By Julia Doynel

This story is published to honor and celebrate a major birthday of my friend Julia

.

I met Julia Doynel at Sueno Portenyo for the first time in 2018, my first trip to Buenos Aires. In subsequent trips in 2019, I danced at Sueno Portenyo, which in those days was located on the 2nd floor at a space on Humberto Primo. It was a very large, beautiful space accommodating up to 400 dancers.

Returning again in January 2020, but this time, for 3 months, I danced there on Sunday night and Wednesday night. I got to know the staff, the waitresses, and most of all Julia herself. I found her to be a most interesting and intelligent woman with a background in theater, as a director and as well a woman who with 4 children and a few grandchildren.

When the force of the horrible quarantine arrived organizers decided to close down all the milongas. Julia supported this decison, as no one could imagen the upcoming events. The country closed its doors to the world on March 20th, 2020.

In my conversation with Julia I find she has great wit and a big heart. During the pandemia she fund raised and continued to pay small salaries to all the people who had been loyal and worked with her.

About once a month I would take a taxi that she organized for me to her house. I would stay for about an hour, we would talk about the past and about the future of us of tango and of our hopes for the renewed world once the vaccines showed up. She even came with me when I was going to recieve mine.

This elegant woman who I call my friend is amazing. She has her man, Hugo, who is also a very intelligent and kind man with a beautiful embrazo.

We have gone out to dinners and milongas together. They have taken me to some of the oldest and most traditional milingas still running in Buenos Aires.

I feel so fantástico to call her mi amiga, mi querida.

So now we get to the story that Julia wrote about her relationship to tango. Enjoy!!!

 

My dad danced tango, and when I was 4 or 6 years old, he put me on his feet and taught me how to dance, a ritual that we practiced quite frequently for a few years until, around the age of 9, The Beatles arrived and I abandoned tango, although in my house it was heard every day.

Many years later, my eldest daughter Veronica, who did dance tango, went to live in Spain with a scholarship in art, and since I missed her a lot, she insisted that I learn to dance tango and So out of casualness I started to learn and I never left it again, tango… a one-way path.

As so many people say when they arrived to tango for the first time you start to know another way of love and passion.

The Buenos Aires [Sueño Porteño] dream was born from the need to make the milonga a place more human place, less alone, 16 years ago in the milongas the men sat on one side, the women in front, which prevented them from interacting when they were not dancing.

Tango is also a dance, of a culture, it is a social fact, many couples have been formed thanks to tango. Tango when one dances with a good dancer, with a good connection, is the only place where one stops thinking. to just feel, that’s what makes it unique.

Buenos Aires, the heart of tango, welcomes you to this unique culture of embracements and friendship, welcome to the beauty of our landscapes and cities, to a great food!

Some of the milongas (the places where we dance) as Sueño porteño gives you a very nice welcome, and you can find warm people that with tango invites you to dream on a wooden floor.

¡TANGO!

After the pandemic, the milongas changed, some milongueros died, others stopped dancing and the political-economic situation of the country substantially reduced the number of times per week they dance today, the question is choosing…friendly milongas, where one feels welcome and where the audience, especially the male one, is flexible to people who are not used to it, especially foreigners.

We are in the beginning the high season for tango, most of the milongas, not all, are flooded with hopeful foreigners in hugging with the Argentinian locals, let’s welcome them in every way possible, they travel more than 12,000 km to do it. 

Grazi,

Julia Doynel, organizer of Sueño Porteño held on Sundays night from 7.30 to 2.00 am at Maza 457.

 

And a little movie from polka dot night at Sueno Portenyo a few weeks ago.

Was marvelous.

Thank you for reading. Enjoy your next abrazo.

Edited, fotos, & intro by Ruth Offen except where noted