Watching and hearing

Watching Ismael Heljalil dance, I find I'm immediately listening to the music with a new clarity, especially the melodic lines of the violins and bandoneon, as if my ears are suddenly opened. I guess he's been listening to this music, and dancing to it, for 60-odd years, and his dance makes the music very clear, as if he shows, with a few quite simple steps, how it all fits together, how it works. Watching Alberto Dassieu, by contrast, I become aware of the rhythm too, especially the rhythm, and of the pauses in between the strong beats. He waits for the strong beats, and moves to them. Sometimes there are long spaces between the strong beats, sometimes there is a cluster of them.

Interesting. It's as if these dancers can make me hear what they are listening to: that's how it seems, anyway. Most dancers, some teachers even, keep perfectly to the beat and use their steps to follow the patterns in the music, but somehow it's as if their dance gets in the way of the music, distracts from it, even. I guess from a dance point of view there's nothing wrong with that, but I could watch Ismael all night, I'd look forward to watching that undemonstrative and unassuming dance that makes me listen very clearly as I watch, and is effortlessly graceful.

All in a dream

I dreamed I met up with Pedro Sanchez in a city where everyone greets with a kiss, right cheek to right cheek. We climbed stairs to a large room with a parquet floor, which appears to have experienced no treatment apart from a nightly rubbing by leather-soled shoes. Music blasted out to fill everyone with dance. 'Tranquilo' said Pedro, 'Just walk'. How can you walk with another couple 20cm away on each side? You have to stand up very straight just to have a bit of room. But all went well, and it felt really good. Later the room filled up, and I seemed to recognise many people. 'El Flaco' Dany, Cacho Dante, Pocho and Nelly, Oscar Casas and Mary Ann. I thought I caught a glimpse of 'El Cachafaz' with Carmencita Calderon, and 'El Fino' too, and there were many others I couldn't recognise.

& before I went out that evening, it seemed that Alberto Dassieu called and invited me to meet up in that same room the next night. When I woke up, it was raining shovels and horses.

Beyond the Clouds

In 1995, Antonioni made a film called Beyond the Clouds in which a beautiful young girl approaches a stranger in a cafe with a story she had read. 'In a scientific expedition in the Andes, the porters sat down and refused to go further that day. When asked why, they said that they needed time for their souls to catch up with them.' She and the stranger, who is in love with his wife, become lovers, and a tangled story ensues. The four short films comprising Beyond the Clouds are all about relationships: in the first, the relationship is affectionate, romantic and unconsummated, in the second it is instant and transitory, in the third, the story of the young girl and the stranger, ultimately violent, and in the fourth, also unconsummated, it turns out that the girl is entering a convent the next day.

Antonioni is wonderful at filming things, and people sometimes seem superfluous. There's a sequence of a deserted mediterranean holiday beach at midwinter which is full of thoughts and stories – until John Malkovitch walks in. Of course Antonioni is notorious for painting his scenes. He had all the leaves repainted in one shot in Blowup because they were the wrong green: perhaps that mediterranean beach was rather less striking before he arrived. (Digital technology might have saved him a lot of work.) He makes the bodies of his actresses look amazing too, which hasn't passed without comment. As it happens, the most memorable scene in the film is an encounter, fully clothed, between Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau that lasts all of four minutes. Their warmth and affection doesn't even have to be scripted. Her face is the most wonderful mix of humour, wisdom and affection. They were the life and soul of La Notte, 34 years earlier, which comes over as Antonioni's best film.

In the end, despite the beautiful young actresses, what stays in mind is Mastroianni the Sunday painter, painting Cezanne's mountain together with the cement factory that has appeared in the next valley, and Moreau looking at his painting with an amused shake of her head. That and the porters waiting for their souls to catch up with them, the feeling you get after a long journey, the worrying feeling that your soul might be getting a bit slow at keeping up.

The smoothness of tango

Back to the roots of Geraldin and Ezequiel, salon tango. It should be our 'default' dance, what we do on busy floors, but we hardly know what it looks like. It's OK to film performances in Buenos Aires, but filming the dancing in milongas, especially if you are a visitor, really isn't acceptable. So there's a lack of video of ordinary social tango, which is a pity because I think we can all learn a lot from it. There are good videos on Tango and Chaos, and I've just noticed that Jantango, who has lived there a long while, has recently been filming, and has uploaded several videos of two milongas. This one is at Maipu 444, one of the heavenly realms of tango, in effect no more than a large, well-lit room, with a parquet floor which appears to have experienced no treatment apart from a nightly rubbing by leather-soled shoes, leaving it smooth and soft like velvet. Don't your feet twitch in anticipation when you look at it?

But watch the dancing. How gentle, relaxed and effortless it appears, and with all the energy of the music. Couples dancing for the best reason in the world – each other. Nothing to prove to the world, just enjoyment of the music and of moving in the moment. It's fascinating to watch how they use available space, and how they give each other room: of course, the floor isn't crowded, and the music is slow. It's hard to think of anything else that looks this civilised: little can compare with the smooth, unhurried precision of social tango this good. 'Asi se baila el tango' as the song says: this is how you dance tango.

Of course people who learn 'steps' will say, oh, that's all easy stuff! We know all that! But learning 'steps' isn't hard; learning to dance with the music, your partner and the rest of the floor takes just a little bit longer. Thank you, Jantango.

Context

'All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.'

I'd be inclined to say amen to that, but it's a quote from Moliere. The BBC website quotes the words but not the context: more than likely it wasn't intended seriously. It could almost be a dance teacher talking up his importance...

But I'd still say amen to it.

Geraldin Rojas and Ezequiel Paludi at Carablanca Milonga, London 20/11/09

Here's the third of the set of four dances. There's also one, two and four.

Outside videos, I'd never seen Geraldin and Ezekiel, and I've tended to watch her from her days with Javier. But of course I wanted to video the event, which meant ignoring it and juggling tiny figures on a tiny screen. Watching the results a day later, I'm really impressed. They dance a display tango, a kind of stage tango, but they bring to it a lot of what I think of as defining characteristics of Argentine social tango. First, the smoothness. There's always a mismatch: from the waist down all is activity, which you'd never suspect if you just watched from the waist up. (Read into that what you like, but that's how it looks.) There also seemed to be a very real emotional content. It wasn't fireworks just for effect, or to show that they can do fireworks: it seemed to be a tender and passionate dialogue. Moreover, dancing close embrace seemed very much their default position: it looked very comfortable for them. In other words, for all the high kicks and elaborate turns, it didn't look as if salon tango was far away.

