Where Is Mauricio Castro and What Happened to His Unique Tango Discovery Method?
Argentine tango has had a long history that spans decades. Throughout the years, there have been notable tango personalities who have made a mark in all aspects of the dance.
Of course, there’s Carlos Gardel, who is renowned for being the “King of Tango” with his famous songs and compositions.
There’s also El Cachafaz, who is described by Dance U.S. as “one of the first Tango dancers” who practiced in the brothels of Buenos Aires before traveling the world to dance, “making heaps of money along the way” until he died a broke but still formidable dancer well into his sixties.
Various other tango personalities emerged over the years, many of them dancers as well as teachers themselves. Thanks to technology, teaching tango classes — both as an advanced or beginner course — has been a lot easier, thus helping cement the reputation of many teachers engaged in imparting tango lessons. Many have shared workshops, seminars, books, and numerous other learning materials for beginner tango dancers and experienced ones alike.
Among these tango dancers and teachers was Mauricio Castro, who is most notable as the founder of Tango Discovery — a unique method of dancing and teaching tango. However, a cursory internet search of his name strongly suggests that Mauricio Castro and his work might have suddenly disappeared.
This then begs the question: where is Mauricio Castro, and what happened to his unique Tango Discovery method?
The Search for Mauricio Castro
Who Is Mauricio Castro?
One of the best things about the internet is the convenience it provides in tracing the identity and body of work of any personality in any industry. Even those who aren’t exactly famous or noteworthy are bound to leave some kind of trace on the internet provided they’re still active in a social media platform or a website.
However, when it comes to Mauricio Castro, it seems as though tracing his body of work or even identity can feel like a scavenger hunt — except there aren’t too many leads and some clues merely lead to dead ends.
Perhaps the most in-depth biographical entry for Mauricio Castro in English is that which is posted from one of his Amazon pages for the multimedia CD Tango Discovery Matrix. The post, which was taken from a review published in 2001 by the newspaper La Nación for his book Tango, The Structure of the Dance Vol.1, reads as follows:
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mauricio Castro is the founder of Tango Discovery and [is] a renowned dancer and teacher of Argentine Tango. He created and developed a personal style of dancing and teaching tango in Buenos Aires and then, through Tango Discovery, he brought it to the rest of the world.
To his solid musical education at the prestigious Berklee College of Music (Boston, USA) - MY NOTE: you see, I told you it was getting interesting! - , he added contemporary dance and movement technique studies (Laban Analysis, Bartenieff Fundamentals, and The Skinner Releasing Technique, among others). In addition, he also studied Human Sciences in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Design Human Engineering, and Human Ecology.
The joining of these disciplines and influences allowed him to create his particular and unmistakable style, systematizing it into an innovative method to accelerate the process of learning to dance. Breaking out from rigid sequences, his focus is to develop improvisation skills through a simple and dynamic technique where students discover not only a relaxed and released style but also a new way of expressing and communicating with their bodies.
The synthesis of his method, recognized worldwide by hundreds of dancers, is available not only by attending his classes but also in his books and cutting-edge multimedia CD-ROMs. [They are also] available in several languages.
From the beginning, Castro insists that the tango [is] and should be for anyone, [as it is] something so pleasurable and common like breathing.
“Repeating random exercises won’t get you anywhere. The proof is that there are people out there, that have been trying to dance tango for years and they still can’t, they still believe that is a difficult dance.
I have found a NEW way of teaching and learning far better to whatever you have been doing.”
Tracing Mauricio Castro’s Footsteps Online
Strangely enough, Mauricio Castro has no Wikipedia page, and the http://www.tangodiscovery.com website, which he used to manage, only displays an error message; it does not open no matter how many times one refreshes the page.
However, he does have a YouTube channel in which he posted what appears to be hundreds of short videos regarding tango and tango-related topics. To date, his most viewed video is one that he posted 13 years ago in December 2007. It is titled “Dance Argentine Tango by Mauricio Castro basic gancho move” and currently sits at 180,120 views.
Reviewing his YouTube channel’s statistics, it appears that Mauricio Castro had a steady following from 2007, wherein most of the videos he posted at the time garnered hundreds of thousands of views. The last video he posted in 2008 was titled “Tango sequence by Mauricio Castro 10 of 20,” which was a 10-second video of a tango sequence that garnered 95,934 views.
However, he had no video activity logged for the next three years, and he resumed uploading only in 2011. At the time, he uploaded the video titled “Mauricio Castro Melina Brufman performance improvisation - Buenos Aires 2001,” which was a very old and grainy recording of a performance he participated in a decade before. The few videos he would upload until 2013 would get only single-digit thousand views compared to his old videos that garnered more or less double-digit and even triple-digit thousand views.
