Camille Cusumano

Photo, courtesy of TigersTango

Omar Vega is giving many workshops starting June 12 in the San Francisco Bay Area — check for details at www.batango.com or www.tangomango.org for details.

If I were desperately seeking him, now I’m despairing of finding him . . . I am sad to report that Omar Vega has died – a week or so ago – during his return visit to Buenos Aires. No one seems sure yet if it was a severe asthma attack or heart attack. Either way, he is gone from this world, and we will miss him. I’m posting his own words here from his Web site:

Hello, my name is Omar Vega, and first of all, I want to thank you for visiting my new website and for your interest in my curriculum vitae. Twenty-five years ago, I never thought that I would become a tango professional. I thank my mother, Irma Jeronima Vega, for this possibility, since she is of African heritage, and I thank my grandparents for being of color, and, of course, for giving me this heritage in my blood. Because of this heritage, whenever I hear a drum or any kind of African music, my blood begins to boil in my veins and my heart begins to pulsate and my body to vibrate to the beat of a tango, milonga, salasa, mambo, or danzon, even if I am standing still.

And today I have 23 years as a dancer, teacher, and choreographer. And I have had the good fortune to know many countries in Europe: Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and France. And many cities and states in the US: New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Colorado, Atlanta, and many more…

I was born in Concordia in the province of Entre Rios in 1959 to an Argentine mother and German father, and in the first two months of my life they brought me to live in Buenos Aires, so I am really a gaucho by nature. I learned folkloric dance as part of growing up, but it was not so with tango, milonga, and vals. I studied those dances for five years in a cultural arts center where I learned a lot about tango dancing for shows; but not much about the social dance floor. One day a friend said to me: “Look at all the dancing you are doing, and you never go to the milongas!” She motivated me to go to a milonga, and there I got a big disappointment, because the first step I did, dancing with a 65 year old milonguera, was a backward step, causing the lady to run into a veteran milonguero within the first 15 seconds of dancing. The women led me by the arm back to my table and said to me: “Pibe, when you learn to dance tango, ask me to dance!” Two minutes later, the man we bumped into on the dance floor came over and said to me: “Pibe, you like the tango?”. I answered arrogantly, thinking inside, “Don’t you see that I’m a dancer?” and he continued, “so why don’t you learn how to dance tango?” That was the most frustrating day of my career, and after that I dedicated myself fully to learning about the social dance floor: the sense of the space, the sense of where I am standing, how to begin to dance, etc…

I worked in films like “The Tango Lesson” dancing with the lead actress and director, Sally Potter. In “Convivencia” (“Coexistence”) with the maestro Osvaldo Pugliese. In television, in “Solo Tango”, where I have video documention of two pieces of choreography. I worked with Julian and El Choclo, who gave my career great enhancement. I had the opportunity to travel around a lot of the world. I won many tango championships and received first place in Argentina in 1999.

I have taught in the best places for tango, such as Almagro, Nino Bien, and at Parakultural, at festivals such as the Boston Tango Festival, and in Los Angeles.

I’m especially saddened that Omar won’t get to read my book, Tango, an Argentine Love Story, in which he briefly appears. Ah, well, life is short.

I saw Omar less than two months ago in a class he gave at La Pista, San Francisco. I thanked him in Spanish and said, it was a “gran placer, como siempre.” He said, “igualmente.” We shook hands, as this is North America. I knew we connecting after a little bit of a stand—off regarding my playful teasing of his loving women. But I didn’t know those would be our last words to each other.

You never know.

Say what you want about him (and I have), he is the King of Rhythm.

Good-bye Omar – may you keep on dancing, wherever you are.