I came across an El Once Tango News interview (2002) of YVONNE MEISSNER of Germany who has been teaching apilado tango for 20 years in Europe, many of those years with Eduardo Aguirre. The following is portions of the 12-page interview.
Q: The style of dancing you started with was presumably figure orientated, like we all did at that time. When and how did you change to the way you dance now?
A: Through Susana Miller and Cacho Dante. They were the first that I was able to help organize and learn from extensively. i was around doing the public relations, organizing the space and printing the fliers. I considered what I learned in three years from them a gift while I organized their workshops twice a year.
We tried to show people what Susana and Cacho were teaching and gradually I got involved more in this minimalist and introvert way of tango. It was a hard thing in 1994 to explain to people who were still in a figure and count-orientated tango using lots of space related to the basic step with a back step. We wanted to show them a very different side that started from the music, a common space, and couple as a definition. The women saved the situation: they all died to dance with Cacho. At first I wasn't hooked as much as it sounds, but this was a subtle power intruding into my life. It's my preferred way to dance.
Q: Susana called their way of dancing "milonguero style", which is now how many people refer to it. What would you say it was called?
A: I wouldn't really use the term "milonguero" style myself. Susana Miller used it after 1987 as an abbreviation. She had gained the confidence of the milongueros, so first Cacho Dante and then Eduardo Aguirre started to work with her in Club Almagro. She invented the term as an abbreviation for the close form of social dancing in the center of Buenos Aires. And there are three types of holds, two are close, (thus apilado) and one is open. The open one was danced in the barrios and the close way in the center where we tourists all got first. And that is why we know the social close form first though it's not the only one. The same milonguero could (in the close embrace) dance small like usual in the center with half a square meter of space for the couples and later that night do a more complicated form when there was more space. Tete and Eduardo are examples of this, next to many others less well-known. Since milonguero was a pejorative word with a meaning more or less "the guy that dances all night long, doesn't like to work, leaves his wife and children at home, and is on the hunt for other women," it wasn't something a milonguero would want to call himself, neither the ones that didn't fit the description nor the ones who did. Cacho Dante and Eduardo Aguirre luckily are among the huge number of non-typicals. Cacho has his own company, and Eduardo Aguirre worked in Teatro Colon for 20 years, and both leave women in peace.
Even in 1995 Tete declared that he was dancing Tango de salon. I still remember that night we sat with a big crowd at Plaza Dorrego with dancers from Europe confused about the holds and terms when Tete made things clear. A memorable and almost historic moment for me was when Cacho made his new business card in 1997. I had lost his phone number and so he gave me his new business card which read: Cacho Dante - tango milonguero style.When I saw it, I started laughing and we laughed together for about ten minutes. We both knew, right then and there, times had changed. The important thing is that milongueros go and dance for the music first; that separates them from dancers of Tango fantasia or Tango Danza.
Q: So really by saying "tango de salon" you are encompassing all the style of tango which you would do in a social context...
A: Yes, not me but the milongueros I refer to with my definition. It's their definition. It comprises what Eduardo Arquimbau calls club tango, club style, milonguero, the form of the early forties of tango liso with no figures at all. There is a bit of confusion in the United States, but as you go and ask the big crowd of historic salon dancers in Buenos Aires, they all say they are dancing tango de salon. As I mentioned earlier, in 1995 Tete said he dances tango de salon, and in 1994 Cacho said the same. You can say that tango de salon is everything with the feet on the ground that was danced from the Forties.
