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Corona in Argentina and the tango: the forbidden hug

2021-08-01T11:38:35.655Z


Tango is everything that is not allowed under Corona: physical closeness, intimacy, dancing with strangers - and for many in Argentina also a job. How do they survive the pandemic?


Enlarge image

After a year of closed milongas and dance schools, the tango scene protested in Buenos Aires in March by couples dancing in the street

Photo: Anita Pouchard Serra

It is part of their identity, say Argentines.

Much more than a dance.

Tango is her »invisible world cultural heritage«.

And it's an industry that makes around two billion dollars a year for the country.

For musicians, dancers, DJs, teachers, bar operators, waiters and cooks, it is often as much a passion as it is a livelihood.

Many work informally.

In Buenos Aires alone there were more than 200 dance halls, so-called milongas - before the pandemic.

They have been closed for more than a year.

Argentina, badly hit by the corona crisis, sealed off the borders for tourists and imposed lockdowns that lasted for months, which were among the strictest in the world.

More than 42 percent of Argentines now live below the poverty line.

The dance industry suffered the most economically.

Because tango, even more than museums or theaters, is everything that must not be in the pandemic: dance lives from physical closeness, from overcrowded, dark places, from hugs with strangers, from intimacy and trust, from spontaneity and crossing borders.

In the capital, Buenos Aires, it is a kind of elixir of life.

Elderly or lonely people in particular met to dance, found friends, touched people, and had a social life.

"Without tango people are sad, isolated," says photographer Anita Pouchard Serra, who followed this loss with her camera for more than a year.

But people also found loopholes.

Some broke the loneliness of lockdowns and found great joy in online dance lessons.

Others began to dance outdoors despite the prohibitions - because they just couldn't stand it anymore.

"Tango is a space in which everyone can be themselves and meet others," says Pouchard Serra.

This contribution is part of the Global Society project

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The project is long-term and will be supported for three years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).

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The editorial content is created without the influence of the Gates Foundation.

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In the past few years, SPIEGEL has already implemented two projects with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: the “Expedition ÜberMorgen” on global sustainability goals and the journalistic refugee project “The New Arrivals” within the framework several award-winning multimedia reports on the topics of migration and flight have been produced.

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Source: spiegel

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