The effects of the corona crisis on tango
This is a series about tango professionals worldwide in the crisis of Covid-19. Their stories, and their different reactions, provide a unique snapshot of everyone’s changed reality. The sequels originally appeared during the height of the pandemic from May 2020 through March 2022.
Orlando Farias has been traveling throughout Europe and the United States for the past two decades, teaching and performing. I first met him a few years ago when he came as a guest artist to Upstate New York. Coincidentally I saw him again shortly afterwards when he spent a week teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area. Unfortunately it turned into a short and disappointing gig for him; poorly organized and promoted. But it was a great opportunity for me to learn from him in a smaller group of people, and we became friends.
Andrea Monti announced a fundraiser with the seemingly outrageous goal of $45,000. Oh my, I thought. She was trying to recover her advance expenses for ‘Argentine Tango USA’ (ATUSA), currently the biggest tango event in the United States. I closed my eyes and made the call, worried about what I would find out.
I had heard a lot about this couple in the South of France. They had started a vibrant tango community out of nowhere in New York’s Capital Region in the early 2000s, then moved to southern Europe where their career took off. With a flourishing tango school and performances all over Europe, they have made a name for themselves in the world of tango. I was curious to find out what their situation in France was like.
Christy is my ‘tango mom.’ She was my first tango teacher when I started learning tango in 2009. I had known her for many years before, when I was a student at the ballroom-dance teachers’ college at the Metronome, at the time one of San Francisco’s most respected and popular dance studios. I wasn’t into Argentine tango back then, but I kept seeing Christy at the studio and I loved watching her at our student – teacher showcases at Fort Mason. I thought her choreographies, her outfits, and her dancing were most charming. She was approachable and friendly without knowing me, and so I trusted her enough to finally take one of her tango boot-camps for beginners. I had fun and enjoyed her teaching so much that I signed up for her regular Tuesday evening classes. The rest is history. Now Christy Cote is without doubt one of the most established tango teachers in the Bay Area. She began teaching full-time in the mid-nineties, and will be celebrating twenty-five years of teaching next April. Now, however, her future, like that of other tango teachers, is uncertain.
The last time I talked to Karina Romero she had just rebuilt her career. That was in 2017, a year after she had split up with her long-time partner and husband, Dardo Galletto. She had given up her share in their successful tango studio in Manhattan, and moved out of their apartment with her two daughters Malena and Camilla, who were ten and seven at the time. She rolled up her sleeves and began teaching by herself, and turned into an organizer of tango events in and outside New York City, including participating in the renowned ‘Stowe Tango Music Festival’ in Vermont. And then she snatched up a desired teaching gig: She taught Liam Neeson, the acclaimed movie star, for a tango scene in ‘Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House’ — a major Hollywood production. In a few weeks she taught the shy actor, who claimed to have no dance experience at all, the basics of Argentine tango. It was another feather in her hat for Karina Romero, who had come on her own as a young woman from Argentina for a new life in New York twenty years ago.
