TANGO IS DYING (AGAIN)
“Tango is dying!’ one of my Los Locos Amsterdam members sighed. Dancers in our milonga have forever been telling me tango is dying (the milonga is running better than ever). ‘I hear the sport of checkers is also going through a rough period,’ I said, ever the philosopher. ‘Fewer people are coming in, though,’ she insisted. ‘I’m not so sure,’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t remember having to wrestle myself into workshops, ever.’ ‘I’m not the only one saying it,’ she insisted. ‘It would help a lot if tango were easier to learn,’ I said. ‘But don’t hold your breath for that one.’
In the early 2000s, a short-lived Queen Maxima effect attracted hundreds of new Dutch dancers to Argentine tango, who dropped off the next year, after discovering dancing to Adiós Nonino was a challenging experience. Milongas were scarce. Dancers drove hours to small events in other cities. As a newcomer around 2007, I observed that tango dancers considered themselves pioneers. They loved the elitism of it. As an insider of this Secret Society, you knew where to go. All others had to rely on the occasional flyer. The Internet lowered the barrier to organizing events across Europe, and the tango nomad was born, particularly the younger kind.
El Corte in Nijmegen, the unique ‘3-day marathon’ in Europe, gradually lost its decades-old monopoly. When Los Locos launched in 2010 in Amsterdam, dancers informed us ‘We’re off to Paris this weekend’, or: ‘Budapest last week, next weekend Berlin!’ The world’s number of tango dancers clearly increased, but spread thinly over remote events. Nowadays, they meet many of the dancers they danced with in Berlin a couple of weeks later in another room in Belgrade or Warsaw. The travelling didn’t make them any younger, unfortunately.
‘Look, tango defied deadly epidemics of yellow fever in BA in 1870,’ I said to her. ‘It spread to Europe, returned to BA, and heroically spread again across Europe, the States, Russia, and the whole of Asia. It overcame decades of suppression by dictatorial regimes and survived a pandemic.’ ‘So nothing’s the matter?’, she scoffed. ’Sure,’ I said. ’Western societies are aging, the addressable market is competitive, and shrinking. You don’t see wrinkled breakdancers doing back-flips, but tango dancers go on until they drop. Probably that’s why young people perceive it as something older people do. A perception that needs changing. But this conversation is ongoing in all sports associations in the Western world. Don’t say it’s dying, or not what it used to be.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘It’s the sort of thing old people say.’
She wasn’t buying my argument. “You said something about checkers?’ she said.’ ‘Checkers is in decline,’ I said, ‘it has been for decades. You actually have to train a lot and join a dorky group if you want to be good at checkers. Much like tango. Chess, a similar activity, has been expanding spectacularly in the same period.’ ‘What? How?’ ‘A world champion of 22. Queen’s Gambit, a successful Netflix series.’ I said. ‘Other formats, online tournaments. Quicker to learn with computers. Not afraid to break with old codes and approaches. Same game, but a bit of fresh air around it.’ She frowned, and I could see her thinking, ‘Oh my God, we’re doomed!’