Before their performance the floor was crowded with what looked like would-be stage dancers; after the performance the dancing looked unusually calm, and rather good, for a short while. Perhaps that summed up their impact: nobody wants to try to imitate dance that good.

& I enjoyed their choice of music: contemporary versions of classics, except for the milonga, which was chosen by the DJ, and thus improvised. I'm sure the first two of the set of four are the Color Tango orchestra.

Returning from the Salon Room at Tango @ 33...

...I got a sneak preview of a new exhibition in Trafalgar Square. “A 'ghost rainforest' of huge tree stumps from the jungles of Africa is to form a dramatic artwork in London's Trafalgar Square” reads the press release. Huge stumps of naturally-fallen tropical trees were being put in place. One aim is to highlight deforestation, but bringing these huge natural things into that very organised square seems a reminder of a vaster reality. Conceivably trees like this once forested London: in ruins they resemble the aftermath of a global catastrophe, man-made or otherwise. & at midwinter, a strange time to do it. How might they look under snow? & what strange contrast will they make with the inevitable Christmas tree?

At least they will draw attention away from the fourth plinth, currently occupied by a bizarre-looking sculpture of a very brave WW2 pilot. Why it looks bizarre, I'm not quite sure. It's over seven feet tall, but that shouldn't be a problem. It's made out of fibreglass rather than bronze. Somehow, sadly, it looks terribly trivial.

Old and new

This came my way a few days ago and has danced in my head ever since. Call it an eyeworm, perhaps. I'm just wondering why.

It looks like a restaurant-bar where you'd get a set lunch. They wouldn't serve in the evenings, so family and friends, I'd guess, are hanging out there under the strip lights in the evening. Perhaps a few local friends might drop by for a drink and to chat on the way home from work. The usual tile floor, a piano, a few pictures on the wall, traffic passing outside in the dark. A few bored teenagers hanging around: they look as if they're putting off going upstairs to finish their homework. Or the restaurant might be their front room. General Las Heras is a town about 40 miles from Buenos Aires.

Someone's put on a track that was a hit nearly 70 years ago, and it fills the bare space with an extraordinary resonance. A couple at the back try to dance to it, a friend pointing out where he thinks their feet should go. They make a good attempt at the hold, but they don't really know what they're doing with their feet. Unlike the couple the camera focuses on. How old is she? Eight or nine? He's a few years older, and leads with a lot of flourish, but perhaps not altogether clearly. She's amazingly neat on her feet; she knows when to keep her ankles together, and her back cross/ocho/step, whatever we call it this week, is a swift, balanced swivel.

They both look at the floor, watching their feet, and their dance has a slightly tentative feel to it, but in a year or two they'll be very assured. It's magical that the camera has caught this brief glimpse of tango in action, tango in the community, tango in everyday life; kids responding with such musicality, energy, intensity, tenderness even, to the old music of Troilo's violins and bandoneon.

Thanks to Tordolh

Rough seas

Nostalgia upon nostalgia

Sadly, I hesitate to invite women I don't know and haven't watched dancing. I have to hesitate: at worst I've had attempts at a close-ish embrace (even without actual body contact) repulsed, as if I were an unwelcome pest; at best there's merely a sense of condescending boredom at my lack of wild stage moves. So if I do invite a woman I don't know and haven't seen dancing, and it turns out that she not only follows close embrace but obviously enjoys it... what a bonus!

I met her again recently as I was leaving a rather dark milonga, lit only by coloured flood-lights: I hadn't noticed her inside. She was fuming about the pathetic wannabe stage-performer attempts of dancers. I had to ask where she herself had learned to dance... but the answer was pretty obvious by now. 'In the Buenos Aires milongas, sometimes the leaders just walk! Don't people here realise what a pleasure it can be just to walk? & they turn so smoothly...' Nostalgia upon nostalgia!

At least there are dancers in London who are sympathetic. London doesn't exactly have a name for excellence in tango, but good salon dancing is beginning to be welcomed, and 'specialist' milongas, like the salon room at '33' on Sunday night, are becoming popular. I can only hope that more people will start to realise how good considerate, elegant and musical dancing can be.

Sub-category errors

Technically, a category error means putting something in the wrong category or, according to Wikepidia, '...a semantic or ontological error by which a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property.' But there might be a slightly greyer kind of category error. For instance, 'dance' (as a category): we all know what this means... but what we know might not be true of both, say, tango and ballet. Similarly, within 'tango' (as a category) there can be mistaken assumptions, so perhaps this is a sub-category error.

Last night I was talking to a friend who'd just taken a workshop with a couple of well-liked local teachers, who said she was puzzled that an Argentine teacher had told her to keep her shoulders steady, while the local couple asked why everyone kept their shoulders so rigid. & I remembered a class with Oscar Casas, who descended on me with true Latin hyperbole one afternoon: 'Nonono! You KEEL your parrrtner like that!' He then reverted to his (usual) Anglo Saxon mode and explained: if you bend from side to side, so that your shoulders go up and down alternately, you throw your partner off balance, as you affect her axis. (I was probably trying to lead traspie: instead I was taught to breath in slightly to lift my partner slightly onto her toes. Surprisingly, I found this takes concentration.)

But I'm inclined to think that Oscar and the local couple were both right. Oscar was talking about tango in close embrace, the local couple about tango in open embrace. In open embrace you are free to be 'expressive' with your shoulders, but if you do that in close embrace, you create problems for your partner, and she'll find you uncomfortable to dance with. Close embrace tango is incredibly smooth from the waist up, which can be very difficult to achieve. I'd watched tango for four years, but I was still taken aback the first evening I went to El Beso in BsAs to see, over the heads of people sitting down, male-female torsos gliding round, and rotating as smoothly as if they were suspended on pieces of string. Nothing I'd seen in London prepared me for that...

(I also remember a London workshop with Pablo Pugliese, who complained about what he called the 'chicken-wing-flapping' style of some dancers: in this, both shoulders go up and down together.)

Perhaps the category 'tango' contains two sub-categories, 'close' and 'not-close'. 'Close' is a specific art form involving a quality of movement that could be described as 'quasi-feline': 'not-close', on the other hand, seems pretty varied. But problems arise if one assumes that, since they are in the same category, 'tango', what goes for one is good for the other. In other words, 'close' is not necessarily 'not-close' danced close.

Two period films.

The Weeping Meadow (aka Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow).

