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Dances
Tango can also be regarded as the quintissential Argentine dance. It can be dated back to 1870 and it was performed by the black, the immigrant and the gaucho who arrived in the Buenos Aires suburbs and later on became a compadrito. These men used to meet at a brothel, where fashionable music rhythms were danced. The black danced in their own settings, which were known as tambos or tangos. This term is said to have been one of the origins of the word “tango”. Actually, the black people´ s dance was characterized by full body movements, contorsions, and cortes and quebradas(“pauses and breaks”). Thus, the compadritos who watched them dance used to imitate them so as to have fun and then began practising those dances in brothels.
Among the top and oldest tango dancers we ought to recall Benito Bianquet, Casimiro Ain and Tito Lusiardo; and regarding contemporary artists Virulazo, Juan Carlos Copes, María Nieves and Miguel Angel Zotto and Mora Godoy are worthy of being mentioned. They all formed part of the cast performing Tango Argentino, which was regarded as a huge success in Broadway. The major tango events such as the Buenos Aires Tango Festival and the World Tango Championship take place in Buenos Aires, which gathered between 170.500 and 50.000 people respectively in their latest editions.
The first International Festival of Queer Tango was held in 2007 as a way to acknowledge tango sexual diversity. But not everything boils down to tango in Argentina. Folk dances such as chacarera, gato, zamba, cueca, chamamé and malambo are danced countrywide. On the other hand, a renowned classical music dance school, which is ruled by the Colon Theater´s teaching principles and from where artists such as Jorge Donn, Maximiliano Guerra, Paloma Herrera, Marianela Núñez and Julio Bocca have graduated, has been set up. Amidst an open-air performance gathering roughly 500.000 people, the latter informed that he was retiring from his job as a dancer in 2007. At present, he serves as director of the Argentine Ballet.