From three blocks away, I could already hear the music, the sharp beats and swelling strings of tango filling the air. All around me, dozens of couples danced in the streets, while hundreds of fellow porteños -- residents of Buenos Aires -- watched. On the second to last day of the annual Buenos Aires Tango Festival, these three blocks of Avenida Roque Sáenz Peña had been turned into a giant open-air milonga (tango dance hall) for the night. Though Argentina is still dealing with the aftermath of its 2001 currency crisis, you would never know it from the porteño couples absorbed in their intimate, passionate dance.
My friends and I had arrived in Buenos Aires on a beautiful late summer day, with plentiful sunshine and a light, cool breeze. The city is best known as home to the tango. One of the most dramatic and sensual of all partner dances, it was shunned as vulgar when it first became popular in the 1880s, but gradually found acceptance and was later adopted as the national dance of Argentina. When dancing tango, the man and the woman stand close together, their bodies rigidly straight, their faces nearly touching. Even without words, passion is unmistakable in the way they look at one another, and in the sharp, smooth turns, kicks, and dips that make up the dance.
Every year, the city holds the Festival de Tango, one of the world's largest tango events -- this year 175,000 people attended ten days of performances and classes throughout the city's milongas, plazas, and performing arts venues. The tango is a dance for all ages -- the dancers at Avenida Roque Sáenz Peña ranged from older couples with decades of tango experience to teenagers still learning its complicated steps. Nearby, hundreds of spectators watched approvingly, singing along with famous tango singers like Alberto Podestá, who set the mood along with the other strings, piano, and accordion players on stage.
Starwood has five hotels in Buenos Aires, including the Park Tower, a Luxury Collection Hotel.
