Clear way for the tango in a city where it was forbidden for offending public decency | Dance without limits

This Thursday at Hungarian city of Pécs the Tango Festival. But there was a problem: dancing was prohibited by municipal bylaw that, although it fell into oblivion, it was still in force. The town hall from Pécs decided to end the old rule and approved a motion that allows people to take advantage of the two-by-four.

“Considering that the city of Pécs wants to popularize the tango, danced all over the world, and enrich the already multifaceted local culture, it symbolically expresses its intention that in the future everyone can practice tango without limits”, indicates the movement, which had the support of all political parties in the city council.

The ban was enacted in 1922 when the local government considered that the tango, the shimmy, the one step and the fox-trot “they offend the taste and morals of the public, spreading eroticism and not entertainment”.

But the rule was quickly forgotten: today in the city -one of the five largest in Hungary and home to 140,000 inhabitants- five tango academies are in operation.

The veto was lifted at the initiative of city councilor Tamás Horváth, who discovered that this ban was officially maintained and proposed to cancel it just as the city is hosting the 15th International Dance Meeting, in which the Pécs Tango Festival is being held this Thursday.