This is the first film of a trilogy by Theodoros Angelopoulos. Reflecting on the death of his mother, whose life almost spanned the 20th century, he started a script based round the idea of a woman's experience of the century. It grew so long that he had to split it into a trilogy; even so, it's still nearly three hours. It's the first Angelopoulos film I've seen, and it looks unlike anything I've seen before. There's no fast, sharp storytelling; single takes can be long, long zooms and tracking shots. But the visual quality of what you see is so effortlessly breathtaking that the film dictates its own pace and time. I regretted seeing it on DVD and splitting it over two nights.

It was written by Angelopoulos with Tonino Guerra, the legendary 20th century scriptwriter who has written over 100 films, including most of Antonioni's, and many of Fellini's. Everybody's Fine, his most recent, will be released in December. Weeping Meadow is a fascinating script: much of the story is omitted, as if: 'Well, we could think of an extra bit of plot and a few more scenes here to explain this, but why bother? What happens is what matters'.

What happens? Elena is an orphan, rescued from the ruins of Odessa after the Russian revolution and brought back to Greece by a Greek refugee family. The refugee Greeks are given land in Thessalonika where they build a village. Years later, a teenager, she has given birth to twins after becoming pregnant by her teenage stepbrother: the children are hidden away in adoption. Her foster father is widowed and she is forced into marriage with him, but runs away after the ceremony to join her stepbrother, a talented accordion player. They are adopted by musicians, and ostrasised by their village. The father dies. After a storm, the village is flooded, an astonishing scene and totally natural: miles and miles of water, and not a trace of CGI or studio photography. He leaves to tour America in 1939. Unable to return to Greece and Elena, he joins the American Forces and is killed in action. The two children die fighting on opposite sides of the Greek civil war that followed WW2.

Tragedy must be part of the Greek imagination in the same way that Shakespeare is part of us: we like our tragedy with history, politics, comedy and romance mixed in. With Angelopoulos it's tragedy pure and simple, unreasonable, inexplicable, inevitable, overpowering. One example of his scripting: Elena stands on the quay, a piece of unfinished red knitting in her hands, as he is about to take the liner to the USA. 'I made this for you but didn't finish it'. A red thread of wool inadvertently gets caught in his clothing, and as he's rowed to the liner, all she has made unravels in her hands. It's visual, and incredibly expressive.

There are a number of other films by him, including Ulysses' Gaze. They are planned for DVD release, but it seems a sadly slow process.

La Reine Margot

I first saw this when it was released eight or nine years ago, and got swept along with it, so I was curious to see how well it has lasted, especially the first 30 minutes. The first 30 minutes survive as strong as ever. An edgy, vicious world, so close up you imagine you can smell it, the days leading up to the massacre of 30,000 protestants in France, sweaty with fear. (The French seem good at making films so close up you imagine you can smell them: the recent TV police/judiciary series Engrenages, 'Spiral' in English, is a bit like that.)

But although La Reine Margot looks good throughout, the plot machinations of the rest of the film look increasingly unrealistic. The Queen Mother has married her catholic daughter to the protestant Henry of Navarre in order to end inter-faith struggles in France, but the wedding becomes the occasion of the St Bartholemew's Day massacre at which the protestant wedding guests are massacred. Henry becomes a prisoner at the French court, and his mother-in-law and brothers-in-law spend the rest of the film trying to assassinate him. In the end, the king is accidentally killed by his own mother in another failed attempt to assassinate Henry. This is Dumas, not history or even common sense. In fact, the king died of TB, and Henry survived to become Henry IV, 'le bon roi Henri', tolerant in religion, and one of the most popular of French monarchs.

Tango past and tango present

Dance is strange. Unlike an artefact, it exists only in the moment it is made, then it vanishes out of time and into memory, leaving, hopefully, a sense of order, of happiness. Its forms might be judged old-fashioned at one time, then a bit later as 'contemporary' again, but the dance itself is never older or newer than the moment we create it in, and we create it out of old forms, with our contemporary sensibilities.

It's too easy to assume that 'estilo milonguero' is old, and it would be tedious to try and preserve something exactly just because it's old. We don't learn to do something as it was done 70 years ago because it's old but because there's a good reason to do it that way, and that reason is almost always a technical reason - and because we enjoy doing it that way. If we want to bake bread, play an instrument or print an etching we need to learn techniques, and there are good practical reasons for the techniques; they work, they get results. It's always interesting to break the rules, but you have to know the techniques, the craft, to begin with. In classes, we can learn what generations of dancers have discovered and refined, we can learn about the possible movements of two bodies close together, the requirements of improvisation to the music, dancing on crowded floors. & on YouTube, we can watch video, like youngsters at milongas more than half a century ago watching the great dancers, getting the feel of it. Then we go out and make it for ourselves, and become part of the present and the history.

We're fortunate that some of the older dancers continue to travel and teach, and are welcomed wherever they are invited. I've no doubt money is important to them. State pensions can't amount to much in Argentina; people who might have spent a lot of their lives dancing might not have extensive savings and if they had savings in Argentina they might well have lost them in 2002. But I'm sure they travel primarily because they love what they do, and they enjoy the company of other people who love it too. Tango has given them more than pleasure, and they wish that for us. They love tango and want it to continue. Thanks to all of them!

(This was prompted by a recent, rather thoughtful post by Elizabeth Brinton, Muma. Apologies if I seem to disagree on one or two things.)

In the Spirit of Diaghilev

Sadler's Wells offered four choreographers, Wayne McGregor, Russell Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Javier de Frutos, the challenge Diaghilev offered choreographers: 'Surprise me!' Four short works resulted, four world premieres in an evening.

The one that remains vividly in mind is Russell Maliphant's AfterLight, suggested by the geometric drawings of Nijinsky. The sparseness of it focused attention totally on the one dancer. Casually dressed, he stretches and turns within a pool of flickering light. There's nothing to distract from the dance; there's just music, light and a moving body. It was extraordinary.

Sidi Larbi used two dancers and a painted backdrop, a dance suggesting the discovery of eroticism, and its intoxication. I wonder if a dance performance isn't something of a ritual; we gather for a journey out of verbal reality. A dance is a dance, but when it tries to tell a story, when the stage setting tries to describe a place, there's too much superfluous information and something doesn't quite work. It becomes more of an entertainment, the focus is lost.

Judith Mackerell's review is here. And here there is an article about research by cognitive scientists into dance, how it is created, developed, remembered, with dancer and choreographer Wayne McGregor and his company. & here is a short video about that research taking place during creative rehearsals. Not like any dance class I've been to.

