(Photograph credit: Gobierno de Buenos Aires)

Like other southern hemisphere countries, Christmas falls during summertime which means the pretty twinkling Christmas lights are not seen until after 9.30pm because the days are at their longest. There´s no snow or sleighbells to be heard and Santa usually is indicated by his hat rather than a full red suit complete with swishy giant belly. It is rather pleasant not to be bombarded by Christmas carols for the month leading up to the occasion, although some English-speaking residents have been known to wake up and play Snoopy´s Christmas via Youtube just to bring a little bit of ´home´ to the Christmas celebrations.  

Being summertime in this large concrete jungle, it is inevitably going to be hot and it has become somewhat a regular occurrence that the city can hit temperatures of 40 degrees on either Christmas Eve or New Years Eve night, making the chef’s job of attending the parilla (grill) a rather sweaty ordeal.  However, you are forgiven if you think that the city has gone crazy when the clock chimes 12am Christmas or New Year’s Day. Forget Auld Lang Syne. No matter how high the temperature is, Christmas Day and New Year´s Day are traditionally welcomed in with infectious revelry and an exorbitantly large amount of personal fireworks being let off in the streets. To the uninitiated, this can be somewhat disconcerting but rest assured that despite the racket, the streets are warm with the spirit of community rather than hostility.

This time of year is all about family.  Trees are put up on Fiesta de la Virgen (Day of the Immaculate Conception) which is December 8th. Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) is full of big family get togethers to eat, be merry and toast with champagne at the stroke of midnight. No waiting around until morning to get your gifts - porteño children are nocturnal and are usually distracted by their families while ´Santa´ places the gifts under the tree at midnight.  These gatherings are followed by long leisurely asados (BBQs) on the following Christmas Day afternoon. New Year is also traditionally a family event and is welcomed in with another round of street fireworks and plenty of good community spirit.

If you’re celebrating in the city of Buenos Aires, why not make Christmas unique and spice it up with an evening out at a tango show.  While all tango shows are open for New Years Eve celebrations, only La Ventana, Gala Tango, El Viejo Almacen and Piazzolla Tango are offering special shows on Christmas Eve.  Each has an unforgettable evening planned that usually includes welcome cocktails, a gala dinner, elaborate tango show and after the midnight toast, a party with a DJ and regular shuttles back to hotels.

Transport over the festive season is very limited (take note: between 9pm and 3am on the celebration days, there are almost no buses or taxis) and most restaurants require advanced bookings.  This can make a tango show all the more appealing as all the hard work is done for you and you don't have to worry about being stranded without a taxi. Besides, this is Buenos Aires whose heart and soul is about tango. What better way to bring in the New Year?

All the tango shows are offering specially planned events to welcome in the New Year and offer an excellent way to give you a unique start to 2015. Transfers, cocktails, dinner, tango show - all followed by parties until the wee small hours of the morning. Madero Tango is even offering the additional surprise of watching fireworks go off over the docks of Puerto Madero. Whether it’s traditional (Esquina Carlos Gardel, Cafe de Los Angelitos), romantic (Gala Tango, La Ventana), extravagant (Madero Tango, Señor Tango, Rojo Tango) or bohemian (El Viejo Almacen, El Querandi), you´re sure to find a New Year´s Eve tango show that suits your style.

Merry Christmas and may you tango yourself into a wonderful New Year.

Likely you've come to this intoxicating city to see what all the fuss is about. Whether it was Al Pacino in ‘Scent of a Woman’ or Robert Duvall in ‘Assassination Tango’ that whet your curiosity, there’s something about this southern hemisphere city that you just had to come and see for yourself. Since you arrived, you've likely been taken in by the french architecture, the elaborate scrolls on the ironwork barring the windows of old facades, the passion of the people, the maddening bustle of the inner city and the cobblestoned streets. There's just something about this city that makes it charismatic.

Perhaps that's why people who dance tango are so addicted to both the city and the dance. Perhaps this dance that came from these very streets has an alluring charm and energy woven through it that envelopes the onlookers who innocently decide that it certainly won't hurt to take a look at what all the fuss is about. Warning, the web and bookstores are full of stories of men and women who decided to “just take a look” and now either reside in Buenos Aires permanently, travel here every year, or dance at least three times a week in their home town and spend their holidays travelling to bigger cities that have bigger milongas and even milonga marathons with 24 hours non stop music. It’s not for no reason they call it ‘the tango bug’.

