“Duval at the Ideal”
for La Vida Tango
Buenos Aires is a magical place. One night last summer, I took a girlfriend who was visiting from the U.S. to the Confiteria Ideal, a salon where you can dance tango almost any time and any day of the week. She wanted to see how the ‘real’ people danced, rather than the acrobatic performers of the big shows. When we arrived, I noticed an unusual hustle and bustle. There were a lot of people there; the waitstaff were not the usual older men, but rather young girls dressed in black and white. Hanging around the edges of the dance floor were tall blonde Americans with professional cameras and lights, not at all the usual patrons.
We sat at a table near the entrance as couples began to crowd the floor dancing a tango by Pugliese. All of a sudden, the camera men rushed passed us toward the entrance and began to walk backwards aiming the cameras toward the stairway that led to the entrance. As they made way for the incoming group, I saw Robert Duval stroll in, with his beautiful Argentine partner behind him and a cadre of tango dancers, like Copello and others whose Italian faces I had seen in the movies. Duval was wearing tan slacks and an ivory sweater. They sat at a table next to the dance floor and that was that. No announcement, no big deal. Everyone knew he was there, but did not make an issue of it. The porteño is proud and would rather not acknowledge being impressed. Then Duval got up to dance.
While couples gathered on the dance floor, an old tanguero gave me the cabeceo (signal) and as we danced, he kept steering me toward Duval, who was on the floor with his partner. By then we had found out why the cameras were there; 60 Minutes was taping a segment on Duval and his passion for the tango. The highlight of the evening was when Duval asked a little school girl, perhaps his partner’s niece, to dance with him. It was an endearing scene, the imposing older movie star carefully leading the little schoolgirl into ochos she could barely manage because of the size difference. But even then, the regular milongueros kept on dancing as if Duval and child were just one more couple finding bliss at the rhythm of the dos por cuatro.
Another personality was there that night, Charlie Rose of PBS. As I left the salon later that night, I asked Rose what he thought of the tango and he responded: “I only wish I had two lives to live, one here and one back in the U.S.” That, in a nut shell, is how I feel: one woman split between two lives, one north, another south. What keeps me whole are my husband and daughter. Both, now, are tango aficionados. So perhaps I can bring back some of the Buenos Aires magic to life here in San Antonio.
– Gwendolyn Díaz
María Kodama is the widow of Jorge Luis Borges and director of the Fundación Internacional Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires. Read more about María Kodama, along with an extensive interview,
in Women and Power in Argentine Fiction.
Jorge Luis Borges at the University of Texas at Austin’s picnic in his honor.
Jorge Luis Borges at the University of Texas.
PEN International is a worldwide association that promotes the freedom of expression for poets, essayists, and novelists.
Luisa Valenzuela and Eva Norvind (Ava Taurel character) in Mexico City performance.
San Antonio-based authors Sandra Cisneros, John Phillip Santos and Frances Treviño.
Nicaraguan poet, Catholic priest, liberation theologian and activist Ernesto Cardenal.
Hydroponic Garden in El Tigre, delta of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
TOMS Shoes buy one pair and another goes to a child in need.
Aldo & Analia tango performers. Click here for demonstration.
