos Aires. The enormous success of the orchestra of Juan D’Arienzo during the 1936 Carnaval season, with its strong and accelerated emphasis of the forgotten 2×4 rhythm led to a decade of extraordinary activity among musicians, singers and dancers between 1935 and the late fifties. The energetic and original treatment of the piano by Rodolfo Biagi set new standards for that instrument, and forced the rest of the orchestras to vary their styles, and many pianists assimilated the influence of the new rhythm in vogue.

Heading into 1940, the tango began perhaps its most fruitful period. It all began when Rodolfo Biagi joined the orchestra of Juan D’Arienzo in 1935. Soon after, other orchestras abandoned their romantic (and at times dense) style characteristic of the late twenties and early thirties. They opted for a more upbeat playing style to please the increasing demand of the dancers. The tango scene became brilliant, the quality of the musicians shot upwards, and the personality of the singers blended within the new musical structures as another instrument that responded to the needs of the dancing public. Concurrently, Buenos Aires underwent a significant transformation anticipating the Peronist regime that would come to power in 1945. The deteriorating conditions of the farmlands, and the industrialization of the capital city driven by the need to replace imported goods, provoked a massive emigration of people from the provinces to Buenos Aires. The working class underwent a process of national restructuring that included the embracing of a nationalistic cultural pride. Coinciding with World War II, and the weakening of the cultural influences of the imperialists nations, a national cultural industry grew quickly aided by a massive development of the media. Movies, radio and the dance halls contributed to the renaissance of the tango and the onset of its Golden Era.

The Recordings of the Forties Between 1940 and 1949 the following orchestras registered the indicated number of recordings. Francisco Canaro, 345 Juan D’Arienzo, 232 Anibal Troilo, 189 Enrique Rodriguez, 172 Carlos Di Sarli, 156 Miguel Calo, 151 Francisco Lomuto, 148 Ricardo Tanturi, 140 Rodolfo Biagi, 113 Alfredo De Angelis, 113 Osvaldo Fresedo, 110 Angel D’Agostino, 106 Roberto Firpo, 100 Osvaldo Pugliese, 94 Leopoldo Federico, 62

People can’t control, choose nor decide where and when they will be born. These circumstances, particularly at the beginning of the twentieth century in Buenos Aires, would unfortunately affect negatively the future of many talented people. Such was the case of Rodolfo Biagi, born in the working class district of San Telmo on March 14, 1906, into a the bosom of a humble family. The desire of immigrant parents to forge a future for their sons and daughters through education played an important role in the decision to enroll young Rodolfo as a non-paying student at a conservatory. By the time he turned thirteen, Biagi had graduated from the Conservatory of La Prensa, where he had been coached to be a concert violinist, but in the course of his studies converted to piano. At the suggestion of one of his teachers he continued to widen his knowledge at the Conservatory of the Anglican Church, while he earned his first money as a pianist in one of the many movie houses featuring silent movies.

There he discovered the legendary Juan Maglio “Pacho”, and at barely fifteen years of age was invited by Maglio to play in his orchestra. The setting could not have been more auspicious, none other than the cafe El Nacional on Corrientes Street, the Olympus for fans of the tango. From that moment in time Rodolfo Biagi had to juggle his performances with “Pacho”, his performances on Radio Cultura and his studies of teaching methods at the Mariano Acosta college. On parting with Maglio, he joined Miguel Orlando’s formation at the Maipu Pigall cabaret, and in that place he met Carlos Gardel, who was a habitual client of that establishment. Gardel proposed that he accompany him on some recordings together with his guitarists Guillermo Barbieri, Jose Maria Aguilar and Domingo Riverol, plus violinist Antonio Rodio. These recordings took place on April 1, 1930. The order of titles waxed was as follows: the tango Buenos Aires, the fox-trot Yo naci para ti, tu seras para mi, the waltz Aromas de Cairo, and the tangos Aquellas farras and Viejo smoking. After this recording experience, Carlos Gardel offered him a trip to Europe as his accompanist, but Rodolfo Biagi chose to remain in Buenos Aires.

