Abstract: This section sheds further light on the origins of Argentine tango, focusing on the dance, by analyzing the available sources from the turn of the 20th century. The author argues that the dance, rather than rising out of the lowly streets of Buenos Aires, was in fact born on the Argentinian theater stage, as part of the same process which saw Spanish plays, companies, and dances replaced by local ones in the plays of the teatro criollo. The available magazine articles on the topic, with their revealing photographic material, point to the fact that stage actors were portrayed and presented as the compadritos and comadritas of a legendary past, as if they were real Buenos Aires street characters, while in reality, those characters were stage personas of the teatro criollo. It was thanks to these theatrical characters and performances that tango became disseminated among the general public in Buenos Aires.
The theater was not only the place where tango could be seen by a broad audience, it was also the site where the public could dance it as a ball room dance during the carnival festivities. The press coverage of the carnival dances of 1904-5 bespeak tango's popularity as a fashionable dance. Furthermore, photographic records suggest that tango had developed from a comedy act to a discrete ballroom dance.
IV.3 The Podestás and the Apolo Theater
By the time De María's Bohemia criolla was first performed, the Podestá brothers had become a fixture among theater companies in Buenos Aires. Their move from the circus arena to the theater stage at the end of the 19th century portended to significant changes in the theater scene of the city. It signified the end of the hegemony of Spanish theater companies in the teatro criollo. The Podestás claimed the teatro criollo as their own. José Podestá (*1858, Montevideo, UR) quickly entered into public controversy via the press, claiming that the only “means to preserve the true character and the true flavor” of “original works by criollo or resident writers“ was an interpretation by Argentinian actors.
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1. The “Capos” of the Podestá Family: Antonio, Jerónimo, José, and Pablo
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The Podestás were remarkably enterprising, if one can judge by the number of plays they performed. Within the first decade of the 20th century, the various theater companies that the Podestá brothers formed together, separately, or jointly with other troupes, staged hundreds of plays. Many of these were set in urban Buenos Aires. The conventillo provided a popular scenery and—since many plays were lyrical music theater with orchestra music, song, and dance—the tango-dancing compadrito became a common character on stage.
Unfortunately, many of the plays are lost or unavailable, so that it is impossible to trace the proliferation of tango in detail. It is certain, however, that some of the relevant plays were very successful. During the two theater seasons spanning 1901-3, for example, when a play produced by the Podestás had a run of 16 performances on average, Ensalada criolla was shown 64 times in two revivals, and Bohemia criolla was given 32 times after it premiered in 1902. Another play in which dancing tango made an appearance, Fumadas by Enrique Buttaro, was played 46 and 36 times, respectively.
The Apolo theater, which in 1901 became the home theater of the company managed by José Podestá, played an important role in the proliferation of tango. In his autobiography, the tango singer Juan Carlos Marambio Catán remembered that he heard his first tangos as a child when a maid smuggled him into the afternoon shows at the Apolo. Arturo De Bassi, after joining the Apolo theater orchestra as a clarinetist at age 13, in 1903, had his first tangos performed at the Apolo during intermissions, including his celebrated El Incendio of 1906. The orchestra was also also among the first in Buenos Aires to record tangos on disk.
At the same time as the Podestás established their theater company at the Apolo, the first tangos criollos were printed in Buenos Aires and offered as piano scores to the general public. Just as Argentinian theater companies had made the teatro criollo their own, so composers now seized upon tango as a ”native” music form. During this period we also find the first evidence—evidence, that is, that can be documented—of tango making inroads from the theater stage into the social life of the city. Both in terms of the music and the dance, the perception of tango was changing. And the Podestás were right in the thick of it due to their exposure to the large audience that frequented the Apolo.
IV.4 Enrique Buttaro
All seven plays of Enrique Buttaro (*1882, Montevideo, UR – 1904) were performed by the Podestás at the Apolo theater. Two of them, ¡Abajo la careta! and Fumadas, with music composed by Antonio Podestá, were very successful comedies given repeatedly during the two seasons spanning 1901-3. Both pieces are lyrical sainetes set in conventillos, with their typical population of criollos and immigrants.
¡Abajo la careta! (1902) contains three dancing scenes, none of which gives an indication of being a tango. Only the last dance, the grand finale, is identified in the libretto. It is a jota, the emblematic dance of Spanish immigrants in the teatro criollo. Tango is only mentioned incidentally in a dialogue. One of the male characters, Figurita, tells a friend about a past relationship with a woman he used to dance tango with:
Te acordás vos de la china
...
