The Diva of Tango”, as they named her in the United States, laments: “We’re at the bottom of the pile”… “I don’t have any retirement pension, nobody made my payments.” She returns to Corrientes street with “Tanguera”; and bluntly states: “I don’t believe in [tango] schools… The milonga is the best teacher.” Of her personal life she confesses: “I let love go by, like a fool… for tango.

She started going to the milongas at the Club Atlanta when she was just 12 years old, but in those days she didn’t dance: she accompanied her sister, La Ñata, who did “raise the dust” on the dance-floor. María Nieves Rego, then a young girl, didn’t even dream of becoming the most famous Argentine tango dancer at international level. Neither did she imagine that just two years later she would meet the person who was to become her now legendary dancing partner, Juan Carlos Copes, and that together they would form the most popular couple in Argentina, triumphing in the theaters of Corrientes street, on television, and on prestigious stages abroad to close their career together joining the cast of the famous show “Tango Argentino”. Today, the oh-so-typically Buenos Aires dancer returns on the scene as one of the stars of “Tanguera”, the musical that has won many awards and critical acclaim and is staged once again at the National Theater.
Tango-lover, fully-fledged milonguera in her own right, an impeccable professional, this performer, as much “ours” as Corrientes street, takes care of every detail for the photos: clothes, make-up, hair-do… everything. Afterwards, now in the peace and quiet of her house in Maure street, with the maté and her ever-present cigarettes, she grants an interview, open and sincere. Authentic, as she says.

