It was late last fall when we finally caught a ray of light in our gloomy pandemic tango world in the Hudson Valley. Joe Powers, the world-famous harmonica player from Portland, Oregon, paid a visit to our scattered community three thousand miles away from his home and delighted us with a lively performance and an engaging lecture about the long history of his small musical instrument. I was surprised to see so many of our local tangueros in the audience, few of whom had come to the sporadic dance events that had been organized during the summer. Now, apparently, they felt that it was safe enough. It seemed that we had finally left the worst of the pandemic behind us and there was a sense of relief and happiness in the air.
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.