Video Argentine Couple Wins Stage Final at International Tango Championship

Argentine couple hailing from Buenos Aires Manuela Rossi and Juan Malizia Gatti win the 2014 stage finals at the International Tango Festival and Championship.

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An Argentina couple took home the Stage Tango title in the final competition of this year's International Tango Festival and Championship which was held in Buenos Aires on Tuesday to a sold out crowd at Luna Park Stadium.

According to some, the seductive dance first took off between two men as they waited in brothels in the Argentine capital back in the 19th Century.

Tango's international popularity has taken off in recent years and thousands of tourists now flock to the Argentine capital to watch the heated battles between the world's top dancers and join in the festival.

The Stage Tango competition goes in tandem with the Salon Tango contest, with the first known to include fancy embellishments, acrobatics and sensationalized solo moves while the latter is known for its stricter technique.

Competition here is tough and the dancers steamed it up on the stage as they competed in what is renowned as the dance's toughest

international contest.

The first couple to be honoured was the second-finishers, Hugo Mastrolorenzo and Agustina Vignau, who are from the province of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

The winning couple from the Stage Tango category was Manuela Rossi and Juan Malizia Gatti. They both hail from Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires.

A prize of 40,000 pesos (4,759 USD) went to the winners of the prestigious dance championship.

Rossi, for her part, was humble upon winning the championship.

"You often think it goes well, and you dream and you dream, and luckily, this time our dreams became reality," she said.

The highly intimate tango was in fact a very public spectacle during the championship, Gatti said.

"And truly to be able to pass it on to everyone, to all of you, to everyone, to everyone at Luna Park... that was a prize for us as well. To be able to do that, well, we left it all out there," he said.

The Stage Tango competition marked the end of the annual festival, which started on August 13 in the South American capital.

Buenos Aires is the birthplace of the nostalgic and passionate tango, a dance that originated in the city's working class ports in the late 1800s.

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