The 'Tango' Started As a Male Dance

The 'tango' started as a male dance as brothel customers

awaited 'servicing' in Buenos Aires' brothels -- and it had a bit of

a testosterone-laden 'kick' to it before it went to Paris in the

teens and 20s and was refined. Here are street tango dancers,

male. Your ratings and comments are invited and most welcome. If

you rate harshly or very critically, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment; please share your superior knowledge to help

improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

This is fantastic...great motion, great balance, wonderful diversion with the murals. Who cares about the shadow to the left?! Very nice, and thanks for presenting the history!

John,

 

This is a marvelously charged shot, and a great composition as well. The raised foot of the nearer dancer aligns so perfectly with the horizontal line, and then appears to be kicking the blue bubble upwards - exquisite.

 

A couple of tiny adjustments would make this a perfect picture: 1) crop (or clone) out the distracting black bits 1/3 in from left on bottom edge, and also spike in bottom right corner. 2) Adjust perspective to make verticals perpendicular.

Good photo, agree with above about shadows left side. Good color and detail.

This sat for several months in my 'to post . . . someday' folder, wondering what to do with it . . . as males dancing together is not seen as prime PN fodder, but it's a good photo generally, with the problems noted below, which I probably will fix, since people note they are distracting.

 

The 'shadow' had proved a problem, but the exchange for this 'winter' photo in low, late afternoon light was wonderful lighting.

 

The symmetry partly was chosen by the dancers, but I took a lot of photos to get the 'kick' right where I wanted it and sat through more than one performance to capture it properly, and to get it where one dancer did not obscure the other, so you clearly could see two dancers (and the kick).

 

Thanks for the comment.

 

 

John (Crosley)

You make good comments, though I don't think I'll adjust perspective, I do think I'll probably break my 'no cloning' rule to engage in a bit of cloning but saving this photo somewhere in comments to ensure people see what your original comment was all about. (That's a hat, foreground, and because of the action, I could not get all of everything in this capture . . . try as I might, and I crop in the viewfinder, not in Photoshop . . . ;-)) It results in some throwaways of otherwise good shots, but often it results in better photos and better instincts on my part. The hat is something I simply did not see (I was wearing glasses and thought it was 'out of frame'.

 

The 'spike' shadow, shouldn't be there, and will go. Photoshop CS2 allows for adjusting perspective, but I won't do that. I prefer the natural look/adjusted perspective is really a 'false' look. I was down at curbside to take this photo and this is actually how it looked.

 

Thanks for a very constructive comment and helpful suggestions.

 

John (Crosley)

 

 

I Agree with your comment, and appreciate that you took the time to comment. See the reply in the comment reply above.

 

You are always welcome here as are the other commentators.

 

John (Crosley)

 

Looking at this photo again, I see that my timing was right on. I caught the right foot and heel in just the place I tried to.

 

This was a single shot photo, not a 'C' or continuous drive photo, so it depended on anticipation and pressing the shutter at exactly the right time.

 

John (Crosley)

The story about the development of the tango is that when Argentina was being colonized and developed it was full of male immigrants from Italy and Spain.

 

There were few women and those who were there were mostly of the 'camp follower' variety -- in other words 'prostitutes' in the sense that they directly took money for sex, as opposed to 'girlfriends', 'dates' or 'wives' who dispense sex on a less rigorous schedule but also usually expect some quid pro quo plus maybe something more than money -- maybe companionship, a good meal, a present, going shopping together or even to raise kids together.

 

Well, these women in early days of the nation of Argentina had a clock and it ran quickly, but not quickly enough for the throngs of men who lined up, ready to make the scarce prostitutes rich.

 

So, as they passed the time in the parlors or nearby, the men whiled away their time, sometimes, by fooling around, and one of those passtimes developed into the precursor dance called the 'tango'. It is a dance full of testosterone with kicks, bites, shoves and all sorts of pushes and pulls which have survived, albeit in a more civilied fashion in today's coed tango dancing. Then, the men danced predominantly with the other men and sometimes with nearby waitresses and maybe with receptionists too, who knows?