Aquella, hombre, que tenía
un pelo que le llegaba
más abajo de las corvas
y unos ojazos que el alma
repicaba si los veía...
Aquella que envidia daba
cuando yo al compás de un tango,
la cadera le quebraba;
mientras que ella, comadriando
su cara ponía en mi cara.
...
(Do you remember that girl
...
The one, man, whose hair
reached down
to her knees,
and such eyes that struck your soul
when you saw them …
She that inspired envy
when I, to the cadence of a tango,
bent her hip,
while she, comadriando [assuming a comadre's attitude],
leaned her cheek against mine.
...)
This reference to tango follows an already familiar pattern: one man telling another about the sensual experience of a dance. The dance is part of a “courtship ritual” that culminates in the rapturous moment when the man leads the woman into a quebrada. (See Soria's Justicia criolla, scene 14.)
Buttaro's Fumadas (1902) contains an actual dance with corte y quebrada. In the scene, a male character, Pucho, wants to take his girlfriend, Rosa, to a dance, but she can only dance “in style”. As the libretto indicates, Pucho dances alone to teach his tango moves to Rosa.
PUCHO: ... ¡Ah! Décime: ¿sabes bailar?
ROSA: ¡Ya lo creo!
PUCHO: Entonces la semana que viene te viá llevar a un baile pa que
nos calentemos los chifles.
ROSA: Bueno, bueno...
PUCHO: ¿Sabés meterle de aquí? (Hace un corte).
ROSA: Qué es eso?
PUCHO: No ves, otaria, que es un quiebro?
ROSA: ¡Ah, no!... Yo bailo a la moda.
Música
PUCHO: (Mientras baila solo). Poné atención:
Echale arroz a este guiso.
Este golpe es pa lo que después te viá a decir. En esta güelta tenés
que tener cuidao de no caerte.
Aquí medio entrecruzás los chifles y te venís pa delante... ¡así!
Y en esta refistolada te preparás pal golpe. ¿Te enteraste?
(Segunda).
¡Echale arroz a este guiso!...
En esta cáida te venís pa un lao y movés... lo que después vas a saber.
Aquí, hacés una media luna... así.
Depués te hacés un ovillo y ponés en juego... (Le habla al oído).
¿Sabés? Cuando yo me quiebre así,
por ejemplo, vos te preparás pal golpe y hacés un firulete... con lo que te dije.
En esta refistolada, te preparás pal golpe, ¿Entendíste?
ROSA: Un poco.
PUCHO: Bueno; cuando güelva te daré otra lición y entretanto... ¡mangiá, nena!
(Hace un corte hacia el foro. Rosa por lateral segunda).
[
PUCHO: Tell me: Do you know how to dance?
ROSA: Sure I do!
PUCHO: Then I am going to take you to a dance next week
so that we may warm up our legs.
ROSA: Well, well...
PUCHO: Do you know how to get into this? (He poses a “corte”.)
ROSA: What is that?
PUCHO: Bumpkin, don't you see that it's a break (quiebro)?
ROSA: Ah, no! I dance in style.
Music.
PUCHO: (While he is dancing alone.) Pay attention:
Add rice to the stew!...
This clincher is what I am going to tell you later. In this turn
you must watch out not to fall. Here you will half cross your legs
and move forward... Like this!
And with this show move, you'll get ready for the clincher.
Did you understand?
(Second)
Add rice to the stew!...
In this drop (caída) you come to one side and move...
which you will know later. Here, you make a media luna...
Like this! Then you move into a bundle (ovillo)
and put yourself into the game...
(He speaks into her ear.) You know, when I do a break (quiebre)
like this, for example, you'll get ready for the clincher
and make an adornment (firulete)... like I have told you.
And with this show move, you'll get ready for the clincher.
Did you understand?
ROSA: A little bit.
PUCHO: Well, when you come back I'll give you another lesson,
and in the meantime... Eat, baby!
(He poses a “corte” towards the audience.
Rosa out to second wing left.)
]
This dancing scene follows another common pattern, the “tango demonstration”: a male dancer pantomimes the moves to show or teach them to a friend. It must be noticed that this kind of mimicry, which downright invites exaggeration, is typical of physical comedy. Pablo Podestá, who played Pucho the first time the sainete was given, established himself as a comic actor with this role.
