By Luke Voogt
Pam and Richard Jarvis’s passionate love affair with tango has seen the couple dance the steamy milongas of downtown Buenos Aires for almost three decades.
“Once you dive in you just want to keep going deeper and deeper,” Pam said.
The Newtown couple fell in love with the dance in 1989 thanks Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla, who revolutionised the tango movement in the late ’80s.
“It was his music that brought a whole generation of young people back to tango,” Pam said.
“It was gritty, amazing music – full of jazz and street noise.”
The music inspired them to travel to raucous upstairs dance halls, known as milongas, in the poorer suburbs of the Argentine capital with just a Spanish phrasebook to guide them.
“As you climb up the music gets louder,” Pam said.
“You walk into this room and there are 100 people dancing, it’s quite amazing.”
Eye contact and a simple nod across the room would see her in the arms of a local.
“That will tell the guy yes I’m interested in dancing,” the 66-year-old said.
“Then we go into the embrace – up until that point we haven’t spoken a word. At the first break you have a chance to have a chat with someone you’ve danced quite intimately with.”
“It’s like a physical dialogue but very respectful.”
She and her 72-year-old husband return regularly to Argentina to mix it with the locals. Pam’s favourite milonga, which bordered a local swimming pool, has since shut down.
“The locals tore up the floorboards and took them home as souvenirs,” Pam said.
When the couple moved to Geelong in 2009, they decided “it was time to get something started”.
“I was involved in serving the meals at Christ Church,” Pam said.
At the time Australia’s tango scene was mostly competitive, she added.
“We had an opportunity to reinvent the wheel a bit and establish a lovely community based group.”
The couple have been running weekly classes at the church since.
“Something happens to people when they tango – they go into a different state,” she said.
“People take it and each time they create something different.”
Pam survived cancer in 2008 after six weeks of chemotherapy and two surgeries but it’s done little to stop her dancing.
And law consultant Richard is still light on his feet despite rupturing three disks in his spine eight years ago.
“If you can walk you can dance,” Pam said.
“All you need is a wooden floor, a hall and a chance to play music.”
The couple ran a trial project with Alzheimer’s Australia (Geelong) last year and plan a similar trial next year.
“Every time people dance they remember something beautiful in their past,” Pam said.
“We were extremely pleased with how much people remembered and what they were able to do physically.”
Pam said most in her group were older than 60.
“In Buenos Aires they have teenagers and 80-year-olds who dance at the same place. Here it’s a bit more difficult to get younger people involved.”
