TRANSCRIPT ~ EPISODE 33

EPISODE 33: "a tango for every body, with Savvas Kourtis"

Producer/Host: Liz Sabatiuk | Music: "La Madrugada," written by Ángel Maffia with lyrics by Cátulo Castillo and performed and recorded by Juan Villarreal y Patricio Crom | Image Credit: Michaël Jacob

LIZ: Okay, how 'bout now?  

SAVVAS: This is my comfortable talking voice in the early morning.

LIZ: [LAUGHS] The early morning. It's like 11:30.

SAVVAS: Rude! [BOTH LAUGHING]

LIZ: You are such a tango person.

SAVVAS: Yes. Ummm... Yeah.

LIZ: K

[MUSIC]

LIZ ID INTRO:
I'm Liz Sabatiuk and this is Humans of Tango, where we explore what tango has to teach through the experiences of those who dance it.

LIZ SCRIPT:
Savvas Kourtis is the first tango human I've interviewed who I connected with because he had listened to this podcast. And yes, I'm super excited about that! We first met at Chamuyo Queer Tango Meeting in 2024, and I'm delighted to report that we've stayed in touch ever since. I've followed Savvas' tango activities in his home city of Nicosia, Cyprus, from afar, and I finally got a chance to hear about them in person when we attended a fusion dance festival together in Berlin, Germany, this past June. Here's hoping the street sounds from the window of our hostel are more atmospheric than annoying.

SAVVAS
I live in Cyprus because I'm originally from there, um, spent quite a bit of time living abroad, but it felt like it was a nice time to go back home. And since we are at Humans of Tango, it's kind of like, take the love that I found for Argentine tango abroad and find a way of giving root to that ideology in Cyprus.

I left Cyprus to go study sciences - I'm a biologist - in the UK, in Edinburgh.

[LIZ ASIDE] referring to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland

There was a thriving community; there was a thriving student community. My first teacher, her name is Sarah Morris. And yeah, I think the first thing that struck me going to that specific beginner class was how relaxed it was, how almost gender neutral it was. Because I didn't appreciate it at the time, but, like, 12 years ago, having a woman teaching alone, for me, was super normalized. And that felt very comfortable. So in Edinburgh, the student scene, especially before COVID, was extremely active. And you could buy the membership for something like, I don't know, 20 pounds per month.

The three teachers each had a weekly class on a different day. So there were students who were going to every single of those three classes, and there were students who were going to two or one of them. I mostly stuck with Sarah Morris, because she was the least quote-unquote traditional. But I think it was extremely nice to go to the student milongas and find people who were still part of the same umbrella.

I think one of the gifts and curses at the same time of being in a very student, experimental scene is people take a lot of liberties. So I started tango essentially to non-tango music - so I fell in love with the movement first. And in milongas, we would hear Golden Age tango. But in hindsight, I do feel that they made a choice of the acknowledgement that 20-year-olds might struggle listening to and appreciating tango music if they don't come from that background. And I think it took me a couple of years to really be like, I love listening to tango music, even outside of the context of, like, dancing.

I started tango with leading and following at the exact same time. For me, they're kind of intertwined. Um, I do get more practice in leading just because of my gender. But, uh, for me, it's like, first class, tango is both. Whatever you feel from the other person, you can then produce, and it's kind of like a circle.

So I was in Edinburgh for like three, four years. I took a break going to Australia where I found other tango teachers. There was a bit more Argentine culture, I would say, in Australia - maybe because it was not a student scene, but it was an adult scene. I think being very young, people cut you a lot of slack. And they were like, "Oh, look at this child who is still exploring tango. Clearly, he's very passionate about it." Emily Rose and Refik, who were the teachers at the time that I was with, they had specific programs for people who were young and could not afford tango. And that was really formative for me because I think the level in the Edinburgh student scene is very low. Students keep coming in and going back out. So whoever gets skilled or has more experience, they leave. But coming back to Edinburgh for my last year of university felt very much like, "Oh, Savvas knows how to dance now." Which was not necessarily true, but in the eyes of the students who have had six months of classes... I felt it was like a huge ego boost that I needed.

