The Champaign-Urbana area held its third tango music festival last weekend, filled with dance workshops, discussions, concerts and more.
At the Community Center for the Arts, four professional string instrumentalists gathered a group of people, ranging from musicians to people simply interested in the tango music workshop, to give a greater insight into the works and foundations of the genre.
“The music is beautiful,” said Amanda Ramey, violinist and an event planner for the festival. “It has a lot of aspects of classical music in terms of sustained notes that are very long and beautiful melodies, but it also has a lot of rhythm that is very appealing. The dance and the music go together so well.”
The group discussed how every part of an instrument supplies extra layers and elements to the sound of tango that align with the dancers to move to it.
The workshop was active, with professionals sharing their knowledge and passion for the music while attendees joined the music by clapping to establish rhythm.
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“Anytime you get people in the room to be listening and talking about tango, it’s an incredible experience,” Ramey said.
While Ramey initially thought the workshop would be limited to instrumentalists, the discussion grew to include those simply interested in the genre.
“We were thinking it was going to be for string players who showed up,” Ramey said. “A couple of string players showed up — which is great — and then a bunch of people who were curious about tango music, which is, to me, incredible. To have an actual discussion about music that nobody ever hears about and doesn’t know very much about — it’s an awesome feeling.”
The festival’s liveliness ranged from folklórico dancers in red dresses performing to mariachi music to adults and kids playing, running around and hula hooping.
En-Chi Lin, an organizer of the festival, said it began as a post-COVID-19 project centering around music, as “dance was the first to go and the last to come back.” As a result, the festival’s goal is to showcase the variety tango has to offer.
“The thing about tango is that there’s a preconception about what tango is,” Lin said. “You tell people, ‘Hey, I dance tango’ or ‘I like tango,’ (and) the first thing they think of is that ballroom American tango with the rose in the mouth, but that’s not Argentine tango.”
The festival ended Sunday with a brunch event. The Urbana Dance Company’s dance floor brought a multigenerational crowd to free dance to live tango music and a spread of pancakes, sausages, fruits, coffee and tea for patrons to enjoy before busting a move.
The band had a full spread, too, equipped with a drummer, pianist, accordionist, double bassist and four violinists.
One of the four violinists is Teagan Faran, who traveled from Greencastle, Indiana, to play at the event. She said the festival brings a multitude of unique qualities to the community.
“It’s one of the few places that I know is a multigenerational gathering … a place where you practice feeling the full range of emotion that music allows us to feel, and you have this range of being able to consent how engaged you want to be,” Faran said.
The event was freeform, allowing patrons to watch and participate. The session of free dance allowed seasoned individuals to strut their stuff, beginners to learn from them and even partner up with each other.
Eventually, toward the end, almost everyone was dancing: students, locals and visitors alike.
“I feel like having events like this is really sort of the first step in developing a language to preserve (tango),” Faran said.
