Argentine Tango!

there is a place in farmindale that specializes in tango. it might be called swing street? there was a big article on this in newsday not too long ago. my family is from argentina. i would love to learn tango! my uncle the asst director of the sao paulo ballet in brasil, and i would love to impress him with our dancing skills, but we dont have much time in our schedule to learn!

anyhoo, i will try to find out the name.

let me know too!!!!! me and fh were taking lessons but they got cancelled poo

how absolutely sexy is the tango!!!!!!!! WOWWEEE!!!

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Posted by MsKitty1274

Great! Let me know whatever you find out! Speaking of Argentina...are there any special wedding traditions steming from Argentina? THanks!

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my mom says no. she left there when she was in her teens, so she may not remember!

here is the article from newsday

In love with the tango
The romantic Latin dance is sexy, seductive and impossible for passionate fans to resist

BY RHONDA GARELICK.

August 8, 2004

As a big yellow moon rises on Saturday night, Central Park looks deserted; the last stragglers head toward the exits. Yet, from beyond the sleeping carousel come the plaintive strains of a bandoneón. Over a little hill, in dim lamplight, an elegant party is hidden among the trees. Dozens of couples are dancing the tango around the statue of William Shakespeare.

Bodies are pressed close together, and the women - in floating cocktail dresses or swirling skirts - seem to have swooned onto their partners' shoulders. Many have their eyes closed in what looks like total abandon; they let themselves be turned, swiveled, dragged or held perfectly still. In every couple, however, all four legs are weaving complex patterns. High heels scrape the cobblestones as they step crisply between, around and over the men's legs.

No matter how enraptured these duos seem, at the end of a song, many of them separate and find new partners, only to wear the same expression of dreamy concentration. Their passion, it turns out, is inspired not by any one person, but rather, by the tango itself.

Not another dance craze

This gathering is typical of the many milongas, or tango parties, where the ever-growing crowds of tango aficionados flock to practice their skills and mingle. They are held seven nights a week in New York: in dance studios, nightclubs, restaurants and outdoors. Go to a few and you start recognizing the regulars. It would be a mistake, though, to view this as just another dance craze. Tango fever has been raging for nearly 20 years. It began in 1985 when the dance troupe Tango Argentino arrived in New York. Since then, a vast and serious subculture has taken root, fueled by live productions such as 'Forever Tango' and 'Boccatango' - both now playing at major Manhattan theaters - as well as movies including 'The Assasination Tango,' 'Tango Bar' and 'Tango Magic.'

The themes of passion and addiction recur when tango lovers are asked to describe their relationship to the dance. How does it start? The stories of tango people, who encompass all ethnicities and range in age from their mid-20s to their 80s, resemble narratives of conversion or first love. Usually, they have seen a professional tango performance and felt moved by it. Next, they take a few lessons, something 'clicks,' and they are never the same.

'Once you hit tango, there's no going back,' says Sherry Palencia, a statuesque 50-something from North Babylon who tangos four times a week and has founded the Argentine Tango Lovers of Long Island at Swing Street Studios in Farmingdale. 'It's an addiction,' echoes her friend and co- founder, Joan Perelmutter of Dix Hills.

'Tango is a drug-free high,' insists Alex Turney, 85. 'I divide my life into B.T. and A.T.: Before Tango and After Tango.' Turney and his wife, Jean, who live near Lincoln Center, were part of the first wave and have been tangoing since 1985. Ignoring arthritic joints, they have performed in several countries, won competitions and starred in a documentary, 'Tango Octogenario.'

Even the highest-level professionals agree: 'It's like a virus,' says Argentine-born Jorge Torres, 37, star of Broadway's 'Forever Tango,' who chose tango over a ballet career.

'No matter how many times I hear this music, it feels like the first time,' says Julio Bocca, the charismatic star of 'Boccatango' at the Joyce Theater, as well as a principal with American Ballet Theatre.

It's easy to understand why professional tango dancers born in Argentina feel this connection. But what can we make of the curiously strong bond between average New Yorkers and this dance born over 100 years ago in Buenos Aires?

Cross-cultural connection

Tango is a hybrid, a combination of the candombe dances brought to Argentina by African slaves, mixed with the European polka and the Cuban habanera, itself a melange of French colonial contra dances and African music. This blended dance was popularized in the late 1800s by European immigrant men who picked it up on the streets and started practicing it in the bordellos, where they went looking for female companionship. The men would practice with one another, eager to impress the women with their skills. At first considered a dance for the rabble, tango eventually made its way to Paris and was later welcomed back by Argentina's upper classes, who liked anything the French liked.

Tango, therefore, is cross-cultural by nature, with roots in a port city whose many exiles yearned for home and love. Furthermore, it is what is called an 'embrace dance': entirely about the connection between two partners who hold each other close. However complicated the steps, however well trained the dancers, ultimately it's an improvised communication. 'You have to talk with your body,' Torres says.

