Terry: And what's the state of contemporary tango in Buenos Aires now? For example, are there musicians who are writing tangos now?

Horacio: There are two great orchestras, a national one and a municipal one, that are both excellent. That never existed in the tango. The tango was always like...anti-official, right? And that's changed a little in recent years, and there's the Orquesta del Tango de Buenos Aires directed by Carlitos Garcia and Raul Garello and the Orquesta Nacional de Música Argentina, that plays only the tango, that's directed by maestro Osvaldo Piro, and they're both very good. And then there are the classic orchestras, like Salgan's, like the Quinteto Real, Mariano Mores's orchestra; and there are many new orchestras, like Tangata Rea, Siglo XXX, quite young groups. For which we have work to do at the Academy, and that's what we're there for, to conserve the different styles. That's why there's the Orchesta Académica.

And now we've got the entrance of women into the orchestras. Orchestras were always all men. And now there are many women playing in Argentine orchestras and everywhere in the world. And with that, the old tradition of European tango, that was a very hardened sort of tango, a less affectionate one, you might put it, has given way. Because the maestros of the Rio de La Plata (the areas around Buenos Aires and Montevideo) have been to Holland, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Canada, and have given dance lessons, music lessons, how to conduct, how to play the bandoneón.

The language of the tango has been profoundly understood, so now it's a subject with real sensitivity. You know, the young guy playing the bandoneón in our María de Buenos Aires presentation, who's Norwegian, learned Spanish in order to be able to speak with the tangueros, with his proper masters.

Terry: That's my story, too. I was studying Spanish just so that I could escape from a life crisis a number of years ago, and I liked the tango lyrics because I thought I could learn Spanish better through the lyrics, and the music as well. But a friend of mine told me one day, "You can't study the tango without dancing it. You can't." And I, who had not danced a step in my life, told her, "No, I can't dance. I just can't." But after two years of insisting on it, she convinced me, and I went very, very nervously to a tango lesson. With Nora Dinzelbacher. I've been studying with her ever since.

Horacio: Well, to dance the tango, you have to listen to it, to listen to the music well, to what the lyrics are saying, to what each tango is saying, no? We could talk a great deal more about this, because we're founding, with Robert Duval and the Argentine ambassador, the North American Academy of the Tango, to put delegations in all the important cities.

Terry: You'll probably get a lot of interest here in San Francisco, and of course in New York.