El tango en su época de gloria: ni prostibulario, ni orillero. Los bailes en los clubes sociales y deportivos de Buenos Aires 1938­–1959

Abstract

This paper presents a case study about tango dancing in one of the athletic and social clubs of Buenos Aires in the years 1938 to 1959: Club Villa Malcom. Those years correspond to the heyday of Tango. It was then that the best orchestras were formed, the most significant recordings made and radio broadcasting was at its peak. It was also during that time that the dance became most popular. Soirées were organized at the dancehalls of local clubs and other similar organizations, where many of the orchestras that have now a nearly mythological status were regular and usual performers. Unlike the stories of the tango mythology, which take place at the docks, in cabarets or whorehouses, i.e. in places of lust, sinfulness and crime, our research shows that at these clubs and associations, dancing was organized under strict codes of behaviour that had a normative, moralizing edge. These codes, which belong to a disciplinary society, would transform tango from a putatively dissolute practice into a powerful means of social bonding.