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.
Tag: Raquel Greenberg
Raquel Greenberg: a citizen of the world, based in London
Raquel Greenberg was traveling the world teaching and performing Argentine tango when I met her in San Francisco in 2011. At the time Raquel, who was born in Israel and raised in Paris, was based in Buenos Aires but spent much of her time traveling. She came to the Bay Area twice within a year and became a widely respected teacher. She taught privately and at tango schools and clubs in the Bay Area. In a relatively short amount of time she built a base of dedicated students who followed and supported her. I was attracted to her teaching because she was a well-rounded dancer. Her background is in ballet and ballroom dancing and, just like me, her heart is in Latin dance. One night we sneaked away for some salsa dancing and she had a blast. There was a rumor that she would settle down in the Bay Area. But when she left the second time, it was for good. She kept in touch with her friends in the Bay Area via her newsletters, sending updates from her new and ever-evolving tango life. To my surprise, one day I learnt that she had settled down in London! England didn’t strike me as a place that would embrace the sensuality of Argentinian tango. London, so I thought, was better known as a business-oriented, fast-paced, tough and expensive place to live. But, as I learned during my recent conversation with Raquel, London is not like the rest of England. It’s a cosmopolitan center with a lot to offer and an open-minded young international crowd. However, just as everywhere else, it all came to an abrupt end when the COVID-19 crisis hit.
