I am late with my Friday Fun Fact and I can't even claim it is still Friday in some other part of the world. So a huge apology to my guest Alli Sinclair who is here to talk about the origin of that most sensual of dances - the tango!
Oh my goodness, if a cover could sell a book, LUNA TANGO should sell its socks off. What I love about this cover is that the "model" are not models, they are real tango dancers. A couple of years ago I shared a flight to the Gold Coast with Alli and during the course of this flight she told me about her peripatetic life and this book she was writing with a tango theme set in South America. Just the sheer sumptious, exoticness of the premise hooked me on the spot.
In case you don't believeAlli's life is a story in itself... Alli
Sinclair is Australian born and spent her early adult years travelling the
blog: scaling mountains in Nepal, Argentina, and Peru, rafting the Ganges, and
riding a camel in the Sahara. She lived in Argentina and Peru and it was there
her love of dance bloomed. When she wasn’t working as a tour guide, Alli could
be found in the dance halls learning tango, salsa, merengue, and samba. All of these adventures made for fun storytelling and
this is when she discovered her love of writing. Alli’s stories combine her
passion for exotic destinations, the quirks of human nature, and the belief
that everyone can dance, even if it’s to their own beat. Connect with Alli on her WEBSITE and Facebook And her is Alli's Fun Fact (or not...)
THE ORIGIN OF THE TANGO...
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No one knows for
sure how tango originated
Tango
is renowned for the air of mystery that surrounds the music and dance, so it’s
befitting that no one knows exactly how tango originated. Tango aficionados and
historians can’t agree and as tango began at a time when written records
weren’t common, there isn’t any concrete evidence to support any one theory.
Here
are some that I discovered in my research:
Theory
One:
In
1880 Buenos Aires was little more than a town and European immigrants arrived
to work the land after British Rail laid tracks across the country. As most new
arrivals were men planning to earn their money and return to their homeland
(most never did), Argentina had a shortage of women. The only way to meet
“good” women was to go to dance halls and woo them. The men needed to practise
dancing and they went to brothels to dance to live music. The women at the
brothels were otherwise occupied so the men practised dancing with each other.
This theory became popular after Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote an
article linking brothels and tango. His fans agreed and the theory grew into a
commonly accepted truth that many people still believe.
Theory
Two:
Tango
was born in the tenement blocks of the poor where a melting pot of
nationalities lived. Young boys learnt to dance with their male relatives and
once competent, moved on to dance with sisters and mothers then eventually
women at dance halls. The music united people from many cultures and became a
common language that eventually morphed into tango.
Theory
Three:
In
the 1880s, the only dance seen in public in Buenos Aires was at theatres or
dance halls. The brothel theory may have stemmed from some dance halls that
doubled as brothels, or from dance halls that were frequented by men and women
whose morals were frowned upon by their Christian counterparts.
Even
after all my research I still can’t decide which theory is the right one. How
about you?
If
you would like to read more about men dancing together, click on this LINK and
watch the fabulous Macana Brothers. It’s guaranteed to make you smile!
ABOUT LUNA TANGO...
Tango, like love, is complicated
Desperate
to understand the reason her mother abandoned her twenty years ago to become a
world-class tango dancer, journalist Dani McKenna delves into the world of
tango in the hope of exposing decades of lies and deception that have
threatened three generations of her family.
When
Dani meets the enigmatic Carlos Escudero—a revered tango dancer and man of
intense passion—they work together to help her understand why her grandmother
lives in fear of all things tango, and how the brutal murder of a tango music
legend in Buenos Aires now affects her family.
Despite
her lack of rhythm, Dani and Carlos create their own dance of the souls, until
the differences in their cultures causes a deep rift. As she seeks to reconnect
with Carlos and rebuild her family, Dani finds tango—the dance of
passion—becomes a complicated dance of betrayal.
Luna Tango is the first in The Dance Card Series, published by
Harlequin MIRA in print and eBook. It is available through AMAZON and all reputable on line estores as well as bookshops across Australia.
