Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien

Since its birth in the city's streets and brothels in the 1880's, tango has remained the heartbeat of Argentine life, a barometer of its rising and falling fortunes. This work explores Argentina through its obsession with the dance, telling of Winter's adventures in the sexy, over-caffeinated late-night world of Buenos Aires' tango halls.

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In 1999, twenty-two-year-old Brian Winter packed his bags and headed for Buenos Aires. He learnt the language, got to know the people and suffered with them as the peso bottomed out. And he became infected by an Argentine obsession - the tango. Since its birth in the city's streets and brothels in the 1880's, tango has remained the heartbeat of Argentine life, a barometer of its rising and falling fortunes. Flourishing in the grand milongas - dance halls - of Buenos Aires' early-twentieth-century belle epoque, its supremacy was later challenged by the emergence of rock'n'roll. But tango survived to enjoy a renaissance in Argentina and across the world."Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien" explores Argentina through its obsession with the dance, telling of Winter's adventures in the sexy, over-caffeinated late-night world of Buenos Aires' tango halls. We meet characters like El Tigre, a merchant marine turned tango professor and B-movie star, and El Tano, a spectacularly foul-mouthed insurance salesman who scraped by for thirty years in Milwaukee giving tango lessons. The tango at its heart is escapism, pure and simple - 'the vertical expression of a horizontal desire'.
Part travel narrative, part memoir and part cultural history of a remarkable and troubled country and the dance that epitomizes it, "Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien" provides a unique insight into the Argentinian soul.