In tango music there is no percussion, only the beating of your heart.
Unlike most dances, tango has no basic step or box to fall back on. At any moment, you are free to move in any direction, or even hold still. Other dances have a “frame”; tango has an “embrace.” You and your partner have one center of gravity, so as with every true romance, you are free to move, but only by mutual consent. For Porteños — natives of Buenos Aires — that freedom is exhilarating. For tango beginners, it can be terrifying.
Exhilaration or terror — both are strong passions. And there is no tango without passion. Just as there is no Buenos Aires without tango.
Of course there once was a Buenos Aires w ithout tango. The city is almost 500 years old, while tango dates back only to the 19th century. The Argentinean capital was founded in 1536 as El Puerto de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre by a Spanish expedition led by Don Pedro de Mendoza. That encampment burned five years later, but the trading post was reestablished in 1580 as Ciudad de la Santisima Trinidad y Puerto de Santa María de Buenos Aires. It prospered as an intermediary between Spain’s colonies in Peru and the Portuguese colonies of Brazil.
In 1806, however, the Porteños were forced to defend themselves against a British invasion when the English navy cut them off from support from Spain. The Porteños succeeded, and the seeds of independence were planted. Four years later, on May 25, 1810, the last Spanish viceroy was deposed and independence was declared.
In modern history, the most famous Argentine leader was Juan Perón, who ruled from 1946 to 1955 and again, briefly, in 1973–74. Although Perón became increasingly authoritarian, he was an elected populist whose wife, Eva Duarte, became Evita, beloved by the people for her charisma, compassion, and charity, and by her husband and his allies for her political acumen.
Even as an independent country, however, Buenos Aires continued to feel a European influence. Germans helped Argentina develop its army and police, while skilled laborers from southern Europe built awe-inspiring edifices that still stand today. Before Perón nationalized transportation in the 1950s, the railroad was run by a British company and the port by French interests. The telephone system, also nationalized by Perón, was built by the American firm ITT.
That international influence has led some guidebooks to call Buenos Aires “Paris on the Plata.” And while Río de la Plata is not actually a river, but an estuary, with Montevideo, Uruguay, on the opposite shore to the east, Buenos Aires does have a European flavor, courtesy of its Parisian architecture — block after block of glorious Second Empire creations and wide boulevards. But Buenos Aires is as multicultural as New York or Los Angeles, in a way that Paris or Rome could never be. And for all its European accents, Buenos Aires is a distinctly South American city, with its vivid colors, colonial past, and, of course, tango.
Tango first came onto the Buenos Aires scene about 1857 but blossomed in the 1880s. The city and the dance have been inseparable ever since. Although the art form arose from many Old World traditions, such as flamenco, it is now a New World idiom unto itself.
Musically, tango is simply a dance in 2/4 or 4/4 time, usually accompanied by accordion and violin. But culturally it has always been a dance of lovers. It can be, and usually is, danced by social partners, those with a devotion to music and mystery, poetry and passion. When the dance partners are also a couple, there is a special resonance. So for our third anniversary, my wife and I decided that we would dance tango in Buenos Aires. But first, we would need to practice.
For six months we took lessons in New York. Careful to take Argentine tango, and not the more stylized international form, we made quick progress. “If your partner is smiling,” the instructor told us, “that is a good sign.” Things got a little tougher when the guest instructors arrived from Buenos Aires, but their exhortations only made us more eager to get on the plane and get into the game.
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El Congreso de la Nación, the imposing capitol, sits on the edge of Plaza Del Congreso, a short walk from La Plaza de Mayo. |
In Buenos Aires, many tango parties, known as milongas, offer lessons for the early birds, who are often beginners. The serious dancers don’t show up until well after midnight. We might have had six months of practice, but by Argentinean standards, we were novices, so we showed up early for instruction. At the end of the lesson I asked in halting Spanish what to do when I could not remember a move. A complex answer would not have been possible, so the instructor simply replied, “Pase, pase. Parada. Piensa, piensa. ¡Ah, recuerda! Pase, pase...”(“Step, step. Stop. Think, think. Remember! Step, step…”)
Of course, residents of Buenos Aires have passions beyond dance. Chief among them is food, in particular, beef. Long before the Atkins fad, Argentineans were subsisting on a diet of beef. (International demand for Argentine beef, along with grain, has been a mainstay of the country’s economy since independence.) Seafood is not as prevalent as you might expect in a port town, but if you don’t eat red meat, or if you simply grow weary of it, fish and seafood stews are specialties in many Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese restaurants. There is also a multitude of French restaurants — both haute cuisine and bistros — more than a few English and Irish pubs, and even German brauhausen. But one of the best ways to sample some Buenos Aires cuisine is to experiment with tiny shops and cafés. On the days we spent ambling through the city’s neighborhoods, we’d try different cafés and sample the house red wine or clericot, a white wine–based sangria that’s a local favorite. And of course, we’d eat. And eat.
