matthew thorsen
It always amazes me what you can learn about your partner, and the music, just from walking.
D avid Lans k y
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FEATURE 37
Stowe Tango Music Festival, Wednesday through Saturday, August 20 to 23, at various locations in Stowe and Morrisville. See stowetangomusicfestival.com for schedule of free and ticketed events. Moonlight in Vermont, Thursday through Sunday, September 4 to 7, at the Brandon Inn. tangovermont.com Find local classes and events at queencitytango.org, facebook.com/ QueenCityTango and tangowise.com.
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playing in Stowe include Argentine pianist-composer Pablo Ziegler and cellist Jisoo Ok (Del Curto’s wife). The fest also boasts North America’s only bandoneón workshop and immersive sessions for classically trained musicians who want to learn tango music. What are all these world-class tango musicians doing in tiny Stowe? Credit for their seemingly incongruous presence is due to the enthusiasm and support of a single individual: a Stowe resident named Jo Fish. He’s the founder of a New York City-based nonprofit, the Argentine Tango Society, which sponsors the Stowe festival. Through the nonprofit’s publicist, Fish declined to be interviewed for this article. Citing his desire for privacy, those in the Vermont tango community also decline to provide details about his influence, though many credit Fish with enriching that community. “He’s done a lot for tango in Vermont,” QCT’s Martínez Cazón says simply. Del Curto, a native of Buenos Aires living in New York City, is a friend of Fish’s and initially came to Vermont at his request. The idea for the Stowe Tango Music Festival, Del Curto recalls, was born during a casual discussion. “We were having coffee, and [Fish] said, ‘Let’s make Stowe the capital of tango!’ And I said, ‘Well, if you want to, let’s do it!’” Del Curto explains with a laugh. “Of course, it’s something that may be completely impossible, but along the way you grow as much as you can. The goal,” he continues, “is to spread the message of
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s a dance form, tango emerged at the end of the 19th century in the working-class neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay. Though its origins are poorly documented, by most accounts tango’s strongest influences come from European ballroom dancing and African traditions of music and dance. The tango trend reached an international crescendo in the 1930s, when resource-rich Argentina was among the wealthiest countries in the world and Buenos Aires became a world-recognized center of culture. Tango drew on dance, music and poetry brought by the waves of immigrants that flooded Argentina’s ports at the turn of the 20th century. The bandoneón, the concertina-type instrument closely associated with tango music, came from Europe. Yet the dance form that reached European audiences in turn was highly stylized. That has resulted in a persistent stereotype — as any “Dancing With the
Stars” fan knows — of tango as a highbrow dance for elegantly dressed couples, one or the other holding a red rose between his or her teeth. “Tango was international before it was from Argentina,” notes Héctor Del Curto, the artistic director of the Stowe Tango Music Festival and a renowned bandoneón player who’s performed alongside tango luminaries such as Astor Piazzolla and Osvaldo Pugliese. “We raised tango in Argentina, and then every [different] style took its own wings and started to travel the world.” Tango shows dwindled when Argentina fell under military dictatorship from the 1950s through the early ’80s; during that period, large public gatherings were forbidden, including ones in dance halls. A tango renaissance began after the country’s transition back to democracy in 1983. By the 1990s, tango classes were cropping up all over the globe — including in Vermont — and different styles evolved. Del Curto believes some contemporary tango styles — such as those featuring “acrobatics,” likely influenced by modern dance — have “lost the essence” of the tango. By which he means “the elegant walk.” But, Del Curto allows, the evolution is something to be celebrated. “I feel like all these new ventures will evolve into something even more interesting,” he says. Del Curto will perform with his orchestra and his quintet at the festival in Stowe this week; more often they’re booked in venues such as Carnegie Hall and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Other top musicians
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Soon after, we graduate to the dance floor, assuming tango’s face-to-face hold: one arm wrapped around a partner’s shoulder, the other suspended loosely at shoulder height with hands clasped. We’re still just walking — the sequences that our fellow dancers execute with assurance are quite beyond us — but we kind of make our way around the dance floor. “It always amazes me,” Lansky says later, “what you can learn about your partner, and the music, just from walking.”
tango as a culture in Argentina and not the stereotype.” And tango, Del Curto adds, functions first on an interpersonal level. “You have this … connection between two people that’s not Facebook and Twitter. And people need this. And tango provides it.” “People come to tango for their own reasons,” says Martínez Cazón, carefully returning his antique bandoneón to its case. “And it’s different reasons for every individual.” It’s a few hours before QCT’s milonga, and we’re sitting in a redpainted room hung with Asian tapestries above Dobrá Tea in Burlington. He’s just played a jaunty tango called “El Lloron” (“Crybaby”). It’s one of five he’s learned so far on the instrument. For Martínez Cazón, one of the few Argentineans in Burlington’s tango community, promoting this music and dance is a way to share and stay in touch with his own roots. “It’s not like everyone in Buenos Aires is watching these old fogeys play tango,” he jokes, after showing me a YouTube tango video with just a few hundred views. “It’s a subculture in Argentina as well, and I think sometimes we don’t appreciate it.” Of course, for North Americans learning tango, the draw is personal, not cultural: They may be motivated by the desire to try a new activity or master a challenging art form, an attraction to the form’s physical intimacy or all of the above. “It’s about getting your brain out of it and finding that body-to-body, heart-toheart connection with a person,” offers Maggie Sherman, an artist and owner of a Burlington B&B. She’s been going to tango classes several times a week for the past few years. “It’s like when you learn language,” she says. “I just knew that was the amount of time I’d need to put in.” The level of diligence needed to achieve even basic competency in tango may explain why contemporary tango groups (at least outside South America) are typically small and close-knit. “Lots of people like to try tango, but not many people stick with it,” observes Seyler. Those who do, though, usually get hooked. “It’s precious,” Martínez Cazón says. “Tango gets at very deep parts of your soul. And I think the people I know in this community very much want to share it with people. But it’s like sharing a silence. It’s just like that.” m