Reviewed by Ernst "Ernesto" Buchberger (ernst@ai.univie.ac.at)
Most books about Argentine tango focus on the music. Here is one about the dance. It is a book I (we?) have been waiting for for a long time. It consists of a number of interviews of the author with leading tango dancers such as Juan Carlos Copes, Pepito Avellaneda and the late Antonio Todaro, to name just a few. Interspersed with the interviews are reprints of pages from an old Argentine dance journal, Bailando. The interviews together with the reprints (and a number of beautiful old-fashioned fotos!) help to recreate the atmosphere of the golden time of the tango in Buenos Aires. But the book is not only for the melancholically-minded. We learn a lot of things we always wanted to know ranging from the difference between various tango styles to the old question of leading and following, and the Argentine way of how to ask for a dance. Included are such gems as a tango lesson with Prof.Mingo Castro together with a diagram of the steps (reprinted from Bailando). Do not expect, however, to find the perfect solution to all your questions, since the experts sometimes contradict each other e.g. regarding the difference between tango orillero and tango canyengue. But isn't this the way tango is - contradictory, enigmatic, yet full of life?