As the sound of tango filled the room, the students chose partners, held them close and gingerly launched into the intricate steps of Argentina’s famous ballroom dance.
So far, so ordinary for Buenos Aires, but this was no ordinary tango class: The dance floor was a room in a neuropsychiatric hospital and the students were mental health patients.
Some health centers in Buenos Aires have found that the complex 2/4 beat can help soothe patients, including those suffering from mental ailments, forcing them to focus their minds on an activity that requires, well, two to tango.
“Tango is unique because its embrace creates a romantic connection,” said Silvina Perl, coordinator of the tango workshop at the Borda neuropsychiatric hospital.
“Tango is not a cure, of course, but during the hour-long class, the patients are focused on dancing and when they do, there are no hallucinations or delirium. They are focused on the steps,” the psychologist said.
At Borda, a mental health center for men, about 20 patients danced with women who work with Perl, holding their hands and sides as they took delicate steps — a close contact that can be difficult for people often trapped in their own world.
“The language of tango forces the psychotic person to be in contact with another individual, something that normally does not happen in his world ... in which the other does not exist,” Perl said.
“There is no tango without the other. If you don’t coordinate the dance, there is no dance,” she said.
At the Ramos Mejia public hospital, tango has become a way for the elderly at the geriatric unit to socialize and cure loneliness.
“When older adults stop working, they go into a sort of limbo with a lot of time on their hands, so it is very common for them to have a sedentary lifestyle,” said Alba Balboni, 67, who coordinates the tango project.
“Through tango, they can return to an active social life,” she said.
As songs by Argentine tango legend Carlos Gardel blare from the dance room, doctors and nurses go about their daily business, rushing through corridors to treat patients.
“Tango has a lot of benefits for elderly people. It is like a magic key, but fundamentally it is the magic of the dance’s embrace,” said Balboni, a psychotherapist who lived in the US for 33 years.
The dance teacher showed the complicated choreography to new students, most a bit shy to hold their bodies and faces close to partners they had never met before.
“In academies, they focus more on the choreography. For us, it’s the embrace,” Federico Tressero, 65, said after his weekly lesson. “Little by little, we get used to the embrace.”
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
RSS