Tango Dancing Pope - Argentine Tango in the Vatican
"Do you know how to dance tango?" Bergoglio was asked. "Yes, I danced it as a young man, although I preferred the milonga," he said, referring to the faster-paced country music that was one of the early roots of tango. (…) I like it a lot. It's something that comes from within me.
Not only does the Pope know how to dance the Tango! He knows (and prefers the Milonga!
There are many reasons why Pope Francis is considered as everyone’s person of the year. Aside from heading the Catholic Church on a global scale, people worldwide love the pope because of his commitment to ending corruption and responding to people who reach out to him.
A lot of people love the pope because he’s very relatable. Even with such a distinct position, the pope has always been open about his love for the Argentine Tango. In fact, he got a flash mob of 3,000 tango dancers to celebrate his 78th birthday back in 2014.
The Pope himself was born poor and has said he wants the Catholic Church to be ‘a poor Church for the poor’. He has also said he chose the name Francis because St Francis represented poverty. So his love of the tango may be a symptom of his sympathy with the poor and with their pleasures.
Of course, it is hard to imagine Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in his Pope incarnation stepping down into the earthy pleasures of Tango dancing. Nonetheless, just the fact that he knows, about it, respects and admires it, and knows how to dance it, elevates the Tango to a higher level. Why do I seem to be emphasizing it?
Before becoming the Pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio gave an interview for the book The Jesuit by Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti expressing his love for the tango. “I like it a lot,” he said. “It’s something that comes from within me.”
Not So Holy Perception of Argentine Tango - The Vatican vs. Argentine Tango
The connection between the Argentine Tango and the Vatican didn’t actually start with Pope Francis. The Argentine Tango made waves in the Vatican as early as 1914 with not such a good outcome!
The Argentine Tango was born because of the immigrants who fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the 1800s. Because of homesickness, men danced with other men to entertain themselves and to get ready to possible future dance with a Women. It wasn’t long before the former slaves and lower and working classes of people in Argentina started to hold celebrations just to dance the Argentine Tango.
From 1913 to 1914, the Argentine Tango became more popular worldwide as the younger generations of high society from Argentina brought the dance outside of their country. However, during the 20th century, the Curate Cardinal of Rome prohibited tango throughout Italy.
Enforcing this ban had become a problem because a lot of people in Italy loved to dance the Argentine Tango, especially the young people who belonged to the pontifical noble class.
In March 1914, the tango-loving society arranged a performance for Pope Pius X and told the dancers to be very modest about their movements, and that no mistakes would be tolerated.
However, Pope Pius X just laughed and made fun of the dance and even noted that the Argentine Tango is a boring dance made for the slaves and is off-limits and immoral to Catholics.
He even mentioned that the dance is from “barbaric contortions from Black and Indian people” and suggested performing the dance of Venice, furigana, instead.
![The maxixe (Portuguese pronunciation: [maˈʃiʃi]), occasionally known as the Brazilian tango, is a dance, with its accompanying music (often played as a subgenre of choro), that originated in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in 1868, at about the…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d8526e4f73668483f296428/1617572490601-4X2BXU8FR14GW08JAMP9/La_Matchiche.jpg)
The maxixe (Portuguese pronunciation: [maˈʃiʃi]), occasionally known as the Brazilian tango, is a dance, with its accompanying music (often played as a subgenre of choro), that originated in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in 1868, at about the same time as the tango was developing in neighbouring Argentina and Uruguay. It is a dance developed from Afro-Brazilian dances (mainly the lundu) and from European dances (mainly the polka).
Tango seen as a sin and corruption of a soul
Could the national dance of Argentina possibly be a “sin”? Pius X (…) condemned the tango early in the 20th century. Other popes looked askance on the waltz, which, thanks to Vienna, now seems the most genteel and elegant of all dances. President Obama, of all sober people, was recently seen dramatically doing the tango—with an elegant Argentine lady, no less. Pope Francis said that as a young man he himself danced the tango. So I presume the “sin” of dancing the tango by two parties is not unto death and easily met with abundant mercy.
It wasn’t long before the papal ban on tango was lifted. With the arrival of orchestras and dancers from the 1920s to the 1950s, the Argentine Tango became more mainstream in Italy and around the world.
Tango as a religion?
Have you ever joked in a semi-serious manner that Tango is like a church, a religion, a cult? We hear it all the time - most often in reference to the fact that most of our classes and Milonga Ideal are held on Sunday. Every week you attend your Ultimate Tango ‘church’. Keep reading…
“For many of its practitioners tango is a kind of religion, a cult—an object of worship and admiration.
And like many cults it assumes the trappings of religious devotion. Like the major systems of religious belief, tango has its rites and rituals, and is distinguishable by its outward signs and symbols, although these are often exaggerated and frequently misleading. Because of its origins, its pomp and ceremony, its codes of behavior, its virtues and vices, tango, like the Macintosh operating system, could only be Catholic.”
Tango as religion by R. Bononno
“Tango has its priests (male and female, tango is a broadminded church) of course, who officiate at various ceremonies in houses of worship around the world. These holy men and women travel the globe, spreading the faith and training novitiates in the art and practice of the dance, a lengthy process that can take years, a lifetime in many cases. The novice is encouraged to abjure other forms of physical or mental stimulation, to steel the body for the rigors of practice, to toil late into the night in the attempt to purify the spirit. Fasting and self-abnegation are commonplace. Many pray for divine inspiration.” - the author continues.
“It has been said that there is a kind of “transcendence” associated with tango at its best, although here too language has a way of slipping from our grasp just when we need it most. I’ve written elsewhere about the sense of shared intimacy, the sense of being in the moment together, the sense of exhilaration brought about by the smooth flow of movement while in another’s arms. There is a feeling of elation that is achieved when tango “works,” a kind of bliss associated with living truly and completely in the moment. Broad, vague, overused terms, I know. And yet . . . When we speak of sharing or connecting or communicating in tango, I think this is what is meant. It is something that has less do with skill than with the complete engagement with the man or woman in your arms. It is based on trust and attentiveness more than it is on technique (however necessary) and to achieve this requires that we give something of ourselves, that we are able to give ourselves to the dance, to the music, and, most importantly, to our partner. A kind of faith, if you will, an unproven belief in our ability to achieve something extraordinary, something so far out of the range of ordinary experience that we are willing to give everything we have to try to obtain it. It is a bit like love. It is our heaven, and our hell.”
It seems a lot like a wordplay as the author is taking us on a journey of comparisons, but some of it resonates quite high. Very interesting. You can read the whole text HERE.
The Two Popes dancing Tango in the movie The Two Popes
Scroll it to about 45 sec to see them dance. Great movie BTW, not about Tango, but has few tango scenes.