Just as in De María's plays, in Fumadas the word “tango” is not even mentioned. Nevertheless, the presentation of the dance in this text has become considerably more technical. Words of the earlier tango vocabulary like “corte”, “quebrada”, or “firulete” seem to have been employed as general, not necessarily tango-specific terms. (Note that in this text, too, “corte” and “quiebro” [quebrada] are used to refer to the same dance move.) Here we also find “media luna”, “ovillo“ and “caída”, and instructions to “cross the legs”, etc. This demonstrates that the dance is becoming concrete: it is no longer a style of dancing with corte y quebrada but it is developing into a dance with specific choreographed movements—soon to be called consistently by its name: tango.
V. Tango Publicity
In 1903 the journalist José Ciriaco Álvarez (*1858, Gualeguaychú) published an article entitled El tango criollo under the pseudonym “Sargento Pita” (Sergeant Whistles). This article is one of the most important documents on Argentine tango: it is the first ever full-page commentary dedicated to the dance, claiming that it had criollo roots and that it was born in Buenos Aires. The essay appeared as an installment of a regular column of Caras y caretas, in which Álvarez/“Sargento Pita” reported on a variety of issues concerning Buenos Aires.
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2. “Photographic Strolls Through the Municipality: The Tango Criollo”
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Álvarez' article is interesting to us as it establishes a connection between tango criollo and the Podestás. Through a cryptic reference to the days of Mitre and Alsina (1860s), tango is presented as a matter of bygone times. In the past, so it says, it was danced in the outskirts of Buenos Aires with corte and quebrada by the compadrito and his companion, the “comadrita with the dagger in the garter”. At the time the article was published, according to Álvarez, tango was only “practiced on the sidewalk of conventillos by some miserable couples of bored loafers” as a “street entertainment among idle fellows at nightfall” to the sound of the barrel organ. The traditional dancers, he points out, have disappeared, but the memory of tango has been “saved and preserved” by the Podestás.
The assertions made about tango in the text are problematic and have left scholars befuddled. They are contradictory in themselves and make historical claims that, simply speaking, make no sense at all. (For a full translation of the article, see Tango in the Theater.) In fact, these assertions do nothing but describe the conventional representation given of Buenos Aires's lower-class inhabitants on the theater stage: the compadrito and “comadrita with the dagger in the garter”; the conventillo; men dancing with men. It stands to reason, therefore, that Álvarez' description of tango past and present comes straight from the theater; in particular, from the Podestás. We suggest, therefore, that the content of the article should not be taken as a factual statement on the history of tango. Important are the photographs that were printed with the article.
Magazines illustrated with photographs—like Caras y caretas, from which the article is taken—were still a novelty in 1903. The title of the column, “Photographic Strolls Through the Municipality”, suggests that it was the pictures that mattered most. The articles informed on a variety of issues to which the Álvarez wanted to call attention: from streets in poor condition, to accidents, street vendors, beggars, drunkards, etc. (hence the pseudonym “Sargent Whistles”). As the articles were not always dedicated to same topic, the text seems to have been written to accompany whatever photos were available for a particular issue of the magazine.
This notion is supported by another set of photographs that was published six months later, also in Caras y caretas. Showing a man and a woman dancing, the pictures illustrate a piano score of the tango criollo El Maco by Miguel Tornquist.
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3. “Tango Criollo”, El Maco by Miguel Tornquist
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The two series of tango dancers (illustrations 2 and 3) obviously belong together: one of them, the “leader”, appears in both series and is wearing the same clothes. Light and shadows in the pictures indicate that both sets were shot at the same location and time.
As a subject matter, the tango criollo photographs are an odd addition to the “Sargento Pita” column, as it usually focussed on the problems of everyday life in Buenos Aires, unless one wants to believe that men dancing tango were a public nuisance in Buenos Aires at the time. But, Álvarez wrote that those scenes were a thing of the past, something whose memory was kept alive by the Podestàs' shows. In addition, why would these two men dance in broad daylight in a deserted street, obviously without music?
Moreover, at the time, photographers worked with bulky cameras and large-format sheet film. Taking a picture involved setting up the camera and inserting a film cassette for every image. The images were taken in broad daylight, thus, making the photographs easier to take and process. If we look at the photographs, we can see that, with only one exception, the “leader” of the couple is always facing the camera. (In this exceptional case, a companion shot is included so that the couple is shown in the same dance pose with a front and back view. See illustration 5 below.) He is wearing darker clothes to contrast against the background and the clothing of the other dancer. This attention to detail suggests that the pictures were carefully staged photographs.
Four of the five photos of the “Sargento Pita” series were taken from the same camera position. Camera and dancers remained in the same spot while maintaining the same orientation towards each other. Hence, the two men actually were not dancing but posing in front of the camera as if they were dancing.
