Who are the “Taxi-dancers”, the dancers hired by foreign tourists to dance the tango (and only that)

Sitting on the edge of the floor of a milonga we glimpse, among the crowd of couples, a skilled young dancer who guides a mature woman through the twists and turns of tango; Follows it with small, medium or great difficulty. And in front of this photo we can bet, with the almost certainty of winning, that He is a taxi driver-dancer and she is a foreign tourist passionate about wheelchairs..

Warning: on the track you can also see couples of very different ages: he is 90 years old, she is 40; He is 25 and she is 80: she dances divinely. But even in these cases, almost certainly, both are local and have chosen each other.

Going back to the beginning, It is easy, alas, to fall into the mistake of confusing those kids with taxi drivers.. No. The work of the taxi driver-dancer consists exclusively of this: he is hired privately by a lady to accompany her to a milonga and she thus ensures a dance partner for the evening, the tranquility of not “ironing” and among other things, practical and exclusive teaching.

Duration of the activity: approximately three hours.

Fundamental condition of the taxi-dancer: knowing how to “carry” his occasional partner around the dance floor, whatever her height, her build and how good or bad she is at dancing.

The taxi-dancers in question

Orazio Lupo (by Carmen de Patagones), Nahuel Guzman (from Mar del Plata) e Javier Silva (from Bogotá, Colombia) are taxi-dancers, they are around thirty years old, they have very varied stories and they take this profession seriously. There are three among many others; The number of taxi-dancers is high, but it is impossible to quantify it.

-A key question: does the term “taxi-dancers” bother you?

Nahuel: No. It only bothers me when people who know nothing about this job “sexualise” it, because they associate it with the “taxi-boy”. He is totally far from that.

-And no one thought of another term? For example “comrade?”

(All three almost simultaneously): No, the comrade is much worse!

-Why?

Nahuel: Imagine, we dance with women who are thirty or forty years older than us and someone points out to us: “he’s her partner”. How bad.

Nahuel says: “I didn’t like music, any music. But one day a schoolmate proposed me to be her tango partner for the tournaments in Buenos Aires; We were 13 years old, she was five feet seven inches tall and she said to me: ‘You have the ideal height.’

“I went through a difficult year because tango hurts at first; But then, when you see something happen, there’s no turning back. I also started taking ballet lessons – my teacher told me it would be a great complement to my tango – and dancing in shows in Mar del Plata doing whatever came my way. That is, everything.

“As for tango, I only danced choreography. I didn’t know how to improvise or “lead”. I moved to Buenos Aires, a city that doesn’t allow you to sit still. It’s beautiful and terrible. When I went to a milonga I discovered that I knew nothing. Look, custom dictates that each musical batch includes three or four songs in a row and it is very difficult for someone to stop you on the song after the first song. This is what happened to me: the woman said ‘thank you’ and went to sit down.”

-And how did you feel?

-I was speechless halfway down the track. I thought the world was devouring me and suddenly someone appeared and he knocked me to the ground with a slingshot. But it was very nice because I started to really learn what it meant to tango.

The Colombian tango and what he learned as a child

Javier explains: “I have been dancing tango for nine years. I was studying psychology at the National University of Colombia, in Bogotá, and at a certain point I wanted to address corporality in relation to my career. I approached theater and contemporary dance until one day I saw an advertisement for tango courses to work on awareness and balance of the body; “It was what I was looking for.”

-Then?

-I go to class and the instruction is just to walk; At a certain point the teacher stands in front of me, hugs me like a hug between friends and takes me for a walk. She then takes me out of the circle and makes me dance. I was surprised that I could do movements that I didn’t know and I really liked it. Then I continued with other teachers, including the most important one for me, Jennifer Orjuela, who now lives in Buenos Aires and we work together as a couple with a professional, theatrical purpose.

Horace: One day my mother takes my little sister to tango lessons and I accompany her. I remain sitting in the chair, the teacher approaches me and says: “Don’t you want to take the lesson? There are always few men.” “No thank you”. He insists: “come, you will become one of the best tango dancers in the world. Attempt.”

-Did he convince you?

-I don’t know if he convinced me. I was curious to know what she saw in me. When I walked out of class I thought, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

-How old were you?

-Ten.

Taxi-dancer, a profession

Javier: I came to Buenos Aires with the desire to learn about the tango culture of Buenos Aires, which is very different from the Colombian one; and also to learn much more, dance, give lessons. I went back to Colombia, came back here and ended up staying. I had already done a job similar to that of a taxi-dancer in Bogota and the first time was strange. It happened thanks to the organizer of a milonga who told me: “Look, this woman is sitting, invite her”.

“When I arrive in Buenos Aires, I contact an organizer of several milongas and she offers me a job as a taxi-dancer. She is the one who pays us, to this day, but later other jobs began to appear because some of those ladies call us on their own initiative”.

Horace: Something similar happened to me. After Carmen de Patagones I went to live in Mar del Plata, where there is a good tango movement. I continued to work for four months as a “bachero”. One day I came across a poster advertising tango lessons. So I recovered with the goal of becoming a professional dancer.

“Due to a circumstance in my life, I settled in Buenos Aires, but I continue to attend classes. The idea of ​​being a taxi dancer hadn’t occurred to me. But looking for work I called Laura Grinbank, who had organized milongas and who recommended a tango room in Entre Ríos and Humberto Primo. I mean, the salon paid me. So this job was born and then, with word of mouth, it grew and they started calling me aside.”

“My tango has a lot to do with what’s happening here, right now: sharing. “I would like to take my tango around the world, but never forget where it comes from: my city, my neighborhood, my home.”

Nahuel: I knew the job existed and a very well-known girl, who had been a taxi dancer (there are not many women who do this job), recommended it to me as something useful for work. It made me wonder: how would I feel dancing with someone I don’t know? But tango, in milonga, always proposes the same thing, even if it is true that it is a choice and that it is not a profession.

And Nahuel continues: “My first experience was beautiful: a group of Swiss people, more women than men, who already danced well, but needed to be reinforced with some male dancers. Not only did they pay me, but I met interesting people of many different ages.

Horace: This work is very good: You work on what you like, meet lots of different people and show someone a good time.. “I’m more interested in that than in monetary matters.”

-But it is also a task that can be tiring, boring, right?

Horace: It’s true that you are hired; But you have to behave in the most natural way possible without having to think about what topic we will talk about. Tango is universal.

Javier: When you dance with someone another way of getting to know each other appears. I’m not interested in making many figures, but rather in making the person feel a pleasant sensation. And if she suddenly has trouble dancing, this work teaches you how to deal with it; not in a boring way, but simply by walking and with a nice hug; This is already a lot.

Nahuel: I haven’t had any bad experiences, although I know that doesn’t always happen. But The person who comes from outside to dance tango usually arrives open, with good energy and a different sensitivity.. And when you dance with the person who hires you, you know he’s not a tourist who wants to see Iguazu Falls; He is a tango tourist and comes to know his culture, which is much more than dancing.

Maybe one day we will be tired, without much desire; But we look around – someone is carrying a bag with 50 kilos of cement on his shoulders – and we say to ourselves “how lucky we are”.

The question that arises spontaneously is whether at a certain point the relationship with the ladies who hired him went beyond the dance floor.

The three respond categorically: “Never.”