Under the stars, chest-to-chest, they move in silent embrace. The clock has struck midnight but the dancers continue to arrive.

It could be a scene out of Buenos Aires as the tango lyrics boom out of a ghetto blaster powered by a generator attached to a car. But this is Athens, and those dancing on this Monday night are doing so under the Attic skies, jasmine wafting through the air, the Acropolis almost within view.

“People need to express themselves, especially in these hard times,” says Christina Mavratzoti, a beautician straightening her tiger print top after a glide across the outdoor dance floor. “And in Argentine tango there is so much passion. You can communicate without speaking, it’s a great way of letting off steam.”

Every nation has a pastime. Before the crisis – that is when Greeks knew Greece before their country’s economic meltdown – most would have agreed that their favourite pastime was sitting around a table dining with family and friends.

But in the financial chasm thrown up by the belt-tightening that has followed five years of austerity, habits have changed. Increasingly Greeks have turned to other forms of relief – and for growing numbers of the young and middle-aged it has come in the form of tango.

Mavratzoti attends the dance party, or milonga, at the lower end of graffiti-splattered Ermou street almost every week. But she is far from alone.

Open air milonga that takes place in a square downtown Athens. Photograph: Panagiotis Moschandreou/The Guardian

Both in and outside Athens, pop-up milongas, like tango dance studios, have gained a popularity that have taken aficionados aback. “When I first started six years ago there were two or three milongas in Athens per week. Now there are three or four every day and most are free of charge,” says Petros Danopoulos.

At 28, the bartender is typical of those now taking up tango. “A lot of us like the philosophy of the dance,” he enthuses, hugging his two-year-old bulldog, Tanda, named after the tango term denoting a set of musical pieces.

“There are no standard steps, every one is an improvisation, a man can lead or a woman can lead, at any time the rules can change.”

In recent years, Greece has produced world-class tango dancers, with several winning European championships and emerging as finalists in global competitions. The dance form – so resonant of love and loss – appeals naturally to their inner sense of drama, claim practitioners.

“I know it sounds cliched to say the Greeks invented drama but their character, their appreciation of tragedy, is very compatible with tango,” smiled Jordi Moragues, a Spanish instructor, who recently moved to Athens.

“Before I arrived in Greece, I spent years teaching in the German city of Cologne and really there is no comparison. Here people have a natural sense of sensuality, which is what tango is all about. They approach it differently. It’s like day and night.”

The group of dancers late at night. Photograph: Panagiotis Moschandreou/The Guardian

The dance is not the preserve of the middle class. Tango studios are appearing in lower-class districts just as they did when it first originated in Buenos Aires in the early 19th century.

“They are mushrooming everywhere because everyone, it seems, wants to become a teacher,” says Ilias Anastasiou, who runs a dance school three boulevards beyond the Acropolis in the suburb of Koukaki. “It’s not a dance for the rich, it never has been.”

In a nation that has seen joblessness and poverty hit record levels since debt-stricken Athens’ near brush with bankruptcy, the craze may be a reflection of something else: tango has long been thought to be a remedy against depression.

But Greeks also have a special affection for Argentina, a country whose economic plight is often compared to their own.

“For supporters of Syriza and the left in general, the Argentines are regarded as a positive example of a people who hit back and said ‘no’ to creditors,” notes Aliki Mouriki, a sociologist at the National Research Centre.

“Syriza’s policies may now have changed, but among the rank and file Argentina is still a trendy country, a country with cachet,” she added. “The fact that tango is so fashionable among Greeks is undoubtedly connected.”