At the beginning of the thirties we find Biagi at the piano of accordion player Bautista Guido’s sextet and in 1935 he was with Juan Canaro’s orchestra on a successful tour of Brazil. In Buenos Aires they enlivened the shows at the Teatro Cine Paris which were broadcast over LS9 The Voice of the Air. With Juan Canaro he began to develop his personal style, a style which reached its zenith in 1935, a time of crisis for the tango for the reasons mentioned before.

The socio-economic and political situation of the country had brought the tango and its people to a crossroad which was difficult to resolve. Many orchestras dissolved for want of places to play. The invasion of strange foreign rhythms, advanced by the ruling classes of the nation, and “supported” by a docile middle class, sent the business of tango into a tailspin; in this desolate environment for the popular music of Buenos Aires, a miracle aroused at the hands of Rodolfo Biagi.

The Rodolfo Biagi orchestra

It was then that Biagi was contracted by Juan D’Arienzo to take the place left vacant by Luis Visca. The tandem D’Arienzo-Biagi propelled the movement which produced the rediscovery by the people of their music. Rodolfo Biagi’s contagious sound emanating from his piano, fully coincided with the aesthetic postulates of Juan D’Arienzo, the popular style that at the time some qualified as simplistic, too fateful for the tango’s future. In fact, the tango establishment, the kind that meets to talk about things others do, never acknowledged D’Arienzo as a major influence for the tango. The king of the rhythm laughed all the way to the bank, but that is another story.

It was the common citizens who were the real depository of the culture which pertains to them and things were finally put in their rightful place, the public responding with its multitudinous presence at the performances of D’Arienzo with Biagi. A new rhythmic line was imposed and it was rapidly adopted by other orchestras and a new generation was born which brought about a great resurgence in the forties decade. Rodolfo Biagi was with Juan D’Arienzo until 1938, the year he formed his own orchestra.

THE MILONGAS PORTEÑAS OF THE 1970′S

Individuals with levels of ignorance that range from innocent to malicious, have attempted to create the idea that the people of Argentina couldn’t care less for the tango, except in times of bonanza when they can make a few bucks by becoming tangueros. The fact is that there is so much about the social and cultural aspects of the tango that begs explaining. Thus, we pay homage and give due respect and consideration to the humble milongas of Buenos Aires, where the preservation of the authentic, traditional and purest form of Argentine tango dancing has been taking place without interruption during both times of bonanza and misery.

The decade of the seventies was a horrendous experience for the Argentine Republic, as members of a repressive elite supported a military war that has become to be known by the infamous name of “dirty” because it was waged against citizens of the nation. Citizens who happened to have dissenting viewpoints, or were singled out by enemies or competitors as “dangerous” to their own selfish interests or the “welfare of the country.”

As a result of that, there are still thousands of Argentine citizens unaccounted for. They have disappeared (some having been dumped from military cargo planes in the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean; others buried in unmarked graves, some after their unborn children were ripped from their guts, and rats were used to fill the void) under the excuse of cleansing the country of dissidents who rubbed somebody the wrong way.

In this climate of terror and persecution, the business side of dancing suffered because the secret police regularly raided dance halls under the excuse of looking for terrorists, communists, and other enemies of the state. People began to stay away from the most prominent clubs where dancing (all sorts of dancing, not just tango) took place.

The conclusion drawn by many, and supported by outright lies told by prominent touring professional teachers, was that tango died in the seventies as a consequence of being proscribed and banned by the government. The reasoning followed that if the tango had “died,” it was because the Argentines “killed” it, and Americans and Europeans with hard currency on hand performed some sort of exorcism, and voila, here is the tango again but now it belongs to the world.

Not so, writes Adela Zulema Cardozo, a surgical nurse and a founding member of the Institute of Tango Research. The ignorance of such claims is partially a consequence of the minimum cost of admission charged by the organizers of the numerous milongas porteñas during the seventies, that allowed access to their salons to a very large number of people of limited or non existent resources. These were indeed modest places, owned by regular people who could not afford the prohibitive costs of radio, TV and printed advertising, which is what gives massive promotion to an activity proposed to all sectors of society.
But maybe, these promoters were not interested in advertising since their facilities never lacked attendance because of the high interest shown by the public in dancing tango.

