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Tango – a perfect venue to meet
Dressing for Success
Clothing can be an important consideration in Finnish tango sessions. While some might choose to dance in their normal, everyday vestments, others may well select period garb. For example, like these dancers at a We Love Helsinki city dancing event: suspenders and wool trousers for men, frocks or flowery gowns for women.
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Putting Dancers on a Pedestal
Scandinavia's balmy summer evenings encourage outdoor dance performances and dance-based social gatherings all over the country. The programmes, which can go on for several hours, often last well into the midnight-sunny evening and might feature a live band.
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Partnering up
The tango was brought to Finland by fin de siècle British troubadours, with Finns writing their own tangos by the 1930s. By World War Two, tangos comprised one half of all music chart tunes in Finland. Soon enough, tango events became a popular mode of courtship.
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Wooing with Mother Nature
Dance pavilions in a forested or lakeside setting – such as this one – are popular gathering spaces for Finland's urban and rural inhabitants. Afterwards, Finns might hop into a nearby sauna or pop out to a local pub to cool down and catch up.
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Helsinki is a buzzy foodie city in the cutting-edge of Finnish new cuisine. The innovative use of Finnish ingredients as part of the New Nordic tasting menu and a laid-back atmosphere is what Helsinki’s bistros are all about.
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Tango – a perfect venue to meet
The famed South American dance is one of the country’s most popular pastimes.
It’s nearly midnight on a balmy summer’s evening and, thanks to the latitude of the Finnish lake district, it’s nearly broad daylight outside. The wooden pavilion just north of Tampere is brimming with Finns of all shapes and sizes, striding about the dance floor, each holding a partner tightly and gazing impassively into the other’s eyes. Virpi, my tango instructor, compresses me against my assigned partner. “Stand clooooooose to her,” she booms.
Even though Finns are considered fairly reserved, they have a real facility for intimate physicality in public. Tango is one of the country’s most popular pastimes, and it offers the perfect venue for otherwise-sheepish Finns to meet, greet and court each other.
Unlike the sensuous sounds of the Argentine version, the Finnish tango is darker and much more solemn, with lyrics that wax about love and loss; and deep, drawn-out sorrowful tones that evoke emotions of wistfulness, regret and a longing for a homeland. The growth of nostalgia and melancholy as Finnish cottage industries stem from the country’s star-crossed history.
Finland was haplessly tossed around for years as a political hot potato between Russia and Sweden, and lost a massive chunk of its eastern border to the Soviet Union following World War Two. Rather appropriately, the most famous Finnish tango, “Satumaa” (meaning ‘Fairytale Land’), is a lament about a faraway place that can never be reached. This uniquely Finnish sense of solitude and yearning is succinctly expressed by kaiho, a notion rather similar to the Brazilian concept of saudade.
As we pause for a moment on the dance floor, it occurs to me that perhaps to feel content and untroubled, Finns need to appreciate heartache and disquiet: to be truly happy, maybe one has to be unhappy first. I direct my gaze straight at my dance partner. We lock eyes, and I grasp her hand, then place one hand on her hip. And as the accordion plays its first slow, woeful notes, we begin to dance.
Cultural Beat
Contrast is the main ingredient in Finnish cultural life, probably because everything looks and sounds different from our northern perspective.
