Giovanni Dolci, the dancing shoe-making tango dancer

The great Argentinian writer and poet, Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote poems and short essays about tango and organised conferences, said,«Tango flouts conventions and that’s what gives it its appeal. It’s that feeling of freedom that kindles all kinds of emotions.

Tango easily steals your heart, because listening to it or watching it being danced makes you want to slip on a pair of tango shoes and follow the lead.»

But you need shoes with three essential characteristics to dance such a passionate, intimate, melancholy, yet powerful, dance: they have to be beautiful, comfortable and sturdy.  And perhaps the right person to make shoes like that is a craftsman in a league of his own, like Giovanni Dolci.

Dolci, who founded his own brand,  Giotango, three years ago, has all the skills required to be one of the very few people in the world able to make perfect shoes for this dance: a chiropodist’s diploma, later training as a footwear stylist and designer and a burning passion for tango, which he also teaches.

Originally from Reggio Emilia, Dolci has a workshop in the provincial town of Sant’Ilario d’Enza, where he repairs and creates women’s and men’s models, mainly to measure, with customers making their orders from all over the world, from as far away as Japan.

While Giotango shoes are sturdier than normal footwear, you can wear them all day long without a problem. One of his customers bears witness to this on the Dolci’s brand’s website. She writes, «They’re like a cosy glove, respectful and sturdy at the same time.» Another woman writes,«the foot has 28 bones, 27 joints, 100 ligaments and 23 muscles. If you’re then going to dance on them… you need proper shoes that are fit for the job.»