These milongas porteñas were the authentic seeding grounds for some of the greatest dancers who a decade later began to showcase the Argentine tango on stages around the world. Among them were Juan Carlos Copes, Virulazo, Antonio Todaro, Eduardo Arquimbau and many others. That’s the reason for their designation as milongas porteñas in contrast with other well publicized places “where they also danced Tango.” These other places were exclusively frequented by tourists, or by a public that had nothing to do with the authentic milongueros, who would only attend these “visible” venues, when as professionals, they were invited to do an exhibition.

Of all the milongas porteñas of the seventies, salon Italia Unita is perhaps the eldest of them all, with over a half a century of illustrious existence promoting the dance of tango. Others had a more ephemeral existence lasting part or all of the decade of the seventies. Some have been recently reopened for the benefit of the new tourist crowd that participates in locally organized international Tango encounters.

The common characteristic of all these milongas porteñas was the alternating use of both Tipica and Tropical/Moderna music in contrast to the decade of the forties were Jazz alternated with the tango. Within the Tropical/Moderna repertoire, cumbias were the preferred choice of the dancers.

The most classic, traditional and oldest salon tanguero is Salon La Argentina, originally located on 361 Rodriguez Peña Street, one block from Corrientes, and today on Bartolome Mitre, near Callao.
Another traditional and very old salon was Augusteo. There were dances with two orchestras: Tipica and Tropical on Saturdays and Sundays, and with recordings on Fridays.

Salon Rodriguez, known this way because of the street where it was located, was actually Circulo Italiano Lider Piedmont. They organized dances always with recorded music Wednesdays and Sundays from 6 PM to 11:30 PM. Notables habitués were Magdalena Copes, mother of Juan Carlos, , Carlos Alberto Estevez better known as Petroleo, a dancer of prestige, and many other well known personalities of the world of tango.

At Salon 25 de Mayo, known in the tango jargon as La veinticinco they danced on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with orchestras, Tipica and Tropical-Moderna; on Sundays the dancing started at 4 PM and lasted till 1 am. The attendance tended to be an older very tanguero crowd.

Salon Belgrano, located on Belgrano Avenue, was actually the Hogar Asturiano. In the seventies they had dancing every night, with different organizers each night. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the milonga was known as the Copes Tango Club.

El Nilo belonged to the Croatian community and at one point it was a movie house. Located on Boedo Avenue, they had dancing with orchestras on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 6 PM.

Salon Reduci, as well as Augusteo and Italia Unita, Unione e Benevolenza and Nacionale Italiano, belonged to the Italian Association of Mutual Assistance. It was built in 1929 and it is located on Rodriguez Peña 1442. In the seventies, they danced there with orchestras on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 PM to 4 AM, and on Sundays with recorded music from 5 PM to 2 AM.

Salon Canning on Scalabrini Ortiz 1331 offered (and still continues) dancing every night to recorded music.

Casa de Galicia had dancing Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays; on Sundays they danced with four orchestras, two Tipicas and two Tropicals. They worked in two shifts, two until 9 PM and two until closing time. Each orchestra played half hour sets.

Salon Italiano, actually Nazionale Italiano also had two orchestras, Tipica and Tropical on Saturdays from 9 PM to 4 AM, and on Sundays until 1 AM.

Palacio Rivadavia offered dancing with a high percentage of recorded tangos on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Salon Constitution offered tangos in the Seventies. Later it became the palace of the bailanta, a dance party considered by many even “lower class” than the tango, perhaps because it was the preferred form of entertainment for the dark skinned people of the interior of Argentina, and the dark skinned immigrants from Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru.

The Casa Suiza, also known as Salon Suizo held dances only during Carnaval time. They were organized by the Shimmy Club, a black association, and it had two dance floors. The main floor at street level attracted the tango crowd in a similar way as the salon listed above. In the basement, members of the Shimmy Club danced candombes to the sound of small drums, although they also went upstairs to dance tangos and cumbias.

