BENGALURU: Build a beautiful connection with your partner at a social dance evening of Argentine Tango. Tango is special because of the possibilities it offers you to embrace your emotions, says Juhi Ramakrishna from Bangalore Argentine Tango.Bangalore Argentine Tango is a community of tango dancers in Bengaluru. They meet nearly every weekend and host ticketed shows once a year.
She adds, “It is different from Indian dances which are mainly individual dances. In Tango, it is all about building a connection with your partner...how best you connect with them and move in sync with music.” The dance is uplifting with interspersing of quick and drawn beats. “The music is usually old songs, mostly about love, not necessarily about sad lost love, as many may say. Each time you dance, the energy around you changes, depending on the music,” she says.
Juhi is a Bharatnatyam dancer and believes it is important for a dancer to not confine himself or herself to a set of movements, he or she must explore all kinds of dances. She’s been into Tango for about two and a half years. “It was a difficult shift mentally. I was not used to looking at someone’s face. So, letting someone enter your space and facing somebody was an unnerving experience,” she says.
Unlike ballroom dances, which tend to be more structured, social Tango is improvised, with every step being a spontaneous discovery in the moment, as the partners focus on their connections to each other and to the music. “Tango has more rigour and involves deeper emotional connection. Whereas Salsa has more freestyle steps,” she explains.
The Tango community in Bengaluru is about six to seven years old, she says adding, “Even foreign dancers who come to Bengaluru are surprised by the Tango culture here.”
So, put on your dancing shoes and get ready to shake a leg or two at ‘Tango Social Sunday’ at Three Dots and a Dash on September 24,5 pm. You need not get a partner for the dance. “It’s a social dance where a man will walk to a woman and ask her to dance. So, you wouldn’t be even dancing with just one partner.”
An Argentine couple Sebastian Jiminez and Joana Gomes will also perform and hold workshops.
Origin of Tango
There are many theories about the origins of this dance. Since there are no proper
documentation, it is quite unclear even today. According to a few theories, the dance originated in the 19th Century in neighbourhoods of Argentina and was practiced by working class people including immigrant labourers. The dance developed different styles in different regions and eras of Argentina and other locations around the world.