After eleven years living, dancing, teaching tango, and writing in Buenos Aires, I came home to L.A. in 2014, where I'm reconstructing my life.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Tango Tourist Season


Tango Tourist Season is in full bloom in Buenos Aires. It
s springtime and the milongas are swamped with people who have come half-way around the world to dance, preferably with locals.

I hear a lot of table talk, as well as see tears in the bathroom.
Tango can take us to heaven, but sometimes we feel earth-bound.

Middle-aged foreign women flock to Buenos Aires to dance, maybe because in their own countries they are overlooked as sexual beings and ignored in life as well as in the milongas of their hometowns.

Here they (we) are welcomed and made to feel like queens, and it can be addictive. Is addictive. And many women come here twice a year, spring and fall, every year because in Buenos Aires they feel desirable once again.

Perhaps in their home countries they are invisible. Past the time of the construction workers' whistles, past being the new girl in town at their local milongas, where there are always younger newbies ready to make a man feel like Pablo Veron.

Here they are desirable women to be courted by the locals because:
they will leave soon (very sexy);
they are better dancers than the Argentinas (sometimes);
they might be up for paying for private lessons or restaurant dinners (often);
they might invite a milonguero to their home countries (does happen);
they might be hot to trot so far from home and don't have the time to waste on slow seduction;
and, just perhaps, they are sexy sensuous women unappreciated at home.

For more, check my previous post on Tango: The Dark Side.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yayyy for beautiful older women. They're the ones I want to dance with at home. They're the ones I want to dance with when I'm visiting Buenos Aires. They're not overlooked as sexual beings when I'm around. Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. Frankly, this post turned me on. Sue me!

Anonymous said...

You forgot to mention the marvelous piropos. Those delightfully charming lines they whisper in your ear. It doesn't really matter that they say the same thing to every lady. Even if you arrive feeling a bit like Shrek, when they say "sos una reina", you really, really do feel like a queen :-)