Other salons where people danced tangos in the seventies where, Verdi, Region Leonesa, Glorias Argentinas, America del Sur, Unione e Benevolenza. Some are still in existence today. There were also social clubs like Estudiantes de Buenos Aires, Almagro, Bristol, Huracan, Boca Juniors. And confiterias such as Marcone, Mi Club, Crillon, Okey, Tourbillon, Retratos, Marabu, Bamboche, Savoy, Siglo XX, and Regine. It was not unusual that around midnight or 1 AM, they stopped selling admission tickets because they were filled to capacity.

There were other venues like Antezana, Circulo Social Mariano Acosta, La Taberna de Ricardo, Sociedad de Fomento Mariano Acosta, Noches de Atenas, Los Bohemios, Peña de Tango Angel Villoldo, Cantina La Galera and Cantina La Herradura.

Of all places, Salon Italia Unita was perhaps the one that typified best, the popularity of the tango in the seventies, a period when tourists stayed away because of the political and economic unrest in Argentina. Built between 1878 and 1883, it is an ample salon with balconies at both sides and at the entrance.
The dance floor has a parquet floor that has been completely replaced twice in 1981 and 1989. At the far end is the stage where the orchestras sat. Large mirrors covered the side walls, and all around the dance floors there were chairs for the ladies to sit. The gentlemen stood in the center of the dance floor (dancers moved around in la ronda) and from their vantage position they observed the ladies sitting or standing around the dance floor, ready to invite them to dance using the classic cabeceo, the nod of the head. They danced with the lights on. Gentlemen were refused admission unless they wore a jacket and a tie. Persons under the age of eighteen were not allowed in, and it was forbidden to smoke in the salon. Smokers had a side hall with chairs to enjoy their vice.

Many orchestras played at Italia Unita. Maestro Juan D’Arienzo’s final performance at the helm of his orchestra took place there, and there is a long list of major personalities of the tango scene who, alongside thousands of unnamed milongueros, spent many glorious hours enjoying and dancing the tango in the decade of the seventies, while some kept saying, and pathetically some still repeat, that the tango was dead.

Marisa Donadio, an attorney and also a founder member of the Research Institute of Tango contributed with documentation used in this article.

WATCH YOUR STEP WITH THE TANGO: IT’S ADDICTIVE

Watch your step with the tango: it’s addictive
By Margaret Putnam
Copyright (c) 2000, The Dallas Morning News. All Rights Reserved

I’d been warned. The rapids are treacherous and the current swift. Once you step in, watch out. It doesn’t take long to be swept away.
Those rapids – otherwise known as the Argentine tango – have claimed plenty of victims. Valorie and Alberto, for instance, gave up lucrative careers to tango. Beth resisted for a while, quitting, returning, quitting and now back at it. Eiko is definitely a goner – she took up tango four years ago and soon found it impossible to return to Japan.

I fear I’m next. Already I’ve skipped two ballet classes, rushed from a flamenco show to get to a Sunday afternoon session, plunked down $60 for a private lesson, practiced tango steps on the streets late at night while walking the dog and danced on and on despite feet that ache so badly I wonder if I’ll make it to the car. And it’s not even a week. Only last Friday I had laughed when Leonard responded to my question about what other kinds of dances did he do. “Tango is the only dance,” he said. I think he’s right.

Tango is the Everest of social dance. Impossible. Demanding. Intricate. And therefore irresistible. “The geometry, the navigation and the balance captivate men,” says Valorie Hart, who with her partner, Alberto Paz, is in town to teach a three-week tango workshop sponsored by Tango Argentino Dallas and the city of Dallas. “Engineers go wild over the infinite mathematical possibilities.” She mentions likewise lawyers, architects, artists. “Tango has become the darling of the professional classes. In the old days it was the working class and the middle class.“

People who spend too much time staring at computer screens and talking on cell phones discover, through tango, the heady pleasures of physical reality. Suddenly, the body counts for something. And the isolation and distance built in to most forms of modern work disappear in a flash the minute a man steps forward to embrace a woman.

