The  topic of Argentina Tango is no light matter. When we dream, we are good at things we want to learn. With fantasies swirling through the mind, aspiring Argentina Tango divas take to the classrooms in preparation for a pilgrimage to the Argentina Tango capital and birthplace, Buenos Aires. Many travelers have wanted to learn for years, many want to get in shape through dance, and most want to form a connetion to the dance from Argentina that symbolizes the soul of Argentina, the national charater, what we hope to feel when they arrive on the streets of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. We all start out with Argentina tango images handed down to us through movies, videos, and travel books: gorgeous toned legs jutting out from colorful, special tango-dresses, amazing shoes, and hair coifed perfectly in a shiny bun at the nape of the neck, with flower pinned at the center. How could anyone not love these images? How could you not want to learn to tango, especially before travelling to Argentina?

Basic Tango lessons will give you enough knowledge of the Argentine dance to get by at any club, whether it be in New York or Buenos Aires. They call this conversational Tango. Usually travellers might sign up for Conversational (or Basic) Tango and take classes for a few months, for up to three times a week, to prepare for a trip to Argentina. Some start out at once a week, then, as the trip draws near, will have built up to three times a week. This intensive training just before departure to Buenos Aires ensures a solid knowledge of the basica of this complex dance.

The names of the Argentina Tango steps originate in the barrios of Beunos Aires in the 1800s. Women in long skirts who danced the Argentina Tango in the rough streets make patterns in the dirt. The patterns gave the steps their names. Once you practice the steps and get good enough at basic Tango moves, you may be invited to attena a practica by your dance instructor. This is an evening session where you can dance with different partners and show off your Tango style, Argentina style!

Also, for the female Tango students out there, it’s likely that your class is made up of mostly women, then you may not have even danced with a man yet. The practica is your chance to tango with a man! You will learn something from each partner you dance with, even though you might end up feeling shy or humiliated by what you perceive to be your bad Tango style. You will meet people who are obsesses with the Tango, people who dance Tango more than 8 hours a week, and people who have been dancing Tango all their lives. It has been said that Tango is a dance you learn for life.

Tango has a language, and the words are the individual movements of the Tango. You can dance to the same piece of music over and over, and never dance it the same way. If you say something different each time you dance the Tango, you will have danced a different Tango each time.

There’s even a sense of humor to the dance, if you know the language. To be able to speak Argentina Tango, or in other words to be able to show the movements correctly, you’ll have to have some dancer intuition already in place. For example, pointed toes, flexed knees, balance tipped slightly forward, and mirroring your partner’s shoulders are all basics that you have to master, like building blocks on which the real Tango language will be constructed.

 There’s another language involved, as well: Spanish. As you learn Tango, you will learn the names of the movements, as your instructor, who might be from Argentina, calls them out. They may even be handy as you attempt a bit of traveller’s Spanish while on vacation in Argentina. Here are a few examples:

• ochos, or figures of eight
• el dibujo, or the drawing
• cruzadas, or crosses
• colgadas
• volcadas
• boleos
• ganchos

What it Takes to Tango

The Argentina Tango is intense, both in its style and in what it requires physically from the dancer. Although you won’t develop a dancer’s body in a few months, you probably will notice increased strength in your legs, and perhaps better alignment, as you practice better posture while dancing. You might notice that at first your muscles are sore after your first few lessons. Your body might feel stiff, and you will notice that you feel a little uncoordinated at first as your brain and body get used to working together to form the tango postures and movements. The more you practice, the better your body and brain will become at knowing what the other is doing, and will begin to coordinate together. You’ll feel clumsy even walking backwards, but this will improve with practice.

In Buenos Aires, the top tangueros spend the first six months of lessons just learning to walk the right way. If you visit a milonga, a tango dance club  you will probably see some good tango walks, especially if some of the dancers are pros from Argentina. If you live in a major urban area, chances are you’ll have lots of places to try your new Tango skills, and to satisfy your obsession. Look for clubs, more dance studios where you can take extra classes, advanced workshops, private classes, and group classes.

Spanish explorers who arrived in southern Argentina to find the wide expanses of Patagonia thought the land was too wild and rough to be useful. A closer look and centuries later, we know this beautiful corner of the earth to be as varied and precious as any remote natural resource, and lots of fun, too!

Patagonia, Argentina can mean windswept plains to moist green mountainous areas, to cool lakes and rocky dramatic beaches facing the Pacific Ocean. Patagonia is also glaciers, streams, rivers, and one UNESCO World Heritage site that’s home to dozens and dozens of species of wild birds.

The best way to make your visit to Patagonia special is to stay at an unique inn or estancia, which is a ranch-like property that acts as a bed-and-breakfast. Both types of lodging come in an assortment of flavors and prices, from affordable to top luxury. These smaller establishments offer an intimacy with nature you won’t find at larger hotels. If you visit Patagonia, it’s almost essential that you stay at an estancia or at least a smaller inn, to get the full experience. Read more about these charming and individually run accommodations here.

History
Argentina people have a diverse cultural heritage historically, mixing European and the newer Syrian and Armenian arrivals, with around 100,000 to 600,000 pure Indians surviving. There were once African slaves here, but after slavery was abolished, blacks faded out of the population. What remains today is a largely European mix of Argentina people, although that in itself brings numerous juxtapositions and identity crises for the diverse population. Argentina people experienced an influx of immigrants similar to the USA, but in a much shorter period of time, so there was less time to meld together and form a national identity.

When you visit Argentina, you might think you’re hearing Argentina people speak Italian, and you may be right. In the latter half of the ninetieenth century and up until World War II, Argentina was deeply committed to encouraging immigration, with government policy doing everything it could to attract laborers from Europe. Just a few years before World War I, Argentina people were almost one-third foreign-born, with 45 percent of this group originating in Italy and thirty percent from Spain. In urban areas, there were sometimes more newcomers than there were native-born Argentina people. There were jobs for everyone, with a booming agricultural sector and with anything involving cattle. The rush finally slowed down after WWII, with most immigrants coming from nearby South American countries, where work was hard to find. Since the 1990′s the economy has slowed down, and workers from surrounding countries have actually started to leave, for lack of work, or have headed to the urban areas where their prospects are higher. The urban areas have not had an easy time of absorbing all these displaced workers, and there are some pretty serious shantytown situations for those Argentina people.

Ethnicities
There are approximately 33 million people living in Argentina, with about one-third living in Buenos Aires, the capital. Eighty-five percent of Argentinian people are of European descent. There are some groups who have tried to remain ethnically pure, such as a small group of Welsh in Patagonia and some German villages in the north. There’s also a strong Anglo influence in Argentina, because British money was used to build much of Argentina’s infrastructure in the late 1800′s. English farmers also bought lots of land in Patagonia for raising sheep. The tight connetion between Anglo-Argentinians and England was strained, however, when loyalties clearly lay with Argentina during the Falklands war. More and more, Argentinian business is geared toward the US market rather than British.