© Giancarlo RadiceP A R A L L E L O Z E R O

A R G E N T I N A

Buenos Aires:TANGO MIRACLE

Claudia fallen asleep at home after a day dancing in a tango school

Jesus Paez and Claudia Balbi earn their living mostly out of Tango dancing. They are the perfect paradigma of a phenomenon that is affecting thousands of young people throughout the whole Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires. After a long period of decline - that has reached the lowest point in the nineties, when Tango was downgraded almost to a simple souvenir-show for tourists - nowadays the national dance has began to revive, both in terms of popular interest and quality of the performers. Most important of all, Tango has started to represents again a source of income for a new generation of dancers. Thanks to the proliferation of schools, milongas, festivals, tango-cafes and theaters many people in Argentina has begun to consider it as a proper full time job.

Jesus is 29 years old and graduated in political science, while Claudia is 27 and studied psychology. But both of them, since their childhood, have always dreamed on devoting themselves to Tango. Today, thanks to private lessons, performances in small theaters, cafes or ballrooms, and photographic poses in the tourist areas of the capital, they are able to earn a very decent income, enough to pay the rent for their apartment in Avellaneda (a suburb of Buenos Aires), and to live according to the standards of the urban middle class. This is their daily life in town.

Tango class at Claudia and Jesus home

Claudia and Jesus at home

Training at the “Practica de Kerusa”, a well known “milonga” (tangodancing hall) of Buenos Aires

A tip left by a tourist

Claudia getting ready to dance at “El Caminito”

Dancing for tourists in a restaurant along “El Caminito”

Talking about tango at Claudia and Jesus home

Makeup before performing at “La Cumparsita” tango-cafe

Tango lessons at “El Caminito”

At the supermarket

Performing at “La Cumparsita” tango-cafe, one of the most famous tango bars of Buenos Aires

Claudia and Jesus at “La Cumparsita” tango-cae

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