The Tango Scene. Swing in by Sonia Abadi

by Sonia Abadi

One day, somebody left the door open, and I slipped into the Milonga. I looked around, listened up, learned to dance; some things they told me, others I guessed. It was the experience, not the cold, objective eye of the researcher that made me want to tell about it. Phrases and situations that came out of listening to confessions, complaints and jokes gave birth to these stories. I asked the many foreigners that come to Buenos Aires why they had become so impassioned with our tango. Their answer was always the “because of the embrace”. And so, how could I tell the dancers what they already knew, what it was that they were experiencing? I decided to make them my accomplices and to show them their reflection. They found themselves mirrored there. They all felt their craze had become legitimate. A bastard child born of a passion for tango, its godparents the men and women of the Milonga, rocked by the dancers, this book was born. I stole time from dancing to write, and time from writing to dance, since work time was untouchable. With the vivacity of the milonga, the passion of the tango and the dizziness of waltz, I invented this Buenos Aires embrace that I wanted to share with you. The book made an impact in several countries. The magazine Reportango in New York published a chapter in English in each issue. It was translated into Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian and French. The whole book was published in Germany and Sweden. It drew the interest of American anthropologists that included it in their bibliographies in the Latin American Studies Department at UC Berkeley. While never neglecting her profession as a physician and psychoanalyst, since 1997, Sonia Abadi has been exploring the many spaces connected to the tango, leaving her unmistakable imprint on them. In writing, singing and dancing, her detailed observations and creativity attract attention from tango lovers as well as those who know nothing about it but are beginning to relate to it.

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