And then leaving Edinburgh and going to Barcelona, where Barcelona has a huge Argentinian population, a lot of the culture around milongas is informed by Buenos Aires and Rio de la Plata. It felt very much like, "ooh, okay-" much more etiquette. Until this point, I was not a fluid Spanish speaker. So also living in Spain, I would just listen to tango songs and I'd be like, oh, that's what it's talking about. This is lovely. Or I don't identify with this. But at least being able to judge for myself. And this is where I met Carmen María, who is a Mexican tango teacher and dancer. And again, I was drawn to yet another woman who was leading and following and teaching by herself. And this was also the moment when I discovered queer tango. 

Until this point, I had kind of heard the term queer tango, but it hadn't really resonated with me because I was in young communities where I had a lot of freedom already. So I didn't feel like I was oppressed in any way. And then suddenly in Barcelona, it was very clear that there are men, there are women, there are milongas where you're not allowed to dance with other men. It's not accepted to be following. I felt that-

LIZ: Not allowed meaning there was a social rejection of-

SAVVAS: Yes. I would not have been kicked out, but there were no available dance partners. So not explicitly, but implicitly, I think from the organization and from the mood of the milongas, it was very much communicated that dancing with other men or following other women who I would dance socially in other places, was against the expectations and the etiquette of that specific milonga.

LIZ: So then you started to see the potential value of a queer tango community at the same time that you encountered a queer tango community? Because there already was one in Barcelona...

SAVVAS: Yes. When I went to Barcelona, I did interact with the queer tango community. Um, I think also because of the language barrier - because when I got there, I didn't really speak Spanish - I didn't gravitate directly towards the queer tango community. I think-

LIZ: But you identified as queer at that time.

SAVVAS: Yes. I was comfortable enough in the hetero scene to be in the hetero scene, but I think my, kind of, queer tango awakening was going to the big Berlin festival-

[LIZ ASIDE] That's the International Queer Tango Festival in Berlin, which you can hear more about in episode 30 of this podcast, featuring that festival's founder, Astrid Weiske.

-and seeing a lot of people who I had never seen before and having a feeling of people want to dance with me. I had felt that in the Edinburgh scene because a lot of beginners, you know a bit more than them, so there was this feeling of like, "Savvas is exciting, we want to dance with him." But in Barcelona, I really didn't feel that at all. And I don't think a lot of people felt that in Barcelona, even in the hetero scene.

LIZ: You mean hetero people in the hetero scene? Because you were in the hetero scene, right?

SAVVAS: Exactly. Hetero people in the hetero scene possibly feeling like, "well, I'm just another person here. If I get some tandas, it's good enough." But really, in Berlin, I felt... desired. And not necessarily desired in the sexual scene. I think Berlin has a reputation for having been a very charged festival.

LIZ: Like erotically charged?

SAVVAS: Yes, erotically charged. But also like charged in general, like there was electricity. 

I think I never went back to Berlin after that because I found that energy too intense. But it was eye-opening to be like, all of these other men are following. Because until that point, like, it was completely normal to me that I was doing both roles. But I felt like no one else around me was doing that and I was fine with that. And suddenly I go to a queer tango milonga. Not everybody does both roles equally. But it was so nice cabeceoing people and feeling like they recognized that you wanted to dance with them. And women cabeceoing me to lead me. 

So I think from there on, from 2019, during the four years in Barcelona, I was super active in the queer tango scene in Europe. So I think I was content in the hetero scene in Barcelona because on the side I was attending all of these queer tango festivals. So I was getting the feeling that I was enough, the feeling that I was accepted, the feeling that I had a place in the tango scene from the European queer tango festivals and marathons. And that fueled me to be working in Barcelona towards improving. But I think if the queer tango marathons had not been there, I would have felt very, like, isolated in Barcelona in the hetero scene. 

[MUSIC FADING IN - LYRICS IN SPANISH]

Gira la noche en el horario
Del desvelado y triste reloj del campanario,
Rueda la pena de un tranvía
Que solitario viste, de azul melancolía.
 
