Whenever I youtube Javier & Andrea, I come across the term "Villa Urquiza Style".  Feeling puzzled, I googled a bit and made some copy and paste, and here is what I found.

Villa Urquiza

Villa Urquiza is a barrio or neighborhood of Buenos Aires.  It is a residential neighborhood of both old houses and apartment buildings, quiet streets and a few fast-traffic, crowded avenues.  It has several parks that make it very pleasant.  During the summer, it is not uncommon to see neighbors talking to each other, comfortably sitting on their chairs on the sidewalk.

It is the home of 2 milongas of importance to the Buenos Aires tango culture, Club Sunderland and Club Sin Rumbo.

A bird's eye view can be found here, you may need to install Google Earth:-

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/download.php?Number=837868

Tango Styles

Generally speaking, there are 3 main styles of dancing Tango: Tango Salon, Tango Milonguero and Tango Nuevo.

Tango Salon Style

Salon Tango was the most popular style of tango danced up through the Golden Era of the dance (1950's) when milongas were held in large dance venues and full tango orchestras performed.  Later, when the Argentine youth started dancing rock & roll and tango's popularity declined, the milongas moved to the smaller confiterias in the center of the city, resulting in the birth of the "milonguero/apilado/Petitero/caquero" style.

Salon Tango is characterized by slow, measured, and smoothly executed moves.  It includes all of the basic tango steps and figures plus sacadas, barridas, and boleos.  The emphasis is on precision, smoothness, and musicality.  The couple embraces closely but the embrace is flexible, opening slightly to make room for various figures and closing again for support and poise.  The walk is the most important element.

When tango became popular again after the end of the Argentine military dictatorships in 1983, this style was resurrected by dancers from the Golden Era in the milongas at Club Sin Rumbo, Sunderland, and Canning.

Milonguero Style

This style originated as the 'petitero' or 'caquero' style in the 1940s and 50s in closely packed dance halls and "confiterias", so it is danced in close embrace, chest-to chest, with the partners leaning - or appearing to lean - slightly towards each other to allow space for the feet to move.  There are not many embellishments or firuletes or complicated figures for the lack of space in the original milonguero style but now also those figures are danced.

Although the rhythmic, close-embrace style of dancing has existed for decades, the term "Milonguero Style" only surfaced in the mid- '90s when the name was created by Susana Miller, who began her classes at the traditional Club Almagro, associated with Cacho Dante, a veteran aficionado.

Tango Nuevo Style

Nuevo style is a dancing and teaching style. Tango nuevo as a teaching style emphasizes a structural analysis of the dance.  It is a result of the work of the "Tango Investigation Group" (later transformed into the "Cosmotango" organization) pioneered by Gustavo Naveira and Fabian Salas in the 1990's in Buenos Aires.  By taking tango down to the physics of the movements in a systematic way, they have created a method of analyzing the complete set of possibilities of tango movements, defined by two bodies and four legs moving in walks or circles.  This investigation provided a view of a structure to the dance that was expressed in a systematic way.

From this teaching style, a new and unique style of dancing has developed, called by many a "tango nuevo" style.  The most famous practitioners of "Tango Nuevo" are Gustavo Naveira, Norberto "El Pulpo" Esbrés, Fabián Salas, Chicho Frumboli, and Pablo Verón. While the other two main tango nuevo schools are DNI Studios and Tango Brujo, of which we have teachers from them come to Hong Kong literally every year.  

Villa Urquiza Style 

The pioneer dancers who danced and taught Traditional Salon Tango at Club Sin Rumbo and Club Sunderland in Villa Urquiza were Gerardo Portalea, "El Turco" Jose, "Milonguita", Carlos Estevez "Petroleo", "Cachito" Montegaza, "Finito", Jose Lampazo, and Alberto Villarrazo.

And then it became so popular and famous that people from all over the world and portenos from all over the city went to these clubs to learn the Traditional Salon Style.  Then people called the tango danced there "Villa Urquiza Style".

Among them there are Maria del Carmen Romero and Jorge Díspari, who became teachers of Villa Urquiza Style themselves and taught many of the today's world's top dancers, including Geraldine Rojas (their daughter), Javier Rodriguez (whose father is a former organizer of Club Sunderland), Sebastian Arce, and Samantha Dispari (their youngest daughter).

Javier Rodriguez learnt his formal tango training at Buenos Aires Theatre Academy in his teenage, the same period of time when Andrea Misse studied tango there.

And the rest is history.

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It is a good thing to watch Javier and Andrea on Youtube, while sitting on a couch.  Yet it is the best way to watch them dancing Villa Urquiza Style right in front of you at the Grand Milonga on 19th May.

We do have limited tickets and they are selling fast, don't say I did'nt warn you.

 Richard

Last update: 05-08-2007 13:34

Published in : Blogs, Dancing