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Borges says: “Tango has a secret: without Buenos Aires, there is no tango.” I visited milongas and bars on my quest throughout Buenos Aires. I discovered passion that was indifferent to age, bodies which met to the hypnotic sway of the music, forging points of no return. Tango is theater, music, poetry and bandoneon all together.

Tango is the essential iconography of Buenos Aires, murmuring our deepest feelings, caressing the immortal expressions of tenderness, passion, love, loneliness and pain. Its words bear witness to the madness of love affairs, to sordid secrets and the comfort of the familiar. It is time itself, ineffable seconds when sensations meld with scenes, the scent of memory. It is Buenos Aires.

Tango takes me back to the school yard, to my maternal grandfather, to drinking mate on the sidewalk, his cologne and pocket handkerchiefs. I remember him, strutting, arrogant, with a blend of intense tenderness and taut tension. As for my paternal grandmother, I loved her very much; she was a simple soul, sensitive and intuitive. I would dance tango with her as a little girl.

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