Y un fantasma de neblina
Envuelve de fina penumbra al café,
Llora la noche en su agonía
¿Qué busco?... ¿Dónde voy?...
No sé... No sé...
 
¿Será a la triste y lejana Margot que fue
como una luz en mi sombra?
¿Será a su vieja ventana?...
¿Será a su voz, que me nombra?...
 
¿Será al amigo vencido, que ayer nomás
me dio un abrazo llorando?...
Yo no sé qué ando buscando sin cesar
Que en tu penumbra he de hallar...

SAVVAS
Cyprus is a very strange and politically charged place. The kind of recent-history residents of Cyprus are Turkish-speaking Cypriots and Greek-speaking Cypriots. They used to live in communities which were, like, intertwined. Cyprus is more divided linguistically than, um, culturally. Um, religion also has a part to play. We are respectively Greek Orthodox and Muslims, but we are less practicing that our respective, um, I don't know Greece and Turkey-

LIZ: Mainland counterparts?

SAVVAS: -mainland counterparts - perfect. But there was a lot of internal turmoil especially after the, um, liberation from British colonization. And currently the island is occupied in the north by Turkey creating the Northern Republic of Cyprus, which is a non-recognized state so it has its own problems. Like, my friends who live in the north, they struggle with, um, being internationally recognized as citizens of a country. For many years after '74-

[LIZ ASIDE] You can find more background on Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus in the show notes.

-there was a physical barrier cutting through Nicosia, which is the capital - so Nicosia is the last divided capital of, like, Europe. And there's a street where you walk and you can see the numbers, like, I don't know, House 2, House 4, House 10, and then it stops and the rest of the street continues across the border that you need to show a passport for. 

For the past couple of decades, checkpoints have opened where you can cross and I think what has been amazing is that tango has been at the forefront of people crossing the checkpoint to go to the other side of the island to dance tango and meet friends. And I think I personally - and I think this experience for many people - had almost no contact with the Turkish Cypriots because we are geographically divided until I came back to the island in love with tango and figuring out that most of the tango in the island was in the north part of the capital. So I would cross every Friday to go dance tango, in the meantime meeting Turkish-speaking Cypriots who are also indigenous to the island and creating, like, friendships. 

It is incredible to see how many people who are deeply hurt by the political situation - they were deeply hurt by the internal conflict, the massacres, the occupation of the land, um...

LIZ: Can I ask where your family fits - where you family fits into that?

SAVVAS: Yeah, my family, my family has always been from the south - two different regions from the south, um... So we are not internal refugees, um... But many of my friends, both of their families had- their families were originally in the north so they are internally displaced and they now live in the south. Because when the occupation happened, essentially all Turkish-speaking Cypriots who wanted to leave relocated to the north. Everybody who was Greek-speaking in the north moved to the south, unless they chose not to.

LIZ: So people had the opportunity to self-segregate, mostly based on language, maybe culture...

SAVVAS: Exactly. And it was hugely encouraged, I would say, especially when you're at the moment where, um, within a couple of weeks an invasion happens and people die. You're like okay where is the majority of-

LIZ: -people like me-

SAVVAS: -people like me going

LIZ: Yeah. 

And yeah, so that situation already existed in Cyprus - I think before moving to Cyprus, tango was already at the forefront of being bi-communal. And I think this is partly facilitated because it's such a small community, so the obstacle of reaching out to Turkish Cypriots was smaller than the love and the need of people to have a community to dance tango in. I think if the community was much larger, there wouldn't have been the incentive to reach out, because there is also a huge internal criticism from the broader Greek-speaking community and the broader Turkish-speaking community of “Why are you going to dance tango with them, with the other?” 

And I think there is something beautiful about being on an island where I am natively Greek-speaking, they're natively Turkish-speaking, and we don't need language to communicate through tango. 

So when I came back to Cyprus it made only sense to make the project in this context bi-communal - we call this project bi-communal even though we have multiple communities in Cyprus and in tango - but it's not even, like, something specific about this project. It's just that the tango in Cyprus is bi-communal, so it's such a norm to me that tango is more important than the physical barrier and the separation in the context of the people who want to be dancing it. 

