This was at my first tango night (milonga) in Rosario / Argentina in 2014 or -15. The lady with the flower body paintings was kind enough to dance a round (tanda) with me (gringo) (bottom right corner) - it was my first night dancing tango in Rosario, and I mostly felt warmheartedly welcome. I'm very thankful somebody shot that foto that night. Bailando.
Rosario
Rosario is the third largest town in Argentina (after Cordoba and Buenos Aires). Around 400km away from Buenos Aires it is not that noisy, contaminated and gray but rather green, with direct access to the huge Panama river which provides a natural green coast line alongside the city that has around 1 mio inhabitants, even though it feels smaller. It is said to be the town with most bicycles/inhabitants in all South America, and maybe also with most trees/inhabitants as well, thus people from Buenos Aires (los porteños), if they don't chill out at the seaside of Mar de Plata, come here for the weekend sometimes and vice versa. Buenos Aires is the indisputable and traditional stronghold of Tango Argentino though it has spread all over the world pulling tango dancers (bailarines) to the cradle of Tango.
Yet what few know is that Astor Piazzolla, whose blood-boiling and bone-chilling music is nothing like the traditional Tango music (whatever that may be), is profoundly connected to this town, which is also called ~"Chicago Argentina" (La Chicago Argentina - being a town where some Italian immigrants brought with them the Mafia, which flourished here almost as powerful as in Chicago/US) - many important Tango musicians and orchestras had been influenced and directed by Piazzolla, and until today there is still the greatest collection of original notes in the hands of some Rosarinian musicologists.
Tango in Rosario
Tango in Rosario can be very colourful. There are not nearly as many milongas to go to at night as there are in BAires, but I've been to very beautiful places, some antique, some glamourous, some very underground and with lots of young people experimenting and finding or creating their own styles and ways, there are lots of young dancers, beginners, creative artists and highly sophisticated and/or professionals alike, there are a lot of musicians playing tango, I'd even say there are maybe almost as many professional musicians as there are great dancers in town, yet you can't find and enjoy them on the spot. You need some time to encounter them or you try couchsurfing with milongeros, which certainly may help a lot. Art, Music, Culture in general is very important, and even though the streets and security lack an awfully obvious lot of money cultural life as been a great focus of former goverments and helped to generate quite a creative and impressing movement, which makes some of the dancers feel pretty comfortable - while some of which only come back for some weeks or months from their touring through Europe, the US and Asia, where they teach and enjoy the language of the embrace to those who yearn it so much. Rosario is a place to discover with some time at hand. If you ever plan to come for a visit I'd recommend to travel in spring or autumn, because due to the very high humidity (usually 70-98%) winter is tough and summer is even tougher. In the meantime you could visit Cordoba, Salta, Bariloche , Ushuaia or Mendoza, which have very different climates, social life and folklore...
Argentinian Tango is folklore embracing the unknown
Tango Argentino, as well as Chacarera and Zamba are incredibly beautiful Argentinian folklore dances - and it is even so much more beautiful to dance them and being part of a real Argentinian milonga night where your dance partner accepts your embrace and trusts you, with eyes closed, three minutes or four, just as if you'd know each other before the times of Babylon. Bailando.
An article about Piazzolla in Rosario (in Spanish) that was recently published in the local newspaper:
https://www.lacapital.com.ar/cartas-lectores/piazzolla-un-genio-rosario-n1608818.html
Some impressions and tango teachers in Rosario:
Rosario is also home of Tango SantaFesina, or: Cumbia Cruzada, which is a mixture between Tango and Cumbia. It was invented when during the military dictorship many decades ago it had been forbidden to dance Tango, so the tango dancers went to the Cumbia clubs, and soon a new cumbia style was born and is quite popular today:
The underground dance club "La Chamuyera" (which in the meantime had to close unfortunately):
(too funny: unexpectedly I found myself in this video mirando)
An exceptional dance couple and their wonderful performance:
Diego y Soledad de Rosario (low video quality, highest dance quality)
And finally two tango world champions performing in Rosario:
💖💖So, ... what do you think ... ❤️?