For another two years, his YouTube channel would go on another hiatus and continued only around 2015. From then on, until 2018, his videos would get only about a hundred views or so, sometimes even less — an indication that his content might not have been favored by YouTube’s constantly evolving algorithm.
Perhaps it also suggests a waning influence but, at this point, all is mere speculation.
However, there seems to be no evidence to suggest that Mauricio Castro was thinking of abandoning his YouTube channel. In fact, his last video, posted in October 2018, talked about how one can become a teacher for Tango Discovery.
In the short video, he outlines the process of how this can be achieved, referencing online training videos and workshops related to Tango Discovery. He cites them as requirements for being a Tango Discovery teacher or if one wants to put up a Tango Discovery school. Thus, one can surmise that those trainings and workshops were still available around that time.
After that video, however, no other entry can be found in Mauricio Castro’s YouTube channel.
“• In the whole history of Argentine Tango, not one Master has had the same posture or walk as any other. Tango is the opposite of ballroom.
• Tango Discovery is about celebrating different types of postures and walks, so yours is perfectly alright already.
• Distinguish yourself from other dancers by looking and moving like you.”
Perhaps it would be easier to trace his online footsteps if his website was still running. Unfortunately, as mentioned, the website no longer opens, though the URL is still mentioned in the description box of his YouTube videos.
Strangely enough, there is a LinkedIn profile for Mauricio Castro, whose designation reads “Owner, Tango Discovery.” However, there is no picture in the profile, which has only given one recommendation to Daniel Truco, a professional graphic designer. Daniel Truco is often cited as the illustrator for Mauricio Castro’s Tango, The Structure of the Dance Vol. 1. The authenticity of Mauricio Castro’s account inevitably cannot be verified due to the lack of information.
Looking for Mauricio Castro’s Books
As a teacher of tango, Mauricio Castro appears to have also written a handful of books, some of which are even accompanied by CDs, videos, or other media. Some of the most notable books that come up in online searches include Tango, The Structure of the Dance Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, as well as Tango Discovery Matrix. After digging a little deeper, one would find entries for extended versions of these books, which have CDs and other media included in the package.
Similar to searching for Mauricio Castro’s profile, there’s some difficulty obtaining copies of these books, even from Amazon. In fact, while the Amazon pages remain on the internet, no available previews for these books can be found. Searching for them on Google Books also does not yield satisfactory results as, unlike other Google Books, there are also no available previews for Mauricio Castro’s works. While the Google Books entry for, say, Tango Awareness has no preview (or even a cover), it still cites how many pages it has, as well as other bibliographic information such as publishing dates and ISBN numbers.
Searching for copies of the books in other websites also often result in the books being out of stock or unavailable for purchase.
There exists, however, what appears to be an available copy for Tango, The Structure of the Dance Vol. 1 from Amazon. On the same page is a short description of the book, which could even serve as a review. It reads as follows:
Mauricio Castro's book offers a new system to help the dancer creatively develop his/her tango using solidly established technical foundations. The instructions can be easily followed with the help of a series of two and three-dimensional diagrams especially designed by the author.
The method is explained in a clear, concise, and efficient way and includes lessons for the beginner to the most advanced in tango dance theory.
This book revolutionizes all of the traditional concepts used until now in the teaching of this sensuous, passionate, and complex dance form, which acquires enthusiastic new followers daily, all around the world.
An entry on Goodreads, on the other hand, talks about the multimedia extended version for Tango, The Structure of the Dance Vol. 1:
Combining Tango, the Structure of the Dance and Tango Discovery, Mauricio Castro's latest discoveries in the field of tango development, the success exercises that he has been teaching in Tango seminars and his applications in the movement technique arena, Tango, the Structure of the Dance Level 1/Extended Version provides new insights into the dancing process.
Mauricio's genius and in-depth understanding of how the brain works and how we use our communicating processes to generate movement unconsciously stand out on their own and speak for themselves.
Mauricio's success in tango is solidly based on his unique ability to present seemingly complex issues simply.
Since Mauricio Castro’s Tango Discovery website no longer opens, it appears that these descriptions are the only way for interested readers and tango dancers to become acquainted with his unique dancing and teaching method, aside from whatever is left from his YouTube channel.
The Mystery Continues
To this day, there seems to be no trace of Mauricio Castro other than the few pieces of information he has left on the internet. Why he has suddenly “disappeared” and severed his connection with the world online remains unanswered, and it is doubtful that any satisfying conclusion would emerge anytime soon.
His only means of communication — if one could call it that — with tango dancers who may be interested to learn his unique style is through the YouTube videos still up in his channel.
Descriptions of his books or his short biographical entries don’t also seem to point to a partnership through which one might attempt to trace his location.
The mystery inevitably continues, and one would be hard put to predict when Mauricio Castro’s whereabouts will be discovered.
Unless…. Unless…
