Just a few streets away from Milonga Tango Queer La Marsháll is another type of pioneering queer tango venue: Situated in a quaint old house in Almargo is Tango Cuir Studio, first established by pro tango dancer Anahí Carballo in 2023. With its expansive space, smooth wood floors, and a wall of mirrors, the place has a decidedly professional feel. Whereas Milonga Tango Queer La Marsháll uses a shared space in a multipurpose community center, Tango Cuir is a permanent dance school dedicated to tango. In her studio, Carballo looks only for skill in her students, no matter who they are or where they come from.
As the daughter of professional dancers, Carballo at first viewed tango as a strictly heteronormative tradition during her upbringing in the conservative outskirts of rural Córdoba, Argentina. When she first fell in love with another woman and came out as a lesbian in 2007, she was shunned by her friends and bullied at school; people in her insular neighborhood sent her death threats. In the late 2000s, she moved to Buenos Aires seeking, as she describes it, a safer life: “I was 19 and arrived with a bag of clothes, a bombo [drum], and nothing else,” Carballo says. “From there I built myself up, bit by bit, to where I am today—a qualified folk and tango instructor with her own studio.”
In the comparatively open-minded Argentine capital, Carballo trained as a dance teacher but initially shunned partner dances where, she says, “I had to put on a miniskirt and heels, to have a man in a dominant role spin me around.” She pursued modern and contemporary dance but eventually came back to tango through instructors like Soledad Nani, who openly practiced same-sex dancing. “I found there were other ways of dancing tango, and that tango is what the dancer makes it.”
