Organizers are attempting a balancing act
After thirteen months of being almost exclusively online, Argentine tango is gradually making its comeback to the real world, that is, here, in the USA. From small private gatherings to public outdoor milongas and even some of the better known tango festivals, tango dancing in person is bit by bit becoming a reality again. The first signs could be seen back in March when a handful of festival organizers began to announce that their national events would return this summer, foremost of which were the ‘Windy City Tango Festival’ in Chicago, ‘Burning Tango’ and ‘ATUSA’ in Northern California, and the ‘Tucson Tango Festival’. These popular nationwide events which usually attract a tango crowd of several hundred or more dancers are scheduled to take place as early as June and July, despite ongoing Covid restrictions in most states. And registrations from all over the country have been going strong.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had I stayed in Buenos Aires last spring. My visit was cut short by the outbreak of the pandemic. I had arrived in the first days of March, not sure whether I had done the right thing by sticking to my travel plan and not sure what to expect. My plan had been to spend several weeks in Buenos Aires studying Spanish in the morning and tango in the afternoon. The first cases of Covid-19 had arrivd in the USA, but Argentina still seemed a safe place. I was naïve, as were most of us. But I had no idea how quickly the virus was going to spread, and that it in no time it would turn into a pandemic.
As the days grow longer and things altogether seem to be a little more hopeful, I’m starting to make plans to return to my home in the San Francisco Bay Area. This past year I’ve been seeking shelter from crowded Oakland in upstate New York. With more space around me, it seemed a safer place to get through this terrible pandemic. With the luxury of having two homes on different coasts, in the lively years before the pandemic hit, I had the opportunity to get to know two completely different tango communities: one very large and active with different events happening every single day of the week together with many high-profile teachers competing with each other, and the other one being a rather small and more dispersed community with only a handful of local tango teachers who also teach ballroom or salsa or at local schools to make a living.
