In this video, we travel to Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, a city that combines faded European grandeur with Latin passion, to explore the dance form that is almost a religion there… the tango.

Tango is both a partner dance, and social dance, originating in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata – the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. It was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries, in neighbourhoods that had predominantly African descendants, as a combination of Rioplatense Candombe celebrations, Spanish-Cuban Habanera, and Argentinean Milonga.

Frequently danced in the brothels and bars of ports, where business owners employed bands to entertain their patrons with music, the tango would eventually spread to the rest of the world. More recently, on August 31, 2009, UNESCO approved a joint proposal by Argentina and Uruguay to include the tango in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.

View the original video here.

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