Microcentro, Cachirula

Parking is impossible in the narrow, busy microcentre streets during the week, so anything requiring a stationary vehicle, such as moving house or using a skip, has to take place at the weekend. Elderly Dodge or Ford pickup trucks are loaded with mattresses, fridges, chairs and tables, an entire household is stacked up on the pavement awaiting transport. Further down the street a ground floor is being gutted, a diminutive dumper loading earth and rubble into a waiting truck. It's relaxed after the crowding and heavy traffic of the week. Most of the buildings are at least eight floors, so weekday pollution is dreadful. At the weekend the area returns to its inhabitants: you can stroll down the street, breathe, and feel safe, at home in it again.

Some common misapprehensions about milonga behavoir:

In Buenos Aires dancers never change their shoes in the milonga.
In Buenos Aires no one ever walks across the floor.
Dancers in Buenos Aires never collide.
Dancers in Buenos Aires dance in a line round the outside of the floor and never move out of that line.
Dress code is formal: no jeans or sneakers.

Back to Maipu 444 last night, Saturday night, for the Cachirulo milonga. Didn't get there till after 11, which I later realised was a mistake. It opens early, 6pm according to the listings, but by 11 the party is in full swing, and a lot of very accomplished dancers are busy. There's not much space, but everything is smooth and musical. Men and women are separated, but the club is small and intimate, so it's interesting but not that formal. Greeted with a warm handshake from the organiser, but arriving late means I get a back table in a corner of the room. Anyway, after a quick glance at the dancing, I decided not to attempt to join in, and avoid any eye-contact. I didn't feel comfortable enough to join in at that stage, but it would be a good place to arrive early, and probably not difficult to get in a few dances when there's more room, before it gets busy. But a lively, friendly atmosphere, and great music. Pedro Laurenz in full flow in 'No me extrana' as I arrive. You can't help feeling sorry for his singers: they're just a minor incident in a torrent of sound.

Susana Miller, milongueros at Ideal

La Ideal

Interesting the persistence of the Beatles here. I think you're more likely to hear them in public than tango. T-shirts, posters, they are still everyday culture here, while the tango in everyday view is aimed at tourists.

La Academia Tango Milonguero is run by Susana Miller and Maria Plazaola (who was Carlos Gavito's dance partner). Tango Milonguero in anything as formal as an Academy sounds a bit like doing a Masters in order to dance jive. The first part of the Friday night class at El Beso was warming up exercises, walking exercises, and then embrace. A big class, and more women than men for a change. I couldn't help seeing a symmetry between a male-taught class with more men, and a woman-taught class having more women. Anyway, there was nothing very striking about the first half. The second half divided absolute beginners from intermediates, who started work on the ocho cortado, with an emphasis on maintaining close-hold contact. The ocho cortado has followed me round the city: every class seems to look into different ways of beginning it, leading it, and exiting from it, all of which is extremely useful. Susana Miller (like Oscar and his son) taught the lead with a very tight backstep, so it is possible to sweep the partner around 180 degrees just by unwinding the body: the feet just turn on the spot. Treat the body as a bandoneon, follow the flow of sound. I begin to feel how positive a lead can be, short of being brutal. I'm told to relax my shoulders, and “Lejos! Lejos!” Distance! Distance! Look into the distance: keep your head up and don't look down. Advice that follows me around.

It was entirely an Argentinian evening, and also a class where people knew each other: the first 15 minutes seemed taken up with kissing, one kiss only and on the right cheek, Argentinian style. But I followed enough to get plenty out of it and the teaching was thorough, serious, no-nonsense. The evening ends with a practica, which I didn't stay for.

I'd decided to go on to the Ideal, as it's live music there, the Unitango orchestra, and it's an evening organised for dance rather than tourism. I didn't get a dance, didn't try, but watched with much interest an older guy dancing: undoubtedly local, milonguero, and individual: nothing elaborate, but his feet were dancing, constantly moving, shifting, turning, with little kicks and shifts, a loose and elastic movement in the hips and ankles, a slight bounce, and always with the music. Milonguero that wasn't learned in an Academy, milonguero as a lifetime of listening to the music, dancing and watching rather than learning a 'style' of dancing. I was particularly struck by his milonga, which I recognised immediately as the kind (tho' not the quality!) I dance when I can't avoid it: just simple milonga lisse, just a few moves, nothing elaborate, the feet moving constantly, rather than traspie, which he didn't use, simple, clear and with the beat, as ever, totally part of the music. Which encouraged me not to feel inferior about my milonga.