I think the gravity and the power of tango - and the love of people towards this partnered dance and culture - to bridge a 50-year-old divide is kind of missed. 

And what I find really fascinating is talking to people who have said multiple times “I will never cross the border. I do not support the invasion, the segregation. Like, I, I do not want to be validating the physical separation of the island by showing my passport and crossing." And then they start tango and they say “I still have feelings about this, but my love and my need for tango is so large that I will step over this stone."

And the funny thing is that once they step over that stone, the fear goes away and they start learning about the other side of the story. Because I think in the education system - both in the north and in the south - there is huge propaganda happening and people think they know what's happening and what happened. And it's only when you meet people who hug you and you feel their heartbeat that you go “Something doesn’t fit here. Something, I’m missing something.” and I think tango is not the solution to the Cyprus problem, but it is a portal into conversation just by meeting the other. 

[MUSIC]

SAVVAS
The current project that I'm trying to establish in Cyprus is called "a tango for every body." It's very much inspired by Tango para Todes.

[LIZ ASIDE] which means tango for all in gender-neutral Spanish

For me, Tango para Todes is the idea that we should be aiming to create a space where everyone feels welcome in whatever way that they are. The focus is not same-sex dancing. The focus is not switching between the roles. All of these have elements to play, but it's just the idea that a community of tango exists where anyone can feel welcome and a sense of belonging and a sense that it's their community and they can take things from the community and they have something to give back. 

a.tango.for.every.body started at a bar called Yalla in Nicosia, which is very close to the checkpoint, so it's very easy for the Turkish Cypriots to come. We started doing free classes there for a couple of months. 

I find it fascinating when I host a taster class for complete beginners and people just walk in. I say “Hey, let’s have a dance,” and I will genuinely enjoy dancing with a person who has never danced tango before. They don't know any of the steps, they don't have any tango technique, but for me the combination of dancing to music I enjoy with being curious about the person in front of me- often happened to me that I discovered new movements that I had never thought about before.

Because a complete beginner will do those movements because they don't know any different, but an advanced dancer will completely avoid them because they're not part of the tango vocabulary. So you close yourself off from possibilities just because they have not been discovered yet - but discovery comes through exploration and with a complete newcomer you can do a lot of exploration that they don't know is exploration because they don't know what the vocabulary is. And from this perspective I feel like when they come in the bar they are offering openness, they're offering vulnerability, they're offering you a chance to be like “Hey, this thing you love, what do you have to show me about it?” And them accepting to be out of their comfort zone is an offering. 

There is nuance to that. The nuance is it is more taxing on my body to constantly be dancing with someone who doesn't have the tango vocabulary I'm used to. So I do really enjoy dancing with also people who practice tango regularly, they are working towards refining their technique, exploring their technique... But I think for me the most important thing in this conversation is curiosity. 

I do find that this conversation gets slightly weaponized in people who only want to take from tango. They've been in tango communities for quite a while and they use this line of thinking as a defense for not wanting to practice, wanting to show up to socials and wanting to do the movements that they want to be doing without being curious about how I respond to those movements. And sometimes I feel my physical body and axis and grounding is being used for them to do the fancy thing, for them to look pretty, for them to feel nice in their bodies, without taking a moment to breathe and say "hey, our communication and whatever we create together is more important than the adorno, boleo, gancho I wanted to do by myself." And I'm talking about this about, like, usually followers, but it also happens with leaders.

I have had the experience quite often, um, men leading me and I feel there is no listening, no curiosity from them. They are still, like, trying to move me through space and they have no interest or appreciation of why my body might be moving at a different speed or with a different texture, than what they had practiced probably in the class alone or, um... And this feeling of constantly being wrong, I think an experience of a follower is a non-curious leader saying “This was my plan, this is what I wanted to be doing, fit in it.” And I am, I'm sure that my level of following might not be what they are used to, but we accepted to dance with each other. 

All of the work I have put into finding tools - to make me more grounded, to increase my listening, to increase my curiosity - has specifically been the thing that allow me to be in a bar dancing and being present whoever is there. 

