Terry: Here in the United States some of us sometimes feel a little sequestered in the past when it comes to the tango, especially in the milongas (dance parties) where the kind of music they play is always from the thirties, forties or fifties. It's the same in Buenos Aires.

Horacio: Yes, it's the same.

Terry: Frequently the music of more modern composers like Piazzolla and the others doesn't get the respect it deserves. Can you help us with your opinion of contemporary tango, especially the reason that no one dances, or wishes to dance, to the more modern tango tempos?

Horacio: There has existed a dance tradition in the tango from the very beginning of the tango itself, that has gone through diverse stages, but that has always been quite attached to the kind of ambiance from which it originally came. So that the dance did not accompany the great poetic and musical evolution of the tango, and it has now been seized upon, instead of by milongueros (traditional tango dancers), rather by dancers of classic and modern ballet. Because the evolution of the music and the lyrics cannot be left to go without the dance.

Besides, it's very good to dance to. Every milonguero chooses his own music and type of tango. That's no sin, but it would be a sin were the more modern kind of music to go on without the dance.

Piazzolla is marvelous for dancing, because besides his being a musician of many tempos (he very much liked tempo), he changed the internal metronome of the tango itself. Piazzolla liked his singers to be musicians capable of many tempos as well, in as much as it's rhythmically a very rich music and should be danced to.

So, yes, the dance has been taken over — at least on stage — by classic modern ballet dancers instead of by milongueros, and they've achieved marvelous things, like the work of Miguel Zotto and Milena Krebs, who's a veritable creation herself, no? Also some of the work that el maestro Juan Carlos Copes has done, as well as other dancers who aren't tangueros, but who, like this chica from Tango Kinesis, Ana María Stekelman, who's been so passionate about the tango without being part of the tango world itself. Because the tango has always profited from people, talents, and situations that don't belong to the tango.

For instance the tango has stolen some of rock's instruments: the electric guitar, the electric keyboard, the drum set. The tango's always been a bit of a thief, in that it enriches itself without losing its virtue, and that's what happens in the case of the dance as well.

Terry: You write in your book, The Golden Age of Tango, about the influence of rock music.