Lujos again

Thursday, Lujos again: Alberto and Paulina are there, and I'm seated with Pedro. I get some great dances. It's crowded, but there's still room to move a bit. The partners I meet at El Beso all speak some English, so we chat briefly in Spanish and English. One tells me she'll be in London for a wedding in November and I invite her to a London milonga: I tell her the London milongas are definitely the best, and we fall about laughing. (Apologies to all London milongas wherever you may be.)

It's great to watch Muma on the floor. I met her briefly in Maipu 444 last time, but never saw her dance. Here she dances occasionally with a few of the older guys, who lead her completely smoothly, with turns effortlessly changing direction. It's so quiet you'd hardly notice, but once I notice, I can't take my eyes off them, it's so intimate, effortless and musical. Muma has her own way of dancing which is quite distinctive: her movements can be quick, but with an emphatic weight on the pauses. It's very unhurried, very beautiful to watch. She teaches but doesn't seem to make much of a fuss of it, and seems content to sit quietly in the milonga. She gave me her card last time I was here but it was just a few days before I left, and I still haven't got in touch with her this time. More unfinished business...

Walking home from El Beso, thinking about style, and trying to remember what Picasso said about it. People thought he learned an African style from African sculpture. No, he said: African sculpture showed him a way of working from the heart, with emotional force, out of fear and love. Otherwise, he said, having a style just means having a cake tin and turning out identical cookies. (It's a reported conversation in La tête d'obsidienne by Malraux. There's an English translation, where I first read it, but I can't remember the title.)