People who dance tango come in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life and are all ages. It can be like a secret little club that the most unexpected of people are usually part of it. The head waiter at a wedding I attended, overheard my conversation about tango I was having with my neighbour and politely informed me that he too loved to dance tango and perhaps I wouldn’t mind if we took a quick spin on the dance floor once the music started up? He was sure he could spare 3 minutes for a dance after dessert was served. The pilot that is flying your Aerolineas plane to Buenos Aires, or the air steward on your LAN flight are probably also tango dancers who spend their stop overs seeking out the local milongas.  It’s also possible that the young 20 something lawyer who you’ve just met on the bus is actually streaming Carlos Gardel through his ipod and not the latest indie band.

Some dancers are former classical or contemporary trained dancers who have reached a stage where they want to apply their discipline to another form of dance outside of their everyday work. It is these dancers who are now bringing together an exciting fusion of elements from ballet and tango, mixing tangueros (tango dancers) with ballet dancers and even having ballet dancers dance tango on pointe.  While it might not be everybody’s cup of tea, watching the finer movements of tango being performed on pointe is something that those of us who also love ballet will find both interesting and alluring.  

NB: It’s important to point out that this is not a growth or change defining “what is tango”. As artists, these dancers and choreographers are taking elements of two types of dances and seeing what happens when they are combined.

One company who is trying to bring the romance and beauty of tango to the people of their  home town is Parasol Arts - who is based in Denver, Colorado. A group of passionate tango dancers, their Creative Director Lorita Travaglia has brought together her passion for choreography, tango and ballet in their latest show Tango Masquerade - a unique performance that blends traditional tango, tango performance and tango ballet. As a perfect example of someone who has been bitten by the tango bug, Travaglia has travelled to Buenos Aires and spent time in milongas and upon returning home, now wants to share this dance with as many people as possible.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmI4XE8t8qI&feature=share

But it’s not just professionals who are taking this dance and putting their own twist on it. While Buenos Aires remains the Mecca of tango and other glorious cities including Berlin, Melbourne and London are full of milongas, there are those of us who decide anywhere is a good place to dance tango.  As these New York Times photos will show, dancers in Finland will dance anywhere and at anytime regardless of whether it is seen as traditional or not.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/07/15/world/europe/20130716-FINLAND-9.html

Milongueros in New Zealand have been known to hold an impromptu milonga on the beach in between classes of a weekend of Milonga workshops. One milonguero and tango teacher from Australia was presenting a cooking workshop at a festival and reminded his students that while you are waiting for the food to cook, ensure that you take a few minutes to tango in the kitchen with your beautiful partner.

Indeed, tango infuses itself into your life as it has done all over this city, finding ways to be both modern and traditional, mix itself in with other interests or passions you have, and leaves you with wanting more. There will surely be milongas or performances in your local area to help give you the fix you need.

Photo credit Jose Luis Funes

With the traditional end of winter/beginning of spring storm of Santa Rosa behind it, Buenos Aires is now officially in Spring. Arguably one of the best times to visit the city, Spring is warming up the city offering sunny days and cool evenings, and the city is prettying itself up with spring time bloom.

Locals in Buenos Aires love sunny weather. The awakening of the jacaranda blossoms also signals an increase in the warmth and joy within the people. Step outside on the first sunny day after a period of rain in Buenos Aires and you’ll notice a spring in the step and whistle in the air as portenos come out of the woodwork to celebrate the sun. The parks are starting to fill up with sun lovers as a carpet of purple blooms blanket the city. Jacaranda trees splash their colour about the urban jungle and hidden up in the Bosques de Palermo is a promenade made up entirely of jacaranda trees. It’s well worth a wander through on the coming sunny afternoons.

The tango world is now emerging after taking many dancers took a well deserved break. The end of winter saw the World Tango Champions crowned for 2014 after the two week long Mundial de Tango, where the best tango dancers from around the world converged on Buenos Aires to see who would take the title of Best Salon Tango dancers (traditional tango) and Best Stage Tango (what you see in a tango show).