PS. It was on my mind while writing this that it was an all-male list of choreographers, and yet I've seen exciting work from female choreographers: Cathy Marston, Siobhan Davies and Shobana Jeyasingh to name contemporary women just in the UK. Diaghilev himself encouraged and commissioned Bronislava Nijinska, Nijinsky's sister. Then I saw an article reporting on a recent symposium on the low visibility of female choreographers.

My guess is that the four males have a higher box office appeal and they have international reputations. Not that their work is necessarily any more interesting.

Mimi Santapa

Someone kindly mentioned Mimi Santapa a while back: this seems to be the only YouTube vid of her dancing, and I'm linking it so I don't forget the name. She seems to have a great reputation as a teacher in BsAs, and it's said she hardly needs to travel to make a living from tango. She has, however, toured N. America. She also gave classes in 'Sheffield', but it looks as if that's an American one, not the one in the N. of England...

I enjoy watching this. The dance sings along with the music, it's relaxed, effortless dancing, it doesn't require any anatomical peculiarities, any lifelong training, even any daily workout apart from dancing; it's just great basic salon, graceful, fluent, musical. There's a whole list of teachers I want to meet.

And the milonga, El Arranque, at 1759 Bartolome Mitre. It starts around 3pm, and at that time it's a bit of an old folks' milonga, everyone else being at work, I guess. People stroll in, order a coffee, read the papers, chat, dance a bit. It's a very relaxed, easy atmosphere, very courteous. Later it gets busier. A good place to go if you have a partner and want to practice, as it's not crowded, or just for a leisurely coffee. & it's way off the tourist routes.

When one good thing leads to another...

I wondered why Ricardo Viqueira (in the video in the previous post) looked familiar. Browsing YouTube, of course, I found why: the Exhibition at Los Consagrados, a celebration of 64 years of Ricardo Vidort dancing tango, features Ricardo Vidort with Myriam Pincen, Osvaldo and Coca Cartery, Oscar and Mary Ann Casas – and Ricardo Viqueira and Mariana Hernandez. Pretty much a who's who of what's now known as 'estilo milonguero', the dance once known as 'tango'.

Continuing the browse, I found quite a few videos with his name (there might be others where he's simply called 'Ricardo'), but the one in the previous post remains a favourite. There are quite a few from Italy, but most aren't good image quality. On some you could count the pixels, on some a wrong aspect ratio squeezes two slender dancers into a single beanpole, others flicker badly, in others the lighting is poor. Pity.

From Italy? Ricardo Viqueira is another in that long list of Argentine tango teachers who visit Europe regularly to teach, and are unknown in the UK. He usually visits Italy: of course, Spanish and Italian speakers can understand each other relatively easily, but he has also taught in France, Switzerland, Spain, Brazil and the United States. Italy is where he'll be from 4 November to 4 December, including the Ferrara tango festival. He also teaches regularly in Buenos Aires.

His website says: 'A native of Buenos Aires, Ricardo has always been connected to the tango: first as a child he studied music at the Conservatorio Delva then later he began organizing successful milongas, among them the well known Club Sin Rumbo in Villa Urquiza... He is especially known for dancing Milonga with Traspié, Canyengue and as the creator of a simple teaching method with which both students and teachers have benefited.'

Of his teaching he says: 'I try to teach what I like to dance. It’s a close embrace where the man as well as the woman dance in their own axis. This allows one to dance in a small or crowed room as the couple dances within their own space. One dances with feet on the floor without limiting the steps or figures. For this, it is indispensable to learn the technique. This is where I put my major emphasis when teaching. I believe teaching the technique gives the student the sufficient tools to later create his or her personal dance. Each step or figure requires a technique, a lead or mark, musicality, and direction. All of these are fundamental. For this reason, at the time of teaching each step, I emphasis each of these points.'

His lead looks incredibly clear and precise. I see he slightly lifts and lowers his partner, which clarifies the lead and expresses the music, and although his feet often dance in double time, the two heads and torsos move with perfect smoothness.

Since I spent a happy half hour browsing all the videos it would be a pity not to link one or two. These are both with Myrta Tiseyra, Argentine milonguera who now lives and teaches in Italy.



And, quite opposite in style and feeling, a version of Canaro's Poema, which I'd never thought of as canyengue before...

Videos thanks to Laretetanguera.

Biagi, again.

Tango en el Cielo has just added a comment to this post about awareness of space on the floor, as well as a reference to another Biagi video, which I enjoyed a lot. As the reference doesn't translate as a link in the Comments I thought I should add it as a new post.

Thanks to everyone who dug out videos of dance to Biagi. I found it very useful to think about his distinctive, sometimes disconcerting music, and I've enjoyed watching all the different responses to it in dance.



Video thanks to flopytango

Tigre viejo

Video thanks to Abretango

Cristal Pite and Kidd Pivot

An extraordinary evening at Sadler's Wells. Cristal Pite has been a dancer and choreographer since she was very young, now working with her own company, Kidd Pivot. She worked for some years with the Forsythe company, therefore at the most cerebral, physical and imaginative edge of dance, so that's the tradition of her own company.

'Lost Action' is one piece that lasts nearly 90 minutes without a break, and it didn't seem over long. For a start she and her dancers are extraordinarily supple, and to watch human bodies with that degree of flexibility moving is wonderful. When we watch movement we are involved in it, we follow it in our own bodies. & the choreography was very inventive with movement.

& the 'sense' of the piece? I guess it would be 'death and the dancer', because it's 'about' a dancer and death. The death is relived, replayed, worked around, re-imagined in a variety of circumstances on a bare stage, just in dance. Finally it's as if the dancers just have to accept it. Finally, after an extraordinarily intense male/female pas-de-deux, there's a motionless (male) body that can be lifted, turned, held, carried, but remains motionless.

An amazing feat of memory by the dancers, too, given the complexities of the movements. The sound track is a sound collage, sometimes overlapping voices, beats, just sound, little to jog the memory. I guess there's a sequence to the movements, each phrase leading to the next. A 90-minute choreography. (I'd have problems learning a three-minute choreography, not that I've ever tried, needed or wanted to... But perhaps learning choreographies is a way to develop the memory for movement.)

I wished the lighting wasn't so low throughout. The moving bodies said so much I wanted to see them as clearly as possible.

She's here, talking about her work and rehearsing with the Nederlands Dans Theater. And the Sadler's Wells trailer for 'Lost Action' is here.