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4. Tango criollo dance poses
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The same is true of the other dance picture series. The fact that the dancers are striking poses is significant. Three of the dance positions are repeated in both sets of photographs.
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5. Common tango poses
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What these positions are, if they had names, has not been conveyed in either publication. The captions are lunfardophrases, some of which draw on dance vocabulary. In fact, rather than elucidating the pictures, the texts are probably just plays on words intended to perplex and amuse the reader. For example:
“An old axe is useless. For the cut (corte), here are the scissors.”
“Why do you want to 'let there be light' if your mom sees in the dark?” (“Let there be light!” was a directive to dancers to keep a proper distance to each other.)
“Because of a stop (parada) like this one, my uncle stayed cross-eyed.”
“The rooster crows forever but there are no deaf to hear it.”, etc.
The picture sequence above suggests that the poses were part of a tango choreography that the dancers were familiar with. Analog to the “technical” dance lesson in Buttaro's play Fumadas, the photographs evince that tango has developed from a style of dancing with corte y quebrada to a distinct dance.
The dancer in the dark jacket, who appears as the “leader” in both series, might be Arturo de Navas. (See “El viejo tango que nació en el arrabal”. Or, Debunking the myth of the lowly birth of tango, Part 1) When the Podestás performed at the Apolo theater (at the time the photographs were taken), de Navas was a member of the company. In the first production of Justicia criolla, back in 1897, he played the guitarist and was on stage during the tango scene—and most likely participated in the dance. It seems reasonable, therefore, that the photos show de Navas, but we have not found a reliable source that identifies him. At any rate, the fact that Álvarez' article puts such an emphasis on the Podestás and their “preservation” of the tango criollo (and for no apparent reason except perhaps because the photos show members of the Podestás' company) leads us to believe that the dancers shown were indeed actors of that company.
VI. Tango Spreads beyond the Theater Stage
Our attempt to trace the emergence of Argentine tango as an independent dance has reached a point in time, around 1903, where the idea of tango criollo being native to Buenos Aires had taken root in the public awareness. For all that, what we have documented is not the development of the dance but the unfolding of a theatrical tradition of representation. Tango, dancing with corte y quebrada, was a comical act, a parody of a “proper” dance. Nevertheless, at some point ordinary people started to dance tango criollo for personal enjoyment. When did this happen?
In 1904, not long after the photograph series of tango criollo had been published, we find evidence of an emerging tango dance tradition: at the carnival dances. In a report on the dance festivities at he theirs of Buenos Aires we read,
Entre los teatros populares, ha sido el Argentino el más favorecido por el elemento criollo. Allí el tango con «corte y quebrada» ha sido el predominante, notándose algunas parejas verdaderamente notables que arrancaron entusiastas aplausos al público de los palcos.
(Among the popular theaters the [Teatro] Argentino was the most favored by criollos. Tango with “corte y quebrada” was the prevailing dance there, with some truly remarkable couples showing themselves who drew enthusiastic applauses from the spectators in the boxes.)
According to the article, tango was danced at several theaters. This is a surprising piece of information. In any case, to our knowledge, this is the earliest reference to tango being danced as a ballroom dance at a formal public event in Buenos Aires. Just a year earlier, Álvarez had brushed off the tango criollo (surely tongue-in-cheek) as a street entertainment of “idle loafers”. Here and now, at a public ball in 1904, it is danced by accomplished dancers, to music arranged for orchestras, and in front of an appreciative audience.
In the following year, 1905, the enthusiasm for tango at the carnival dances seems to have even increased. A review of the carnival dances in Caras y caretas observed:
Los tangos populares, con corte y quebrada, hicieron furor entre los bailarines, descollando en el Victoria por sus habilidades coreográficas una vieja que lo hacía a las mil maravillas, lo que demuestra que hasta en el tango es cierto el dicho de Martín Fierro: «El diablo sabe por diablo, pero más sabe por viejo»
...
En los programas de todos los teatros predominaron los tangos, los que, como el teatro nacional, están de moda...
(Among the dancers, the popular tangos with “corte y quebrada” were all the rage. One old woman, doing it marvelously, stood out at the Victoria [Theater]. It shows that the saying of Martín Fierro holds true even in tango: “The devil knows by being the devil, but he knows more by being old”.
…
The programs of all the theaters were dominated by tangos which, like the national theater, is in fashion...)