We enjoyed one of our best meals on our first night in town, as we wandered a little around the Retiro neighborhood to get oriented. Suddenly hungry, we stopped into the only light on a residential block. The bright, tiny café sold us savory bean soup, hearty French bread, local cheese, and maté. Like tea, yerba maté is a hot drink made from tiny dried leaves, with a rich, smoky flavor and a good caffeine kick. Just like that, we felt like Porteños, eating and chatting into the evening, and drinking yerba maté from a gourd, with a silver straw, in the traditional style. As the locals drifted off, many to their own favorite milonga, we were tempted to join them. But we wanted to be fresh for our tango debut, and so strolled back to the hotel.
The next morning we set out to wander the parks and boulevards that make it abundantly easy to explore Buenos Aires by foot. We started with La Plaza de Mayo, literally “May Plaza,” named in honor of the uprising against the Spanish viceroy in May 1810. The plaza is anchored at one end by the presidential residence, La Casa Rosada (“the Pink House”), which stands against the Rio de la Plata. La Casa Rosada — a long, low neoclassical building that remains dignified despite its bright salmon color — has been the site of events ranging from impassioned public speeches to countless rallies and protests. A museum on the ground floor features life-size portraits of most of Argentina’s presidents, most dramatically Juan Perón with Evita.
La Plaza de Mayo is anchored at the other end by the two strongest pillars of Argentine history. The Cabildo is the town council building where city leaders and militia met to plan Argentinean independence. Today the Cabildo is a small museum well worth a half hour’s contemplation. Across the plaza is the Metropolitan Cathedral, an impressive, beautiful neoclassical building in its own right, but also guardian of the tomb of General José de San Martin, known as El Liberador.
The walk down Avenida de Mayo from La Plaza de Mayo takes you past the former offices of the anti- Perónist newspaper La Prensa (“the Press”) to the imposing capitol, El Congreso de la Nación. It’s like a stroll down a Parisian boulevard, except that Buenos Aires is laid out on a grid. On foot, exploring the streets in Paris or London challenges even an Eagle Scout’s sense of direction. In Buenos Aires, major blocks are 100 meters long, and addresses correspond to the distance along the street.
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Avenida 9 de Julio, one of the widest streets in the world, is Buenos Aires’ main thoroughfare. |
Not surprisingly, things get a little less formal by the waterfront. Feeling adventurous — after all, we came here to tango — we took the subway (Subte) to the evocatively run-down Estacion Constitucion, the smaller of the city’s two main rail hubs. The subway is one of the most effective ways to travel around Buenos Aires, and the Estacion Constitucion stop gets you close to the bohemian haven of La Boca (the “mouth” of the Riachuelo River).
For visitors, the jewel of La Boca is El Caminito, a few blocks of brightly painted artists’ homes and galleries. There, you can haggle over jewelry and prints, and take in great empanadas and shepherd’s pie at La Perla, the centuryold pub at the heart of La Boca. There are tango shows on weekends, and if you have any cash left from a day of haggling, all the art on the walls is for sale.
On the way back to the city center, we strolled through San Telmo, one of Buenos Aires’ most atmospheric neighborhoods. San Telmo went to seed during the unrest of the 1970s but has since been revived as a quaint, artsy neighborhood full of antique shops and cafés.
On the south edge of San Telmo is El Viejo Almacen, a small club with a big role in tango history. Buildings on the site have featured in much of the city’s history, and the current cabaret, which includes a newer restaurant, was built in 1969 by the famous tango singer Edmundo Rivero. Closer to El Centro we had un cafecito at Café Tortoni, built in 1858 and the emotional center of Porteño society; it’s the oldest café in town and a place where political and cultural leaders rub elbows with Porteños and visitors. Renowned poet and author Jorge Luis Borges frequented Café Tortoni until his death in 1986. His home is just a few blocks away, and his stories make for great reading on the flight down to Argentina.