I think there's something here for the tango community too: the more supple you are the easier it is to move, and suppleness can be improved. The 'milonguero' community might not pay much attention to stretching exercises, but if you watch the older dancers it is surprising how supple they still are. Impossible to say whether that's because they've danced so much, or whether they've danced so much because they are naturally supple; a bit of both, probably. But if you're not naturally bendy, it's worth trying to do something about it, because bendy people are likely to dance a lot better and look a lot better than stiff people.

Biagi... and Miguel Balbi

When I was looking for Biagi in music and dance I forgot to look at Tango and Chaos, where most of the best videos are to be found. In a comment, Anon reminded me of this video. Those smooth energetic turns are so effortlessly on the beat; could it be better? One thing that strikes me: if you use a lot of turns you are constantly surveying the space around you: they use space quite freely because they know where all the other dancers are.

Tango gets UN cultural approval

'The Tango has been declared part of the world's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations.' The full story is here. A tangible intangible?

Biagi...

...also left the human race with one of the great recordings of 'Lagrimas y Sonrisas', 'tears and smiles', one of our all-time favourite valses, one of his greatest hits, and one that can be enjoyed without worrying about the legato and staccato of it. I love this improvisation by a young Argentine couple, on their way to church if I understand the caption correctly ('Improvisando un poco antes de salir para la capilla'). Why is it that I can watch this again, but I can't get beyond the first 20 seconds of those 'Campeones mundiales de tango salon' videos? Is that perverse? & she's not even dancing in CiFs!

Video thanks to Mecesarariet.



I might as well add this here: it seems to be part of the same 'session' as the above, a bit later perhaps, since she's had time to put on her dancing shoes. But the thing about it is that it's Biagi again, a tango, and one of his more complicated tangos, rhythmically, too. Their response to the urgent rhythms, with those odd misplaced beats, seems lots of short steps; but I think I prefer their vals, with a relatively straightforward Biagi. & it's great to see 'milonguero' danced and enjoyed by lively young people too. There's a lot of wit and enjoyment in it; there's clear, inventive leading and great following. 'Nuevo' hasn't conquered the world, not yet. I must find out where La Capilla is...



Again, video thanks to Mecesarariet.

Entrega

Recently I was trying to remember what entrega is. Literally it means 'handing over', 'surrender', but I know it has a particular meaning in tango. My usual research method turned up this page, dated two years ago; there are some interesting comments too. There were never many posts on the Chemin du Tango blog, and it hasn't been updated since last year, but the posts are interesting; come back soon, Chemin du Tango.

Chemin du Tango's writing about entrega is a great account of... well, of almost a non-event, but nevertheless of something wonderful, something really indescribable. But her non-description seems to be a good indication of what a leader should aim to give his partner. (So it's not an assault course of waved and waving limbs that they want, not a lively good time, not an aerobic session, not even a Q&A? Just...)

I must have read about entrega first on TangoandChaos where there's a whole page on it, including a great video and a wonderful photo of '...three of the world’s best tango dancers'. Tangoandchaos says that 'What the people of the clubs are really looking for is entrega. In fact, you could say that “entrega” is the whole point of tango'. He adds that this kind of tango '... has become buried under a step and figure oriented dance that’s performed with one eye on the mirror and the other eye on the audience. A tango designed to impress as many people as possible in a two-minute YouTube clip...'

Some things are easier to define by saying what they aren't. I'd be grateful if anyone out there can tell us more. Is it really that important?

Los Ocampo

I've been meaning to get this finished for months. Omar Ocampo and Monica Romero, Los Ocampo, were at Carablanca milonga in late spring. It's just taken a while to process the material.

Los Ocampo are popular here, and their workshops and classes are always well attended. I found them very generous and helpful as teachers, and I like their emphasis on walking well and to the music. They also teach some straightforward material which is useful in dancing in a milonga.

Their shows are something else, often involving a variety of dance forms from Argentina. I don't have much information on the dance or the music: I seem to remember her introducing the first dance, 'Los Ocampo', as a form of Argentine Samba, although it looks a bit like Chacarera. 'Los Ocampo 1' is a milonga. '3' and '4' are closer to tango: '4' must be Piazzolla. They obviously love to dance, and love dancing together, and their shows are always enjoyed.

Dancing to Biagi

I have the impression that Biagi is difficult to dance to, and I wonder why. I found his music late: I could recognised D'Arienzo, Pugliese, Di Sarli, before I'd even heard of Biagi. I guess he's not played incessantly in milongas, so you don't get the practice. &, yes, his music is different.

Rodolfo Biagi was D'Arienzo's pianist for about three years, and became known as 'Manos Brujas' – 'magic hands'. In 1938 he left D'Arienzo, and formed his own orchestra. The story has it that D'Arienzo was irked by the applause his pianist was getting: 'I'm the star around here!' he's reported to have said. So Biagi came out of the tradition of playing very rhythmic music for dancing to.

There's a particular intensity in his compositions and arrangements, but also a serious kind of playfulness with rhythm, and with melodic lines. His rhythms are sharply staccato, perhaps the most staccato rhythm in all tango music, but his melodic lines can be extremely 'legato', very smooth and flowing. When you are dancing, and hear at the same time sharp forceful rhythms from the bandoneons and piano, and smooth flowing lines from the violin, you are faced with a dilemma: the rhythms make you want to move your feet in time, but the melodic line asks you to dance in a very flowing way.

But that's not all. The rhythms themselves aren't at all regular. Occasionally, the first or the third beat, which is normally accentuated, is either unexpectedly missed out, or played very quietly. Sometimes in a phrase of a few bars, the fourth beat in every bar is accentuated. This is syncopation, but for some reason it doesn't have the same effect as syncopation in jazz. Biagi plays around with the beat, so you have to keep your inner metronome sharp and clear. If you start to think the fourth beat is the first beat, sooner or later you're in for a big surprise.

This suggests that he abandoned the tradition of playing music for dancing to. But his music is great fun to dance to, but I really have to listen carefully, I can't take anything for granted. Above all, it's very powerful music, very intense, very energetic. To make a different kind of music, an individual music, is a great achievement.

I checked out YouTube to see if there were many videos of dance to Biagi, but rather few are identified. One of them is familiar because I uploaded it myself, and I've linked it before.

Tete isn't popular with everyone: he's never really elegant, smooth. Watching this video again, it's obvious that he uses his regular, perhaps relatively limited, repertoire of 'steps', even if they are combined in different ways.* But elegant or not, I don't think Tete and Silvia's dance to Biagi can be bettered in spirit and musicality. The intensity of the music is right there in the dance, and they relate perfectly to the legato phrasing, as well as to the crisp rhythms. There's a mixture of long and very short steps, which suits the phrasing and the rhythms well. The introduction is by Natalie Clouet, who invited Tete and Silvia to Paris in May: 'Tango is danced in a variety of ways, but above all one gets support from the floor because from the floor energy is found, and because it's on the floor that one dances the music.' (Tete.)

