Tango club says come dancing in the park

It is a dance you can learn in an evening, but you can spend a lifetime obsessed with mastering it. The tango - sociable, sensual, intimate and fun - has hit Norfolk dance floors and fans are hoping it will entrance a new generation of dancers here.

Chairman Tony Ramsay explained its attraction: "The best description I have of it is 'A man and a woman meet on the dance floor and begin to walk in search of each other'.

"It is all about connection and the whole thing is improvised so there are no steps to follow. It is connection without words".

The tango was born in Argentina in the 1880s and was taken around the world bythe wealthy playboys of Buenos Aires. The young men were often sent on a European Grand Tour by their rich families, taking the tango with them to the continent's great cities where it became a craze among the middle and upper classes.

But back in Buenos Aires it grew and grew until it defined cultural life with dancers in their thousands attending tango venues.

Argentine dance teacher Pablo Alonso - who has given workshops in Norwich for Tango in the Park - takes up the story.

"Our military and government tried to kill the culture in the 1970s. They didn't want big meetings happening. But in the 1990s the young people wanted to recover our culture and they began dancing again".

Now it is back in the bars, clubs and street squares of Argentina - although today's young people dance a slightly different version to that of their grandparents.

"Now we say that our biggest claims to fame are the tango, the footballers, the meat ant the beautiful women!"

Pablo has danced the tango since he was 12, when his mother taught him. Now he lives part of the year in Buenos Aires and some of the time in London, where he has helped to establish it as an increasingly popular dance.

"The tango is the most complicated and, at the same time, the most beautiful of social dances. All the dances like salsa and swing are social and open dances, but this is the only one where you can connect with someone and flow with each other," he said.

"It brings together the rhythms from around the world, so wherever it is danced people can find something resonating deep in them. It finds an echo everywhere".

The Tango in the Park grew out of similarly addicted tango dancers from Norwich who found themselves travelling to Cambridge, often three times a week, to find places where they could dance. Eventually they formed an organisation to promote the tango in Norwich.