Oscar's classes

"Plant a tree, Bring up a child, Write a book, AUTOMATE YOUR CURTAINS: Systems for roller blinds in fabric, plastic and aluminium." Ad on the subte: the important things in life.

The general level of courtesy here is high but erratic: when someone gets into the lift with me they invariably open the doors and invite me to leave at the ground floor. If I manage to invite them to leave first, they thank me. But all this goes out the window when it comes to getting onto a crowded subte carriage. The lift, incidentally has doors that have to be opened: I remember, half asleep the first few days, standing waiting for the lift doors to open.

Oscar: try using steps that are slow or quick, low or high, long or short, and you can make your dance so much more interesting without even learning anything new.

The problem with his classes is not that he teaches anything very difficult, although it's usually new and interesting, but that there have almost always been more men than women, and even if he asks everyone to change they are often dancing as couples and don't want to. Fair enough, but I tend to get less practice time. He does teach with Mary Ann and his daughter, who are very helpful, although they tend to be busy helping the dancing couples.

Centro Cultural Borges & Maipu 444

A milonga called Mi Milonga at the Ideal Wednesday night. MCd in English and Castellano, which gives away the game. A tourist evening: a tanda of dance, then a bit of show, another dance tanda, more show... But I hadn't been back since dancing there last Friday, so it was good to sit and think over the past week, and remember being on the floor there, very much on my best behaviour. The floor is more than three times as big as at Porteno y Bailarin, and not much more crowded. But Wednesday night is obviously an eating and watching night, not a dancing night.

Thursday evening: visiting Centro Cultural Borges and by chance it's the private view of Expo Artistas 2008. Lots of paint, lots of colour, and some print including etchings I'd love to have in a LOOP show. Artists from Argentina and Uruguay. A lot of very prominent public space given to local artists, very good to see. I had a good look, then as it got more crowded went around making photos of the people and the work. I find faces very interesting here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionstills/

Later there's a class at Maipu 444 taught by two young guys, Martin Maldonado and Maurizio Ghella. There are a few English speakers, including some first-timers, and they teach in Spanish and quite clear English, first emphasising principles, like connection, lifting and lowering movements, and then turning, and extending all these into more complex movements. Too bad I missed last Friday night here: according to the listings it was Javier Rodriguez and Andrea Misse.

Maipu 444 (Maipu is the street) is the best kept premises to date, very neat and clean, and with an excellent unpolished parquet floor. (El Beso is polished like a skating rink, and the other floors are tile, which is also quite slippery.) After the class on Thursday night is a milonga called Mano a Mano, which I think is run by La Vikinga, an Icelandic dancer, teacher, anthropologist, poet and journalist who now lives in the city. I stayed on after the class, trying to make conversation with an Argentinian woman I'd danced with in the class. She tells me she's been working all day, writing a book on Victorian England. She also says that Maipu 444 is different on other evenings, and that Thursday is rather a tourist evening. We have a bit of a dance, and I leave around midnight. A couple of tourists arrive as I leave, otherwise the place is deserted.

El piso es tu amigo

Wednesday afternoon class with Oscar. La pisa es tu amiga (?the floor is your friend), stay down on it and stay firm. A simple sequence but the moves can be high or low, long or short, an expressive variety. He really emphasises the dynamics, the logic and geometry, of how moves are led, more than anyone else. The need to turn, to bend the knees or stand upright, in order to create the response in your partner. By and large I've always learned choreographies in class and from the internet: here it is necessary to learn body awareness and movement, and it's not easy. It's wearying and depressing, but I have a feeling that I just need to keep at it. I'm learning the dance from the inside: what I need to get right is actually not that complex, and learning like this makes complete sense.

Porteno y Bailarin: Ana Maria Schapira

Wednesday 03 December: improbable to write that date, wearing T shirt and shorts with the window open, sunshine and a fresh breeze. More internet problems but why intermittently?