'It's a private conversation,' says Claudine Curry, 34, of Piscataway, N.J., who teaches mambo in Manhattan (see www.mambo2chacha.com) but, for pleasure, goes out to tango, preferring its subtleties to the showiness of other ballroom dances.

Intimate interdependence

This communication and intimacy are a big part of what makes the tango so deeply attractive in New York, where one can live for years without knowing one's neighbors. Tango offers many a relief from the isolation and anomie of urban life. Partners become leader and follower, woven together in a constantly changing series of interdependent patterns.

Caleb Cain Marcus, a tango performer and instructor at Empire Dance in Chelsea, explains it well. 'Tango creates a symbiosis rare in other dances. No matter how technical it gets,' he says, 'it's a hug.'

Cain Marcus' partner and co-instructor, Ting Chin, who is an architect by day, but spends her evenings dancing and teaching tango. 'I became addicted to the human connection,' she says. 'It's improvised. You don't know what happens next. Every dance is different, every partner is different, every time is different. As the woman, you have to give up everything you've been thinking about and give yourself over.'

Many women agree with Chin about tango's appeal for their sex. Although women are usually the followers in tango, responding to cues given by their male partners, theirs is not a subordinate position. One of tango's unique features is that following turns out to be quite a creative exercise. More so than in any other ballroom dance, tango encourages individuality. In following, women invent their own response steps, adding grace notes called embellishments.

Performer and teacher Rebecca Shulman, 32, of Dance Manhattan explains: 'In salsa and swing, the follower doesn't affect timing. Here the follower can slow down the leader while she says her piece. Because he's paying so much attention to what she does, her suggestion might affect what he chooses to do next.'

So is tango a feminist dance? Not exactly. It would be more accurate to call it a dance of romantic equality, and therein lies another element of its appeal.

Most of the people who attend lessons and milongas show up alone. At these events, the dance is performed by couples, but not fixed couples. It is tango etiquette to dance with many partners, which not only maintains the excitement of improvisation but also makes tango a safe way for unattached people to express sensuality, removing some of the pressure of the singles scene.

'It fulfills quite a need,' says Gayatri Martin, 42, who teaches tango in Manhattan and organizes tango tours to Argentina. There is no shame in not having a date for tango. It's normal. A single woman (or man) can get dressed up, go out to a milonga, see familiar faces, enjoy this delicious and sensual dance with several partners and then go happily home alone. In fact, according to Daniel Carpi, who runs the packed Friday night milongas at La Belle Epoque ballroom in Greenwich Village, many married couples go out separately to tango, preferring a variety of dance partners.

Sense of community

Tango provides more, however, than 'a three-minute love affair,' as Rochelle Steinfeld of Stony Brook puts it. It provides the promise of a warm, familial social group.

'All you have to do is go out; there's a community. Fifty to 200 people in a room with the same aspirations,' says Cain Marcus.

'It's a nice thing to open the door and find this in New York - a dream, outside of the chaos,' says Carpi.

This welcoming community extends to most large cities in the United States and many abroad. 'Wherever I go, I find out where there's tango,' Steinfeld says. 'When I show up , the host welcomes me, dances with me and kisses me goodbye.'

For many, tango becomes a reason for travel, and many students of tango make repeated pilgrimages to Argentina. According to Chin, 'You have to go to Buenos Aires; there's a different energy in the culture of the street.'

Professional Argentine tango performers love the warm reception they receive in New York, whether they have come to perform, teach or just see their American friends. Even big stars such as Torres and Bocca, who dance to sold-out crowds, become friendly with tango amateurs. For many, this is yet another draw of the tango scene: The dance can be very challenging and its masters greatly admired, but there is relatively little social hierarchy. Onstage, the professionals dance with ferocious glamour, but offstage they are warm and approachable, making that glamour seem more accessible to regular folks - an obtainable fantasy.

Tango is not an easy dance, and it demands commitment. Most instructors say that at least six lessons are required to be able even to enjoy the dance minimally. Lessons are not free, of course. Group classes range from $12 to $20 an hour; private lessons cost much more (although many tango parties are free or inexpensive).

Lifelong lovers

Tango will not satisfy those seeking a quick dance fix, who want to memorize a few steps for parties. Since it is heavily improvised, one must acquire many basic elements before beginning to arrange them, much as with a foreign language. But tango is also a forgiving mistress that, unlike other forms of dance, embraces participants of all ages.

'It changed our whole growing old,' Alex Turney says.

Martin says she has seen many students in their 60s and 70s rediscover joy and vigor through the tango. Sherry Palencia feels that tangoing with her husband has brought passion back to their marriage: 'We fight harder, and we love harder,' she confides.

There are various styles of tango and a wide range of teaching methods. Some instructors teach sequences of steps. Chin and Cain Marcus, on the other hand, teach what they call 'nuevo tango,' which focuses more on independent components and reduced interdependence of partners. Rebecca Shulman believes in teaching everyone both the follower and leader positions.

Trial and error might be necessary to find the subgenre that clicks with one's temperament. But be forewarned, that click might mark the beginning of a lifelong love affair.

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some other spots on long island.