At first glance, the septuagenarian tango dancer — slight of build, lithe in his carriage, long, gray hair gathered tightly in a low bun — might be taken for an Argentine.
But when Ivan Shvarts speaks, your expectation pivots.
A Russo-Hungarian accent — not a Spanish one — colors his English as he instructs students in the basics of Argentine tango in an upstairs room of San Francisco’s War Memorial Veterans Building. And his dark eyes and moody expression — so typical of tangueros — are actually those of an Eastern European Jew who hears in this plaintive music the story of his people, or of any people who find themselves far from home.
Shvarts himself knows something about distances. He was born in 1946 in Mukachevo, a small Hungarian town absorbed by the Soviet Union after WWII (and now part of Ukraine.) His parents had been affluent, educated Jews before the war and spoke Hungarian at home. In her youth, his mother had studied music and dance and was sent to Austria for further lessons in piano. On at least two occasions, one particular teacher rolled up the house carpet and showed her how to tango, even though elders frowned upon the dance as risqué.
“She loved, loved to dance,” Shvarts said. “And she knew all the songs.”
It was music that may have helped his mother survive Auschwitz: Forced to play in the women’s orchestra at the concentration camp, she likely received more rations. His father survived a Hungarian labor camp. They met and married right after the war. When he came of age, Shvarts served in the Soviet Union’s air force and studied architecture.
After his father died in 1962, the remaining family put plans to emigrate into motion. They were finally able to move to Los Angeles in 1976, and Shvarts became a licensed contractor, building a new life in the U.S. as a young adult.
But it was not until the year 2000, when Shvarts’ mother passed away, that his heart found a home in tango. There were good dancers in Los Angeles then: immigrants all. He had dabbled a bit in tango, and his mother apparently noticed his undeveloped gifts. In her last days, or hours, she left him a note at her bedside, imploring him to explore the dance.
“She died in the afternoon,” Shvarts recounts. “And the next day, I took my first tango class.”
Soon after, he was off to the heartland of tango — Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Tango, both the music and the dance, is the ultimate immigrant art, a fusion of Spanish, Italian and Eastern European Jewish musical traditions brought to the ports of Buenos Aires and nearby Montevideo in Uruguay — and then reblended in seedy bars frequented by sailors, musicians, gauchos and prostitutes.
Many of those women were 19th and early 20th century Jewish immigrants who had been tricked into leaving Poland with promises of marriage and were then abandoned in Buenos Aires to fend for themselves. Asked to entertain strange men speaking a multitude of languages, they would resort to the Jewish folk dances they knew. Some of those steps became integral to the tango danced today.
Tango’s development was also influenced by Argentine and Uruguayan folk tunes and by a lesser-known source: the drum beats and dance languages of enslaved Africans.
“You know from where it came? Tango came from the Congo,” Shvarts said. His source is a book on the history of tango by the late art historian Robert Farris Thompson. The book describes how people abducted from Congo were sold in the ports of Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
“They lost everything,” Shvarts says, imagining the tragic scene. “So they hugged each other and cried, standing up, rocking to the rhythm of drums. And when the European musicians came and saw them, they said, ‘Oh, wow … this is great.’ You know, this is almost how they feel. The Jewish musicians who came from Poland and Russia, and the Italians, also lost everything. That sorrow became the tango in close embrace.”
Like many popular dance inventions, tango spread across the world. In the 1910s, it ricocheted from Buenos Aires to Paris, throughout Europe and back again to Latin America. New tango songs were written in multiple languages, including Yiddish. By the 1920s, “Yiddish tango was around, in Poland, Hungary, Russia, all the Jewish communities,” Shvarts said.
“Close embrace,” which Shvarts clarified is “not about sex,” is the style he teaches today, both to military veterans through local chapters of the American Legion and to mostly older students through the San Francisco Parks and Recreation Department. Far from the flashy gymnastics seen in tango stage shows, close embrace tango is slower and more sensuous, providing a discrete structure for physical contact between dancers who may or may not know one another.
“The focus is on connection, musicality and the emotion conveyed between partners, rather than intricate footwork,” Shvarts has posted on his Facebook page. This style fosters an “emotionally rich dance experience, where dancers feel in sync with both the music and each other,” he notes.
It is for this very reason that S.F. Parks and Rec and then the American Legion green-lit his proposals to offer classes in the mid-2000s.
Shvarts had moved to San Francisco in 2005, following divorce and retirement, and was by then proficient enough to teach. He began offering classes for people 55 and older at the city’s Hamilton and Richmond recreation centers as a volunteer first and then as a paid instructor starting in 2015. The classes don’t require prior experience and are still going strong.
Katherine Villasin, senior services program coordinator for S.F. Parks and Rec, told J. that she has seen the benefits to regular participants socially, mentally and physically — so much so that they moved the classes outdoors in order to keep them going during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“People just taking a walk in the park during the pandemic would stop and see the dancing, and some would try it. They didn’t know they were about to become tango dancers!” she said. “Ivan just goes with the flow — literally.”
Shvarts also organized outdoor tango dancing on the grounds of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, on the western edge of the city. On many weekends throughout the pandemic, one could see people in face masks dancing in the fog to ease the pain of social isolation.
For Paul Cox, former chair of the American Legion War Memorial Commission, it was a bit of a gamble as to whether veterans would show up for an activity like tango. But “Ivan was clearly very serious, and a veteran himself, so we gave him the go-ahead,” Cox said. “And I’m very glad we did. I think there is reason to believe that dancing tango can be healing.”
While the classes for vets have remained small, Shvarts is adamant that the exposure to tango has had a strong impact on at least some of those who have taken part.
Shvarts also noted that he is not teaching classes to produce tango “stars,” but for the satisfaction of enabling a lonely, awkward or depressed person to respond to the emotive music and to safely experience the gift of human touch.
Since the time when he served in the Soviet military and socialized at the officers club, Shvarts has seen dance lift spirits. And he touts the more authentic experience of meeting new people at a tango class, as opposed to, say, online dating. But he is sharply critical of the commercialization of tango culture as it has soared beyond its humble Argentine roots.
“It’s become an industry,” he complained, with championships and a sexualization of style and dress.
For Shvarts, that is not the tango.
“No, no, it’s gloomy,” he insists, his Russian accent giving this claim some weight. “People say, ‘Oh, you have to smile. You have to be happy.’ No! I don’t have to be. I enjoy my gloominess. I like to be happy — but to feel my sorrows too.”
Ivan Shvarts’ Argentine Tango classes for beginners 55 and older resume at Hamilton Rec Center on Jan. 7 and at the Richmond Rec Center on Jan. 8. Free. For information on tango at the War Memorial Veterans Building, visit goldenagetangoacademy.org.