Mr Ryszard Łazarski, the founder of our University, was born in 1926; as a result, the 1930s were the years of his youth. We wanted the concert to bring back the atmosphere of those years and make pre-war Warsaw remembered by veterans more familiar to our contemporaries. As a fragment of Polish culture, the tango boasts a history of over 100 years. In mid-1930s, Polish composers and conductors have moulded their own unique tango style, with a softer harmony and melody as well as more melancholic than the Argentinian original. Thousands of tango hits were composed around that time. Warsaw became the European capital city of the tango.
Through the artistic performance, for 90 minutes we travelled back in time to pre-war Warsaw, a city that the war changed so much.
The concert featured performances by unique artists: Ms Olga Avigail and the Tango Attack band comprising Hadrian Tabęcki, Piotr Malicki, Grzegorz Bożewicz (who played the bandoneon, an instrument virtually unknown in Poland), as well as dancers teaching at Centrum Kultury i Tańca OLL, the Tangopoemat duo Natasza & Masoud.
<em>“Whence this nostalgia for the tango?</em><em> </em><em>It is not altogether clear for me.</em><em> </em><em>It might be because that world was devastated so brutally, with only some surviving scraps of the Polish and Jewish coexistence and co-creation in the period between the world wars…”</em> says Olga Avigail about her repertoire.
An additional splendour to our concert was added by the attendance of our guest of honour, Mr Eugeniusz Tyrajski, Vice President of the Warsaw Uprising Soldiers Association, a soldier of the Home Army “Baszta” Regiment affiliated with our University, and – privately – a great music lover. <em>“This type of music has a special way to stick with you. All these uptempo melodies have no sensitivity like the tango has. It is the music of my youth. I remember our family home before the war and the huge collection of records that my father owned,” </em>recalled<em> </em>Mr Tyrajski.
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Tango of Love at Łazarski: report on the concert and dance show
On 25 January, a unique concert was held at our University to inaugurate another year of the Home Army “Baszta” Regiment Memorial Room at the Łazarski University. The concert featured Polish tango songs from pre-war Warsaw, such as: “Tango Milonga", “Ostatnia Niedziela", “Rebeka" and “To grzech"; it was an opportunity to see that the tango is not only a dance but, above all, a story expressed through singing.
