During decades it was the erotic dream of tantísimos spectators dazzled by their print and the harmonious figures that it doodled with Juan Carlos Copes. And also the "mina" that coveted as track partner the best milongueros in the years 50 and 60, when to dance tango was a religion.
María Nieves Rego, Galician humble emigrants' daughter is another fruit tanguero of those conventillos with her patio laziness and cotorro where the poverty was embedded and where the dreams collided with the incidents that imposed the newspaper to subsist. Their father dies young and of the piece of four meters for four, where he cohabited with two male siblings and two women, amen of the mom, he had to be released from "pendeja" (young boy) to "laburarla" (to work) like maid in La Boca. So far from their house of Saavedra that she should take three communities and to stay working the whole week until the stocking takes of on Saturday in that returned, abandoning the school in 4º grade.
Their bigger sister, "Ñata" - high point of the milonga -, it would take it to discover that fascinating world of the tango and their baggage of mysteries soon. Next to another friend, Alicia, the foguearían tempranamente in the tracks.
Nieves, the actor Ángel Magaña and Copes
She had 15 Aprils, yearnings of to suffer and to love, to go to the center and to triumph... And a beginner and audacious boy dancer that then would know that Juan Carlos called himself you Surround, he discovered it in the Star of Maldonado and it was seduced by his beautiful figure adolescent.
"The "minas" (women's) came out him/her to dance for the spot, if he didn't know neither to walk..." she would say. It nodded her and she looked to the floor: "Because my sister killed me if I she left to some. I will only accompany them to her and Alicia."
Curious, it was the first and only time that they danced in that club, in one night that Francini-Pontier acted with Rufino and Podestá in the singable ones. "Ñata" taught him its art, and with its flourished 15 years, it returned of its exile in the Mouth, she ironed the same clothes that used to serve and it ascended in its illusion supersport to fulfill the rite of coding courts and gulches in its sister's company and the faithful bar.
That morocho pintón had begun its blockade and he/she would unite to Saavedra's band, although he was of Villa Pueyrredón, to achieve its purpose of conquering the brat of beautiful figure and you release legs, and the history would culminate in a mettlesome romance that "Ñata" would finally approve. Copes he sensed that she had found their definitive muse and the tango to the great couple of their history.
The fever of the dance would hug them and the wide history of its firuletes respecting the spirit cadencial would arrive to the center, after performances of clubs and neighborhood living rooms and to win a tournament in the Moon Park. Juan D'Arienzo that I eat Fangio was sworn in that competition where they participated grateful milongueros, he would admit later years to the already famous María Nieves: It was "incredible what they danced that night. We had given the vote to a suitable couple, but you danced as two prostitute children and they were won the whole public... That barbarians!"
Copes it had grown and their ambition taura didn't have limits. It armed the Juvenile Group, with ten milongueros couples that it was cudgeled in exhibitions amateurs waking up Carlos' clinical eye Petit, National Chilean manager of the mythical one, the theater of magazines. And there the Group would debut, next to characters like Stray, Severo Fernández, Margarita Padín or Alfredo Barbieri. "We were some nerves" - María remembers -, we didn't know neither to stop and I died from shame when greeting..." For then it dressed flared pollera, wide belt squeezing the waist - the fashion of small Divito -, handkerchief to the neck and the cut of copied hair of Gina Lollobrigida that had visited Buenos Aires fleetingly.
At once they passed to make bends you it faces, in the luxurious cabaret Ta-Ba-Ris, where until the coperas they shone elegant and bejeweled. It was the vedette then Juanita Martínez - it handcuffs of comic José Marrone - who it indicated him/her the convenience of using shoes of satin of long taco to enhance their figure, because it still continued with low taco and until bristol board lashes that you autofabricaba and she hit with line on the lids. And at dawn, after the phosphorescence of the applauses, Currents up to wait the community 60, of turn to Saavedra's bulín, while he fell in love to sumptuous vedettes.
The success the espabilaría: Copes he looked at himself in the mirror of Gene Kelly and María decided to be Cyd Buenos Aires Charisse, although her aims didn't contemplate to abandon the neighborhood. The dancer's desires, their dreams, they would be carried out a lot beyond that imagined. The couple's art would pass over the corral of the frontiers, and opening doors for the numb tango went up America up until Broadway in the 59.
At the beginning they suffered privations, but the victory would crown the beautiful and sensual drawings that embroidered in the yank scenarios, accompanied by an Astor Piazzolla that still looked for its destination. Copes he would transform into "Latin lover" of the "high North American society" and their romances were happened without truce. They were stars of Ed's program Sullivan, the TV opened them its doors, as Las Vegas and until Ronald Reagan made them dance in the White House for his birthday.
A marvel world steamed up by María's constant tears Nieves, due to the infidelities and their mother's distance. "She escaped from the poverty in Spain and it could never return to their native Galicia. She feared him to pass her the same thing with me because my tours lasted 2 or 3 years... Instead of enjoying the success, it suffered as madwoman..." -María admits. The crazy compass of its heart tied it to that man. They conformed the rhythmic biggest cell in the danced tango. They were boyfriends, lovers, couple, husbands, divorced... "We marry in Las Vegas, for my mom mainly... He also wanted a lot it, but at once we broke everything and forever..."
The show Argentinean Tango that they integrated, demonstrated in the entire world that the seed that they sowed, it had finally germinated, after the hollow borroneado of the past. Shelled by the time, the couple came undone. Copes he dances now with Johanna, a daughter that doesn't feel own, fruit apparently of a fleeting adventure. He married again and he has other two daughters.
Wrapped in the fog of the legend, the marquees return it to María Nieves framed as twinkling star in the show "Tanguera." "I will no longer show my shrimps like before...", she whispers with an accent of nostalgia in the backpack of the soul.
Fifty years later it threw their steps to the future in the scenario of the National one again, as when it was an inexpert piba of conventillo of moderate ambitions.
The memories are the stokers of the imagination that take me to descend the stairways of the porteñazo "Caño 14", of the street Talcahuano 975, in the years 70, where a wiskis couple dispatched, I shivered with the fueye of Troilo, it vibrated with the topics of "Polaco" Goyeneche - neighbor and María's siblings' friend in Saavedra -, or the violin of Francini and she "danced" with Copes and María Nieves.
I admit that some night I envied it to the "Black" Copes to have similar partner in the scenario and the long "feite" (cut) of their pollera she made us the bocho to all.
She was and it will be crack. When they ask her for Copes, the "mina"(women) and the "milonguera" open their "cuore" (heart) and they get undressed forever: "If I have to say something of him, it is that with me it was prostitute's son, but there will never be a dancer like Juan Carlos Copes." Neither one as vos. I say. I affirm.
She notices published in the magazine from Madrid "Gilda. Women in the tango", of March of 2003.
Source: Todo Tango
