Juan Carlos Copes, who brought Tango to Broadway, dies at 89
Tango was originally a social dance, performed in neighborhood gatherings and dance halls. But Juan Carlos Copes turned it into dance for the stage, with complex, highly polished choreography that could wow an audience over the course of an entire evening.
Copes moved across the dance floor for seven decades. For much of that time he danced with one partner — also, for a period, his wife — María Nieves Rego. They came to define a new tango style, dubbed the “estilo Copes-Nieves.”
“I saw two styles being danced,” Copes said in a 2007 interview with the tango magazine “La Milonga Argentina,” “One with lots of steps, and the other smooth and elegant. My innovation was to combine the two into one.”
Copes died Jan. 15 at a clinic in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. He was 89. The cause was complications of COVID-19, his daughter Johana Copes said.
Juan Carlos Copes and Nieves may have had their biggest impact performing in the show “Tango Argentino,” which had its premier in Paris in 1983 and became an international juggernaut, touring Europe and Asia before coming to Broadway in 1985, where it was nominated for several Tonys. The show, again starring the pair, returned to Broadway in 1999, when it was nominated for best revival.
“Tango Argentino” led to a global resurgence of the tango, which had fallen out of favor even in Argentina, replaced by a rising tied of mostly American pop music. Tango clubs opened all over the world.
“The fact that we tango performers of today even have a profession is due to Copes,” said New Yorkbased dancer Leonardo Sardella, who has often performed with Johana Copes.
Juan Carlos Copes remained in the spotlight, dancing in, and choreographing, dozens of tango shows through the 1980s and ’90s. In 1998, he starred in Spanish director Carlos Saura’s dance film “Tango,” alongside Argentine ballet dancer Julio Bocca, to whom he had taught the tango. (He also taught it to Liza Minnelli.)
Copes was born May 31, 1931, in Mataderos, an outlying neighborhood of Buenos Aires, to Carlo Copes, a bus driver, and María Magdalena Berti, a homemaker, and grew up in Villa Pueyrredón, another neighborhood on the city’s outskirts. His maternal grandfather, Juan Berti, was a pianist who specialized in tango.
As a teenager, he studied to become an electrician. But he also began frequenting tango evenings at social clubs, where he met Nieves.
In 1951, the pair entered a large dance competition at the Luna Park stadium where they took the top prize among 300 couples. This led to appearances at clubs and cabarets and then, in 1955, to their first tango show at Teatro El Nacional.
Copes and Nieves went on tour four years later with composer Astor Piazzolla. The itinerary included the United States, where they landed the first of several spots on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1962. Footage of that first performance reveals the superfast footwork, sharp kicks and streamlined style that had made them so popular.
They married in Las Vegas in 1964. The marriage ended in 1973 but they continued dancing together until 1997, despite having come to dislike each other intensely.