Yesterday, class at El Beso with Oscar's son and daughter, who teach together on Tuesday and Thursday. Brother and sister, they are fun together, and teach a lot too. Very few people turned up so we got a lot of individual attention. Various possibilities with ocho cortado, firstly leading it well, and then three alternative ways to exit: the first is hard to describe, a sort of lift to the front, the second an americano and the third, leading the americano but using the right foot to sacada. & we go down when we step, and lift as we collect.

Bought more CDs again yesterday: a very welcome remastered double CD of Julio de Caro. I've only a few tracks, downloaded from Todotango, 500kb each track, so the quality was poor. The remastered CDs have loads more. Perhaps the sound is slightly 'engineered' but it's a pleasure to listen to, and musically a lot clearer. Including tracks as recent as 1952, which sound much better, and a photo of de Caro with an extraordinary violin with a built-in horn, obviously to enhance the noise before electric pick-ups became available. Likewise a very welcome remastered double CD of Pedro Laurenz. I must be close to wearing out my downloads of him. & Pugliese en el Colon, which I've wanted ever since I first heard about it, the live recording at the 1985 concert in the opera house soon after the end of the terror. £3.50 here: available in the UK as a download from LastFM for about double that I think.

Porteno y Bailarin in the evening. Coming out of the subway into Corrientes, the new moon in a clear sky. A good sign, I hope. Class with the same teacher, Ana Maria Schapira. I like her teaching, interesting, different. She's a good local teacher who doesn't have or seem to want an international reputation. She doesn't like my way of walking and tries to get me to be more grounded, heavier. I try to leap up too much, I don't walk heel first. As she teaches the use of double-time steps this is a serious difficulty as the followers are all relative beginners and don't always reach back well. I know I've always worried about this and led double-time by lifting up, which 'el Pibe' Sarandi objected to in London a few years back. I should push thru' the double time steps. Otherwise it was a very disappointing evening. I was hoping to get to dance with the partners at the class but their post-class interest was a meal and several bottles of wine, and not dancing. Had just one dance with a young American woman I'd met earlier, but she's a beginner and very uncertain. Got home wondering why it had been a flop, and realised I'd had four hours of class that day, but I like the club and will keep at it.

I'd like more classes with Ana Maria. It's disappointing that I don't get to dance more, but I have the feeling that I'm being taken apart, made to question everything, to get rid of a lot of habits, start again. I can only hope I'll be on the floor more later in my stay. There are good and poor evenings everywhere.

Sunday walk: Abasto and Palermo Viejo

The following was written on Sunday: the internet was out for several days, and I've uploaded bits in the wrong order. I finally plucked up courage and stuck a pin in the small orifice in the back of the modem: all the lights flashed on, then subsided, then, slowly, the Data Send/Receive lights started to flicker again. Relief. Contacting a computer helpline in Spanish didn't seem to be an option.

That was Friday night: I arrived Monday afternoon and everything so far was between Wednesday and Friday. So perhaps a day of rest was called for, and the weather enforced it. Saturday was cloudburst day: it poured, it thundered, it lightninged. It eased off towards evening and I thought of going out, but as soon as I started getting ready it poured again, so that was that.

Sunday dawned cool and fresh so I took off for a walk across town from Abasto to Palermo. The Abasto end: an art deco building originally the city's market and now a shopping Mall. A bit like the Galleria Pacifico downtown, the Abasto Mall is all upmarket shops, clothes, perfumes, expensive luxury stuff, boring. & you can't see the building for the shops. So I took off across the streets towards Palermo, or so I thought. After about 10 minutes I checked the map and realised I was going in quite the wrong direction. I puzzles me how often I've taken wrong directions here as my sense of direction is usually pretty good. One reason might be that city maps show the Rio Plate at the bottom of the map, which one assumes is south, whereas the Rio Plate is of course north of the city. Another might be that this is the southern hemisphere and I believe that means the sun travels north to midday, rather than south. Of course, in the narrow grid of downtown streets, currently 'mi barrio', the buildings are high, and the sun is far away. Anyway it's been cloudy a lot of the time, and I never seem to know which way I'm going.

So I retraced my steps and, now going in the right direction, treated myself to a 'cortado' in a pastisserie/coffee shop that looked clean and inviting. A cortado, (as in 'ocho cortado') is a coffee with a cut of milk, and I was offered a slice of panettone with it, with a friendly smile. I could hardly refuse, and noticed it wasn't in the bill. So that was A$5, £1, for coffee and cake. This city seems sympathetic and welcoming to visitors: but I guess arrival here is recent in most people's family memories. Yes, I tried to pay for the cake with a good tip.

