Tango social

In a world mostly ruled by the fear of the different, which leaves us all the more alone and suspicious, Tango has the power to unite two strangers in a deep and intimate embrace, full of fraternal, friendly and sensual emotions. The embrace – “el abrazo” – is the great power of tango. Born at the end of the XIX century, from the meeting of the different musical cultures of immigrants from all over Europe on an African origin rhythm, Tango develops underground at brothels and places of ill repute in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. It tells the sufferings and nostalgia of migrants, as well as their hope for a new future. Soon it leaves poor and marginalized suburbs to conquer theaters and bourgeois café. Tango dance does not follow schemes or pre-defined sequences, it is pure improvisation over walking: the leader moves forward, the follower backwards. Each dancer has its own style, each couple moves in a different way, but the language is only one: “el idioma del abrazo”. By means of this wonderful embrace, two completely unknown human being totally rely on one another, forgetting all the other dancers in the “milonga”, and cancelling any differentiation of race, language, religion, gender, political opinion and social conditions. Today, tango has returned to the original countries of migrants and is spreading on all continents of the world. It is not a dance anymore, but rather a cultural movement which rebuilt trust and proximity bonds. El abrazo is just a chapter, but maybe the most important one, of a wider project I have devoted myself in the last ten years: to shoot and live the tango social.