(*This led me to wonder about dancing differently to different music. Teachers do talk about this. To what extent do you use different steps and combinations of steps when you dance to, say, Di Sarli or D'Arienzo? My guess is that for most dancers it's not the steps themselves that change so much as a more general overall 'interpretation'. The style of dancing to Di Sarli might be longer steps, long smooth turns, while D'Arienzo would be a livelier use of the same steps and turns.)

Tango, but no more ripe peaches.

The last evening

A swim at sunrise is always the best, if you can get up in time. The sea seems incredibly fresh, completely new, the water as calm as a lake, just a slight swell that brings occasional wavelets on the shingle with a soft kissing sound; the sea is still sleeping, breathing calmly. The water feels warm, a little heavy in its fluidity, but the Mediterranean is packed with salt. & at sunrise and for about five minutes, the low sun brings the surface of the water alight with colour. You swim immersed in colour.

Then it's a 15-minute walk along the beach for a cup of coffee, and all the way back in fresh bright light. The bicycle is folded, the tent and sleeping bag thrown into a holdall, and a seat on the TGV claimed as the northward journey unfolds. Mte Ste. Victoire, then the towers of Avignon fall away into the past. No more sunrise swims this year. Nine hours later, it's a chilly London evening, after a few weeks wearing little more than shorts and a tee-shirt. Tango, but no more ripe peaches.

Meduses

If you arrive at your favourite beach on a hot sunny morning and see very few people in the water, everyone else anxiously scanning the water's edge, and grown men armed with their kids' buckets and spades resolutely wading into the water and picking something out of it, watch out. But off the Cote d'Azur jellyfish ('meduses') are usually small and infrequent, and the sting isn't that bad. Brainless floating nerve systems. Dire predictions that through overfishing and agricultural run-off the world will be left with dead oceans full of nothing more than jellyfish. 'Jellies' we're supposed to call them, since they aren't fish.

Tangocommuter, emerging from a long swim, is called over by two wildly attractive young women standing in the shallows. But the focus of their attention is what one holds in her cupped hands: 'Are those meduses?' she asks. At first sight I see only water and then realise that there are dozens of tiny jellyfish in the water she holds, each hardly more than 1mm long. Her friend points to the sea we are standing in: it is a cloud of minute jellyfish.


Azur, as in 'Cote d'Azur'

'Allez chercher des poissons dans les arbres!'

...said the fruit and veg shop manager, giving a loud and very public earful to her boss, who was apparently stocktaking, across several square metres of perfectly ripe peaches, €2.70 a kilo, about £1.50 per pound, obviously unconcerned about job security. Or maybe she'd already lost it.

I've been wondering about the English equivalent. It's a wonderfully derisive remark, and 'Go look for fish in the trees' hardly does it justice. Of course a lot depends on tone, and she gave it plenty, but I guess the translation just doesn't have the rhythmic directness of the French. Derisive, and a bit surreal, too. Remember it for your next visit to France, just in case you need to tell someone to get lost in expressive (but perfectly decent) French.

& a national newspaper reports on a chess tournament in Kolkata at which the French champion, Russian by birth but now French, nodded off at the board. & stayed nodded. His opponent must have grinned, and held his breath for fear of waking him, as the minutes ticked by. Finally, an hour or so later, his clock rang and he awoke, but the time he was allowed for the match had expired. & so he (and la France) lost.

Can it really be fun if we don't take it seriously?

Tony Walker circulated a link to an article about tango in Times Online: if you don't get his emails, the article is here. The article points to the emotional seriousness of tango, as of relationships in general. But isn't it fun? Yes... but can it really be fun if we don't take it seriously?

This relates to this ongoing discussion about cabaceo, but to me the discussion is about an approach to the milonga in general, even about how seriously we take each other, rather than about whether we should follow an arguably outdated piece of tango history.

Some time ago I went to ask an acquaintance to dance. She was busy chatting with a (girl) friend; I 'hovered' for a moment but she didn't look up, so I walked away. Later she asked me why I hadn't danced with her that evening. Well, it's impolite to interrupt a conversation and, although I was sure my interruption would have been welcome, in the back of my mind there was the feeling that she wasn't 'ready' to dance. Sure, she would have jumped up immediately to dance, but uppermost in her mind would have been another way of relating, another mindset, a lively verbal activity, and it would have felt a little uncomfortable because, for a moment, I wouldn't have trusted her sudden involvement in dancing.

Tango needs a degree of commitment to the partner you are dancing with. The importance of cabaceo doesn't seem to be as the traditional method you use to ask your partner to dance, but as to whether you are maintaining a receptive mood for a dance, and whether you want to dance at that moment with that partner; and cabaceo is still the best way to deal with all that. If you sit watching for a sign – which male or female can ignore or accept – you are ready and committed to your dance, and to your partner, in a way you aren't if you are enjoying some jolly socialising, and sort of fall into a dance casually. & if you start off in a receptive mood, you're going to enjoy your dance a lot more, and get a lot more out of it.

We might be able to think of more appropriate and contemporary ways of organising a milonga than the cabaceo, and if they work as well, fine. I think the principle to keep in mind is how we maintain a focus on a dance we think is important enough to focus on. We might treat tango as more than a recreational activity. We all know it's seriously good for us!

Gotan

A new tango course is advertised in Nice. 'This isn't that old kind of tango: this is "tango nuevo", and it's danced to music like the well-known Gotan Project...' Groan, and Gotan, that dull mechanical electro-beat with a bandoneon that can hardly play eight notes, and then without conviction or passion... Oops, put a glass of wine in my hand someone, and tell me to shut up.

Antibes, the sea

Cabaceo (again)

When you're on metered internet you start to realise how much time it takes. Check the emails, write an answer, read a few blogs, that's half an hour; €2, please... A new post? Another €2.

There's an interesting post on the use of cabaceo in Toronto at Irene and Man Yung's Tango Blog.

I'm still not sure where I stand on this one. I found the serious cabaceo milongas (the 'line-up' ones) in Buenos Aires intimidating – but then I didn't know anyone there. It's also clear that this kind of cabaceo grew up in a social climate quite different from the European or American present, a climate in which it was quite incorrect to have men and women who weren't closely connected sitting near each other. (Apparently they could dance together but not sit together.) At the same time the cabaceo, along with the practice of clearing the floor at the end of a tanda and taking a different partner, imposes a kind of order on a milonga, which tends to make the dance the focus of the evening, to the benefit of the dance.

