Campeonato 2007--The Triumph of Youth

(At left, winners in the V Campeonato Metropolitano; below right, winners Mundial del Tango Salon, Dante Sánchez y Inés Muzzotatta of Buenos Aires, 19 & 20 years old.)

Probably all those interested already know by now, a week later, that it was a full Argentine sweep for the four divisions: Metropolitano tango de salon and milonga, Mundial stage and salon. Each couple's ages added up to about 40.

Argentina's Natalia Tonelli Attori (20) and Fernando Gracia (21) won the fifth edition of the Tango World Championship in Stage Tango by dancing to the tango Quejas de Bandoneon (at right). The pair had competed against 16 other couples in the Stage Tango section to win a 7,000 pesos (2,250 U.S. dollar) prize.

Chile's Paloma Berrios and Alvarado Maximiliano, took second place. Hiroshi and Kyoko Yamao, a Japanese couple that moved to Buenos Aires to train full-time, were in third place in the Mundial del Escenario. The two told media they had met six years ago at a dance class, got married and decided to follow the tango to its birthplace. Two Japanese couples had made the finals of the Mundial competition, which featured 479 couples, only 90 from outside Argentina.

Foreign dancers favor the showier version of the dance: stage tango. Salon tango is more popular in Argentina.

The jury of the campeonato was composed of María Nieves, Pancho Martínez Pey, Graciela González, Elina Roldán, Raúl Bravo, Gabriel Missé y Sergio Cortazzo.

These facts leave lots of room for me to editorialize about age and culture and what is tango, but I'll leave that for another day--or to someone else.