Of course I am also building my vocabulary and my technique and my toolkit to be able to play with more experienced dancers, but in my everyday, day-to-day life, I don't have that many experienced dancers, so most of my technique work goes into: how can I be able to absorb whatever form of information and return it in an interesting way that does not feel like a disruption, does not feel like a mistake, but feels like an opportunity? 

And I think the beginners are super surprised when they're like “Oh, I was dancing,” and I'm like “We were, because whatever movement you were making I was trying to reinterpret through my lens of how could that be tango and return that to you and see what you thought of that response." 

I don't hugely like the word "adaptability," but it is some sort of, like, not having a rigid path but rather being a river. And the river might find a different track and that track also might make sense and sometimes the river might carve out the path. It's constantly, like, being redirected. I think I like constantly redirecting and I think we're both redirecting each other in the embrace and the communication. 

[MUSIC FADING IN - LYRICS IN SPANISH]

Quiero cruzar la madrugada
Buscando entre sus brumas, la que no fue olvidada...
Viejas estrellas del hastío
La luz del alba alumbra, muriendo dentro mío.
 
Sortilegio con que me ata
La luna de plata y el turbio café,
Llora la noche en el rocío
¿Qué busco?... ¿Quién soy yo?
No sé... No sé...

SAVVAS
I wanted to be communicated this sense of being free, coming as you are, you are welcome in whatever form that you are today. And this idea that there is a huge spectrum of tango musical expression, and libraries and orchestras, and we can appreciate Piazzolla and we can appreciate Demare-

[LIZ ASIDE] two beloved creators of tango music with very different sounds

-and we should see that diversity and that acceptance in the bodies that are on the dance floor. I'm really inspired by how the way we dance tango is determined by which physical body's used to dance it, and how we can make active decisions about what kind of tango we dance and how we dance it based on the bodies that we want to feel comfortable in tango. 

For example, the expectation that men are leading and men are heavier and women are following and women are lighter has created a vocabulary that is designed around those bodies and I think there is nothing wrong with saying volcadas were designed around a thinner body leaning and being supported by a taller, heavier body.

[LIZ ASIDE] Volcadas are one example of off-axis movements, movements where the leader invites their partner to lean into their torso or arm rather than staying independently on balance.

So if you have a woman who is 150 kilos, that movement is not going to make sense in her body if I am leading her who I am a short man. And that does not make us bad tango dancers, it just means that we might have an opportunity to create new vocabulary that's based on new combinations of bodies and say "that vocabulary doesn't work for us." 

Another thing that I find is I don't have an especially flexible body and it does feel very surprising when I see very large boleos being performed, especially, like, by professional performers, and the dancing quality of a body might be determined by the angles of the flying-leg back boleo. And I'm like, well, that specific body can stretch themselves that much, but maybe my body has other characteristics that might still make it an equally valid following body and I don't need to be hitting the back of my head with my leg, and I-

LIZ: Like, you don't need to aspire to that particular boleo.

SAVVAS: Yes, that specific movement has been created and does work very well for a specific kind of body. I can be working towards some movements, but also let's appreciate and work and be joyful with the bodies that we have in front of us. 

LIZ: I want to just restate a little bit. I've definitely encountered this topic in a tango context, but I don't know how much I've heard people talk about the movements themselves. So the kind of vocabulary would be- off-axis movements is kind of the most obvious one, right?

SAVVAS: I would go even, like, deeper where I say this concept of, like, the leader initiates the move and they are this like anchor point that the follower can then project from and move still has this idea that you are the anchor point and you are heavier. Because in my experience when I am following much shorter, thinner women than I am, it's harder to feel security in that anchor point. And someone could say, well, I'm not a very good lead because I don't make my follower feel safe or... Yes?

LIZ: [LAUGHING] I experience that sometimes...