With that embrace, the rest of the world falls away. The music takes over. Even in the cold florescent glare of KC Dance Studio where some of the workshop classes are held, my partner listens, I listen, both of us waiting for the moment to take that first smooth step to the side. Then I’m moving backward, to the side, forward again, gliding like a miniature liner through unresisting ocean. “Stay connected,” Alberto exhorts, surveying the dancers from the middle of the studio. The tango requires uncanny cooperation between man and woman and woe to anyone who loses focus. This is not the fox trot or the waltz, for which you learn a pattern and repeat it, ad infinitum. There are steps and patterns, to be sure, but they’re only a base, and the possibilities of variation are infinite. To tango is to improvise, and to improvise with a partner requires intense concentration.

Not that we start out in the workshop improvising. Alberto starts us with the basics: the tango walk, a stealthy stride placing one foot directly in front of the other, thighs crossed, upper body moving slightly in counter motion. Then the side-back-side-front pattern.
We practice, and practice and practice. Amazing how much there is to learn, about balance, keeping connected, turning out the legs ever so slightly on the side step, shifting the weight, keeping the rhythm.

Overconfident at the end of the second lesson – after all, I’ve had decades of ballet training – I approach Alberto with a question. He eases me into his arms. I move before he does. “No!” he barks. We start over. “No! Why are you swinging your leg?” he says. We begin again, and once more, before we get to the end of even a complete pattern, I’ve done something wrong. “What are you doing?” he asks incredulously, trying to explain that the leg doesn’t initiate the movement – my wonderful ballet training – but the upper body.

Alberto is so warm and encouraging

The two-minute lesson is a revelation. And after that, every time Alberto glides over to me, hand outstretched, I quake, ego on the line. But each brief encounter yields tremendously helpful information, and I improve on the spot. Think what a private lesson could do, I reason, and Tuesday I find myself in the Oak Lawn apartment where Alberto and Valorie are staying and spend 90 minutes dancing with him on a slick wood floor. Not only does he not bark, he is so warm and encouraging I begin to understand why Valorie ditched her New York business five years ago to take up the tango life with him.

“My friends in New York thought I had lost my mind,” Valorie says. “I had a beach house in the Hamptons, a studio and an apartment. I gave all that up. My friends thought I was going into white slavery. I’ve never had those issues of submission. A kind of courtliness arises with the tango. We’re all in this together.“

The “togetherness” aspect of tango, in fact, is its most striking characteristic. The battle of the sexes may rage elsewhere, but not on the dance floor. The man and woman either cooperate or stop dead in their tracks. Alberto doesn’t even like the terms “lead” and “follow.”
“Lead and follow imply we are doing something we both know,” he says. “But the moment you are improvising, you can’t lead or follow. The woman moves first, the man responds and creates the space for her to dance. It’s not even 50-50, it’s 100 percent and 100 percent from both of them.“

Tango is too intense to permit small talk. In three group lessons and a tango party, I learn nothing about any partner other than name and tango history and often not even that. I have no idea what Leonard, Mac or Carlos do for a living, whether any of them has been indicted for fraud, been married six times or plays the horses. Nor do I care. Can he dance is the only burning question.

The single-mindedness of the tango fanatic extends after class, too. After the second lesson, about a dozen of us repair to Goldfinger’s restaurant nearby. The band plays Greek bazouki music, and in a flash, the dance floor fills with couples doing – what else? – the tango.
And who can bother eating? At the milonga, or tango party, Saturday night, two tables filled with food at 9 p.m. are still filled with food at midnight. When Astor Piazzolla’s music is playing, “to dance or to eat” isn’t a hard choice.

“When I first signed up for tango lessons,” Valorie says, “I thought, how hard can this dance be? I can fake it. That first lesson was like ‘Whoa!’ I’m not going to be able to put on a cute dress and cute shoes and think that will cut it.”

Watching Alberto and Valorie move together in their infinitely smooth and subtle way, I’m heartened. Valorie took up tango only five years ago, and look at her now. True, she has her own Argentine partner, a charmer, but I’ll bet she’ll tell me where to buy some sexy tango shoes.