It's a pleasant walk between Abasto and Palermo Viejo. The streets are wide and tree-lined, the side streets still cobbled, and it was a quiet Sunday morning after the rain, fresh and clear. I finally came out at Scalabrini Ortiz, one of the city's wide avenues, where I wanted to locate Canning as I plan to go to the milonga there tomorrow night, and try to think about how to get back. It's hardly walking distance.

Don't imagine BsAs oozes tango thru' every pore. Unless you're passing a tango CD store, or your taxi driver has unusual tastes, it's r&r and latin you'll hear, like anywhere else. In the taxi back from Canning: “She was just 17, you know what I mean, YOOO, I'll never dance with another...” Long time since I last heard that (fortunately).

After trees and wide streets, back in the downtown canyon. Still no internet: it seems to give up when it rains. Perhaps that's a downside of all that cabling between buildings.

Tango in Spanish: Porteno y Bailarin

Monday morning: a week here, less a few hours, and it's beginning to be fun. For the first time since I arrived it's cooler outside than inside, and I can live without the aircon. There's a cool wind coming from some undetermined point of the compass, and I need a jacket when I go out. A few mosquitos, but they are small and not a serious problem. Not yet, anyway. & still no internet.

I went to Porteno y Bailarin last night. A lesson was advertised from 9 to 11, with a milonga afterwards. Trepidation: a new place, an unknown class and in Spanish, Castellano, too. But it was fine: very carefully taught, starting from simple balance awareness exercises, leading into walks and then a sequence. The other students were locals more or less struggling to get some tango together. As to language, it's important to know the words for 'left' and 'right' but after that just pay attention to body language, and smile. There's a marvellous documentary about Nijinsky's sister, Bronska Nijinska, recreating her ballet, Les Noces, to Stravinsky's music, with the Royal Ballet in the 1980s, I believe. She must have been in her 80s, and it was said of her that she spoke 5 languages and had forgotten all of them. There was no linguistic communication: the Russian dancer said Bronska spoke no Russian, the French that she spoke no French, and no one quite knew how she recreated the work with them, apart from working mercilessly hard. You listen to the music and watch the body: the less you can rely on words, the more you look.

I think I got thru' most of the class before anyone started to realise I didn't understand a lot of the words. It certainly wasn't a complicated sequence, but a lot of observation and correction was given, and to dance as expected took care and attention. It was really excellent, and it seemed closest to a kind of tango that flows directly from the music. Even Oscar's teaching, tho' I like it, sometimes seems like needless elaboration.

& my friend from Friday night turned up. She called out to me as I was sitting down after the class: Why aren't you dancing? Come on! You must dance with all the 'chicas'. We all need practice! – and dragged me kicking and screaming onto the dance floor. It was different from Ideal: at Ideal there's more room, but at Porteno y Bailarin the floor is small and more crowded so the whole dynamic was different, no walks, a lot of tight turns. & I danced with several partners from the class, including a breathtaking vals tanda with one of the shortest partners I've ever danced with, who managed to stretch right up and make a good connection.

Porteno y Bailarin is much less formal than either El Beso or Ideal. It's small, intimate and friendly. As at Ideal there's no separation between men and women, but at Porteno y Bailarin, although glances and nods work easily because the place is small, you don't rely on them. Men, and to a lesser extent women, also ask each other to dance. I heard a woman sitting close to me explain politely to a man why she couldn't dance with him, although she was dancing with someone else not long after. Very Conway Hall. You don't just sit and stare at a line of partners: you can get up and wander around till you find someone looking for a dance. There are actually two small dance floors there; the main one isn't much more than 3x6 metres, and there were at least 14 couples on it at times. The dancing is mostly close-hold, and some of it looks wonderful. Nothing complicated, nothing most of us don't learn in the first six months of classes. It's just the way it's done, the way it's put together with the music, that makes it so special. Certainly the easiest place to get a dance so far.

Oscar's milonga class at El Beso, Monday afternoon. I'm perverse: tango makes me happy, and milonga makes me really miserable. But the level he's teaching is really way above what I can lead. I need something more basic.

