24 - may 03

Antonio speaks

When you distrust the roses, the roses will only smile.
E.E.Cummings

In this days of confusion, of stylistic arguments and invectives "màs largas que puteada de tartamudo", it's good to listen to a great dancer's voice. The following is probably the last interview with Antonio Todaro. It has been released to Fabiana Basso, who is the Josè Basso's niece, and has been published by the London's El Once as a tribute to the Master of Masters after his death in 1994.
Antonio used to teach regularly also in Europe: from his creations all the dancers drew a full stock of steps and sequences that, as the good crop or the firewood supplies, was expected to last all winter and keep each and every Tango instructor alive. They are still ticking over, thanks to his lessons.

For half a century Antonio Todaro has been moulding the bodies of Tango dancers, creating countless figures in which man and woman were like clay in the hands of this true craftman of our dance.

I began to dance in the year of '46 and i've been teaching since '48. As happened with many boys, an age came when one could start to go to dance in the local clubs where one could learn to dance tango or go to the Academias such as Gaeta's, Paso's, Juan Panell's, Arturo's which was in calle Ayacucho or Tito and Victoria's which was in Avenida Corrientes. In the local clubs, the men danced with each other; in contrast, the Academia teachers would have three or four female dancers in each room and for example Gaeta ended up with 25 or 30 schools. It was the heyday of the tango; if we returned to it nowadays we would need at last a hundred academias because in that time we were only eight millions inhabitants and today we are thirty-five million. But the things that's wrong nowadays is that young people aren't carried away by the tango the way they were in those days. The young boys who want to be professionals or want to learn it in order to work here or abroad aren't around, but, i must stress, the biggest thing that's missing is young people to bring the tango to all the dance halls.

To go out and dance for fun it's enough to know the basic step and three or four figures, but to be a professional one must study it a lot. The difference between professional dance and that of the milonguero has to be underlined very clearly.

No, because it's another thing. Today's young men are dancers, not milongueros. When i say dancers, i mean they come to the tango having already gone through other schools of dance such as for instance folkloric dances or classical dance and because of that it would be natural for the boys to time figures and sequences with the music. The milonguero was the boy from one of the outlying quarters who used to go to dance and who would feel the tango in another way, he would dance because he was a milonguero, in other words with a lot of feeling and without abandoning the beat but he wouldn't especially create figures for the music.

There aren't many "lads" like me left now. By that i mean old people and older than me... because the tango declined as a result, among other things, of syncopated music, when Palito Ortega, el Club del Clan, Los Clinco Latinos emerged on the scene and that was when the young ones went off to learn those new rhythms. They left the tango because the tango is more difficult and what's more is that time you had to dance really well or the girls wouldn't come out and dance.

I've been a teacher for many years now, but i'm never going to forget that i took a year to learn the basic step. However after that i greatly improved because i worked and studied. I would finish my work and then give myself four or five hours of dance every day, alone or with another boy. We practised and practised. We'd arrive at the milonga and we'd succeed in getting the girls up to dance.

I can talk to you of the year '45 and after and of course there were tango shows. We gave exhibitions, we worked in variety, live shows in the cinemas but when we performed we never improvised. No professional dancer can improvise while performing. The dancer who goes on the stage has to do so having worked on his tango. Take for example the show Tango Argentino - not even Virulazo improvised! What happened was that his dance was different from that of the other couples, it looked like the dance of milonguero and of course it was! But at the same time it was dancing which had been planned and rehearsed with his wife Elvira. It had taken time to create.

I would go to bed at night staring at the ceiling and i would dream awake with all my senses and i'd see possibilities of what i could do. I would imagine the figure and later, in practice, i would finish creating it.

I don't remember anymore what i used to do 30 or 40 years ago. Sometimes i don't even remember what i did the year before. Of course there are things from 10 or 15 years ago which i pass on the boys but these were engraved in my mind because of the fact that i liked them a lot. The exact opposite has happened to me too - i've taken hours to create figures and afterwards i haven't liked them. I never do them again and they are erased from my mind for ever.

They don't create things except when they are studying. When i show them a sequence and they start to work on it, sometimes they realize it suits them better done differently and they change my version which seems very good to me because probably the boy doesn't have the same way of rotating style of turning as i have, so that it's not comfortable for him. He changes it to something that fits him better and that takes creative ability. I can't say that they aren't creators, but if everyone were a creator i wouldn't have so much work.

We can't speak of the partnership because none is perfect. Every couple has some defect in one way or another: in the position of the arms, in how they hold their bodies, in not separating the bodies, in being clean with the feet or stopping themselves well. As far as elegance is concerned, it cannot be learned. It's natural, the cachet of the dancer is innate otherwise all dancers who come to learn from me would have the same posture as i have and that is not the case. Tango partners must have skill, feeling, they must like dancing and they will like it more when they see that they are progressing, that they are not always on the same level. Everyone playing football can't be Maradona and neither is Maradona perfect anyway.

Over there they don't have the same opportunities to go out and dance the way we have here in Buenos Aires. In Europe they go to the school, take their class and afterwards they go home and they have to wait until Sunday when the same school gives a practice session. There are no dances. Here there are dances everyday and if they've got no cash to go dancing, they go to the local club they belong to, put on the music and dance.

Yes, they feel it very well... Probably the thing they don't have is the "porte del porteno" - the carriage of the Buenos Aires man or woman. But that happens right here in Argentina too because no one from outside Buenos Aires has the carriage of the porteno, neither the fellow from Cordoba, Tucuman or Mendoza. A while ago i taught in the city of Rosario and the Rosarino's dancing is not the same as the porteno's either. The carriage of the man and woman from Buenos Aires is unique. But equally, i'm very happy with the level has been achieved in countries like Holland, Switzerland, Belgium and in Berlin especially.

Because the tango gets inside you, it's such a lovely dance and besides one never finishes learning it, no one can say they know it all. It's the best dance. In my case, i've been teaching it for 45 years, i mean i am crazy about it, it's my passion.

The wine corner

The Trio Esquina leadered by César Stroscio will be back in Italy soon. It's not the first time that Tango is welcomed in a winery, as it is in this case at the Teroldego Rotaliano's cellar in Mezzocorona (Trento). Another organization once paid us in liquid, that's to say with 200 bottles of wine plus taxes, which we shared among five. Luckily, nobody but our manager was an abstainer: he didn't want to give up his commission and started drinking there and then.