ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 12, 1996 TAG: 9612120005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA RHOR\KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
``Malena canta el tango
``como ninguna
``Y en cada verso pone
``su corazon''
(Malena sings the tango
like no other
And in every verse, she puts
her heart)
PHILADELPHIA - It teases and beckons like a would-be lover casting an ardent glance across a crowded room. It slips and caresses like a silk shawl draped over bare shoulders. It moves back and forth in lingering flirtation, rising and falling with passionate romance.
It is the history of a country peopled by immigrants, of downtrodden neighborhoods where outcast and outlaw gather.
It is restraint and fervor. Joy and melancholy. Love and death.
It's the tango. And these days, it seems, it's everywhere.
Levi Strauss and IBM computer TV ads feature couples locked in tango's embrace.
In an episode of ``Frasier,'' repressed longing bubbled over during a sexy tango between Niles and Daphne. On one recent morning, Regis and Kathie Lee took to the dance floor. Even rapper Dr. Dre, in his latest video - ``Been There Done That'' - included a tango-inspired dance sequence. So did a first clip of Madonna for the forthcoming ``Evita.'' Al Pacino danced it in ``Scent of a Woman.'' Arnold Schwarzenegger took Jamie Lee Curtis for a twirl in ``True Lies.''
Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias' new release is ``Tango,'' a recording of 12 classic tango songs. Dozens of tango sites and newsgroups have sprouted on the Internet, including one from Solo Tango, a 24-hour tango channel in Buenos Aires.
Tango x 2 (Tango por Dos), a touring performance troupe, in mid-November completed a sold-out run in Manhattan's City Center.
Just listen to Jean Fung, by day a scientist with a pharmaceutical company, by night a ``milonguera '' - a party or dance regular. She used to teach ballroom dancing, and practice vintage dance moves. Now, she only tangos.
``You get transported by the music in a way. If I'm feeling sad, I feel even more sad,'' Fung muses. ``Sometimes there's a tenderness. One of the poets said tango is turning sentiment into movement. It's not so much about doing fancy steps with your head. It's from your heart, your soul.''
Fung, dressed in black tights and a black lace skirt for a recent Tuesday night session, pauses. She puts a hand across her heart. From a boombox near her swirl the plaintive whispers of a bandoneon, the accordion-like German instrument that fuels the heart of tango music.
The music pulses quickly one moment, slows the next. Two pairs of dancers, at practice in the small room, move forward, then pause. Step-step. Stop. Step-step. Stop.
Their feet brush against the parquet floor. Their torsos are straight. The women point their toes and swivel their hips. Now and then, they extend a high-heeled foot and etch a figure eight on the floor.
``Sometimes you feel the heart of your partner,'' Fung says, describing the sensation of the dance. ``Sometimes after a tango, I feel like I need a cigarette. It's magic.''
The roots of the tango are as complex as the dance itself. No one seems to know quite how and when it began. Only that it was born in the slums of Buenos Aires in the late 19th century.
Like Argentina itself, the tango is the child of immigrants, a mixture of European, African and criollo culture. It hints of African candombe rhythms as well as Cuban ``habaneras.'' It was nurtured by the outcasts of the city - immigrants, freed slaves, urbanized gauchos.
It began, legend says, as the dance of the bordellos and the whorehouses, an imitation of negotiations between a prostitute and her customers, of knife fights between ``compadritos'' (street punks).
Even tango lyrics - with a heavy dose of Buenos Aires street slang called ``lunfardo'' - evoke those shadowy worlds.
By the 1920s, the tango had traveled out of the slums and become the rage of Paris. Even Hollywood picked up the fever when Rudolph Valentino - a rose between his teeth - danced a highly stylized tango in the 1921 film ``The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.''
For many Argentines, the tango's pathos was captured best by Carlos Gardel, the vocalist who set the genre's standard and became an icon to his countrymen, even after his death in 1935. Gardel, many ``tangueros'' say, ``cada dia canta mejor.'' He sings better every day.
The tango faded from the forefront by the 1960s, even in Argentina. Only Astor Piazzolla, creator of the New Tango, kept the strains alive with his orchestral interpretations.
In the 1980s came ``Tango Argentino'' - a revue created in Buenos Aires that eventually found its way to Paris and Broadway. Suddenly, the tango was back.
Slowly, young Argentines who had never danced the tango began lining up for classes. Tango clubs boomed in Paris, New York and San Francisco, home to one of the country's largest Argentine communities.
In the '90s, week-long tango marathons at Stanford University and in Ohio and Maryland were drawing hundreds of participants. Now, spurred by the filming and imminent release of ``Evita,'' the tango craze is nearing fever pitch.
For those already hooked on tango, the new popularity comes as no surprise.
They extol the tango's intimate feeling. It is the only dance, they say, that moves in a true embrace. They revel in the poetry of the lyrics, the complexity of the rhythms.
``It's almost a transportive experience. When I can, I dance with my eyes closed. Then I feel only the music, the sense of two bodies close together,'' says Martha Ledger, a Philadelphia resident and the managing editor of Inside magazine.
``If you're dancing with the right posture, your chests are together. You're getting the lead from there, from the thigh. There's something very tender, and also very aggressive about it. You have to dance it to understand.''
LENGTH: Long : 111 linesby CNB