SAVVAS: Yes. There is- in following as we currently practice it, there is this feeling that you are allowed to explore the boundary of your access because the leader can absorb that movement and create very interesting things from them. And I think especially very experienced followers will say being constantly, perfectly on axis and independent is not the aim of my dancing. The aim is to be finding these points of, like, micro-counterbalancing, which does lead back to having a heavier lead.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I don't think there is anything wrong with feeling like your leader can support you. But I think it would be fascinating if we had a leader who was thinner and shorter, with a follower who was taller and heavier and they rethought the whole structure of how leading and following can work to say how can my follower who is heavier be my anchor? Given the vocabulary that we have it's perfectly reasonable. Like, you can encourage your follower to not be moving and be standing still and then leading on to your follower, which to any mainstream tango body combination, that doesn't sound reasonable, because they imagine themselves as the taller, heavier man - why would I lean on my shorter follower in high heels?

LIZ: Yeah

SAVVAS: But if your follower is a two-meter-tall woman and I am a 170-short man, they can handle my weight perfectly and they're more in balance than I am, so it might be very enjoyable to them and interesting, and perhaps find a musical context where it would be very interesting for me to lead that. 

LIZ: Yeah, I feel like, it's like, there's lip service to this concept that, you know, your size, your shape shouldn't affect what role you dance. Like it's- maybe it's a little bit new, because I mean I've also heard this idea of, like, it's easier to lead if you're bigger, which is- we're kind of acknowledging that I think on some level. But then now there is this movement to present the idea that it should be possible for anybody in any body to do either role with, with anyone. But, um, maybe the movements have not caught up with that idea. 

SAVVAS: I think there is value in saying, um, any body should be welcome to dance with any other body and the leading and following should still work. AND. How much do we understand about the dynamics of bodies and leading and following and weight to adapt what we're trying to do to the body that we're dancing with? And I think it's important to put ourselves and the body that we are in relation to the body that we're dancing with, rather than saying that person is fat, that person is tall, that person is short, that person is thin, instead of bringing the partnership... They are heavier than me, they are lighter than me, they are taller than me.

LIZ: Yeah. And then I think there would be a lot of value in just recognizing, like, we- I'm sure can both name people who are small and they lead off-axis movements beautifully and they could perfectly lead someone who was bigger and heavier than them in those off-axis movements, because they have developed that level of skill. But acknowledging that it- they probably had to work a lot harder than somebody bigger. 

SAVVAS: Completely. And I think we do often talk about, like, the volume of a person. Um, but I am a muscular body and I think, um, sometimes when discussing with other people how I lead that, they say, "Oh you can produce so much force with this thing" and I'm like "Yes, and we should recognize that muscular engagement is needed to produce some movements and some bodies might not be able to produce that much movement or produce much more based on the rest of their physical conditions." 

And exactly what you said - it's like, yes, given the surface area of our feet, it might take a lot more skill from a heavier dancer to keep their axis in the essentially same surface area of the feet. And they might need to regulate their axis much tighter, which also limits the joy of their dance, I feel, in their connection to their partner, because they feel like any minor deviation in their axis might not be able to be contained or supported by their leader. 

In a.tango.for.every.body we do attract a lot of people who have larger bodies, plus-size bodies, and ... it's incredible to see how much joy people have to give and how much joy they can experience, like, um, just by the act of saying "hey, come and dance, and your body weight has nothing to, nothing to reduce..." or- it does, it does change- and that's what I was communicating before- yes, it does change things, but it doesn't change the fundamental thing that we are bodies and we love to dance with each other. 

LIZ SCRIPT
Here's to cultivating curiosity, community, and joy in our own bodies and the bodies around us.

Thank you, Savvas. And thanks to Juan Villarreal and Patricio Crom for their recording of "La Madrugada," composed by Ángel Maffia with lyrics by Cátulo Castillo, which accompanies this episode.

[MUSIC FADING IN - LYRICS IN SPANISH]

¿Será a la triste y lejana Margot que fue
como una luz en mi sombra?
¿Será a su vieja ventana?...
¿Será a su voz, que me nombra?...
 
¿Será al amigo vencido, que ayer nomás
me dio un abrazo llorando?...
Yo no sé qué ando buscando sin cesar
Que en tu penumbra he de hallar...