Many of the clubs, like El Beso and Maipu 444, host different milongas on different nights of the week, run by different people and perhaps for different people. Thursday night at El Beso is a milonga called Lujo, but on Saturday night it's the Milonga de las Morachas. The hardware, the premises, remains the same but everything else can vary.

Oscar runs a milonga called Mi Refugio on Monday night at a venue called Nino Bien, which is a big, rather dreary hall, and I found it an intimidating social event. It's a long hall, women sit one side in a long line facing a long line of men, with a dance floor in between. The lighting isn't relaxing and there's nothing at all intimate about the venue. The dancing was interesting to watch, as always: I learn a lot, perhaps even more than from classes, from watching the people who dance with the music. I didn't enjoy the event, didn't feel like dancing, and left in time to get the last subte back, but it was another glimpse into the social tango world. El Beso separates men and women too, but it's a small intimate venue. I'll go back to Porteno y Bailarin every evening I can, but not again to Nino Bien.

Tango and the city

The city seems to function well, in need of repair but operational. Pavements often need mending, but the roads are OK. Priorities. Guide books make jokes about the traffic, which is hectic but actually pretty orderly, and no worse-behaved than city traffic in Europe, although pollution is a problem. A ban on smoking in public places was introduced recently, and seems to be working well. Taxi drivers -- taxis here are saloon cars -- all seem to wear seat belts: perhaps a better record than minicab drivers in the UK...

I've been glad of every minute I spent listening to Spanish language tapes: people often know a bit of English, but some basic Spanish including numbers is really helpful, and once you have a bit you can build on it. But pronunciation isn't quite as in the language tapes. I knew that 'll' is pronounced somewhere between 'zh' and 'j' (you'll hear 'Cazhe Corrientes', Corrientes Street, in tango songs), but an odd one is 's' pronounced 'k': 'dos', two, sounds like 'dok'. '(Turn) left at the corner' sounds like 'ikkierda al ekkina'. I learnt 'esquina' for corner. 'Jo soy del barrio de tres ekkinas' you hear in the D'Agostino/Vargas song, 'I'm from the three-cornered barrio', well, triangular, I suppose. But he doesn't sing 'trek ekkinak', so I remain puzzled. Why 'dok' and not 'trek'?

Confiteria Ideal is the famous old cafe and milonga, familiar to anyone who saw Tango Salon on the BBC a few years ago, with Geraldine and Javier, and some older dancers and denizens of the milonga. The upstairs, where the programme was filmed, no longer seems open. Downstairs is much the same, but is rather a tango tourist trap than a place where you see milongueros. But it's just down the road and Unitango was playing there last night, so I went around 11pm. I'm beginning to like the timetable. It makes sense: if you work you have time to eat and nap and go out for a few hours too.

'In need of repair but operational' also applies to the Ideal, a cavernous, dingy place, built when the city was one of the wealthiest in the world, the walls all mirrors and dark wood, teak I'd imagine, the floor slabs of marble. Four central marble pillars define the dance area, the rest is tables. Unlike El Beso there's no separation of men and women, not last night, anyway. Whole families at the tables. A few obvious tourists, but generally it seemed local, but more of a family party than a serious club. The disrepair is sad, actually a bit shocking: at some stage fluorescent strip lighting was screwed into the stucco mouldings on the ceiling, and then later ripped out, leaving holes in the ceiling and the dark traces left by the lights, and the ceiling is dull with decades of grime.

But the party at ground level was pretty lively. The dancing was hardly up to the level of the dancing at El Beso, but less intimidating too. There was the old porteno who drags young tourists onto the floor and gives them a taste of tango with his large midriff -- watch out, ladies, you wouldn't want to be tangoed: a couple who I assumed were visiting tango teachers working on their ganchos, boleyos, barridas: dancers with various strange attitudes and complicated moves: three or four guys in their 30s, serious dancers, who moved very smoothly, a kind of dance I've heard described as 'nuevo milonguero', observing musicality and the close hold, but trying to extend the style and the range of steps: then there were some kids from a tango school who gave a demonstration and who later danced around pushing people out of the way. All in all much like a quiet night at Negracha.

