Tango (Argentina)

Argentina is enveloped in passion. I hinted at this before but it is worth saying again. The streets are colorful and bold. There are no apologies for the boldness. Soccer is a national obsession with die-hard fans. People talk in gestures. Their food is passionate, their nightlife is too. When people relax or stroll slowly, they mean it. But most passionate of all is the art. Especially tango. Tango is a great symbol for Argentina. It is bold, passionate, classic yet individual. It is beautiful and captivating.

Sometimes a whole country can be encapsulated by one person. Their essence can capture that of the place like only a metaphor can. I met Guillermo Alio on a street corner in the La Bocca neighborhood of Buenos Aires. La Bocca was my favorite place in the city, known for its colorful streets, tango, crazed soccer fans and robberies. I found it positively intoxicating.

I was reading a poem embossed on a stone wall. Alio put his hand on my shoulder and shook his head. He told me that the poem had been killed, shortened. His voice of the missing verses filled the void dribbling from the rock. I too feel passionate about the slaughter of poetry. Some words are not meant to be sliced and it seems unfair to take a poem and chop it down, like giving someone a lick from a juicy peach as it dribbles down your hand, but nothing whole to bite into. You miss the meat of what the poet was trying to convey and turn it into a sound byte.

He took Colleen and I back to his studio, a small space sandwiched between colorful buildings. The studio smelled of oil paint. Pages folded off the wall, paintings clipped to each other, maximizing every inch of space. He took out a scrap book and poured through page after page of yellowed newspaper articles. They were all about him and his performances and exhibits around the world. Time, Associated Press, New Yorker told his story, as did the mischievous glint to his eye and delicateness of his skin. I suspected that though he had to be pushing 65, this man was well-versed in passion. He carries himself with beauty, like a real artist.

Tango for me is sultry and captivating. There is some sort of passion and sexiness to it that I could never attain myself, so I can watch two people twist their legs around a dance floor with such intimacy that I cannot tear my eyes away from it though I almost feel I should look away, and feel the passion myself.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to be a tango dancer in my next life. A tango dancer or a bullfighter, not because I could kill a bull, but I think of Hemmingway, “Nobody lives their life all the way up except bullfighters,” I think that could pertain to tango dancers as well.

Alio has two great passions; tango and painting. And, he has managed to unite the two. He is famous for his dancing and his art separately, but the most incredible part is the combination. He paints his dances on canvass.

In an interview with Bill Comer from the Associated Press, Alio describes the passion of tango, “The melancholy of the soul is what pure tango speaks most about. But tango also speaks of many things: of motherhood, of friendship, of sport, of neighborhood, even of the horse races. It's something very profound," says Alio. "The tango is a reflection of all within man."

So he dips his and his dancer’s feet in paint and lets them dance on the canvass. It is two art forms blending into one full of the passion of both. It’s a kind of passion soup if you will, and plenty to sustain someone without food or drink, only by satiating the soul’s desire for real fervor.

In the same interview, he says, “The feet show what is going on in the head and heart. They are a means of expression and the world needs this dance, the tango, to understand what is within."
He tells us of one of the most influential tango dancers in the world who was his teacher before he died in a plane crash. There are endless articles about him in the loosely put together scrapbook and he is even a chapter in a textbook to teach Spanish through artists.

He seems to live life with a different lens, one that makes me think of what other lenses I can choose through which to view my life. I think passion is one of the most important things to follow or find in life. I think most of Argentina would agree.