This might seem excessively formal in our social climate, but a London milonga is a bit blurred between a dance and a social meeting, and what you do on the floor is less visible, less emphasised, perhaps less important, since the lights are kept low. As Irene and Man Yung say, it looks "lively" and "friendly" and "jolly" and "noisy" but this isn't necessarily the atmosphere for tango. Added to this, London dance venues aren't dedicated tango venues, so the layout of tables and chairs may not be helpful. What we do in London has 'just growed'. Of course, so did the cabaceo: people looked at how they organised their dances, saw the needs and the problems, and acted to resolve them. Adopting any solution wholesale isn't likely to be satisfactory, but I think it's a good idea to look at how we do things, and see if they can be improved. At the same time, of course, events have to pay their way, which means giving people what they want, or at least what they expect.

It would certainly be interesting to see how a milonga on fairly traditional lines would work in London, as an experiment. That's why I think the report from Toronto, a sort of 'limited overs' cabaceo*, is so interesting.

(* 'limited overs': a game of cricket played for a very limited period of time.)

Picasso Cezanne

Picasso Cezanne (advertised in that order) at the Musee Granet in Aix. Picasso had a life-long admiration for Cezanne, so it's strange the two haven't met in an exhibition before.

I'm first attracted to the Cezannes, paintings in which drawing, the structure, remains visible on the surface, painting visibly composed of marks, painting moving definitively away from the 'photographic'. Cezanne's doubt and hesitation: the apple is here – no, hang on, it's here; he adds a touch of colour, then comes back a day later and draws it again, a bit lower down, to the side. You can see this in the portraits: they add up to expressive portraits but if you look closely they are composed of a number of slightly different view-points. & flattening: tables are flattened against the picture plane, and even in landscapes there's a flatness. Of course Japanese prints were by now well-known and admired, but Cezanne himself says that the intense light of the south flattens the appearance of landscape.

Which is where Cubism started: what you see depends on where you are, and when you are looking. Perspective, the single viewpoint of the lens at a single instant, is ignored, outdated. & a painting is a collection of marks, of signs. But there was another very significant influence on Picasso: African art, which wasn't another 'style' but an art that didn't try to describe the world, an art with a purpose, an art of exorcism, a creation that had the purpose of intercession. When Picasso thought of this, his connection to Cezanne became more tenuous. As a result, much of the exhibition is taken up with superficial similarities: Cezanne and Picasso both painted landscapes, still lives, portraits, but their ways of painting, even what they were trying to achieve, seem very different, Cezanne always doubting and uncertain, and Picasso, who gives the impression of never doubting anything, affirming life and the creative force.

But both painted skulls. There are a few of Picasso's skulls in the show, but sadly none of Cezanne's (nor of his Mte. Ste. Victoire paintings either). I'd love to see a show of their skull paintings together...

Aung San Su Kyi

Total: the name's appeared a couple of times recently. Jane Birkin recently released a song (in English) called Aung San Su Kyi: she's been active in France on behalf of the Nobel Peace Prize winner. I heard the song on the radio some nights ago, recounting, in that sad vulnerable voice, the treatment of Aung San by the Burmese junta. & that was the first mention of Total, a French company that, in conjunction with Chevron, runs the Yadana pipeline that pumps oil out of Burma – and dollars to a junta that controls one of the poorest and most backward countries in the world. The song is a precis of the Earth Rights International report, released on 10/09/2009, which claims that 75% of the Yadana revenues go directly to the junta and that, instead of being spent locally, much of the money finds its way into secret bank accounts offshore of Singapore.

And the other mention? Total is one of the sponsors of the Picasso-Cezanne exhibition.

It's astonishing how toothless world opposition to the Burmese junta appears to be. Politicians say it is bad: the rest of us seem to shrug our shoulders. The report doesn't seem to have been mentioned in the UK press. The recent 'trial' of Aung San, like the suppression of the monks' protests and the deaths not so long ago, seem to have passed with a bit of token outrage. Shamefully, the junta looks secure for the time being: oil supports the junta, since Burma has little other trade with the outside world, and the report suggests that if Total pulled out, Chinese companies would take over...

Aix and dance

I like Aix-en-Provence. It's an old town-sized city, with university city facilities; it's warm, the light is marvellous, it has tango, the Mediterranean isn't far, and the countryside around, including the 3,000 ft Mte. Ste. Victoire, is just amazing. Yes, I would like to live there.

& it has more dance than tango. The internationally-known French choreographer Anglin Preljocaj moved his company there a few years ago, establishing a custom-built centre, the Pavillon Noir, perhaps a surprisingly static but obviously pragmatic glass and concrete work place and centre. It has since been recognised as a 'Centre Chorégraphique National'.

The Preljocaj company visits London regularly: I saw their Rite of Spring at Sadler's Wells few years ago. His work is inventive, lyrical, challenging, intensely physical, with a wonderful sense of how amazing human bodies in motion can be. The climax of the Rite of Spring can be seen here: warning, if necessary, scenes of nudity. & of course the company is active in the streets of Aix, giving public performances and workshops.

Breaking news!

Breaking news! Another video of Ricardo Vidort has surfaced. Here it is:

& in March I noted that Alberto Dassieu was visiting Zurich, and I linked a couple of videos. Actually I wanted to point out that here was a great tango dancer and teacher within reach of London: I hoped, in vain, that someone with a bit of money might think if getting him over from Switzerland. The page is here: the second video, the D'Arienzo, I've watched again and again. Two moments stand out: at the very beginning when he and Elba Biscay first make contact it's like two magnets. And then there's an extraordinary turn at 0:34 that always makes me smile: you can hardly see Elba's face, but a glimpse suggests she's grinning from ear to ear.

& now a couple of videos of his Swiss visit have surfaced, filmed in beautiful HD. Interestingly, this one features that same vals, but it's a more sedate version. Elba Biscay is known as one of the great milongueras, and it's a pity she couldn't visit Switzerland. Or London.

