The original women’s technique class By Valorie Hart Copyright (c) 1995-2012, Planet Tango. All Rights Reserved At Stanford Tango Week 1995, Graciela Gonzalez became the stuff of mythic proportions. This diminutive powerhouse of a woman was something the American tango student had not experienced. She was not part of a teaching couple, she taught alone. [...]

by Irene Amuchastegui and Laura Falcoff Copyright @ Clarin, 1999  According to Irene Amuchastegui and Laura Falcoff, the various styles of dance practiced at the popular milongas in Buenos Aires generate confrontations and polemics between milongueros. Their featured article was published in daily newspaper Clarin on Sunday, August 8, 1999. The translation by Alberto Paz [...]

My life and El Firulete By VALORIE HART Copyright (c) 1995-2011, Planet Tango. All Rights Reserved The first time I saw El Firulete was mid week at the 1995 Stanford Tango Week. It appeared on a table in a messy pile of local fliers. It stood out and caught my eye. It’s black and white [...]

Ever since I suffered a cardiac arrest on the way to Customs at the Calgary airport my memory of the time between getting to the Continental gate in New Orleans and waking up in a hospital bed three days later is totally blank. All I know so far I have been told and documented on [...]

There isn’t a single person alive who had a glimpse of what “compadritos” looked like or whether they were good dancers or not. That’s why any reference to the dancing of the “compadritos” (it is implied that the compadritos only danced tangos) is full of smoke and not supported by any verifiable evidence. As a [...]

DANCE AS LIFE By Cafe Girl Published by courtesy of CAFE GIRL CHRONICLES I used to think my dance lessons were all about timing, steps, musicality, and technique.   Lately I have come to realize that that there’s more too it than that.  The more I dance, the more I learn about life.  According to my [...]

Every year on this date, June 24th, I’m haunted by the image of the freak airplane crash that took the lives of Carlos Gardel and Alfredo Lepera in 1935. For most folks born outside South America, it is nearly impossible to understand what it meant for the nation of Argentina, and many other South American [...]

By Gisela Kirberg Mamone (1942-2009) The tango is an embrace in movement. A man and a woman enter a dialogue through their bodies, guided by music which has an almost somber quality of yearning. Of a passion that can that can never be fulfilled. Of a sweet sadness. Two strangers become one for the duration [...]

A testimony by Jean-Pierre Sighé April 2, 2006 I met Alberto and Valorie during the Winter of 1998, in California . I had just made the decision to learn Argentine Tango, after going to the show “Forever Tango” twice in San Francisco and watching the movie “The Tango Lesson” by Sally Potter. I needed someone [...]

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 [...]