[Tango-L] Confiteria style / Confiterias gone from Buenos Aires

[Alberto Gesualdi]

Dear all

In a recent posting, someone asked wether it was a "confiteria style" tango danced in confiterias , and I answered that ,as far as I knew, this places were almost closed nowadays.

Now I found a good work on this subject , from the Instituto de Investigaciones del Tango / Tango Research Institute, a non profit organization that tries to answer this questions, since, as I commented, there is not a very good documentary basis, besides some hearsay testimonies and newspapers data files from Buenos Aires.

One of the research work of this institute is called " Milongas porteñas on the seventies" , and explains that on those years, there were several places to dance, that were not published or promoted on radios and tv in buenos aires, since their organizers were just with the money enough to keep the place open .

those years as well as the 60`s , are called " the resistence years" since tango was like in a cocoon in buenos aires.  other music , rock, latin , foreign music, entered into the local scene and place the teenagers outside the milonga dancing floors , to the rock and roll dancing, or disco music .

Not always a simple explanatin could be given for a fact, as this "cocoon" hybernation of tango on the 60´s and 70´s. And maybe is not fair to blame other music for the only cause of tango retreat . The fact is, it was not only the 80`s , with the "trottoirs du paris " shoes on Paris , and later tango argentino in broadway , that came back to buenos aires, from abroad , with people coming from europe and the usa , eager to learn this dance .


Follows the note , signed by Adela Zulema Cardoso, member of the institute, researcher and milonguera. There are documents of advertisement ( humble leaflets , not advertisement on media ), of this places, tickets of entrance, copies of bulletin of the places with the activity, in short, documents from the everyday life of a milonguera/milonguero on the 70´s ,that shed some light on this confiterias gone .


Confiterias where at a humble price, people could have some dancing

"Marcone" , Pueyrredon 19, there were dancing every night with two orchestras: a tipical of tango , and another one, another style.

"Mi club" Suipacha 586, rom tuesday to sundays, also two orchestras.

"Crillon", Suipacha and Santa Fe avenue, from tuesday to sunday , sundays tow entries, evening and night, they have an orchestra that play all rhitms, and also used recordings of tipical musical (/ tango)

"Okey" Bartolome Mitre at 2.700 near the corner of Castelli street, north block ( actually there is a garmen store )

"Tourbillon" Rivadavia avenue corner San pedrito, first floor

"Retratos" , Galeria "Le Boulevard" , Rivadavia Avenue 6731, first floor

"Marabu" Maipu 365, on the decade of the 670 it works as dancing confiteria, with orchestras ( note from Alberto: here started Troilo orchestra . Lately the place was going to be demolished, but once again , a foreign hand prevent the act . A businessman from USA, Jo Fish, buy the building and preserve the place, I dont know it there is tango activity nowadays)

"Bamboche" Rivadavia 7248, it does not have a tanguero audience , but it was possible to dance tangos from time to time, since they were not excluded from the music that they use ( note from Alberto;: this place have a person at the entrance , a midget dressed in red , that have thumb up or down to entrance, they do not allowed under age 18 boys to enter . We use to enter on the 70`s with my cousin, because we look a bit more than the 16 and 17 we had :) . 

"Savoy" Callao 181 , there still is tango lessons on wednesday, fridays and sundays , but the entrance is through Peeron 1764 , they started on the 80's , they are a bit out of this scope of the confiterias from the '70s . 

Same case is "Regine" confiteria, at Rio Bamba and Corrientes, Rio Bamba 416 , that started with tango lessons on the 80-s and keep giving tango lessons ( note from Alberto; U think la milonga El beso is now in the same place )

Siglo XX , Humahuaca 4702, this was the second venue for Siglo XX confiteria dancing place, the first one was very previous and it was on corrientes avenue at 1400, on the first floor of the place of Confiteria La Armonia, that used to have different shows at their ground floor. It worked with a total success, full house every night , on saturday night they stop selling tickets at 1am because there were no more seats available. Suddenly they closed their doors making a huge vacuum on the tanguero environment of those years.

Desiree, corner of cerrito and sarmiento , first floor

The confiteria of Bar Español, Av de Mayo 1200. The Bar Español was at Salta Corner Av de Mayo , and the confiteria worked on the underground with entrance by Av de Mayo

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I will include another place from a separate list that the author mades on "clubs" since it is interesting how it says on black people and his drums . 


Casa Suiza from Rodriguez Peña 254, als known as Salon suizo, where there were dances only for carnival times, organized by the "Shimmi Club" -a black people club- , and it has the particularity that in the ground floor , the dancing was as all the dancing places mentioned before, but in the underground basement, the members of the "Shimmi club" dance candombe at the beating of their drums , also going upstaris to share the other dancing with the people on ground floor.



alberto



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