& at last I got a dance. A young Argentinian woman at Oscar's class had kindly and patiently tried to help me get my milonga lead going, and she turned up at the Ideal. We got onto the floor, and after the first dance she laughed and laughed and said something like: 'How come you're such an idiot at milonga when you can dance tango like that?', and laughed some more. It really was a good dance. I'd watched her dancing earlier with one of the serious dancers, and seen how much straightforward walking they did, and how expressive it could be, so I stole that one and found it very useful. Apart from that I kept it simple, nothing I can't lead easily, as you do in another country, in public, and with someone you've not danced with before. & it seemed right.

An interesting thing: teachers often say that you dance in your own axis, which can't be true, because if you are in close-hold your feet would be too close together. If your feet are the usual foot's-length apart and your upper chests are together, there is a slight lean out of axis. The effect of this leaning together is a slight pressure, a tension, between the two bodies. I've experienced this in London, but hardly ever for the duration of a whole dance. We learn complicated figures in open-hold, rather than how to maintain connection in close-hold. But here that pressure is maintained – and it's equal. Her pressure on me is the same as mine on her. Leandro and Romina go on about 'holding your partner tight', but perhaps it isn't a tight hold, which could be inflexible and uncomfortable, it's a pressure from leaning, a weight that I suspect the follower even more than the leader has learnt to maintain. In an odd sort of way it is her control, too. In one way she's leading her partner on: go on, push me! But she could also use it to signal, to warn if she isn't comfortable. I've found a lot of partners dance close but without that pressure, and it's just not the same, tho' of course height is always a factor.

We think of dance as leaping, gravity-defying. Nureyev was said to hang in the air a little longer than seemed plausible, and I saw something like that in a dance in William Forsythe's Impressing the Czar at Sadler's Wells recently. But tango, traditional tango, seems to accept and work around gravity and weight.

So I left around 1.30, feeling good. By chance I'd got my first dance, four tangos with a good Buenos Aires partner, and to D'Agostino, music I know and like. It's a good beginning: I'm sure we'll dance again, and I've been seen dancing there, which could lead to more dances. But the 'cabeza', the eye-contact that leads to the nod that leads to the dance, is still a problem. The Ideal is big and the lighting isn't bright, so it's actually difficult to see where someone across the room is looking. But it's an interesting custom that has stood the test of time: it allows dancers to say no to each other, ever so discretely, just by avoiding eye-contact.

I walked home at 1.30am; the streets are narrow and not well lit, but there are people around, and traffic. In the wider streets people are sitting out finishing a coffee after eating, so it all feels perfectly safe.

El Beso

It's dark, and the sun should be up: I look out in the gloom and see the red tiles of the balcony shining. Rain, steady but gentle, washing away the dust, pollution and heat of the last few days. I open the laptop, my portal on the world, and find news of flash flooding in southern Brazil, but that must be 800km away.

So I went to El Beso, not expecting or even looking for a dance. Reassuring, and interesting too. Yes, the guys and the girls sit separately and get together for a dance. But it's very much a social evening. Drinks and a bit of food: the guys want to sit and chat with each other, and so do the ladies. By 1.30 it's thinning out, and only dancing couples are left. It'll probably go on for another hour or two. El Beso is small, it's a large room rather than a dance hall, with a warm, friendly feeling. Everyone knows everyone else, more or less. So my aim of coming here to dance whole nights away might not happen happen at El Beso, because tango here is part of a social event. People come to meet up and chat, and dance too. For a good evening here you need decent Spanish, and it helps to be a competent dancer. At least up until 1.30, when I left.

A few dancers stood out by their simple ease in moving, particularly their smooth turns, sweeping partners through gyros. Three older guys, two fairly heavily built, had that effortless dignity and energy that really stood out. & they were sought out by younger partners, who had effortless skills to match. But nothing ostentatious. One of the three older guys in fact was notably slow in moving round the floor: he just seemed to pick his way through the music in a different way. Apart from that, most couples looked good without looking as if they were totally part of the music. '...how can we know/The dancer from the dance?' wrote WB Yeats, which seemed to apply to just a few couples. One couple had some new stuff, but it was fitted well into the close-hold, relaxed, dignified feel of dancing, and was noticed and approved by a couple of guys standing near me.

