Al and Barbara Garvey . . .
now live in Puerto Vallarta. After over 50 years living, traveling and working together and 25 years in the embrace of tango, the Garveys are introducing their passion to Mexico's most charming overgrown village.
Most of Al and Barbara's marriage was spent in Fairfax, California, about 18 miles north of San Francisco, in an 90-year old house centered around a dance floor and its Tango Bar. They have visited 35 countries, lived for extensive periods of time in Paris, Mallorca and Israel, and experienced the magic of Buenos Aires as well as the Sinai, Sahara and Baja California deserts. They built the first Japanese-style communal bath in their patio and invited their friends, thus initiating California’s hot tub culture. Before tango their dance experience included ten years of Greek folk dancing followed by a vintage period inspired by the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra.
THEIR LIVES IN TANGO
The first time Barbara saw the show Tango Argentino, on a business trip to New York in 1985, she called Al from the hotel to say "I’ve just seen what we’re going to do the rest of our lives".
A year later, the touring company of Tango Argentino had come and gone from San Francisco, leaving behind a small but enthusiastic group of aficionados. Barbara continued to actively promote all tango activity in the area, developing a mailing list and information center to support a growing community of teachers, students and entrepreneurs.
In the spring of 1987, Al and Barbara were among the first Norteamericanos to travel to Buenos Aires in search of tango. On that first trip they were fortunate to meet the legendary Fino Rivera and take a lesson from him, only a few weeks before his untimely death. This encounter clarified dramatically for them the distinction between salon-style, or social tango, and the exhibition version, tango-for-export, to which they had been exposed by cast members of Tango Argentino.
Back in the States, looking for a proponent of social tango, they discovered Orlando Paiva, a milonguero of exceptional elegance, then resident in Los Angeles. They invited him to present a series of workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area. After his return to Argentina, they continued to organize seminars in Northern California for Danel & Maria Bastone of New York, and Michael Walker & Luren Bellucci of Los Angeles, Orlando’s proteges.
On a number of subsequent journeys to Buenos Aires they studied with many other leading maestros, among them Roberto Grassi, "El Pibe del Abasto", Pupi Castello, Graciela Gonsalez, and Lampazo. In 1991 they met Nito & Elba Garcia in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and, through the auspices of friends Hector & Ana Villalba, brought them to California for the first time, launching their world-wide teaching career.
As the Northern California tango community grew to the largest in the US, keeping up with all its activities prompted the founding, in 1995, of the non-profit Bay Area Argentine Tango Association. This organization serves as an inspirational clearing house for all, hosting events and maintaining a communication network for all tango-related classes, dances, workshops, exhibitions etc. from Carmel to Santa Rosa.
Al and Barbara have performed and taught tango over a period of almost 20 years, but think of themselves as milongueros and tangueros, interested in all aspects of its culture, from the dance to language, literature, music, history and philosophy.
AND OUTSIDE OF TANGO
Professionally, Al is a Renaissance man; his artistic breadth extends from drawing and painting to fine printmaking, graphic and architectural design and woodworking. For decades he created works of art in the form of one-of-a-kind entry doors for unique homes throughout the Bay Area. Now retired from DoorWays, Al is currently immersed in oil painting and the creation of digital portraits. He designed and contracted their unique new home in central Puerto Vallarta, with indoor and outdoor dance floors and a view of the Bay of Banderas from every room.
Barbara was one of the three founders, and later president, of Folkwear
Patterns, a clothing pattern company that reproduces ethnic and vintage garments.
Folkwear continues to thrive, serving the contemporary sewer under new
ownership. In Mexico Barbara studies guitar and joins Al in teaching tango,
house-planning and learning danzon (an elegant social dance original to Cuba
now popular in the cities of Mexico). The Garveys can be found many
Sunday evenings in Puerto Vallarta's Plaza de Armas, dancing with friends to the
municipal band.
Abrazos, Al and Barbara
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