The closing sentence of our excerpt confirms the point of our argument, namely, the inseparable connection between the teatro criollo (that is, the “national theater”) and the tango criollo. But there is more: In the same issue, Caras y caretas devoted a whole article to A Fashionable Dance:
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6. “A Fashionable Dance” at the Victoria Theater
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The article consists of five photographs and a text written by Goyo Cuello, a music and theater editor of the magazine. The photographs were taken at the Victoria Theater, presumably during the carnival dances.
Baile de Moda
Llegado el carnaval, el tango se hace dueño y señor de todos los programas de baile, y la razón es, que siendo el baile más licentious, sólo en estos días de locura puede tolerarse. No hay teatro donde no se anuncien tangos nuevos, lo que es un gran aliciente para la clientela de bailarines que deseosa de lucirse con las compadradas y firuletes á que da lugar tan lasciva danza, concurre á ellos como moscas á la miel.
Como espectáculo es algo original; en el Victoria, sobre todo, es donde tiene que admirar más...
(A Fashionable Dance
Carnival having arrived, the tango becomes the lord and master of all dance programs. The reason is: being the most libertine dance, it can only be tolerated in these days of folly. There is no theater that does not announce new tangos, which is a great enticement for the clientele of dancers that wants to impress with the insolence and flamboyance this lascivious dance engenders. It attracts them like honey does flies.
As a show, it is something original. One has to admire it most at the Victoria, above all...)
With this introduction, the connection between the text, the photographs, and the preceding report on the carnival dances (see above) is established. The remaining description of the dance and the event contrasts blatantly with the photographs:
… La sala llena de gente alegre, por todas partes se oyen frases capaces de enrojecer el casco de un vigilante. En el fondo el malevaje de los suburbios con disfraces improvisados, en los palcos mozos bien y muchachas más bien todavía. De pronto, arranca la orquesta con un tango, y empiezan á formarse las parejas. El chinerío y el compadraje se unen en fraternal abrazo, y da principio la danza, en la que los bailarines ponen un arte tal, que es imposible describir las contorsiones, cuerpeadas, desplantes y taconeos á que da lugar el tango.
(… The hall is filled with cheerful people and from everywhere one hears phrases that would make the helmet of a police man blush. In the back the miscreants of the suburbs in improvised costumes, in the boxes well-off young men and (even better off) women. Suddenly the orchestra starts up a tango and the pairs compose. The fellowships of chinas and compadres join in brotherly embrace and the dance gets underway. The dancers display such artfulness that it is impossible to describe the contortions, swaying, stumbling, and stomping that tango incites.)
Instead of the “miscreants of the suburbs in improvised costumes”, performing “contortions, swaying, stumbling, and stomping” while dancing tango, the pictures show rather well-dressed couples dancing with proper postures.
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7. “Miscreants” dancing tango?
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Did Goyo Cuello actually attend the dance at the Victoria? We think not. His account of the event resembles a scene from a teatro criollo play more than a report by an eyewitness. The text is replete with stereotypes: that the miscreants stayed in the back (as if they had a reason to hide); that the theater boxes were occupied by rich kids and women of questionable repute; that tango dancers were compadres and chinas from the poor outskirts of the city. Likewise, tango is called a “lascivious” and “libertine” dance with “voluptuously swaying” movements. Such terms are part of a vocabulary with which dancing of lower-class people was commonly described. Cuello's text reflects the representation of tango in teatro criollo plays rather than an actual dance event. Just as in Álvarez's piece on the Tango criollo, it is the photographs that matter. The text is not an explication of what is taking place in the pictures, but seems to have been written independently.
We have no reason to doubt, however, that the couples in the pictures were dancing tango. Comparing the pictures of the Álvarez and Cuello articles, one can even discern similarities in the dancing positions. Note the crossed legs of the “leader” in the following pictures:
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8. Tango dancing positions: crossed legs of the “leader”
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The following sequence seems to show one of the more “scandalous” moves of dancing “con corte”, called “meter pierna” (introducing the leg).
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9. Tango dancing positions: “meter pierna”
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Our documentation of the development of tango in the teatro criollo from the 1890s to the carnival reports in Caras y caretas from 1905 evince the crucial connection between tango and theater. The first evidence of tango as a criollo dance (1897, Justicia criolla) comes from the theater stage. The first evidence of tango being danced as a ballroom dance by criollos comes from the theater, too: the carnival dances of 1904. By 1905, tango had become the fashionable dance of the carnival balls, the highpoint of the annual dancing season. This period from 1897 to 1905 circumscribes the ascend of the teatro criollo from its beginnings to great popularity. Within this time frame, we can safely place the development of Argentine tango from a general style of dancing with “corte y quebrada” to a discrete ballroom dance.
© 2020 Wolfgang Freis
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