Recent Tango Movies:
Assassination Tango
Assassination Tango - 2003
Dir.: Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall, Rubén Blades, Kathy Baker, Luciana Pedraza
18.1 MB (480x260)
By Alma Guillermoprieto Photographs by Pablo Corral Vega
Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt.
Music, champagne, beautiful women, gorgeous men, perfume that drifts through the air like a song, songs that linger in the mind like perfume. The union of two bodies transformed into one? Total subjugation? My Humphrey Bogart? I decide that it's high time to sign up for tango lessons.
One, two, three, four, FIVE—the successful resolution of the tango's basic eight-count step for women depends on one's ability to cross one's ankles tightly, left over right, on the "five." This is a reasonably simple task if one isn't concentrating simultaneously on keeping the right shoulder down, the right elbow up, the left hand relaxed as it holds on to the partner's back ("it's an amorous embrace," someone suggests unhelpfully from the sidelines), the torso facing straight forward, the legs stretched and long. "Try not to bounce up and down," my teacher, Luis Lencioni, suggests gently. I straighten up, and trip over his right foot, then the left.
"Worse things happen," he says with a wink. "Try not to look at the floor," he adds, dragging me along. "And when you step, don't pick up your feet like that. Try to slide."
Rather than becoming one with Lencioni, I feel as if I were turning into a rather large ostrich in his arms. Much of my early youth was spent in modern dance studios, training to become a professional dancer, but those years of effort are not paying off here. We stop, and Lencioni repositions me. In the tango the woman's torso remains facing strictly forward under all circumstances, focused completely on the man. The hips may swivel, but they never move side to side, as in salsa; instead, the entire lower half of the body twists left or right in a single block, and one moves about the dance floor in this fashion, like a character in an Egyptian tomb painting.
"Always so?" I ask Lencioni, doubtfully.
"Always so."
Soon enough I trip once more. He reassures me again and keeps on dancing manfully until eventually I begin to feel a connection with the music, a certain surrender to the steps, a relaxing sense of floating along with my partner. Lencioni brings me to a full, sharp stop. "Get some personality in there!" he scolds. "Don't just moon about enjoying my dance!"
In other words, technical clumsiness is forgivable; emotional sloppiness is not, because emotion—strong, intense, focused emotion—is what the tango is all about. I promise to do better in the next tango, but my back is killing me from all the corkscrew swivels of the previous one.
Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine
| Full of yearning and lament, the tango is perfect therapy for a nation still stinging from economic loss. |
Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt.
Music, champagne, beautiful women, gorgeous men, perfume that drifts through the air like a song, songs that linger in the mind like perfume. The union of two bodies transformed into one? Total subjugation? My Humphrey Bogart? I decide that it's high time to sign up for tango lessons.
One, two, three, four, FIVE—the successful resolution of the tango's basic eight-count step for women depends on one's ability to cross one's ankles tightly, left over right, on the "five." This is a reasonably simple task if one isn't concentrating simultaneously on keeping the right shoulder down, the right elbow up, the left hand relaxed as it holds on to the partner's back ("it's an amorous embrace," someone suggests unhelpfully from the sidelines), the torso facing straight forward, the legs stretched and long. "Try not to bounce up and down," my teacher, Luis Lencioni, suggests gently. I straighten up, and trip over his right foot, then the left.
"Worse things happen," he says with a wink. "Try not to look at the floor," he adds, dragging me along. "And when you step, don't pick up your feet like that. Try to slide."
Rather than becoming one with Lencioni, I feel as if I were turning into a rather large ostrich in his arms. Much of my early youth was spent in modern dance studios, training to become a professional dancer, but those years of effort are not paying off here. We stop, and Lencioni repositions me. In the tango the woman's torso remains facing strictly forward under all circumstances, focused completely on the man. The hips may swivel, but they never move side to side, as in salsa; instead, the entire lower half of the body twists left or right in a single block, and one moves about the dance floor in this fashion, like a character in an Egyptian tomb painting.
"Always so?" I ask Lencioni, doubtfully.
"Always so."
Soon enough I trip once more. He reassures me again and keeps on dancing manfully until eventually I begin to feel a connection with the music, a certain surrender to the steps, a relaxing sense of floating along with my partner. Lencioni brings me to a full, sharp stop. "Get some personality in there!" he scolds. "Don't just moon about enjoying my dance!"
In other words, technical clumsiness is forgivable; emotional sloppiness is not, because emotion—strong, intense, focused emotion—is what the tango is all about. I promise to do better in the next tango, but my back is killing me from all the corkscrew swivels of the previous one.
Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine |
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