tangoessence

The third dance in the history of dance done with the man and woman facing each other is the Tango. It consists of the man holding the woman’s right hand in his left, while his right arm is around her. The first dance done in this position was the Viennese Waltz, a craze which spread across Europe throughout the 1830s. This was the first form of couple dancing after the traditional dances of couples with highly choreographed steps. The second dance was known as the Polka and was the next craze throughout the 1840s. Finally the Tango evolved into the third dance of its kind which greatly varied from anything before its existence because it introduced the great concept of improvisation for the first time.

The Tango soon after had a great influence on all of the “couples dancing” in the twentieth century. Its evolution was due to the great amounts of immigrants coming into Argentina which brought an array of new dancing with shocking new holds. It is, however, unknown as to how and when exactly the Tango evolved from the Viennese Waltz and the Polka into what it is today. This is due to the fact that it was everyday normal people who helped with the evolution of the Tango. They were the poor and the underprivileged that helped shape this phenomenon.

The first piece of music written and published in Argentina describing itself as what we know as the Tango appeared in 1857. It was called, “Toma mate, che.” The name “tango” at the time probably referred to what is known today as “Tango Andaluz” or “Andalucian Tango” which was the style of music brought over to South American from Spain—also the home of the Flamenco, another popular type of music in Buenos Aires in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The origin of the word “tango” has many theories of how it came to be. One such theory is that it came from the community of African slave descendents who mixed the name of their god of the drum with the Spanish word for drum, “tambor.” However, this theory has not been accurately proved, as there is not proof of African dances being involved with a man and woman in the same form as the Tango. On the contrary, African people in Buenos Aires joined in and influenced the development of the dance and music just as vast amounts of other immigrant communities did as well. The most important groups of people in the evolution and development of the Tango were the poor, the undereducated, and the underprivileged white men. Finally, Tango was sung in theatres throughout Buenos Aires during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Its emergence in popularity led it to Europe in the early years in the 20th century, where dancers and orchestras from Buenos Aires traveled to European cities such as Paris, London, Berlin, and other major capitals where the Tango craze was then born.

However, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 led to the popularity of the Tango to decline throughout Argentina. New governmental restrictions were introduced after the overthrow of the government leading creating a lack of Tango. After Juan Peron became president, the popularity of the Tango rose again, making it yet again fashionable throughout the country.

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