I submit this message as an expression of respect to Carlos Gavito, acknowledging an invitation to share some of our experiences with him. Back in 1966, “Forever Tango” came to Philadelphia and my wife and I decided to invite our teenage children to watch as a way to expose them to a another artistic dance form coming from Latin America. As it would be expected for first-time spectators, we were all mesmerized and marveled by the exceedingly physically demanding choreographies of the dancing couples… experiencing a similar feeling of awe as when one watches a high-caliber world class acrobatics show. However, it was at the moment that that mature dancer and his gorgeous partner walked into the stage that my wife and I look at each other’s eyes and nodded our heads agreeing that we have found a very enticing thing for both of us to do together… we looked at the program and we learned that their names were Carlos Gavito and Marcela Duran… without knowing it, we had already connected with enticing man. Several years later, and a few miles of Tango walking in many venues across the US, we came to learn that one late Saturday night, while my wife and I were dancing at the old Sandra Cameron Studio in NYC, Carlos Gavito showed up and upon entering the large room he inquired with some of his friends about our dancing style. His friends wanted to play a joke on him and challenged to guess from which BsAs ‘barrio’ we were coming from… he looked at us with more attention and argued that our style could not be clearly attributed to a single neighborhood, he seriously argued that he could perceive specific dominant influences from specific ‘barrios’… but his friends pressed on him to decide in favor of a specific ’barrio’… he selected one, and his friends told him that he was wrong, but that they also agreed with him about the difficulty of his guess, given our style, even for a milonguero of his stature and deep knowledge of Tango… he conceded and guessed again to be told he was wrong again… after the third guess his friends erupted in laughs to tell him that we were not from BsAs. I share this rather private story in the hopes that it may shed some additional light about the way Gavito experienced his social Tango… I sense that for him Tango dancers brought to the dancing floor not only their personalities and the learnings from their masters, but also brought their full personal histories including their ‘barrios’… while he was guessing, his connection with us extended far beyond the confines of the venue and the specific moment. I see my simple story in that context, and will always be thankful to him for this valuable learning. En mi corazon, Gavito, te has quedado, Juan Carlos Wilmington, DE, USA
