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My Students Say The Nicest Things...

"I can see the results after a few classes with Carlos - I can dance!"

- Lucy, Tango Student


"Carlos never lets you believe that you can't do it. He has an effecive approach to teaching dance - if you're new or nervous he will dissolve that and make you dance."

- Mary, Tango Student


"Carlos has a very unique style of teaching; he pushes the students to learn lots of material in a small amount of time..."

- Tiran, Tango Student



Questions or Concerns? Contact Me...

Carlos Loyola, Tango Master
Phone: 604-730-9669
Email: carlos@danceinvancouver.com


The Rich History of Argentine Tango

The tango, which was engendered in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a dance of steamy eroticism, meditative inner search, and relentless passion. Gaining tremendous popularity in dance halls all over the world in the twentieth century, tango beckons its followers, who are seduced by its romantic allure, lyrical passion and intricate footwork.

Entwined in a close embrace, faces inclined, couples move with feline grace, legs describing loops and circles around each other. Dramatic pauses followed by staccato bursts of flashing limbs flow seamlessly into joint promenades across the dance floor as the bittersweet voice of the Bandoneon swells above violins and effusive piano flourishes, evoking images of Parisian salons and Rudolph Valentino.

The tango craze once again sweeping across North America's dance floors and into popular films and advertising campaigns was born in the red-light districts of 19th century Buenos Aires. There, lonely European men who had traveled to Argentina in search of prosperity were drawn to the melancholic exhibitionism of the Tango danced by prostitutes and their pimps.

Because men outnumbered women 50 to 1, these immigrants often practiced between themselves. The church and the government considered the tango to be of bad taste, to the point that occasionally tango dancers were detained by the police for dancing on the street. Its prohibition pushed the tango further underground.

The dance was only accepted after Buenos Aires upper class university students, who learned to tango in the brothels, brought it to Paris in the nineteen tens and twenties. Parisians and other sophisticated Europeans fell in love with the tango and elevated the dance to such prestigious heights that the tango reached the dance floors of Argentina's high society, lounges and clubs.

The passage of time changed tango, which evolved, resulting in various branches or styles. By the 1950's there were several styles of the tango in Argentina. The first style was the Tango Orillero or Canyengue, characterized by improvisation; it was the first street dance. It was called Orillero because its origin was in the Orillas, or the slums surrounding the city of Buenos Aires. Tango Salon or tango liso was characterized mainly by walking patterns, without figures or close embrace.

This particular form appeared in the 1920s in the salons of downtown Buenos Aires. Another style is called Milonguero, which is characterized by its close embrace and the forward inclination of the body. This particular style was called "Apilado" which means, in Spanish, on top of each other. There is much speculation in North America about the feeling, the closeness, or the emotion, of this style, but its evolution had a more practical origin. It is the simple result of crowded dance floors, on which the dancers had to resolve to simple resolution combinations in order to be able to move.

The term Milonguero can lead also to confusion for tango dancers outside Argentina, because in Argentina somebody who goes to the milonga (tango dance) is a milonguero, and it is not necessarily an interpreter of this specific style. As an evolutionary outcome, stage tango appears, which is known as Tango Fantasia. This tango is the result of blending all the previous styles and in addition to some theatrical moves to further add intricacy to its patterns. Despite its complexity, the original tango is at the base of each of its forms.

In the last few decades the tango has been transported around the world by traveling dancers and performing dance troupes and is transmitted by tango artists, who have achieve a high level of dexterity. This fact makes the dance misunderstood and labeled as being too difficult to learn, since its complexity frustrates the impatient novice, and the uncoordinated dancer. Its complexity and beauty is not the decision of one or two entities or people; it is the course of history itself and the intervention of generations of great dancers, such as "El Cachafas" and "Antonio Todaro", who determined the creation of steps and its inflections.

In the 1950s the tango went dormant and survived in the background of Argentine life. It was only in 1986 that the dance troupe "Tango Argentino" resurrected Argentine Tango and ignited public interest, which has been fueled by extremely popular shows like "Forever Tango" and "Tango Passion". The Argentine Tango has long been the outlet of expression for the Argentine people and continues to be true and original in any of its Argentine forms.