El Pibe Palermo

“ Che, Peti, prepare some mate, I’ll be there at quarter past four.”.

Palermo phones me at 4 p.m. sharp, he is my daily alarm clock after a late night and never enough sleep. No sooner I had put the kettle on than the bell rings and I hear his voice over the intercom saying “It’s Palermo, open up”. I go to the door, and there he was as usual. He greets me with a compadrada and his famous corrida. “Do you know retazo,” he says (this time I get to be “retazo” instead of Peti) “with Norma I practiced some new steps for La Cumparsita”. “Don’t tell me,” I said, while thinking to myself that this incredible man was always creating something new.

While we sip our mate, a brief recollection by Pibe Palermo or a question of mine is enough to start us off on a journey through time. It starts in the 1920s in the neighbourhood where he grew up - Palermo of course.

It’s the same neighbourhood one finds in the writings of Jorge Luis Borges. That old and historic neighbourhood, the cradle of our people’s poetry, a meeting place for pimps, compadritos, musicians, poets and dancers, all gathered in a historic togetherness, a world in which José María Baña, el pibe Palermo, took part.

His was a very different vision from that of Borges, who described the place from behind an elegant wrought iron gate, and from inside a library littered with piles of English books.

Today, Palermo tells us living stories, with characters that were part of the landscape of his childhood and youth, stories like this one of “someone called Ortiz”.

El Negro Ortiz told by el Pibe Palermo

He used to come to my house everyday at 2.30 p.m. to visit his darling, Doña Ambrosia Lamadrid, nicknamed “la grone”. She was the first ironing woman to work for my mother. We used to play tango records, and we danced so much my mother’s patio would burn. Sometimes he would come with another fellow named El Flaco Plá, who had danced with Cacha at the Londres Cinema. But El Flaco Plá had a mishap - he fell down some stairs and fractured his hip and never really recovered. One day as we were dancing a milonga, (really a candombeada, just the way it should be danced) my old man happened to see us. There I was moving my body like the blacks do, next to our black friend “el Negro Ortiz” and el Flaco Plá, my father got mad and said : “Stop, the boy is dancing like a negro !” El flaco Plá, responded : “Leave him alone, the boy knows what he is doing.” One day, El Negro Miguel Ortiz tells me : “Poroto,” (that‘s what they used to call me ; I had just started to wear long pants) “this evening I will pick you up, if you want you can come with your cousin Banchero. We’ll go to the practice session with Alfredo Nuñez. He was the friend and successor of the famous Pardo Santillan, and more than a few great dancers skulked away from the scene after seeing him.”

The practice was at 780 Hidalgo street, at the Academia Hidalgo. There was live music and two bandoneones ; it was a “macho practice” - only men except for Peti, who had been Alfredo Nunez’s partner. One day Alfredo admitted that he had fallen in love with the woman not for her beauty but for her dancing. Years later at the Palermo Palace, backed by D’Agostino’s Orchestra, I gave an exhibition with Peti - and Nuñez was right ! What a dancer. I danced a lot with her.

At each of these all-male practices there was a new dance demonstration. One day one would perform, the next day another, that’s the way it used to be. Important dancers from various neighbourhoods would go to these practices. Dancers like Luisito, Cachafaz de Boedo, el Misto, el Pibe Colón, Cabecita de Oro and Miguelito Taboraro, who used to come with me.

Despite his youth, el Pibe Palermo had outstanding dance steps and corridas just like older, more seasoned dancers. Among so many important and strong competitors, Pibe Palermo gradually began to draw attention with his speedy leg movements and unpredictable steps.