Repost with new introduction: The Secret History of Russian Women and Tango

I am reposting this because of an improved appreciation for Russian culture after our Daniela Arcuri workshop in Durango. This comes after I listened to an NPR story about the director of the Bolshoi being attacked. Until this week I never full appreciated how much the Russian tangueras I danced with loved to dance. They come from a culture that reveres dancers just as much as Americans worship singers.

Sunday night, after the workshop, we dined with our master teacher from Buenos Aires and she related her world-wide travels and her impressions of the different peoples she met. It was through her words that I was inspired to let go of my distrust, instilled in me during childhood. I grew up in Cold War America. We were taught to be suspicious of Russians through teachings in our schools and via our TV shows, like the cartoons featuring Rocky and Bullwinkle, a flying squirrel and a bipedal moose.

Tango for me has been not just an education in the dance but also enlightenment for me to people of other cultures. It has always been a struggle for me to resist the bigotry our culture tries to imbue in us; I guess that's what makes me an American. We are a bipolar people, despising the immigrant whilst simultaneously loving the immigrant culture.

A Russian tanguera once told me how sad she was that the United States government depicted Russians as a group of unhappy people. At the time I thought she should just get over it. After all, Serbians are still mad at the Turks for an invasion that occurred over 700 years ago. I was tempted to tell her that it took America 100 years to grant African-Americans civil rights after we fought a war over whether or not they were people or property and that it would take us at least as many years to forget the Cold War. Fortunately for me I kept my mouth shut: I learned that from tango:-)

I am not claiming to be enlightened but I am saying that I can see the light and that I strive for it.

So here is my repost of the Secret History of Russian Women and Tango. Enjoy:-)

                I would be remiss in my duties as a writer if I did not mention the prevalence of Russian women in the American tango community. I have always felt I was ready to write about them but I sensed that I needed to do more research. The more I learned, the more I realized that they are so diverse, complex and fascinating, I am sure I could study them forever. At some point, I had to make a decision to comment about them and that time might as well be now.

               This dance is so multicultural, on so many levels, that finding an ethnic group represented is not unusual. However, when you consider that this is a Latin phenomenon and there are 196 countries in the world, then the high concentration of northern Eurasian females doing it, does seem a bit odd.

               I suspected I would be writing this piece soon, so I began to throw some thoughts out at the Russian tangueras I ran into at tango events. One lady’s husband, who is Russian, said Eastern European women are very competitive. She disagreed, saying they are only competitive in Eastern Europe. I talked to a dear friend, a Russian, and she said there is no competition for her…and I knew she was right; when she walks into the room, the men follow her around, hoping to make eye contact.

               When I considered the two statements, I knew I was on to something. Let me see if I can’t try and capture it. It is fleeting, like a spark from a flint when someone is trying to build a fire.

               There are many similarities between Russian society and Argentine society. The economies of these nations are always struggling. They are both very sexist cultures. My friend said she grew up with tango music and that it was played all the time in schools. So, too, in Argentina! Both are very well-received in America.

               Russian women have to be very adaptable in order to survive; so, too, for Argentine ladies. Russian women are very passionate and are driven to learn tango but they’ve got nothing on Argentine tangueras who I imagine packing pistols in their purses to ensure their boyfriends behave.

               The answer is obvious: Russian women are cosmically displaced Argentine tangueras with suppressed memories of an emigration from a southern Italian province in this life or a previous one. Quite a leap, I know, but I am not bound by any rules here: this is a blog. This would explain my fraternal feelings for a Russian tanguera in my practica group; she thinks she’s from Russia, from somewhere around the Volga River, but, according to my cosmic-memory-suppressing formula, she is really an Italiana from Mutignano. We could be cousins because my dad is from Abruzzo. 

                Italians were one of the largest groups to emigrate to Argentina. Most came from the southern part of the peninsula, from provinces like Calabria, Campania, Apulia, etc. It is hard to imagine how my displaced Italiana friends ended up in Russia, but I will try because I love them all so much!

               In 1294, though it is not recorded in the annals of history, Marco Polo’s uncle Maffeo, led a company of Venetian outcasts from the town of Pescara, in the Abruzzo region of Italy, to Russia. They were a ragtag band of gypsy dancers who made a living running pizzarias on the islands of Venice. One day, a homely ‘Pescarina’, nicknamed ‘Mama Luigi’ because of her thick mustache, kidnapped Tuboletto “little pipe” Borgia, Lucretia Borgia’s gay cousin, and kept him in a cage as a pet until the authorities caught up with her and exiled their whole tribe.

               They finally settled in a small town outside of Moscow, known as Pizzollya, where they lived and danced, happily making pizzas and singing songs about Mama Luigi. They were displaced by Stalin during the 1930’s for writing subversive messages on their pizzas using olives and pepperoni slices. Part of the town was relocated to the Siberian hamlet of Blagoveshchensk. Pizzollyans from the renowned ‘West End’ of town were relocated to Nikolskiy, a small village in Kazakhstan. A third portion was removed to St. Petersburg.

                The final group managed to avoid deportation because their women were just too pretty to allow this to happen. When the soldiers came to take them away, they merely asked, with eyes wide, “You want to take us away?”

“Yes.” The soldier replied.

“No,” they would respond, “you don’t want to take us away.”

Mesmerized, the soldiers would answer, “No, we don’t want to take you away.” 

"Okay, you can leave now," the girl would tell them and they would leave. This same script was repeated for each of the houses on the northern side of Pizzollya.

               The name of the town was later changed to ‘Piazzollya’ meaning ‘without Pizzollyans’. Eventually, young Astorovich Piazzollya would make the trek from exile to the homeland his heart knew existed, in Argentina, and begin composing the most beautiful of all tango ballads under the name ‘Astor Piazzolla’.

               I talked to another Russian tanguera last night at practica. I told her Russian women are very self-disciplined. She corrected me and said, “No, it is passion. I do this dance because I am very passionate about it!” Water welled in her eyes as she swallowed hard to choke down the tears.

               ‘Self-discipline’, ‘passion’, I don’t care what you call it, all I know is I love Russian tangueras for it. It is very pleasurable to dance with someone who works as hard as I do to master various concepts of this dance, like ‘barrida’ or ‘volcada’ or ‘boleo’. Last night, after four years of trying, I successfully led contra boleos with ease! Garazh bukhat(I’m trying to convey a Russian expression but it might be Klingon)!

               A key ingredient to enjoying tango fully is to know what it means to struggle. People who have lived in the Tropics all their lives cannot truly appreciate what a joy it is to be warm. Sit in an igloo for an hour in your underwear and you’ll have a greater appreciation for Eskimo women;-) I grew up in a drafty house with a coal stove. When I embrace a Russian woman in tango, I can tell they are happy to be in the arms of a warm-blooded man and that, they too, know what is like to be cold.

               And now my task is done. I have written the secret history of the emigration of Pescarinos to Russia and their contribution to tango music. It was not easy and it is not free….I’ll take my fee in dances, please:-)


Note: Check out my new book on Amazon: Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure.