Taxi dancers in Buenos Aires help travelers learn tango
For many travelers, dancing tango in Buenos Aires is a must. However, mastering the complicated steps can be challenging, and stepping onto a milonga dance floor without preparation can be a tough test.
This is where the “taxi dancers” of the Argentine capital come into play – professionals who accompany inexperienced dancers through the night in the city.
Without the help of insiders, the experience can be “intimidating,” 35-year-old taxi dancer David Tolosa told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The dance floor… is like a stage. People are constantly watching you. There are a lot of dancers, famous dancers, sitting there and looking at the dance floor… You feel like you’re being watched, you feel this pressure.”
Experienced dancers can be impatient and “a little cruel” to outsiders who are new to the scene, Tolosa says. Untrained dancers can be elbowed out of the way or have their feet stepped on.
For women who are alone, it can be a frustrating experience to have to wait for a dance invitation that they may never receive.
“Women prefer to hire me … because they can sit and wait for hours,” Tolosa said, if they don’t have a guaranteed partner.
His clients are almost exclusively foreigners, “mostly women, especially Asians, Japanese, Chinese, but also French and British,” who pay about $50 an hour.
His busiest time is in August, when a tango festival takes place every year in Buenos Aires.
Even outside of the festival, “milongas” – social events where people come together to dance tango – take place regularly throughout the city throughout the year.
“Learning by practicing”
Most taxi dancers like Tolosa work independently, but in the capital there are also agencies like TangoTaxiDancers, which has 17 years of experience.
It offers private lessons and guided dance excursions and promises on its website: “Don’t sit and wait – dance and enjoy.”
To enjoy a tango evening, it is not enough to know the steps, say connoisseurs.
You also have to master the art of “cabeceo”, a non-verbal invitation to dance using only a movement of the head.
“There are certain rules in tango, for example how to ask someone to dance,” explains 28-year-old taxi dancer and teacher Laura Florencia Guardia.
“There are still some traditional aspects, like asking someone to dance by looking from one table to the other… People have to learn that too. That’s why it’s good for them to hire dancers to show them that world.”
Guardia skillfully dodged the feet of Salvador Bolanos, a Mexican tango enthusiast who attended one of her classes, and laughingly boasted that she had “never had a customer step on her feet!”
Bolanos, a 37-year-old systems engineer, said he was in Buenos Aires to “learn about the music in particular. I’m learning about tango: the culture, the composition.”
He said he enjoyed the “melancholy of tango, but at the same time the power it has.”
Tango tourists get something from the “taxi dancers” that they might otherwise miss: real experiences in a traditional environment, Guardia said.
“At first they are shy, then they gain courage,” she told AFP.
“Practice makes perfect.”
