“We survived” she said, now that we managed to meet and dance again after almost 18 months. Survival… yes… we managed to survive so far in a very strange period and I can’t help thinking of the parallels with the era when tango really thrived.
It is a strange coincidence… Tango really thrived in the years that a big part of the world was suffering the consequences of WWII. Yet somehow, people in this country managed to find inspiration in love, nature, different human emotions, and everyday life to write, compose, play and dance to such music.
The 28th of October is the day that Greece celebrates the win against Italy in WWII. It is a national holiday in Greece. This year, on that day, I saw in my FB stream a very rare picture of the cover of an American newspaper on the day that Greece declared war on Italy. It was presenting the map and how the war was developing in the area.
So take a moment and try to imagine yourself having traveled back in time. You live in Argentina in 1941 and you get your newspaper. On the front, you see the news from the War on the other side of the world, and somewhere inside the ads about the cabarets and shows from Troillo, DArienzo, DiSarli, etc. You read the news and decide where to go dancing for the night.
Now think about the present. These days you might be reading in your FB stream the news about the situation on the Polish borders… about the people dying in hospitals from COVID… and right after them, you would be looking where to go dancing for the night.
Times might have changed, but history and human behavior sometimes seem to repeat itself in an ironically stubborn way… right? Is our behavior simple indifference similar to what tonight’s Goodnight Tango describes or is it simply a survival skill?
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