Rivertango

Rivertango - from one open-air milonga to another, but Tangocommuter commutes - moved from the river outside Tate Modern to Spitalfields this year, probably because it coincided with the Thames festival, but it is surely a vast improvement on the Tate Modern site, which is overrun by by a flood of visitors, where dance-floor invasions are the order of the day and one never knows who is there to dance or just to watch, with a cold damp wind blowing off the Thames: as a place to dance it's unsafe and uncomfortable, a nightmare. Spitalfields is altogether more of a milonga, under the canopy, which gives it a bit of a protected, intimate feel. There are tourists in Spitalfields, and the odd unsupervised toddler or visiting rock n'roller intrudes on the dance floor, which admittedly is hard (the floor, that is), but it's easy enough to spot who's there to dance, and it feels like a milonga. I hope the move to Spitalfields will be permanent, because one visit to the riverside site last year was enough for me.

As for the two £25-a-head milongas, I am told that the Sexteto Canyengue gave note-perfect renditions of tango scores, as classical musicians can, and incidentally gave a perfect demo that, although tango is played from the notes on written scores, the way those notes are played, their precise duration, the precise speed of phrases, the changes of speed within phrases, the exact emphasis, the 'attack', all of which give tango its own distinctive swing, are almost as important as the work of the composer and arranger. Was that worth £25? & the fact that other milongas, which usually charge 1/3 of that price, closed 'in favour of' this extravaganza, leaves me gob-smacked. Surely something expensive and exclusive has to earn the right to be expensive and exclusive, and it doesn't sound as if it did.

Place Richelme

Place Richelme is in the centre of Aix. It's not a big square; on the city map it is only a crossroads, but it is easily the most memorable of the city's squares. The daily market under the massive plane trees, is said to be one of the best in Provence, a land of great daily markets. Then at midday what's left of a huge array of farm-fresh fruit and veg, and other high-quality food, is packed away, the smooth marble flagstones are hosed down, and the cafes spread out their chairs and tables under canopies for the rest of the day. By evening it has the atmosphere of a southern European city: in the cafes and on seats spilling out onto the square people sit and watch football, yelling at the goals, pizza delivery boys roar by, kids wander around licking ice creams, drinks are served to people chatting at tables under the trees, under the stars. You sit out in a tee-shirt and shorts until late: it's warm and it feels good.

But that's not the end of the story. Every Sunday night from early July onwards, between 9.30 and 1am, there's a milonga on the smooth marble flagstones. Because the surroundings interrupt constantly until late in the evening, it doesn't have the concentration of a London or Paris milonga, and there's a certain contrast between the dance in one corner of the square and the relaxed party evening elsewhere. About fifteen couples take to the 'floor', which slopes upwards nearly a metre at one corner, but there's plenty of room for everyone. The dance is about the same mix as London, some salon, some nuevo, a lot in between; some smooth and skilful, some... I didn't find the music that good: for instance, it's odd to hear Biaggi in the third or fourth tanda of an evening, because it isn't easy music to dance to. It's a social and drinking evening with dance too, although they're obviously serious about their dance. At the Paris milonga I went to there were more women than men but here numbers were about equal, and everyone was obviously on good terms, so I didn't try very hard to get a dance. Anyway, it would have been hard to convince anyone I was serious, in worn blue canvas sneakers.

But the good news is that it's there. Take a pair of half-decent shoes, introduce yourself to the organisers beforehand and pay them the recommended €2, sit at the tables where the dancers sit, order a drink and join in. A friendly, open event. I found some photos from a year or two ago here.


According to blogger this is my 201st post. Here's to the next 200!

Something different...

It's about this time of year that Tangocommuter, exasperated by lack of sunshine, folds up a bicycle, throws a tent and a sleeping bag into a holdall and jumps aboard the cheapest available transport to sunshine – which usually means the south of France. Avignon beckons, but this year the first stop is Aix en Provence largely because, as part of a big exhibition called Picasso-Cezanne (advertised in that order), the Chateau of Vauvenargues is open to guided public visits for the first time ever. I looked down on it from the summit of Mte. Ste. Victoire a few years ago, knowing that Picasso is buried there, but never thought a visit would be possible. It has remained in the family of Jaqueline Picasso and has been kept as it was during their short occupancy.

It's a 17th century chateau, though parts of it are much older, and it had fallen into disrepair. It had been asset-stripped by Marseilles businessmen who owned it briefly, it needed re-roofing, and central heating and modern plumbing had to be installed, no mean feat with walls over one meter thick. & it was infested with scorpions. However, it was turned into a beautiful studio home, huge spare rooms, with breath-taking and breath-giving views of the forests on the northern slope of Mte. Ste. Victoire. Picasso boasted that he had bought Cezanne's Mte. Ste. Victoire, but he was exaggerating by 50%: the grounds of the chateau include only the entire northern slopes of the mountain.

But Picasso, then in his 80s, began to suffer angina, and the nearest doctor was miles away, so the stay at Vauvenargues was brief. An extraordinary place to visit, and the nearby village is enchanting.

The 'grounds' of the chateau include everything you can see in the second picture (except the sky).

Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur

The first few rooms, some earlier maharajas, are beautiful work but a tedious fantasy world: the maharaja seated amidst endless rows of identical ladies in his garden. Or perhaps it wasn't even fantasy... But they do have fun at Holi, the maharaja and his endless cohorts letting off steam by squirting coloured water at each other, and the artist had a good time, too: having painted the scene meticulously, he splashed paint all over it.

Then we come to Maharaha Man Singh. While still a child he was deprived of his kingdom by an evil uncle. He was kept in hiding by loyal supporters, but the difficulties of this weighed on him, and he decided to give himself up. That night in a vision, the story goes, the founder of the Naths appeared and advised him to wait a few days. In those few days the uncle died and Man Singh inherited his kingdom. The Naths were - still are - an order of yogis, reknown for fierce determination and unswerving discipline in meditation. Many stories are told about their mental powers. In person they can be intimidating. Not a good idea to fool with the Naths.

These events obviously changed Man Singh's life, and this is reflected in his court paintings, which tend to feature identical Naths rather than identical ladies. But at a certain stage Man Singh instructed his artists to turn their attention to metaphysical issues. There are a lot of painted images relating to Indian 'myths' and Ajit Mukherjee has published impressive books of paintings of tantric diagrams, but for the most part they are diagrams.

The imagination of Man Singh's artists was wildly challenged when it came to depicting the arising of existence out of nothingness, and they found extraordinary solutions. There are several triptychs reading left to right: the left showing just burnished gold, the centre showing partly formed images, with the final painting on the right. There are a number of wonderful depictions of the body-as-universe, as it is in tantric thought. And finally there is a room of long paintings of figures floating in a sea of pattern. Utterly strange and mysterious. & most of the paintings are big. Nothing miniature in size or concept in the paintings on show.