Free Tango by Mike Gonzalez Page A

first advent of the Tango Argentino, the dance that has since circled the whole world, as it were, in a movement of the hips. Ladies pronounced it charming as they half closed their eyes and let a little shiver run across their lips. Men said that it was the only dance worth dancing. It was so Spanish, so unconventional, and combined all the aesthetic movements of the figures on an Etruscan vase with the strange grace of Hungarian gypsies . . . it was, one may say, so . . . as you may say . . . you know. 18
    It was under this conservative Anglo-Saxon influence that tango became a social dance, and increasingly a kind of sport where athleticism prevailed over sensual expression. There were international competitions, and – after a struggle – the dance was redefined. It was now no longer ‘Latin’, with all the exotic implications of the word, but ‘modern’, incorporated into the world ofcontemporary ballroom dancing, with its rapidly accumulating rules and regulations. The interweaving of limbs should now occur only symbolically and at a distance – as the dance manuals of Vernon and Irene Castle made very clear.
    The music was changing too, in response to the twin impact of tango’s globalization and the expansion of its clientele into the bourgeois centres of the world’s great cities. The fast milonga had given way to the slower more dramatic expression encouraged by the bandoneon. In Paris, the ‘Orquesta típica’ dressed in national dress to play for the dancers. By 1913, however, the ensembles were growing, adding extra bandoneons and strings, and their dress was changing too. Dinner jackets reflected the tango’s entry into the elegant world of the French bourgeoisie, but they in turn responded to the exoticism and excitement of the dance. At the same time, the dance was re-choreographed. While Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring still resonated with a self-conscious primitivism, Grossmith and Dare’s hit 1916 musical The Sunshine Girl featured a tango considerably less daring than its original. 19

    Paris tango in 1913.
    The first generation of tango musicians, dancers and singers were often workers who played at night in the brothels and cafés. In Paris, they changed their mode of dress and became professionals. Few of these early musicians had musical training – Rosendo Mendizábal was an important exception – but they began to commit their songs to paper as the new century opened, humming or whistling their tunes for others to set them down. Eduardo Arolas, a renowned bandoneon player, was among the first tango lyricists, as improvised words gave way to written lyrics. His tango ‘Una noche de garufa’ (1909), with words by Gabriel Clausi, vies for a place as the first tango with lyrics.
    En esta noche de garufa yo me quiero divertir
    con los amigos
    de bohemia en el viejo Armenonville .
    La vida es corta y se
    pianta muy pronto ,
    en esta noche hay que vivir .
    En las nostálgicas veladas
    vuelve el tiempo del ayer
    con este tango que nos lleva
    como un sueño a su compás .
    Viejos recuerdos, paicas papusas ,
    dulce momento del ayer .
    Cómo me emocionan tus notas
    en esta velada porteña ,
    deja que la música embriague
    para hacer, del tango una fiesta .
    On this night of pleasure I will take it where I can / With my Bohemian friends in the old Armenonville. / Life is short and ends all too soon / So this night is for living. / In those nostalgic parties / Yesterday returns / With the tango that carries us / into a dreamwith its rhythm / Old memories, beautiful women we loved / Sweet moments in the past. / The music moves me so in this Buenos Aires night / Let the music intoxicate you / And let the tango / turn the night into a celebration .
    (‘Una noche de garufa’ , A night of pleasure – Eduardo Arolas, 1909)
    Arolas went to Paris in 1919, and died there in mysterious circumstances in 1924. He was 32