What is TangoCalifia?

TangoCalifia™ is a non-profit organization dedicated to Argentine dance and music education.   The flow of funds for arts education in the California public schools, primary and secondary, has reached a very low ebb.  Government expenditure per capita for schooling in the arts has almost literally dried up, and this has been the case for several years.  The management team of TangoCalifia believes that the arts comprise as important an educational opportunity as any other subject, if not more so. TangoCalifia has therefore made a strong commitment to help fund individual programs for the music and dance arts (particularly Argentine tango) in northern California.

To this end, we mount regular milongas (i.e. tango dance parties) in San Francisco to which the tango dance community is invited.  These are held in large public areas such as The Ferry Building, Ghirardelli Square and The De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Voluntary donations are sought at these events from the participants and audiences. Those moneys go to funding scholarships for younger dancers to important tango teaching seminars, such as Nora’s Tango Week and Gustavo Naveira’s north American seminars for advanced students.

Management Team

Terence Clarke:

Novelist, screenwriter and journalist Terence Clarke has written three novels published in hard- and soft-cover by Mercury House and Ballantine Books.  A new novel by Terry, The Notorious Dream of Jesús Lázaro, will be published in 2009. His book of short stories, Little Bridget and The Flames of Hell was recently published on Amazon.com. His translation to English of Pablo Neruda’s Cien sonetos de amor (One Hundred Sonnets of Love) was recently published in digital form by Red Room. Terry is also the author of two feature-length narrative screenplays now in development.  An accomplished dancer of tango, Terry wrote and was a co-producer and principal cast member of  Literary Tangos, a stage/music/dance production about tango, as written of by the great South American writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  It played to standing-room-only audiences at the Koret Theater in San Francisco. Terry also co-wrote and was the on-stage commentator of Tango: A Romantic Ritual, a stage presentation produced by John Campbell and Debbie Goodwin, and directed by Debbie Goodwin.  It is available on video. Terry also wrote, co-produced, co-directed and appeared in a recent half-hour documentary special on Argentine tango for LatinEyes, a nationally syndicated television show based at KRON TV in San Francisco. Terry’s website is at Red Room, where his journalism on the arts can also be found.

Beatrice Bowles:

Writer and educator Beatrice Bowles is the founder of Harmony Hill Productions whose programs, storybooks and CD’s promote enjoyment of world mythology and freedom of spirit. She has performed and lectured at festivals, schools, museums and conferences from coast to coast. Bea has danced the Argentine tango on four continents so far, and on TV’s nationally syndicated LatinEyes tango special. She recently won a 2008 NAPPA (the National Parenting Publications Award given annually by Parenthood.com) for her new CD of children’s stories Spark Catchers.

Contact Information

Terence Clarke
Terence Clarke: Writing/Film
756A Bay Street,
San Francisco, CA 94109
USA
Telephone: (415) 990-8135
E-Mail:

Why the name TangoCalifia?

Because tango, like Argentina and California, grew from a profusion of native and immigrant cultures and still thrives from their fusion, and because tango arouses the spirit of mythic delight that inspired the name, California.

CALIFIA, QUEEN OF THE WEST
or How California Got its Name

The wildest rumor of ancient times -- one mentioned even in the Bible  -- held that a corner of the Garden of Eden had escaped the Flood.  This Terrestrial Paradise lay west of the Indies, the story went, on an island inhabited by women -- beautiful, copper-skinned, sea-faring warrior women who wore pearls and gold and not much else -- out in the uncharted waters that mapmakers named the Sea of Darkness. Explorers from Sir John Mandeville to Marco Polo and sailors from every port embellished the legend as they sought -- and many claimed to have sighted it -- this Paradise on Earth where bold, bare, bejeweled Amazons ruled themselves.

Finally in 1510, Spanish writer Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo wove the rumors into a melodramatic potboiler, Las Sergas del muy esfozado caballero Esplandian.  (The Deeds of The Great Knight Esplandian).  Montalvo's lurid novel delighted the Spanish court and went on to become Europe's first best-seller.  The mere mention of the free-living, free-loving queen Califia (the feminization of “calif”?, a Turkish word for ruler) on her island of California -- proved too much for the Catholic clergy, however.  Of Montalvo's many popular novels, only one burned in the bonfires of the Great Inquisition  -- Las Sergas.

But the cat was out of the bag.  In 1535, when Hernan Cortes reached Baja, he believed he'd found the tip of that distant island of women and wealth that so many had read about and that all sought. Staking Spain's claim, Cortes named the "island" California.  So the name of Montalvo's queen lives on long after his novel was forgotten. In the late nineteenth century, historian Edward Everett Hale came across a rare copy of Las Sergas del muy esfozado caballero Esplandian in the Harvard library, and finally made the link between Montalvo's island and the source of the name of our golden state.

Beatrice Bowles