Tango lovers of Long Island find community, connection 

Fancy dresses loaded with spangles and beading, as well as snappy suits, fedoras and dress shoes, were on display when more than 100 tango dancers gathered at a restaurant in Westbury recently. 

The milonga, which refers to both a social dance-and-dinner evening and a type of dance that's looser and faster-paced than the tango, was held to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of the Argentine Tango Lovers of Long Island group, which hosts weekly lessons and a monthly dinner-dance.

"It would have been our 25th anniversary dance, except for the COVID interruption," said Sherry Palencia, 81, of North Babylon, president and one of the founders of the group. "But we're back!"

Sherry and her husband, Enrique Palencia, and another couple, Carmen and Alberto Quintero, formed the group in part so they could dance closer to their Long Island homes. Vice president Carmen Quintero, 76, of Elwood, explains they had gone dancing at a tango club in Manhattan and, when they came out, found her car had been towed.

"We decided then to start a club here on Long Island," she said.

Over the years the group has morphed into a social outlet for many of the dancers, who enjoy parties and summer barbecues at one another's homes. Some travel together to Argentina and Greece for tango dancing, lessons and sightseeing. A weekly practicas, or practice session, at a dance studio on Friday evenings also lets dancers take private or group lessons.

"We want to make you a tango dancer, not to teach you phenomenal steps but to help you look elegant and confident on the dance floor and dance happily," said Sherry Palencia, who also teaches line dancing.

The group has grown from 17 members to about 150, and it includes people in their late 20s and up.  

"It's amazing how tango has taken over the world. It's a journey, and you should enjoy every step," she said. "It's all in the interpretation of the music."

'A little oasis'

Valerie Wolf-Sonkin, 55, of Melville, and her husband, Yury Wolf-Sonkin, 53, have been dancing tango for 16 years.

"This is how we started," Valerie Wolf-Sonkin said, gesturing to the crowded dance floor. They came to a milonga and decided they'd be fine jumping in without tango lessons.

"We were not fine," she laughed. "But we took lessons and kept at it. Yury fell in love with the music and wanted to stick with it. He had taken judo and wrestling and he found similarities, like focusing on where you place your weight, and he liked experimenting with it."

She enjoys the socialization, the dancing and the chance for an evening out.

"We call tango therapy," she said. "It's a powerful dance, it's very connecting. We miss it when we don't do it."

For her 50th birthday, her husband surprised her with a trip to Buenos Aires, where they stayed at a boutique tango hotel and took lessons. They continue to take lessons, focusing not just on the choreography but on infusing musicality into the dance.

"There's whole conversations to be had," Valerie Wolf-Sonkin said. "When a dancer's really good, they don't dance just to the beat, they dance the different voices of the instruments, the violin, the bandoneon. It's a process." The accordionlike bandoneon helps give tango music its distinctive sound.

Ed Johnson, 74, of Cambria Heights, Queens, has been dancing with the group for 20 years.

"It's so good for you — the head, the heart, the soul," he said. "It's a special place, a little oasis. Everything else disappears. You have to pay such close attention, so you're not worried about the Mets or the Yankees, or what's happening in Ukraine. It's your own little conversation with your partner."

Farmingdale residents Estrella Molina, 67, and her husband, David Olivares, 68, began coming to milongas about 10 years ago, after their kids were grown.

"The first time we came, my mom was visiting from Chile. She had danced tango for years and I wanted to offer her something familiar. I grew up listening to the music, and my mom danced tango until COVID," Molina said.

"For us it's a social thing," Molina said, noting their group sometimes gathers at one another's homes for barbecues. Her husband agrees. "It's good for us as a couple," Olivares said.

Longtime group members Anita, 71, and Joseph Cummo, 79, of New Hyde Park, still consider themselves beginners. They started as salsa dancers, then found tango 16 years ago.

"They've become my family. We're all aging gracefully together," Anita Cummo said of the group. "It's social, it's physical and it's emotional, especially after the pandemic."

Joseph Cummo said he was ready for a challenge when they found tango.

"And this is it," he said. "It took me eight months to learn how to walk [my partner] properly." He mimes a couple's torsos leaning close and then leaving space from the waist down. "The body follows the foot — you have to leave some room so you don't bang each other in the knees. If it was an easy dance, everybody would be doing it," he said.

A glance and a nod

Tango's rich history draws on influences as disparate as  waltzes, polkas and the dances and music of enslaved Africans. It got its start in Argentina and Uruguay at the turn of the 20th century. Different tango styles have developed, and Palencia said Argentine Tango Lovers members dance the social, or more informal, style of the dance, as opposed to the performance style.

There's a dance etiquette — los códigos — for inviting partners to dance, as well as a procedure for safely entering crowded dance floors. Along with the technical elements, there's also a tradition of asking partners to dance with a glance and receiving the cabeceo — the nod of agreement.

Palencia's group, though, is a bit more informal, she said, and often dancers approach one another and just ask a partner to dance. Partners share three dances in a tanda, or set — a tango, a milonga and a vals, or faster waltz — before partners change.

Avid dancers often go into the city to further hone their skills. A group trying to get started on the East End sponsored a three-day Montauk Tango Festival last month. Organizer Renee Rouger, who runs tango workshops in Manhattan, said she and her partner, Montauk restaurant owner Lewis Gross, are looking for a venue.

After taking time off during the pandemic, Palencia's group resumed monthly milongas and weekly practicas last year. In December, another group, Amigos del Tango of Long Island, also resumed offering tango dancing one Wednesday a month at Café Buenos Aires in Huntington. Its organizer, Miriam Wirski, 64, of Glen Cove, who’s also a member of Argentine Tango Lovers of Long Island, enjoys tango so much that at one point she searched out tango dance venues five days a week.

"It's about the connection the leader and the follower have," Wirski said. "It's felt through the music and how you move."