During the dark years of the military dictatorship, Tango had fallen into oblivion all over the world, most especially in Argentina. The “Tango Argentino” show was the show that led to the worldwide revival of interest in Tango. It debuted in Paris, then conquered Broadway and, later, the whole world. Juan Carlos Copes, Miguel Ángel Zotto, and Milena Plebs, Gloria and Rodolfo Dinzel, Gloria and Eduardo, Virulazo, and Elvira are some of the artists who participated in this legendary show and are described in great detail in this book, now known as the definitive work on Tango Argentino. Every serious tanguero should know the history of the revival of Tango and this book is for them. Tango Argentino: What a book! What a book! It enchants immediately, like the show, taking us to the beginnings of Tango, accompanying us in its history, gradually creating the irresistible desire of Tango in the reader. In the book, we come face to face with the myths of the dancers, musicians, and singers. It tells us some gossip about the fights and jealousies behind the scenes and tells us also about the creation of the costumes, now iconic in the worlds of theater and fashion. We also read that Lady Diana and the Japanese Emperor Hirohito were so enchanted by the Tango that they wanted to learn it. It is finally confirmed: only by knowing the beginning of this new era, we can better understand its current global success. Tango is a universal language!

Tango Argentino was the groundbreaking show that led to the renaissance of interest in Argentine Tango. It premiered in Paris, then conquered Broadway and, later, toured the whole world. It had enormous cultural influence on the understanding of tango history, music and dance, fashion, hair and makeup.After 7 years of research and writing, tango historian Antón Gazenbeek presents his in-depth book on the history of the show Tango Argentino. The book includes never before seen backstage photographs, memorabilia from the show and fascinating inside stories taken directly from personal interviews with all the surviving cast members. The book has an intimate narration that allows you to be a part of the show's creation, its backstage dramas and onstage triumphs. This is a book not to be missed!

CARLOS EDUARDO GAVITO (4/27/1943 - 7/1/2005) was born in La Plata, Argentina. He spent his youth in the barrio of Avellaneda (to the south of Greater Buenos Aires) and the rest of his life circling the globe. He traveled for more than forty years and visited more than ninety countries. He spoke English, Italian, French and Portuguese fluently and could make himself understood in German, Russian and Japanese. He was a universal man who took the tango from the barrio to the world. He began dancing not too long after he started to walk, and then there was no stopping him: tango, rock, folklore, Latin rhythms, swing. On stage and off, there was no dance he didn't try. Over the years, he searched for his own place in the dance world, and then his own tango: the absolutely unique style that brought him to fame. In the mid 90s, after being out of Argentina for many years, he gained international renown with the company of Forever Tango and word got back to Buenos Aires.

In the earliest years of the 20th century, North American ballroom dancers favored the waltz or the polka. But then a new dance, the tango, broke onto the scene when Vernon and Irene Castle performed it in a Broadway musical. Rudolph Valentino, Arthur Murray, and Xavier Cugat popularized it in the 1920s and 1930s, and thousands of people crowded onto dance floors around the country to hear the music and dance the tango. This work chronicles the history of the tango in the United States, from its antecedents in Argentina, Paris and London to the present day. It covers the dancers, musicians, and composers, and the tango’s influence on American music.

This book is the first to explore tango argentino as translocal practice, with a focus on the European context. Beyond that, the book crosses borders in the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods, ranging from participant observation to statistical data evaluation, including optical motion capture for movement analysis. Most of all, it is an important contribution to the emerging field of choreomusicology, focusing on movement and sound structures, dancers and musicians, and the complex relations between all of these factors that all have their share in shaping tango argentino practice.

From its earliest manifestations on the street corners of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires to its ascendancy as a global cultural form, tango has continually exceeded the confines of the dance floor or the music hall. In Tango Lessons, scholars from Latin America and the United States explore tango's enduring vitality. The interdisciplinary group of contributors—including specialists in dance, music, anthropology, linguistics, literature, film, and fine art—take up a broad range of topics. Among these are the productive tensions between tradition and experimentation in tango nuevo, representations of tango in film and contemporary art, and the role of tango in the imagination of Jorge Luis Borges. Taken together, the essays show that tango provides a kaleidoscopic perspective on Argentina's social, cultural, and intellectual history from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Contributors. Esteban Buch, Oscar Conde, Antonio Gómez, Morgan James Luker, Carolyn Merritt, Marilyn G. Miller, Fernando Rosenberg, Alejandro Susti