One must start by saying that tango is the only dance which is suggestive of an intimate kiss, a kiss representing Passion. It is the soul of tango, that which separates it from all other popular music and which explains also why it is so popular in the glacial culture of our globalization.

First, the kiss, and then, it is the incarnation of passion. The tango is the sublimated version of the sexual act. The neophyte is often mistaken in thinking that this woman who abandons herself docilely and sensually into the arms of her partner, seems only to yearn for a carnal ending. The sexual energy is omnipresent, but it is transformed into dance, in a fascinating mini-show which is completely theatrical and musical. It is in fact the representation of an embrace which lasts barely three minutes…

A hundred thousand people gather together every year in Finland to dance the tango and to watch it being danced. Thousands of people go to forty different tango festivals in Europe and in the United States. From Istanbul to Toronto, from Russia to New Zealand. And, of course, most of all, they go to Buenos Aires, the only city in the world which is identified as having its own music. The tango is danced by everybody, men and women together, but also men with men and women with women.

There’s a new movement, a new wave which little by little has brought tango back into fashion with a sensual and mysterious aura. The mystic of tango is also is a business with a turnover around the world of three thousand million dollars. The most recent Tango World Championship in Buenos Aires was attended by 175,000 people (72% from abroad).

Thousands of Europeans visit Argentina only to see or to learn how to dance the tango. It is a pilgrimage back to the very heart of tango: to go to Buenos Aires, to see the old caciques transmitting their knowledge, to share in that popular emotion, to become a part of that pounding music, all that is part of an indescribable obsession.

Diego Goldberg