[Tango-L] origin of term "confiteria style"

[Charles Roques]

<<While we're on the subject, how about "downtown style" ?
(i.e. estilo del centro) When did people notice that
the dance was different in the center versus the outer
districts?>>

Tango began in the less respectable and poorer neighborhoods on the fringes of the city.  As the popularity of the dance spread new clubs opened in the center that were aspiring to be more respectable because they were attracting better clientele.  In some cases the owners of new clubs in town, who were often Italian immigrants, tried to "clean up" the dance and give it more elegance and respectability and remove the stigma of being only associated with the lower classes.  People dressed up when they went to these clubs and the dance also "cleaned up" and lost some of its cruder movements.  The tango danced in some of these clubs became known as "tango liso" (smooth tango) which evolved into tango de salon. Neighborhood styles were beginning to appear but there was no specific date so much as a gradual change.
My take on the history was that the tango del centro was the fancier classier tango.  I think milonguero and apilado are new terms that emerged (or were invented) after the resurgence of tango in the 1980's.  They did not  arise to describe dancing close, because people had always danced close for years....they were a different style of dancing close, in part because of the newly crowded clubs.

Cheers,
Charles