Interview with Sebastián Pereyra

By: M.Belén Bulacio —

Dancer and dance teacher, Sebastián Pereyra gave me this interview one night at the milonguita Gato Negro (formerly Antiguas Lunas). Sagittarian, born in the city of Padua, in the district of Merlo, Buenos Aires, Sebastián told us that his childhood and adolescence were spent in the west in Paso del Rey. He remembers the Tiberio Botto Institute with great affection and comments that he is still linked to his friends from that time. In addition to his profile as a dancer and dance teacher, he also worked as a choreography assistant and Pilates instructor. He shared with us that “he never (thought) that he would have such a close bond with art through dance, there are more and more things that (invite him) to continue believing in the possibility of transformation, generation of awareness and life that exists in art”.

Belén: How was your first contact with tango?

Sebastián: It has to do with images because in my house we listened to a lot of music, a lot of folklore; my brothers danced folklore. My sister in her adolescence danced tango. Hugo Diaz [harmonica player and composer from Santiago] was played a lot at my parents’ house, Hugo Diaz’s wife used to go to my parents’ house a lot because she was the godmother of the folkloric group where my siblings danced. I have pictures of my parents with Domingo Cura and Victoria Díaz [the former was a notable bombisto and instrumentalist from Santiago de Santiago and the latter was his sister, dancer, singer and wife of Hugo Díaz], I was in my mother’s belly.

My first contact or primary sensation in relation to tango has to do with going down the stairs of my parents’ house, crossing the living room to go to the kitchen, I was about 4 or 5 years old, and sitting on a high chair on the kitchen counter, having breakfast and the voice of Hector Larrea is playing on the radio in the laundry room and there I was listening to tango. I say it and it moves me because it reminds me of very nice things. Those were my first contacts, basically. And later we met Rubén Véliz, who is a great tango dancer, and also my sister danced with him in a group in the Ballet Brandsen [choreographic group]. Rubén and my sister danced this tango by Mariano Mores called Tanguera. I don’t like Mariano Mores’ orchestra at all, but it is a tango that gives me tremendous sensations and that is another memory I have, of sitting in the living room and listening to that tango.

And later, when I was about 13, my parents started to take tango lessons on Mondays, I remember exactly, on Mondays I stayed at home and I stayed because my brother was there. One Monday my brother was not there and I decided, in order not to stay home alone, to accompany my old lady and my old man. It was a center for retired people in Merlo and they made me dance there and the teachers told me that besides Monday they were waiting for me on Thursday and, I don’t remember what other day of the week, also in the theater of Merlo because they wanted me to dance in the group they had. I went a couple of times but I was a teenager and I didn’t expect any of that.

Those were my first encounters with tango. Later, when I was 20 years old, I started dating a girl who was a classical dancer and she wanted to start tango. Her parents had a tango teacher who went to their house and we took private lessons there. So I started to remember things that I saw on the Sólo Tango channel and once I mentioned to Don Tito, the girl’s father, that I really liked Gachi Fernández [Tango teacher, dancer and choreographer]. For me she was an impressive dancer and I admired her a lot when I saw her in Sólo Tango. Don Tito found out the address of that dancer, called her and we started to take some semi-private lessons at Gachi Fernández’s house in Constitución and it was like wow. That’s when I started to get into deeper questions of movement and then I had a lot of comings and goings in tango until about 10 years ago, since then the only thing I’ve been doing is dance and study tango.

Belén: What milongas do you choose when you are in Buenos Aires? What draws you to those spaces?

Sebastián: What happens to me since I came back from Greece in September is that I am in crisis with the tango spaces,I feel that there are many spaces that are not very genuine, you see? I think that the most traditional or most popular milongas are living a lot on mysticism and there is little depth and little study, right? I feel that they are living a lot of mysticism and I feel that with that alone we do not advance, the culture does not grow, the tango movement or the movement itself does not grow. I feel that this is happening, that there is a lot of mainstream. In Cachirulo or El Motivo you could dance well 10 years ago, you had to take classes and good classes to go and dance in those dance floors. Today what happens is that there is a lot of mysticism and a lot of foreigners who think that by participating in a place like that, that’s it. That’s it, we’ve done everything. And I feel that there is a void in the search for quality and depth of the movement. The mainstream obscures that search with a lot of flyers, a lot of DJs and little dancing. So, the places that call me are, for example, this one like Antiguas Lunas, where people stay after the class to experiment. It is not about dancing well or dancing badly, there is like a certain identity that is generated in the groups of classes, those people who stay in practice or in the milonga and we all dance with everyone. It is about connecting from a more genuine, more comfortable, more real side. It seems to me that this does give a certain dynamic to dance, a certain dynamic to movement and that leads me to identify with those spaces. That’s why I also choose to go and maybe I don’t dance. It seems to me that Diego, the organizer, generates a space where people are comfortable, where there is no imposture. There are other spaces where mostly tourists are living on a mystique and I don’t see a search for quality, as I said before.

La Viruta, beyond the discrepancies that people may have, is where everyone falls. And it seems to me a space that proposes a most interesting synthesis where there is tango and tango is danced, there is a mixture of people of all kinds, people who dance well, people who dance badly, professionals and amateurs. La Viruta continues to maintain that dynamic, it is a place where I can go alone and I feel comfortable, I don’t have to imposture anything, I can have a beer at the bar.

Another place I like is El Cafetín, I go there every Monday. It seems to me that it is another genuine space that invites you to build this identity thing that tango has and not the imposture.

Belén: What projects are you working on these days?

Sebastián: I’m giving tango lessons in a milonga in the west zone, in a very nice and picturesque place which is an old still life, it’s called Tarzán in Castelar. Today I start teaching at Antiguas lunas with Diego, to whom I am very grateful for having invited me. I also give classes in a tango house for tourists called Palacio Tango in the Astor Piazzolla complex, in the Galería Güemes, there in Florida, they are short classes of half an hour with a group called Jugando tango.

I am training in Pilates and I have just finished putting together a mat class for my instructors Mariana and Mile, and recently I was invited as choreographic assistant in a project of an international company called Sur Mundo Ensemble led by Gabriela Zuarez, an Argentine-Dutch playwright and contemporary dance choreographer. Everything she and her team research and create is based on tango, that’s why they called me.

Another work space I have is with a Bachelor in Contemporary Dance, a graduate of the UNA, Perla Lazo, who has been working on an idea about Malvinas,we have been working on this project for a year and we made a video with a contemporary dancer. We will be rehearsing a soloist part for a new video with me.

All this makes me very happy and I feel very grateful to be in this wheel and that all this is happening.