Taking out the title for Campeones de Escenario was Manuela Rossi and Juan Malizia Gatti. An engaging performance to watch, this style of tango (Escenario) draws out all the possible dramatic passion that tango can possess and combines it with dangerously high leg flicks and intricate leg twists that leaves you wondering exactly how the woman extracts herself from the twist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XRG3hKMDF4

Although some tourists may argue that tango shows are not ‘the real tango’, it is indeed an authentic branch of tango whose dancers work extremely hard to achieve a high level of this discipline of dance. Indeed, tango shows are the only place you are going to see this dynamic form of tango so make sure you catch one.

Crowned Campeones de Salon Tango were Sebastian Acosta and Lorena Gonzalez Cattaneo. This style is the traditional tango and what you are more likely to see if you head to a milonga while you’re in Buenos Aires. In contrast to the stage tango, this style is softer and improvised. The embrace is closer and what it lacks in drama, makes up for in sentiment and connection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukUu-0G9NHs

This is tango that you will see danced all over the world in a milonga anywhere. It’s close embrace and more subtle movements is what defines it. And this video shows you the grace and connection that tango can embrace. Enjoy.

The tantalizing smell of empanadas wafted through the air as the smoke from the neighbouring parilla threaten to overwhelm the crowd of onlookers in front of the stage. The toffee apple and caramalised popcorn cart had a throng of children standing around it, all vying for best position to get the biggest apple. The MC's voice announced the arrival of another band of musicians and dancers to the stage as a row of older women shared yet another round of mate (tea) with each other, sharing the straw as a group of teenagers would a bottle of softdrink.

Set in a large plaza in the suburb of Mataderos, Buenos Aires, this is Feria de Mataderos - the folk/artisanal answer to the tango/antique market of San Telmo. Here you'll find handicrafts, cheeses, deli meats, wooden crafts, musical instruments, leather goods, bottles of jams and honey, along with all the usual types of souvenirs. You also get live folk music, spontaneous crowd dancing and gauchos/horse riders that race up and down the road.

We got to the market early to ensure we had the majority of stall wandering over before the crowds and mid day sun made the more fair skinned of us run for cover. Within moments of arriving in front of the large stage, we were torn between joining in the dancing or checking out the stalls first. Music and dance won us over as more patrons emerged from the small but growing crowd to dance the chacarera. Danced in two lines facing each other, the atmosphere is energetic as the music and clapping begins. Rhythmic and uplifting, the chacarera is a seduction dance that is festive and vibrant, which also means one song is never enough. We ended up staying for the whole set before managing to detach ourselves and head back into the now much larger crowd.

Street food is one of the best parts of markets and Mataderos does what Argentina is famous for - asado and empanadas. For vegetarians, it’s hard to resist the gorgeous parcels of hot cheesy goodness that empanadas offer, and the meat eaters have heaven just waiting to be wrapped up in a bread bun. After stopping beneath the towering church to eat our food in the shade of the jacaranda trees, we meandered down the third arm of the street fair to watch the gauchos (cowboys) giving their horses a good workout, galloping down the street littered with hay bales.  That was, until the strains of chacarera and zamba brought us back to the mainstage. Zamba is a slower folk dance that is much sweeter in sentiment, gentle in rhythm and engaging to watch as each of the two dancers have a hankerchief that they dance with, waving it above their head and using it to shyly shade their faces from their partner.

Located in the south west of Buenos Aires, it is a decent one hour bus ride to get out to the market from the central city. Luckily for those of you in the city on Saturday 2nd August, Feria de Mataderos is “moving” to Palermo.  From 11am until 5pm, the similar event will be held on Avenida Sarmiento and Belisario Roldan, near the Planetarium.   Upwards of 300 stalls will be selling traditional crafts (such as jewellery and ‘mates’ - gourds for tea) and local products while the main stage with have dance and music shows, giving you a chance to hear some great musicians. The traditionally dressed gauchos will also be there, demonstrating their horse skills.

The festival and all the activities are free of charge and will be suspended if there is bad weather.  Head to http://agendacultural.buenosaires.gob.ar  to double check any of the details.

(Photos credit and copyright Rebecca Travaglia)