ONE NIGHT AT THE COFFEE ROAST

A table at a coffee shop seems the ideal place to solve the problems of the world, to catch up with the latest gossip and to passionately chat about The Tango Lesson; after all who better than those who have had their share of tango lessons to Siskel-and Ebert Sally Potter’s dream come through.

Dick saw it in Sweden and can’t stop talking about the tango valseado that Pablo and Sally did by the Seine, reminiscent of an unforgettable scene from An American in Paris.

Samantha was at the showing of the movie at the Venice Festival and now laughs at her emotional outburst of contempt for what she considered an arrogant attempt by Sally Potter to portray her movie as a love story. That’s not how love stories go on the dance floor, she wrote in a letter to the editor of an Italian newspaper, but then she reasons, not every fifty something Brit lady gets the chance to do a movie about tango and makes it look like half way decent. At best they get to start a war in the Islas Malvinas or to be featured in a Monty Python film.

Another round of cappuccinos, cafe lattes and Kalua makes its way to the table. The perky waitress has caught up with the conversation and she is eyeballing Jake Manzana who looks dapper in his blue blazer and gray flannel pants. He’s quick to say that the Tango Lesson is the kind of outing to which I could bring a date without fear of getting her bored. “Perky” bends over the table and gives Jake two good reasons to make him stare at her for a moment before he turns his head and gazes at the rain falling beyond the windows of the cafe.

She’d love to learn the tango and a flurry of business cards fall on her tray. Best tips she ever had…

Woody snaps, I guess the special effects budget ran short because in the scene where they dance a milonga in the rain on the streets of Buenos Aires, I can see that 100 feet away it’s not raining.

Come on, says Camille, a contra-artist who is always on the leading edge of creative ways to mix tango with art, you probably have enjoyed your quota of wet T-shirt contests in your life. Dancing in the rain? Don’t knock it until you try it.

Matt is patting his hair into place, enjoying his own reflection in the window he’s using as a mirror. He speaks to the group, but never takes his eyes from his reflection, or his hands from his hair. The real star of the film is Buenos Aires, the scenes at Ideal are just as authentic as they can be. Sally, he continues with the authority of a connoisseur, I can’t stand because she is so self-centered. On cue, everybody looks at Matt, with a quizzical question mark in their eyes.

Suzy is about to lash out something vitriolic, everybody can see that, but then thinking that they‘re gonna have to ride back together she just rolls up her eyes and deliberately opens the New York Post and reads aloud, The Tango Lesson doesn’t have legs.

What does the writer know? Tammy, jumping up from her chair, snaps, I dare him to prove that! She is in town on a grant from the Tango Cheerleading Federation visiting local hoofer Darren, serious, scruffy, with a trendy new growth of beard. Sit Tammy, sit. He’s a dancer; he’s born again; a single tear rolls down his face.

Milenita confesses that the look Alicia gives Carlos in the scene where he is hustling Sally is too close for comfort. Hay miradas que matan, rebuts Juanita with an air of complicity, using an acquired Spanish accent that drives everybody crazy. Indeed if looks could kill.

Do you think that Veron is French dipping in the airport scene?, asks Tito with a lecherous look on his face. It’s French kissing, you dirty old man!, snaps Margarita, his embarrassed wife.

I think Sally committed an act of wild hubris by assuming center stage in her new film about dance and love, says Janet, who writes for the New York Times. There is a moment of silence as everybody ponders the depth of Janet’s statement before everybody burst out laughing.

Come on you guys, give the old spinster a break. It takes a lot of guts to put in black and white a poignant story about the lessons of tango capturing with a very subtle sense of humor and irony the egocentric and chauvinist subtexts of the Tango scene both in Buenos Aires and abroad. Heads turn in disbelief to a bearded guy who’s tap dancing by the table, clad in a long dripping overcoat.

Can you guys spare a quarter for a cup of coffee?, he begs extending a paper cup with his right hand.

Outside the rain continues to wreck havoc with the traffic.

Margarita’s eyes have turned to the window where the capricious raindrops and the reflections of the street lights have drawn a smug image of Sally Potter’s face. Ave Maria purisima, it’s a miracle, she mutters as she slowly crosses her chest…