By Heidi Trautmann
The sobbing of a violin, the staccato of the piano,
contrabass and the Argentine Bandoneon…I played the CD of the Alejandro Ziegler Quartet
bought at the Concert and Show in Bellapais, of the 6th Tango
Festival, a couple of times to understand the philosophy of the pieces. The
more I listen to the music the clearer I can visualize the background of the
tango.19th century Argentine, a melting pot of immigrants ‘de toutes
les couleurs’, the poor workers neighbourhoods, people working in factories to
earn their living, but on weekends they tried to live, tried to find the
romantism, self respect attention for a while, and the yearning for passion and
life, for music and dance, was met by the Tango which is actually a mixture of
dances from many countries. The best dress was put on, the elegant suit and tie
attired, the shoes polished, the shoes in fashion, black and white, and off they went to dance themselves tired
over the weekend when misery set in again facing the following week.
From Argentine the Tango wave rolled over to Europe,
became the fashion in all elegant saloons across the continent right over to
Turkey and nowadays in Cyprus. Pembe Gaziler and Mustafa Elmas, are the
organizing team of TangoCyprus and consequently of the Tango Festivals, it is
the second time that I have the pleasure to hear and see Argentine Tango in
Cyprus. I know them for some years already, the first time in Famagusta in 2006
when we spent one night in one of the Old City hotels. In the same hotel was a
Milonga Night and for many hours I listened to this unexpected Tango music;
that is how I learnt that Cypriots are fanatic Tango dancers. There is Turkish
Tango since the times of Atatürk. Pembe and Mustafa have their Tango School
with a strong group of student couples just as addicted, and they travel to
festivals abroad. Tango is their life.
The Alejandro Ziegler
Quartet played beloved traditional tango pieces by famous composers, among them
Piazolla, but also own compositions by Alejandro Ziegler which he had dedicated
to his wife who sat next to me in the concert and I watched her as she kept her
eyes closed with a smile on her lips. They must also have met through tango, I
suppose. They also played improvisations with some jazzy and soul elements and
I could see the musicians give themselves to the melting quality of their play.
On the violin: Guillermo Ferreiro Habra; Bandoneon: Matias Rubino; Contrabass:
Lautaro Guida and on the piano the Chef Alejandro Ziegler.
Three dancing couples Cintia Tinelli and Lucas Panero, Brenda Tonellotto and Lucas di Giorgio
and the organisers Pembe Gaziler and Mustafa Elmas themselves. What a sight, I
believe that many of us in the audience – the house was full to the last seat –
would have liked to jump up and join in or here and there hands joined in happy
memories: oh yes, when we were young.
The dress code for the male dancers is wide trousers,
black and white shoes - you can buy Tango shoes via the internet, I saw - a
long narrow jacket with shoulder pads, to make you look elegant and, if I
remember well, a pencil moustache and pomaded hair. The ladies were wearing a
show dress slit in front and high heeled dancing shoes which bore in itself the
danger of getting hooked up with your heels in the hem while swinging their
legs around, round and round the legs of their partner.
At the end Mustafa and Pembe called their students on
to the stage to dance together with the masters and in a flash the stage was
crowded and nobody would have realized if I had joined in…but I had no partner
with me.