In one of San Telmo’s tiny bookstores we saw an old newspaper posted on the wall. The headline from July 27, 1952: “Eva Perón Entro Ayer En La Inmortalidad. Llora Todo El Pueblo a Su Jefa Espiritual” (“Yesterday Eva Perón Entered Immortality. Everyone Cries for Their Spiritual Leader”). And yet, at Perón’s tomb in Recoleta Cemetery, her epitaph really does begin “No me llores…” (“Don’t cry for me…”), the words made famous by the song from the musical Evita. To see for yourself, just follow the steady trickle of the faithful.
Today Evita Perón has her own museum nearby in Palermo Chico, one of several up-and-coming neighborhoods that have been carved out of the larger district of Palermo, long a pretty but quiet upscale residential area. Another, Palermo Hollywood, is dotted with great new restaurants and bars, and Palermo Viejo is a trendy shopping district, with emphasis on clothes and desig n. On the Riachuelo River, south of the Palermos, Puerto Madero has sprouted luxury hotels, fancy restaurants, and new parks in what used to be tidal flats.
Avenida Corrientes, the “Broadway of Buenos Aires,” starts near Puerto Madero and runs through the heart of the city. West of El Centro, the avenue is home to many milongas. Our own foray into the passion and freedom of tango ranged along Corrientes and made for a wonderful, romantic evening, a little exhilarating and not at all terrifying, perhaps made better by the fact that we didn’t tango in Buenos Aires until we had soaked up some of the local attitude for a few days. Dancing is never naturally perfect, but it is always perfectly natural. So we simply went out dancing with our fellow Porteños.
— Gregory DL Morris
Porteño Possibilities
There is a place to dance tango at every level, or just admire the dance, every night of the week in Buenos Aires. Tango’s main drag is Avenida Corrientes, especially inland (west) of Plaza de la Republica on Avenida 9 de Julio. But we found great venues all over town. 
Torcuato Tasso, in the San Telmo neighborhood, has live music and lessons daily. So does Viejo Correro, near the Parque Centenario. La Trasienda offers convenience; it’s right in El Centro.
For sustenance, get comfortable at the top of the food chain. In Puerto Madero, the renowned grill (parrilla) Cabana las Lilas takes its meat so seriously that it has its own ranch. In Palermo, La Cabrera, Central, and Miranda all get top marks for updating traditional dishes with respect and flair. Among the many good Italian spots, Filo, in the Retiro district, stands out, as does Baez, in Belgrano, which serves sushi.
The best place for afternoon coffee is Café Tortoni, but for something stronger, Opera Bay at the head of Puerto Madero is a good place to start happy hour. If you are in La Boca, don’t miss La Perla. Near the English Tower in Retiro nestle a wonderful pair of Irish pubs, the Druid Inn and Kilkenny. And then there is plentitudinous Palermo. Stop by Cronico Bar for beer and burgers, and Bar 6 for breakfast, tapas, drinks, or music.
— G.M.
It’s a Big World After All
The world may seem as if it’s getting smaller all the time, but Continental Airlines’ route map just keeps getting bigger. That means if you’re looking to tango in Buenos Aires, you can get there on Continental, which begins nonstop service to the Argentinean capital on December 14. Buenos Aires is one of Continental’s growing number of internatFional cities.
As of January, Continental will serve 133 international destinations, including 47 in Europe and Asia. That means you can not only tango in Argentina, but also do a Catalan dance in Barcelona (service launching in May), or step out in any of the exciting international destinations served. You can see some of the wonders of the world with a trip to Beijing and the Great Wall or to Delhi and the Taj Mahal. Both of those exotic Asian cities are now served with direct nonstop service from New York/New Jersey.
You can also brush up on your German with a visit to Berlin or Hamburg; both cities now have direct service from the United States on Continental. So too does the historic city of Stockholm, Sweden. Neighboring Copenhagen, Denmark, will be added to the list in May.
But if the winter months have you looking south instead of north, take solace in the fact that in addition to its expanding European and Asian service, Continental also flies to 77 destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Getting There: Continental will begin daily nonstop service to Buenos Aires from its hub in Houston and throughflight service from its hub in New York/ Newark on December 14.
