On this grey and rainy day we finished up our 4 month stay in the city of Tango.
It’s been such a wonderful time as we met a few new friends, discovered many new restaurants and most of all danced a lot of tango!!!
So now we sit at the airport lounge, drink DV Catana Malbec, and wait for our flight to Miami.
We went to the security checkpoint pretty easily, but at immigrations we encountered an interesting situation.
Years ago, I applied for and received a temporary DNI in Argentina… and have used this to exit and enter the country. But this time, they discovered that my DNI had expired. So I had to pay the fine for overstaying my time here in Argentina.
This year, we neglected to go to Uruguay after 90 days of living in Buenos Aires, because I totally forgot that my DNI expired . I didn’t realize that we had to leave the country.
So at immigration I had to pay the fine of 12,000 pesos or $ 12 US.
OMG, it is cheaper to pay the fine than to pay the ferry fare to Uruguay, not only because you paying about $ 150 US dollars round trip and losing a day in your life in the ferry boats.
Makes an interesting dilemma.
But upon my return, I will renew my DNI.
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This year’s travels will take us to the Northwest, Florida, Spain, Croatia, Poland, Finland, France and Portugal with our return to BsAs in Mid December.
Recently, a few friends visited me in Buenos Aires. What fun!!! It was a great time to catch up on our lives, share our stories have a coffee especially in BsAs with all the marvelous cafes.
First visitor was, Gabriela Condrea from Seattle, who is the leader and organizer behind Tango Stride and HugsthatEmpower.Org a 501 C3 nonprofit organization. The mission of HugsthatEmpower is to help people with physical disabilities improve their walking ability while trying to reach their full potential for a vibrant life. This nonprofit group helps out by financially filling the gap of post-rehabilitation therapy through the TangoStride™ Program by subsidizing tango classes for those in need. TangoStride teaches tango to people with brain injury or degenerative diseases of the body and other physical impairments. She has some impressive results with the program helping to improve the quality of life of those individuals affected by the loss of motor skill.
Gabriela, who is based in Seattle, WA founded this organization about 10 years and she continues teaching tango to beginner students weekly. She’s a very kind, caring and wonderful person. I truly enjoy my time with her as it’s not a frequent encounter for us.
She’s a frequent visitor to BsAs, this time she was here for a couple of weeks before embarking on a trip to the north to visit Iguazú waterfalls. When here, she loves dancing tango with the old milongueros y Portenyos. So if you see her, give her a hug!
Next in was a tango friend from Alaska, who just retired and was starting his traveling and dancing tango life.
We figured out the last time we saw each other was atthe San Diego Tango Festival in 2019. It was great to sit for a couple of hours at one of my favorite cafes, Tonica. We had a few hours to catch up on retirement and the travels from my tango friend from Alaska, Al Villanueva. Great travels my friend, as he was off to Morocco.
Jan y Christine
Next up are two of my bestie friends, Chica Christine Sampson from Seattle and New Zealand and my other Chica, Jan Sheeley, who is a former Brit that’s lived in Seattle area for many years.
Haven’t had a chance to hang out with them since their visit to me in Florida in 2023 November. Really not that long ago but was only 4 whirlwind days.
My friends are amazing and very good tango tourists too. They will shop for clothes and tango shoes. Go to at least one or two milongas a day. Go out for dinner, too.The pace that they can keep is amazing.
This process will go on for about 2 weeks.
Dance, drink, eat, shop, repeat and throw in a bit of sleeping too.
Me y Jan at Nuevo Chicque
I love all their energy and enthusiasm. We will try new restaurants. And some new Milongas, too. We will visit new and old places to shop for tango clothes. We have created many wonderful experiences over the years of visiting Buenos Aires.
When we will go to all our favorite milongas, we are lucky as we have two fabulous leaders with us. Jamie Steele from New Zealand is Christine’s partner. They actually met here in Buenos Aires at the Milonga, Sueno Portenyo, in 2019. They did a bit of a long distance relationship, and then Christine jumped into living her life in New Zealand with Jamie. She moved most of her possessions and her goofy dog there, too. They continue to this day except Christine lives a bit more in the US as she has a son who is completing and graduating from university soon. As to Jamie, he is still working part-time, just had his first grandchild whom he adores, so they travel to spend time together and still live separately part of the year, too.
Christine y Jamie
Then there’s my partner Maximo, whom I also met at Sueno Portenyo quite a while ago. We live in the marvelous city 4 months a year. We are truly fortunate to have two beautiful leads with us.
Maximo y Jamie
My friend, Jan, continues to live in the Seattle area, as she is an amazing and caring woman where her family is concerned. One of her grand daughters, might be competing on the US Olympics Diving team, and currently, she is an active participant in that process doing lots of driving and flying to competitions.
Dinner at Sintesis
Yes, we are all amazing, active, kind caring wise women who are in the prime of our post career lives.
It was so much fun to have all my extended family here in Buenos Aires for a few weeks.
Dinner at Milones Restaurant
Life gets a bit crazy as we all love to dance and eat well. We are all living our best lives, and it’s wonderful that a few weeks of the year, we hang out together, enjoying our times in various places.
Life moves at such a quick pace these days. It’s so nice to be able to spend some time together savoring the life of travel and tango.
I feel as I am loved and very grateful to have such a wonderful and loving extended family.
While sitting comfortably at the kitchen table in the home of Zoraida Fontclara, I remembered how this meeting and subsequent conversations came to be.
Ah yes. It’s really a simple answer.
