Thanks to all the participants in the workshops with Luciano!!

Los Berretines Milonga

First Saturday of each month

9:30 - 1:00

4046 Hamilton Avenue

Above Slim's Restaurant

Hola, Tangueros y Tangueras!

Welcome to the Cincinnati Tango Zone where Argentine Tango is the King...

Tango is a dance of the heart. It is passion set to music. All the emotions can be danced in tango from anger or sadness to love or joy. It will seduce you.

We bring you this web site in the hopes that you will want to learn more about this entrancing dance and about Argentina and its art forms.

Happy tangos to all!

The Mystique of Tango

Argentine Tango is exotic, sensual and breathtaking to watch. It is composed of three elements: the music, what you see and what is felt by the dancers.

Generally, what is seen on stage is a rehearsed choreography and is practiced to perfection by the dancers before you see it. This tango is beautiful to watch. It is dramatic, precise, rhythmic, elegant, graceful, passionate, sensual, sexy and intricate in its step patterns and “jumps” of various types. All of these movements have specialized names and take hours of practice to perfect. Many of the famous stage dancers started dancing before they could read! The tango choreographies that are danced are an exaggerated version of what is danced socially because of the need to make things larger for a theater so that it can be seen by people sitting in the back row.

Social tango or the tango danced in the milongas of Buenos Aires, on the other hand, is a much more subtle creature. A “milonga” is a social dance gathering or dance club. “Social tango” is based on the connection between the dance partners: the manner in which their bodies communicate. Usually this is in a “close” embrace, in which the torso or upper bodies of the dancers are in contact. This “connection” creates the channel through which the dancers communicate. The patterns danced are generally more compact in nature, partially due to the crowded dance floors in which the milongas are held.

Unlike the “stage” tango, social tango has no set step patterns; the character and movement of the dance is determined by the man’s imagination and the music. The woman then responds to what he has “suggested” in his lead. How well the dancers communicate is what makes the dance feel good (or not) to each partner, which is the goal of any social dancing, including Argentine Tango. Some say that to dance a tango is to engage in a “3 minute love affair” on the dance floor. If you are very lucky this is what can happen.

What is known as the “tango trance” is what happens when the connection between the two dancers is VERY good and together, they meld with the music and all three become one. Very Zen sounding or like Vulcan mind melding! This magical blending of the music, which is the “heart and soul” of Argentine Tango, and the dancers can truly be an otherworldly experience. The woman becomes the instrument through which the man illustrates his interpretation of the passion in the music. She “hears” the music in what she feels through the man; the two bodies are one entity moving in the music. Nothing else exists in the world but the music, of which you are a part. When the dance ends, it is like waking from a dream, almost a dizzy feeling, and you need to reconnect with reality. Slowly, you become aware again of the other dancers in the room and that you have stopped dancing, but you still seem to be floating a little. This is the magic that all dancers want to achieve and has been referred to as “Chasing the Ghost”, which is also the title of a documentary film of the old tango dancers (“milongueros”) in Buenos Aires that is in the works by Barbara Durr of Atlanta.

To milongueros in Buenos Aires, tango is life itself; it is the air that they breathe and the blood that pumps through their hearts; because of the ‘trance”, they say they want to die on the dance floor. “Argentine Tango” cannot be danced without Argentine tango music; “tango” can be danced to other music because the rhythm is the same, but the tango music of Argentina is the soul of the dance and the heart of Argentina. Even if you do not understand the lyrics of a tango, if you “listen” with your heart, you will feel the understanding.

Barbara Bill
2006