MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Tango Dance World Championship ends in Bs. Aires

The jury of the IV Tango Dance World Championship crowned a Colombian couple with the top award for the Stage Tango category, while Argentine dancers were honoured with the accolade for the Dancehall Tango style.

Colombian dancers Carlos Alberto Paredes and Diana Giraldo Rivera, who have been dancing together for six years, presented a choreography created for Francisco Canaro's song Pájaro Azul. This couple became the first non-Argentine performers to win the Stage Tango award, the local dancers obtaining this recognition in the first three editions of the championship.

Natacha Poberaj and Gustavo Peralta were the two Argentines considered the best in the Dancehall Tango category. Second place went to Aoniken Quiroga and Pablo Rodríguez from the province of La Pampa, while Soledad Cantarini and Diego Pérez of Santa Fe came in third.

The competition, now in its fourth year in this Tango-crazed capital, lasted 10 days. The Stage Tango event features dancers exhibiting feats of strength and acrobatic techniques while the Dancehall Tango event pitted couples against each other in traditional dancehall styles of tango enjoyed in Argentine since its origins early last century.

A total of 35 couples participated in the finals, which took place yesterday at Palermo's La Rural, with the presence of Vice-President Daniel Scioli and the US actor Robert Duval, whose passion for tango is widely known.

The winning couples received 5,000 pesos and a contract signed with the Japanese company Minon to perform for two months in Japan.

Over 100,000 people were present at the championship, thereby doubling the audience that attended last year's edition. The foreign country with the highest number of contestants was Colombia, with 25 couples in both categories. Other nations represented at the championship were Japan, Italy, Rusia and Finland, among others.

Some of the artists who presented a show during the night of the finals were Ariel Ardit, the Salgán-De Lío Duet, and María Nieves and Miguel Angel Zotto. The show El humor del tango (The Humour Of Tango) was performed and directed by Héctor Malamud, while renowned dancers Mora Godoy and Junior Cervilla presented Tangodisea.

Sunday also marked the end of the milongas organized at the venue of the World Championship.

The success was remarkable as many amateur and profesional dancers crowded the dance-floor every night. Bien Frappé, Tubatango, Yunta Tango and El Caburé were some of the orchestras playing live.

The dancing at this milonga was organized in the form of thematic nights dedicated to tango myths like Aníbal Troilo, Osvaldo Pugliese and Juan D'Arienzo. Buenos Aires Herald