 

The 'Tango' made its way across the Atlantic to Paris, where it was refined, became a hit in the late 'teens and early '20s, then was re-exported to Argentina, where it has remained a staple ever since.

 

The young people in Argentina, they tell me, never dance the tango -- they like Techno, Rock, and other beats for their clubs -- anything with a thunderous beat, especially since they have little money, but their clubs, often built before the fall of the peso, are sometimes glitzy palaces.

 

Eva Peron, on whose life 'Evita' the musical is based, and populist wife of leader Juan Peron from the 1950s, absolutely hated the 'tango'. It is not a cup of tea for all Argentinians.

 

There are some traditional tango palaces, called milongos, which you can read about in tourist books and they have a strict protocol about 'eye contact'. Asking to dance in those places is done by 'looking' only. To see 'tango dancing' one only has to walk down busy touristy street, as here, or one of the main shopping streets. Street tango dancers are common -- and very good.

 

That 'kick' at the end is part of the spicy part of tango. It's part of the 'testosterone thing' I wrote about above; the males were overladen with testosterone and maybe they didn't want to be seen as 'queeer', so they put in a few little anti-social and competitive kicks and other things into their 'dance' so they wouldn't be seen as what we now call 'gay'.

 

And, of course, we now can understand that there undoubtedly were a certain number of very masculine-looing men who certainly hung around the bordellos of Buenos Aires and other cities, just to dance the tango with other men and maybe always were 'too late' to visit the mesdames upstairs . . . 'drat the luck' they'd tell their friends . . . 'well next time' they'd say as they smiled to themselves, their little secrets kept intact.

 

John (Crosley)

It is possible, in the late afternoon sun, that the shadow is me, seated on a small stool, at curbside from tables where patrons were served beverages.

 

Next time I'll have to 'turn transparent' when I have the sun at my back so I don't interfere with my own photograph.

 

As I recall, I couldn't figure out a way to take this particular photo from this particular angle without also casting a shadow unless I waited for a different season or a different time of day (and the time of day accounted for the wonderful ambient color, light, modeling and shadows of the dancing figures.

 

Maybe that's why people were calling me 'The Shadow'

 

Sometimes 'The Shadow' doesn't know.

 

(parodying the tag line of a 40s and 50s radio program, called 'The Shadow' which ended with the line 'The Shadow knows'.)

 

John (Crosley)

Fabulous photo and interesting history you have shared. I believe the trade of your shadow for the wonderful lighting was a wise one.

 

Kathy

Thanks for the endorsement about the shadow.

 

I try to provide more than just a bare-bones photo. Sometimes people like to read a little bit, and I am an experienced writer who reads a lot, and I figure, 'Why not share?', so when I can I try to enhance the viewing experience.

 

I have found, through a few comments, here and there, that some of Photo.net's luminaries, as well as the general membership, browse the comments from time to time when they tire of looking at over-Photoshopped images, which pleases me greatly.

 

John (Crosley)

If anything should be changed in the photo above, than the hat in the foreground and the spike in the corner should be made more visible NOT less, because they offer the 3-dimensional reference and add depth to the photograph, especially since it provides a diagonal line to lead the eye (the hat, foot and box). You probably have a little more of these at the very edge of your negative. The shadow on the left balances the composition and the slight tilt of verticals adds to the overal tension.

Don't listen to what the others want you to do.

Was it at La Boca?

 

I'll be searching for the original capture, whick may take some time, then rethink this photo, along the lines you suggest. Interesting, and the proof will be whether this is full frame already or not. I suspect it isn't, then I'll test it. It may take the better part of a month, but I will follow through. Thanks for an able and original critique.

 

Addendum: Yes, Caminita at La Boca.

 

Right near where Bill Clinton ate. And around the corner from where Hillary had a Coca-Cola.

 

Small world.

 

John (Crosley)

Indeed!

Thank you.

 

John (Crosley)