Marina Zucchi
08/27/2017 11:06
Clarín.com
Shows
Fame
Updated 08/27/2017 12:34 PM
-Dancing felt here.
(He strokes his stomach).
-That I felt?
-A beautiful anguish.
-How is a beautiful anguish?
-It was like all those things about falling in love.
And more.
-And now?
-I don't think I'm going to dance anymore.
After being like a compass on the ground for seventy years, Juan Carlos Copes' restless legs are very still.
Something stopped him, but not the will.
"I was withdrawn by malpractice," he says with a raspy, tired voice.
"I was to run, to die on stage, but they gave me a knockout blow."
Juan Carlos Copes, at home.
At 86, the knockout was done by medical negligence.
He underwent a colonoscopy at a medical center in Ramos Mejía and ended up with intestinal perforation.
He can no longer give away firuletes, and
is obliged to live with a minimum retirement that "with historical repair and discounts reaches 10,000 pesos."
He does not want charity, but "just enough": "I am going to initiate a trial for malpractice and I am with lawyers, hoping that from Tango Porteño, the last place where I danced, they will pay my salaries for the time I was ill. my image and my name on the door and on the marquee for ten months ”, he is indignant.
The walls of his little house in the West zone do not allow to see cladding or wallpaper: they are covered by awards, diplomas, international decorations.
"But with all this I do
n't eat,
"
he laments.
Myriam, his wife, adds: "We ask for an honorary retirement. He continues to pay his monotax. It is the only living myth of tango."
The myth recalculates dates of feats.
"31 years since I danced to President Ronald Reagan," he gives away.
The physical file, the one that is not digitized and causes sneezing, certifies.
On that day in 1986, a driver in a navy blue car picked him up for the "dance at the White House" operation.
"
His performance is a secret, a gift," they warned him.
Once inside, trying not to lose the strength of his legs in the shaking, Copes made a joke to Frank Sinatra.
He danced "Verano porteño", with María Nieves, and saw how "the Yankees" wailed before "La Cumparsita" and "La Puñalada".
"Happy Birthday, Mr. President," he cheered up after the chan chan.
"You are lovely," Reagan replied.
The "chip" had begun to generate on the tracks in Atlanta.
"In the right angle the girls from Capital gathered, separated into sectors by 'best milongueras' and 'prettiest'. In the left angle, those from the province or patadura".
The mother accompanied them all.
The invitation was by "a head butt."
At first Copes danced with María Nieves' sister, because Nieves was younger.
Later, yes, came the couple of more than 40 years and the separation.
The career milestones are counted by the hundreds:
at Stanford University he was awarded the "title" of "Philosopher of tango-dance".
He taught in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Milongue in the Middle East and 12 consecutive weeks at the Chateau Madrid in New York.
He also starred on the "Ed Sullivan Show", a television show in the United States that reached 60 million viewers.
The dancer Juan Carlos Copes, at home: the walls are littered with diplomas and awards.
At the end of 1958, the unstoppable legs of Copes danced in Cuba, four days before Fidel Castro's entry into Havana.
Then El Salvador and Mexico.
Soon after, he became friends with Astor Piazzolla, with whom he put together a show in Puerto Rico.
Even Copes' hands were commissioned to open the telegram announcing the death of Astor's father, a fact that later created the wonder "Adiós Nonino".
The legend - which he now doubts - is that he came to the world received by a tango.
"I was born in Mataderos, in my house, and they say that while the birth was taking place outside there was a violin, a guitar and a flute playing tango in the patio.
My grandfather was Juan Berti, a great flutist of the time and a piano teacher, but not I know if that happened, "he judges and offers an afternoon of memories of a suburban world that today seems like stories.
"My father was a bus driver on line 26, which went from Parque Avellaneda to the port. I sometimes accompanied, collected tickets and, later, I slept in the back seat. As a boy I was a fighter. I could not bear the lack of respect . I still have marks of everything broken on my head. We moved to Floresta and newcomers to Villa Pueyrredón began the adventure, "he laughs.
-How was that adventure?
-I fell in love with tango when I was 16. And when I discovered the environment I realized that people fantasized a lot that it was a criminal environment.
So I got into the challenge of demonstrating.
-What did he have to prove?
-That neither my mother nor my father were criminals.
My way of learning was particular.
There were no teachers.
I went through everything.
I would go into a cabaret and feed on what I saw.
"But you are not cafiolo. What are you coming to do?", They asked me.
I extracted what I liked and practiced it alone at home.
He returned at three in the morning.
And I heard the noise from the windows of the stable: "There goes the black sheep."
-What other activity caused the same level of outburst?
-Football.
I played until 1985. I was 4. I'm from San Lorenzo.
Total admirer of Sapo Villar.
My second club would be Chicago, because my father was one of the founders.
Atlanta, on the other hand, was like my second home at the tango level.
Juan Carlos Copes and his daughter, when they were still a couple.
-Would you like to dedicate a farewell show to you?
-I don't like the word goodbye.
Hopefully they consider me as Sarmiento can be considered: a guy who dedicated himself to something that was sunk and today is an intangible heritage of Humanity.
I am the only one accredited by UNESCO.
But I don't want them to raise money for me.
I'm not looking for that.
I know that I am from another generation, I do not know how to handle the phone, that takes me away from many things.
But at the same time I know that I did something.
I wrote to (Mauricio) Macri, but we believe that he never received the letter.
I propose: the elite is in the Colón, for the San Martín theater.
And the tango?
Why don't you use the Alvear to offer tango at all times?
- Are you angry or sad?
-Brough and sadness.
From Julio Bocca down, from Eleonora Cassano down, the dancer is not recognized by the Culture as it should be.
They win prizes abroad, they make a living from it in other parts of the world, but not here.
There are a hundred couples teaching tango, but there is no Master.
I have had a project built for years.
The Tango Dance career.
They draw it out.
Everyone is called a Teacher, but there are no teachers, because there is no magistracy.
I even offer to work for free.
-In what type of project?
-Arming and boarding a plane delegations that travel the world carrying our tango.
With one World Cup per year we do nothing.
-With everything that happened, what causes you to see the others dance today?
- Intimately, I go in critical plan, but I never say it.
If he's a friend, I encourage myself: "Why do you stoop so much? Why don't you get closer to the melody instead of closer to the rhythm?"
The rhythm leads you to take steps and steps.
But tango is not that!
-And ultimately, what is it?
-It is a sequence, as in Anatomy: head, trunk, limbs.
But it is a joke: throw steps or become the male.
Tango is to make a single person out of a couple.
