Bilingual Tango
The story is simple: Sophie Guillouche (Paris, 1974) always loved dancing. When she worked as a nurse, rock ’n‘ roll helped her to relieve the habitual hardness of her job. In 2001, she knew the tango and became so enthusiastic for it that three years after she visited Buenos Aires. The day she arrived, she went to Porteño y bailarín, a famous milonga, where she was invited to the dance floor by a porteño who was learning to tango.
As he didn’t speak French and she didn’t speak Spanish, they talked about tango in English. Sophie went back to Paris but they kept in touch and soon they started to telephone each other every day. Months later, she came back to Argentina, but this time tango was not the only reason. In February of 2005 she decided to settle in Buenos Aires.
Today, Sophie Guilouche and Daniel Carreira–a porteño and dancer–live together in San Cristóbal. They teach tango lessons and they reached to the semi-final round of the Metropolitan Tango Championship. Together, they manage 2xTANGO, a website devoted to milongas in Buenos Aires.
How Sophie got acquainted with Tango:
“In Paris, I was enjoying a lunch with a friend and I asked her why she was wearing high heels. She told me that she was taking tango lessons. I accompanied her and stayed in the milonga after the lesson. When I started to dance tango, I loved it.”
Sophie in the milonga:
“First of all, I was impressed with the environment of the milonga and how people get ready to visit it, they make themselves look nice. I believe that this attitude shows the Buenos Aires’ idiosyncrasy because it doesn’t only happen in the tango houses but also in any place where people go to dance. When we go out with foreign visitors, we try to explain this issue to them”
Do you know a story similar to the Sophie and Daniel’s one? Have you ever fallen in love with the music of a place? Do you dance?
Septiembre 14, 2007 a las 13:20 Editar
I have an American friend who met her Cuban boyfriend in Buenos Aires. This story is similar to the the Sophie and Daniel’s one but in this case, she was learning how to dance Salsa and her boyfriend was, of course, her professor. Another nice love story born in Buenos Aires…
Agosto 24, 2008 a las 21:07 Editar
I first came to BsAs in 1997 from Los Angeles to dance tango on vacation. I kept returning once a year, until 2004 when I moved here. A year later I met and fell in love with Ruben Aybar, and we became dancing and teaching partners as well as in life. We finished #15 in the Campeonato Metropolitano de Tango 2006, and I was the only foreigner to make it past the semifinals. Now I have a tango/expat blog, tangocherie–http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/. Ruben and I are pleased to meet many foreign people who come here to dance. This month, the tango magazine, Diostango, wrote an article on us–Ruben y Cherie: Puro Tango.
Agosto 25, 2008 a las 19:09 Editar
great story, cherie! how did you learn about tango first?