Fabrica de Tango: Interview with Tango Maestros CARLOS & ROSA PEREZ

Lucia(L): You are dancers and tango maestros well known all around the world. Can you tell what tango means to you?

Carlos Perez (CP)We think there are various answers to this. To us, tango is the dance of our people, people of Buenos Aires, in consequence is very sentimental, at our age it brings us many memories of childhood and youth. The mayor part of its words are written with reference to this period, so tango is very personal to us, since in the majority of homes all they listened to the radio was tango. As a definition, we can try to say tango is a feeling that can be danced, with music, body and heart.

L: How did you start to dance and who were your teachers?

CP: Our beginning is dated in the 60’s. Rosa learned from her elder brothers, I learned with Jose Vazquez "Lampazo", Eduardo Pareja “ Parejita” , Osvaldo Mosi “ El nene Fo “, El Gallego Villaroza, Gerardo Portalea, Rogelio Culacciati, Mingo Canonico, Marcos “ La Biblia”, and many more, whose names I cannot recall. It was different back then, the teaching was among friends. There were many excellent dancers in those times, and all different from one another. Each one had his own style, and this richness I don’t see nowadays.

L: The majority of metropolitan and world champions passed for the famous “Practica de Sunderland”. How do you explain this? What has this Practica that other places don’t?

CP: We had the luck to have as students many people with a huge capacity and will to learn, and also with good conditions, which are difficult to explain, you have to have them incorporated. We try to give them our knowledge; we believe this helps them get good results in the championships. The Practica in Sunderland, that we supervise, has something special, which is the atmosphere that has been created along years of work, and we put all our experience, knowledge, and feeling. We teach tango as we dance it, as it was transmitted to us by those great dancers in the past, who invented it. We teach tango as it once was. From this point on, each one develops his own style, we just give them the tango as we learned it 50 years ago.

L: Can you name some champions whom you prepared for the competitions in Practica Sunderland?

CP: There are a few. In the world championship: Sebastian Achaval y Ximena , Fabian Peralta, Dante Sanchez e Ines Muzzopapa, Daniel Nacucchio, Hiroshi y Kyoko. In the metropolitan: Damian y Sara, Sebastian Jimenez, championship of Hugo del Carril: Ernesto Candal y Vanina Iurici, Matias Sotto y Glenda Salas.

L: A piece of advice for people who learn how to dance tango nowadays:

CP: We think that first you need to learn how to walk ‘ caminar’, listen to the music, respect the pauses, and then come all the figures.
Tango is a manner of communicating with the others, so don’t forget you have to put your joy in it.

L: Why do you think so many people lately approach tango?

CP: Tango is emotion and we all need this. The feeling can be better transmitted and received once you have a certain technique in dance. Like all good things in life, it requires a bit of patience to learn it well. I mean that you need to have some basis, some technique in order to enjoy all the richness tango can bring you.

L: Dali responded to a professor that insisted all he needed to do art was imagination, nothing else: ‘Imagination I have in excess. Please teach me the technique to combine oils”
Would you say the same for tango students?

CP: I always found Dali a bit strange, but now that he said this, I’ll have a second look at his work, hehehe!!!!!!!!!!

Below, I added some youtube videos with Carlos & Rosa, and their outstanding students.

Carlos & Rosa Perez