"Tango Libre" is on rue Marie-Anne in "le Plateau", an old, very French, working-class neighborhood much beloved by young people and retirees alike for its calm, leafy avenues and inexpensive row-house rents. Rue Marie-Anne is the kind of street where, on warm summer nights, Montrealers live on their broad balconies behind graceful wrought-iron railings, watching the Expos through the window while sharing a beer with friends. Tango Libre fits the character of the Plateau. Its small dance floor occupies the space in front of a pocket-sized stage; during the week this a small cultural center. On the weekend it is deftly remade, with a couple of lanterns and posters, into a porteno street corner by its Chilean born director, Gerardo Sanchez, and the illusion works, perhaps because the Plateau is the Montreal equivalent of a Buenos Aires neighborhood. Indeed, on the Feastday of St. John the Baptist, the national holiday of Quebec (June 24), the street outside Tango Libre is closed off and becomes a dance floor for the whole quarter.

Tango libre is the most intimate club in Montreal, which is another way of saying that, while it is tiny, it's not crowded. Most of the dancers seem to be from the neighborhood because they are utterly unselfconscious in a way that just can't be managed in a "downtown" club. The music, on the night I was there, included music from the soundtrack to "Forever Tango" and one couple I know who are regulars say that the selections tend towards the traditional, Gardel era, sound. The sound system is good. Gerardo plans to show some old tango movies here next Fall. Meanwhile, this might be the perfect club for someone from out of Montreal who wanted to not simply dance, but also to meet Montrealers where they live, to get close enough to touch the heart of what makes Montreal one of the most beautiful and and liveable cities in the world.

Tango Libre reminds me of why I love tango and the people who dance it. It expresses simple, purified emotion, communicated both in intimacy to a partner and to an audience of fellow dancers.