Tango and Istanbul
Chapter 1 of 3 · 1918–1931
Pera and the dancing masters
A Western dance for a society just out of seclusion.
Beyoğlu (Pera) · Şehzadebaşı
Tango spread to Europe after the First World War and reached Istanbul through Pera (Beyoğlu), and from there the rest of Turkey.1 It arrived soon after the nation was formed in 1924.2
Murat Belge's essay in the Istanbul Encyclopedia describes how the Westernization of the late Ottoman years had already produced the kanto, a genre sung before "dramas" at the Direklerarası Theater and addressed to the common folk; the tango, by contrast, was a Western product and a dance, and from the beginning smelled of an "elite" atmosphere.1
The dance was a very new phenomenon in a society that had just come out of female seclusion, and its romantic-sexual style was tamed down even more in Turkey.1 The profession of "dancing master" emerged: dancing masters from the non-Muslim minorities, mainly Armenians, opened dancing schools in almost every part of the city, and the dance they taught most was the tango.1 "He dances well" or "he is very good at the tango" carried great weight in high society.1
The music of these years, most danced first
What happened, and where
No placed, sourced line for these years yet.