I wanted to know more about these two wonderful people who created El Abrazo Tango Club. At the time of our meetings, Zoraida’s life partner and co-organizer in the milonga, Diego Alvaro, was working and teaching in Europe, so he did not participate in our coffee conversations.
The story begins…while I am living in BsAs and going to many milongas and dancing tango frequently, one of my favorite Milongas is the El Abrazo Tango Club at El Beso on Fridays from 2.30 to 8.
I think I have danced at El Beso, every friday afternoon since we finished the pandemia years ago. That’s a lot of dancing in one place.
El Abrazo Tango Club
Over the years, I found myself enjoying the space that Zoraida and Diego have created. The hosts are very welcoming, the floor and the music are excellent, and the milonga is usually packed with locals and tango tourists because it is one of the friendliest in the city.
This milonga started 28 years ago.
This Friday, March 8th, the El Abrazo Tango Club celebrates their 28th anniversary. This milonga was the first afternoon Milonga in the city and started at the old La Confitería Ideal on Suipacha near Avenida Corrientes in March 1996.
One week after celebrating their 20-year anniversary at La Confitería Ideal, the milonga moved to it’s present location at El Beso, Riobamba, and Corrientes.
Here, at this milonga, it’s not about your level of dancing or the clothing you are wearing. It’s about being in your comfort zone, of enjoying the place, whether you are dancing or sitting. It’s possible to just enjoy watching the dancers while always being kind and not causing discomfort to others.
I asked Zoraida over a coffee.”How did this milonga begin ?”
These conversations would continue over successive coffees, as we got to know one another better.
To write the story, I had to discover the essence of the person. One must get to know that person.
From these conversations with Zoraida, I learned that she grew up knowing she wanted to be a contemporary dancer. She attended many different dance schools, from ballet to contemporary dance, while living in Buenos Aires with her parents. They both worked at regular jobs and danced tango as did most Portenyos in those days.
This passion for dance led her to learn and then later teach many different styles of dance along with the structure of dance and choreography.
Zoraida with the announcements
But within the framework of her dancing, she was always searching for something more, something that would ignite her passion for the dance.
Studying and working with many local dance and theater companies was a dream come true, but the stress of working 7 days finally caught up with her. Zoraida was 23 years old. She was overworked and over stressed, and as a dancer, she was not fulfilled.
What was missing?
In this spirit of discovery, she left Buenos Aires and traveled to France, Italy, and Germany.
Her talents allowed her to become a temporary member of various companies. She tried all these companies on, yet she was still searching for her gift, her place, her style in the dance world.
The 1980s in Paris was an amazingly productive and rich artistic period for her and her dancing. Here in Paris, she met Pina Bausch, a German expressionist dance choreographer.
Meeting Pina and seeing her dance work touched Zoraida’s soul in a way that no dance had done so before.
As with any artform, it is common practice to search for your soul in your work and to discover your particular style and manner. Zoraida did this for many months in Europe. She was still a very young woman.
Upon meeting Pina, she was invited to watch the company practice. At these practices, she experienced many emotions and much creativity. At that time, she was invited back to Germany and was even offered a place to live at one of the other dancers’ homes.
What an honor it was to be invited. Yet it was a difficult decision to make as her family in Argentina was financially supporting her and this was becoming increasingly difficult.
Zoraida remembers this moment as she knew that the decision she made would forever change her path of dance.
Zoraida made her decision, and she chose to return to Argentina.
Besides this, another dear dancer friend wanted to go to Argentina. Daniel Trenner was a teacher of contact improvisation and wanted to teach this subject in BsAs.
After living in BsAs for a while, Daniel asked, “Why are we not dancing Tango?”
Zoraida considered this idea as she remembered she had danced Tango with her father when she was young. She learned this expression from him.
“Tango is always waiting for you!” ! El Tango todavía siempre esperando¡
When she started dancing Tango, Zoraida found all the connections she had been searching for in dance.
Her friend, Daniel wanted them to become the next Fed Astaire and Ginger Rodriguez but in Tango.
Her love of connection, her love of knowing the body as honest as a way of knowing another’s soul.
Diego y Zoraida
But, even as she danced Tango in BsAs, Zoraida was still studying different dance techniques. She was invited to take classes at the Omega Institute in Northern Massachusetts.
For a while, she lived there, teaching classes and driving to school daily. Then, one day, while driving to class, she was involved in a horrific car accident that left her in a coma for 10 days, but somehow, she had many serious.
While in her coma, Zoraida recalls that she kept having the same reoccurring conversations in both her subconscious and her dreams.
This statement kept repeating itself.
What is my purpose?
The answer to the question was Tango!
She chose Tango, and Tango chose her.
Ultimately, she is a tango teacher but not of steps…
Zoraida believes that to be more integrated into your body, tango teaches me what I think I need to teach to you.
Tango teaches me to teach you the tools to dance for yourself and what is going to be good for you and your body.
El Abrazo Tango Club Milonga, the place, is a space to be giving the tango embrace and to be meeting with others.
Tango is a language without words.
Because I propose a space that I want for the people to be themselves.”
As Zoraida continues telling her story about meeting Diego when she was 24 years old, and they became good friends. He was an actor in the theater. Then, after remaining friends with Diego for 6 years, they fell in love and got married. They are the proud parents of two grown children.
El Abrazo Tango Club started in 1996 and continues to this day on Friday afternoons at El Beso club on Riobamba near Callao.
And on most Friday nights while I live in Buenos Aires, you will find me there, dancing with my heart at El Abrazo Tango Club
On March 8th, they will celebrate their 28th year. Abrazo y beso
