From San Telmo to Sant' Elmo. Sant' Elmo is the name of the castle commanding a view of the whole city (and formerly defending it) from the hill of San Martino. It is the last visible building from any vessel leaving Naples, and it was the last sad view of the city for the multitudes which left in ships packed with emigrants and eventually reached "barrio San Telmo", the area of Buenos Aires where tango was born and where it has a brighter life still today. The second NapoliTano Tango Festival picks just this suggestion, in order to look for a bond which is not just historical or philological, but also emotional, so as to unite, through music, cultures and feelings which are so similar in Neapolitans and Porteños.

Through tango these feelings (more than passions) melt within the two embracing dancers who live, for three minutes, a story which can be told only there and in that moment. This story, however, is narrated together, moment by moment, in such a strong communion of silent words and mutual listening that, when it finishes, it is so strange to depart form each other and, still, voices seem so superfluous. Dancers have entered for a moment in a realm in which reason and words leave place to emotion and misteries.

Stefi Donisi

I feel greatly proud of being again designated as artistic director of this second tango festival in Naples, in organising which we succeeded through much effort, work, dedication and, especially, love for tango, which is my life and my passion. In this case, my pleasure is double, as I was born to a family which is both Italian and fond f tango. Today, I have the opportunity, through tango, to throw a bridge between two cultures so contiguous as the Argentine and the Italian ones. Please, accept my welcome to the second "Napolitango".

Miguel Angel Zotto

Presentation

The great success of the First Napoli Tano Tango Festival lead us to go a step further on the same route, by proposing the second edition of this event.

Tango is a special expressive form, which, while representing Argentine cultural identity, also deepens its roots in the Neapolitan song. The Napoli Tano Tango Festival, therefore, creates tight bonds between the heritage of the host and the heritage of the guest: Naples and Buenos Aires, the Neapolitan song and tango.

The city of Naples always had a very close relationship with the Buenos Aires: the two harbours were the departure and the destination places of countless people who greatly contributed to the extraordinary growth of the Federal Capital, not only in terms of socioeconomic development, but also in terms of cultural enrichment; immigrants , coming in great numbers especially from Europe, fertilised Argentine Tango with their heritage and their intelligence, thus creating an explosive mixture which has become a cultural phenomenon, a flagship of emigration , the perfect fusion of music, poetry and dance .
 

A the end of XIX century, Buenos Aires was a babelish mixture of different languages and ethnical groups: Italians, French, Germans, Spaniards, Jews, blacks of slave origin, as well as many other immigrants escaping from misery, prosecutions or wars, settled in the capital's suburbs. This mixture of different heritages and memories gave birth to Tango, an entirely new cultural genre.
 

Italians greatly contributed to tango: musicians, poets and dancers with Italian surnames are countless: Piazzolla, D'Arienzo, Pugliese, Zotto, Discepolo are only few, important names, but the entire list would be very long. Their parents reached Argentina with cardboard suitcases full of everything, including the music, the dances and the cultural values of their motherland.

The idea underlying the Festival is to create a bridge between the harbours of the two cities , both symbols of immigration, a phenomenon which, for good or evil, heavily characterised the last two centuries. Through this bridge the ideas, the dreams, the hopes, and the memories which still unite us to our faraway kinsmen will freely flow - in both directions, this time.

This is one of the reasons why the word "Tano" is included in the title of the festival. Tano, a short form for "Napolitano", is a word still used In Buenos Aires to indicate all the immigrants of Italian origin, not necessarily of Neapolitan descent. For this, it was only natural to use this word again for a tango festival in Naples, trying to cancel its original derogatory implications.

The Second NapoliTano Tango Festival is a tour between the Neapolitan song and Tango , an ideal bridge between the two cities.

The Second NapoliTano Tango Festival is also embrace , solidarity, feel of belonging to the same history, sharing of faraway roots. In this regard, the tango embrace (possibly the most fundamental part of the dance, as anybody who had even a feeble contact with tango technique knows) becomes the metaphor of a higher and deeper bond. This bond becomes even stronger in that one of the festival's locations is Pomigliano D'Arco, a labour city. This is a way of freeing the truth and the depth of Tango from the shiny varnish of mass culture, a way of returning tango to the people that, through the pains of emigrations, contributed to its birth and world-wide diffusion.

The second NapoliTano Tango Festival , after the first edition, certainly represents an occasion of exchange and study on tango, its history and its culture, at the same level as other very important international events. But we hope it may also constitute a beginning for closer relationships between the two sister cities.