I soon became immersed in the world of the milonga—the tango hall—where I met outsized characters: pimps, business moguls, professional rioters, drunken gauchos, and widows on the prowl, all united in their passion for the dance. Before long, I began asking myself: What am I really dancing here? But the origins of the tango are murky; we can only draw from hints from the tango's choreography: Is it supposed to reflect a knife fight? Or the foreplay between a prostitute and her john? There was no correct answer; just the whisky-fueled ramblings of a hundred local self-pronounced "tango experts," each with his or her complex—and often hilarious—theory on where this marvelous dance came from.

Eventually, as my day job led me to cover one of the most epic economic meltdowns of the last century, I sunk even deeper into the dance, realizing that the spirit of Argentina and the tango were really one and the same.