Modern Tango World N° 9 (Rome, Italy) | Page 16

Maggiolina ’ s program included music , cinema and lectures with international masters . This event brought many people to tango . After that event , the first stable milonga arose on Monday nights . The day have been difficult for many . But , it marked a shift from the unstable situation to a more organized one . The success of this evening led to the birth in 1994 , of the Tangobar , the first and for many years only place in Italy devoted exclusively to tango , holding daily lessons and weekend evenings . At the same time , another group of pioneers organized the Tangopolis Association , and launched Thursday at San Lorenzo , in a loft of the former Pastificio Cecere industrial building .
So , it became clear that if you wanted to involve new enthusiasts it would have been better to move to a more central location . A couple of years later , the initiative moved to the skating rink on Colle Oppio , a place that is definitely much more popular and more visible .
Despite so much effort , the tango community remained small , so small that there was only one milonga on New Year ’ s Eve in all of Italy . FAItango was born from this experience . It was not unusual for people to travel from a city to city , meeting ever-new dancers . At first , Turin , Trieste and Bologna , and then Naples , Cagliari and Catania became favorite places to go .
During the winter , there was dancing , but by the beginning of summer the everythind had closed . So , the very first street tango was born in the EUR district , on the staircase of the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro , which Romans call the Colosseo Quadrato . One night , each week , the tanguèros could be found dancing under the stars on this wide marble stairs to the music of a portable stereo or even directly from the car systems . The place was easy to find , but secluded , because at night it was used only as a large parking lot . photos by Antonio Lalli )
Because it was not easy for the most to keep theit passion alive during the week , many , especially men , found it hard to study with the necessary commitment , and abandoned tango after their initial enthusiasm .
For more than a decade , it was therefore a struggle to reach the so-called critical mass — the number of habitual tangueros that would make a qualitative change to a higher level of tango . Sometimes , it was possible to galvanize the tangueros for months and months . Shows like Tangox2 , Forever Tango and Tango Pasión had
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