Tango!: The Dance, the Song, the Story

The tango is not a dance but an obsession. Erotic and passionate, haunting and melancholy, it involves not only the body but also the soul.

How did a dance born in the slums of nineteenth-century Buenos Aires remain spectacularly alive for more than a hundred years to become an international cult? Tango! tells the rags-to-riches story of this extraordinary dance, drawing on the expertise of four well-known tango authorities.

• Simon Collier traces the tango’s roots in Buenos Aires and discusses its earliest dancers and musicians.
• Artemis Cooper recounts the astonishing upsurge of tangomania in Europe and North America before the First World War.
• The Golden Age of the tango in Argentina, from 1920 to 1950, is covered by Maria Susana Azzi.
• Richard Martin tackles the question of the tango and machismo, and discusses the immensely popular tango shows of recent years.

Illustrated with more than 250 photographs and including the sensational colour photography of Ken Haas, this book will delight tango enthusiasts, students of dance and all those who are fascinated by this seemingly unstoppable phenomenon.