Past few months I went from disappointment to enthusiasm about tango. Social distancing is mortal enemy to social dancing and that brings up the question: will we ever dance tango again? How will it look like after all this ends?
Asking myself these (and similar) questions made me do a little research. This was not the first pandemic humanity faced after all. We had much deadlier viruses attacking people and somehow life continued.
People still danced and society didn’t ended. Humans are social beings: they crave real connection with real human beings. We’re not lonely islands.
Looking back
I turned my attention to one of the deadliest (and most recent) pandemic humanity faced: The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 (also known as the Spanish Flu).
Spanish flu, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or the 1918 influenza pandemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.
From Wikipedia
Four successive waves… 100 million deaths… mostly young people… What are the odds for the world to recover from this in short few years?
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Well, it looks like that’s exactly what happened. Not only the world continued as it was before, but it went harder and stronger.
What I’m saying is that right after the influenza pandemic 1918-1920, we have the jazz era, the so called Roaring Twenties which brought period of rise of popularity of Lindy Hop, Fox trot, Charleston, Waltz…
Tango as well: remember that The Golden Age of Tango started a decade after that.
Dancers, mostly young people danced socially, despite the fact that the influenza killed 50-100 million people worldwide, which makes it the deadliest pandemic in history.
And, the victims of that pandemic were mostly those young people!
The point is…
Don’t imagine people were not aware of the measures they should take, like social distancing and wearing face masks – because they were.
Of course, getting citizens to comply with such orders is another story: In 1918, a San Francisco health officer shot three people when one refused to wear a mandatory face mask. In Arizona, police handed out $10 fines for those caught without the protective gear. But eventually, the most drastic and sweeping measures paid off.
National Geographic
Yet, after the pandemic, we have this decade of rise of popularity of social dancing. Influenza today is considered something little more severe than the common cold. We learned to live with it – even before the vaccine was invented.
To compare: Influenza in 1918-20 killed almost 100 million people. The novel coronavirus in the moment I’m writing this (June 2020) killed less than half million worldwide (some consider that number to be overinflated for one reason or another).
Well, it looks like the future is not that dim after all!
BTW, here in Slovakia, tango life is not dead at all. Most tango schools reopened and you’ll find also some milongas. I am not pessimistic at all.
Spread some of that optimism 🙂 Some people need it! 🙂