“I learned by watching, girl, nobody taught me,” she starts to tell this living legend of the milonga and stage tango…
- So, what do you think of the schools?
- I’m against the schools. Absolutely! It’s a con. Nobody’s the owner of the truth in tango. I always tell them when I give a lesson: there’s no better teacher than to go to the milonga! Wear out shoes, get kicked and have your feet stepped on, and do the same yourself. It’s true, girl! Me, for example, I like dancing with a plié, but other like the legs stiff. I say “waist”, and you go somewhere else and they say: “no, move the whole body”. So, there isn’t a truth to teach the youngsters.
- Junior Cervila told us in a previous report that you and Copes had given him the gift of a profession, you took tango onto the stage…
- Ah, Junio, he’s so grateful. There are other dancers who were with us and they never recognize us as references… We didn’t have references. Do you know who mine was? Cid Charisse. I adored her, I watched her films five or six times. But she was a great ballerina, me just a simple tanguera…!
- And at the Club Atlanta, didn’t you have a reference there?
- No, no… I never, even remotely, thought I’d make a career out of tango! I thought that tango was going to dance to have fun, nothing more, like rock. What happened was my ex-partner had the vision to do something with tango. He was a visionary.
- In that era, in the ‘50s, you did Sunday matinees, didn’t you?
- Yes, on Sundays at two in the afternoon we’d already be putting on out make-up at the theater. The stars were Nélida Roca, Adolfo Stray, Pepe Arias, all the greats… Carlos A Petit, a visionary, said: “Let’s see what these greenhorns can do” and he took us on. There were twenty of us dancing tango, it brought the house down, girl…!
- And did they pay well in those days?
- No. They didn’t and they don’t pay well today. The dancer is the dregs in tango. The singer gets more because they have their recording and it’s played on the radio. But if we’re not there they don’t see us and we don’t get paid.
- They’re paying young dancers between 50 and 70 pesos a night, but without retirement pension.
- But it’s not as if I’m retired with a pension! I tried to get a retirement pension for all I had given the country and nobody had paid any contributions for me, and Varieties had taken off the percentage. One day, when I’m six feet under, they’ll give it to me…
- Is the dancer very unprotected?
- Totally. Nowadays there’s the Association of Teachers and Dancers, but they can’t do anything… If the government of the City, with the championships, we adjudicated and what they paid us was a pittance…
- How do you feel with your young companions in this stage of your career?
- Very good, much-loved. I relax with the youngsters, they look after me, they give me energy and they make a fuss of me.
- When was the last time you and Copes danced together?
Tango Argentino brought us together in 200. We went to Broadway to see in the New Millennium. Segovia convinced us and it was the time I was best paid in my life.
- After splitting up, who have you returned to dance with?
- With Luis Pereyra, he gave me the chance, and just think! It was the most applauded number. That was at the Avenida and at the Recova Plaza.
- And after Luisito, you started with Tanguera?
- Yes, but between Luisito and Tanguera I had a long break. Two long years passed until I danced with Luisito. I had a long time without work.
- In your personal life, did you have only one love?
- No. I had various loves. Away from the milonga…
- Do you feel you lived what you deserved?
- Yes, because it’s what I sought.
- And what is it that you looked for?
- I didn’t look for anything.
- I mean, what did you seek in a man?
- What any woman likes: a person who gives you love and above all respect. Who values you as a woman.
- And did you find it?
- Yes, but I let it go… stupidly, for continuing with tango. That’s why I always say that just as tango gave me so much, I also left much along the way. His name doesn’t matter, put… Juan, he had nothing to do with this environment.
- Did he demand that you leave tango?
- Of course, he wanted me to leave it. I couldn’t convince him, he wanted me all to himself. He wanted a normal life.
- Today, when you lie down and close your eyes, do you think you did the right thing?
- Ah, yes, I sleep very peacefully. It was my choice. I don’t complain, I know how to adapt to everything. Having plenty of dosh or not knowing where the next meal will come from. I don’t lose any sleep over that.
- Why didn’t you have children?
- It wasn’t possible, because of the work. I chose not to have them.
- Mariano Mores told me that the greatest reward for him was the public’s applause.
- For me the applause is the best vitamin there is. Previously I didn’t realize, because I went, danced and they applauded, but now it’s like it gives me a bit of a surprise to realize how much people care. The years pass and you want to give and you can’t give what you’d like to, so it seems like people are going to distance themselves. But people love me! People love me! (she repeats it emphatically). The other day I went to dance, they just mentioned my name and the applause didn’t stop. I like that but it inhibits me too.
- The City Government has a project to create a tango ballet. Would you like to be called on?
- I don’t feel I’m a teacher, I get embarrassed teaching. But I do feel able to tell the kids my experiences. I always say: “I was born to dance tango and I’m going to die dancing tango.” My mission in life is sublime, because I realized that I have a “something” with the public, a very special empathy. When I go out on stage to dance I feel the public under my skin and vice-versa. Because many people say to me: “Thank you for the energy you give us.” There’s “something”…
- How do you see the milonga today?
- I haven’t been to the dances for a long time. They call me from all over, but I don’t go. I feel like staying at home, getting up early. I’m in bed by 9. I live the opposite of what I lived all my life, now I enjoy the day. The daytime people are different from those of the night.
- And what is the formula for getting there as well as you are?
- To dance tango, that’s my only secret.
- Are cigarettes your only vice?
- The only one. Absolutely!
- What was it like to meet Duvall?
- He never interested me… When we were in Los Angeles he would do asados, I would save myself for the show. I’ve always been like that, not going to parties, asados, get-togethers. I would stay at home, I saved myself for the show.
- And of all the companions you had in Tango Argentino, who do you remember most fondly?
- I remember them all because we shared so many years, it’s not that we did a season together. Like ten years, from the first night in ’83 at the Chatelét de Paris. Afterwards I went to various places in Europe until they took us to Broadway and that’s when we danced for the White House and they made a tribute to us. We went to Japan twice, all in all we traveled the world. Tango Argentino is one of the shows where we really felt ourselves to be performers and respected. Claudio Segovia and Héctor Orezoli respected us, they found five-star hotels for us and they realized that with that they were respected as impresarios. Apart from being very talented they were very smart.
- It is noticeable how that show, which renews tango and generated a before and after, was made by two artists who weren’t tangueros.
- But they had the vision. They would always come and they said they wanted to do Tango Argentino and when they went I remember we used to say amongst ourselves: “They’re two head cases, these, they’ll never do it, they propose but they never do anything.” They were like searching until they found the end of the ball of wool and then they managed it.
- Here nobody gave a peso for the show.
- Yes, here they never gave a peso for tango!
- Do you think this “boom” is a fashion?
- I hope not. I’d like to think these young people that are going to retire eventually, that others are going to fall in love with tango and are going to carry on and do different things, that is what is lacking. Not copies, but different things.
- A true renewal.
- A total renewal…. But electronic tango, no! Please!

Silvia Rojas
Photos: Alejandra Marín