Uruguayan Tango
Dancing the Uruguayan Tango
The Uruguayan Tango
Tango is a music and dance form that originated in the poorer areas of Buenos Aires, Argentina and Montevideo, Uruguay. The dance originated from the mixture of native population and European immigrants, especially Spanish and the music derived from the mixture of various forms of music from Europe, Africa and the Americas.
The origins of the word Tango is from the Niger Congo languages of Africa and was first used about the 1890's.
The Tango in both Argentina and Uruguay are similar but different and I will not go into them as I do not know exactly what they are.
In Buenos Aires Argentina, there are numerous clubs, theatres, dance halls to see the Argentinean Tango and many can be expensive as they really promote this to the tourists. In Montevideo, Uruguay however, there are much fewer places to see the Uruguayan Tango and in fact it really is not promoted to the tourists.
We knew nothing about the Uruguayan Tango until after we had lunch at Juanico Winery outside of Montevideo. They had a special treat for us which was a Uruguayan Tango show. They explained that the Tango in Uruguay is different from the Tango of their neighbour - Argentina.The traditional Uruguayan Tango begins with two men dancing it (and this is not a homosexual relationship) to see who is the better dancer (similar to who is the stronger rooster). He then gets his choice of the women to dance with.
They did several Tangos for us as you can see in the accompanying photos and video.
Another amazing treat was that after several dances, all four Tango dancers then came into the audience to try to teach some of us the basic Tango steps! As you can see in the adjoining photos, I was one of the lucky ones and near the end of my dance lesson, we actually did a couple spins!
When we returned to Buenos Aires the next day, we did not take in a Tango show there as we had the ultimate show (for free) in Uruguay!
Make sure that you view the video below of the Tango from Uruguay as it shows two couples dancing the Tango, Uruguayan style!