I didn't count the number of couples: the floor didn't look crowded but I know it was crowded enough to seem crowded when you're on it, and require constant attention to space and movement. I saw two couples bump and laugh it off, as you do among friends. & I didn't look for or get a dance; I felt as if in some kind of auction, where catching someone's eye by mistake means a public dance with someone with 20 years' experience when I've only got four. So I sat at the bar and drank a bottle of water and watched. I left around 11.30 and walked back. A warm evening, whole families strolling around, young kids in twos and threes, teenagers, all very unthreatening, lively and gentle. & inevitably, everywhere, the 'cartoneras', who move in on the rubbish of the day, sort through it, divide it into huge bundles and take it away. Recycling.

Basics

Not only does every building have at least one radio/TV mast (& they must be between 30 and 50 metres high, and some much more) but you start to notice that every building is connected to every other building with cables: roof to roof, roof to ground, ground to roof, across the streets, a real city-wide web of cabling.

Before I came here I wondered about the outcome of this trip. The unrealistic one is going back as a really good tango partner. Or going back a lot more confident and with more variety. Or going back completely confused by having learnt so much (a friend said she knows someone this happened to). I added another one today, after a milonga class: giving it up completely and never even thinking of tango again. The kind of thought that comes to me after a milonga class, after a busy morning chasing round the streets to buy a mobile in Spanish (pre-pago, y sin contrato) and not eating. 1pm is an awkward time: I'd want to eat at 11 but there's not much around, so I tried leaving it until after the class, but it just didn't work. Two medialunas and a slice of toast at 10.30 don't give much support to a milonga class at 14.30. If the flat had a decent stove I could at least fix an omlette before going out; guess I'll just have to switch it on an hour in advance.

Beginnings

180 degrees from my balcony: a dull morning but it doesn't look any better in sunshine. The forest of masts is hardly visible against the sky.

I step onto the balcony at night and immediately recognise Orion. The stars are surprisingly clear, given the street-level pollution.

Dawn on the balcony: every building, it seems, has a radio mast with a red light at the top. These blink at different rates like a sculptural landscape by Takis. A city reaching up into the ether.

The city is putting on a free open-air concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, this weekend I think, in the middle of the 9de Julio, underneath the Obelisco, the local Nelson's Column. One of their conductors is Argentinian. Would the Mayor of London put on a free Berlin Philharmonic concert in Trafalgar Square? But I guess the Berlin Phil is going to be more generous here.

But tango is why I'm here. I arrived nearly two days ago, and not a dance yet. Anyway the time change (two hours) still means early waking. I bought shoes from Darcos yesterday, a simple, light pair of handmade black shoes. They will be comfortable. & stuck my head around the door at La Confiteria, just down the road. I only saw downstairs, a dark cavernous hall, in need of redecoration. The staff seem indifferent. I sat for half an hour and watched a class without being asked to buy anything. The class was more or less tourist beginners: those in trainers and shorts, those who'd bought the flash shoes, all dancing at arms length. I went back later in the evening: still downstairs, more complex steps but still at arms length. I didn't feel inclined to join in, so I went back to the flat and sent off emails to Mary Ann to find out when Oscar's classes are, and to Sylvia, Tete's partner. Both replied by this morning. Tete's only doing private classes these days so I emailed for details. Oscar's teaching at 1pm. It's 11.30, so I'm off.

Oscar's class didn't disappoint. It's in El Beso, one of the more traditional milongas. Leading a sequence of cruzadas must be clear, and that's what it was about. He teaches in Spanish and English, which is interesting, emphasising the need sometimes to lift and sometimes hold down the follower to create a lot of movement in a small space. Mary Ann gave me reassurance about turning up at milongas, and his son and daughter were there to help out, so it was good value, two hours for £5, friendly, and I had some good dances. I'll do that again. Strange to see them in 3D after having watched so many of their teaching videos. Silvia emailed that their private classes are £60 an hour, so I'm going to have to think about that.

It's hot. Everyone says it's hot. About 30, I guess, not excessive, but hot, and humid. You avoid the sun. I'm told that this time last year was so cold you had to wear a sweater.

Google's gone Spanish on me. Instead of 'Did you mean...?' it says 'Quizas quiso decir...?' & I now 'Buscar la net con Google'.

Arrival

Coming out of the airport, the heat hits you; not a serious disabling heat, but it's warm and the humidity encloses you. The girls in the taxi office, the young guy who takes me to the waiting taxi, friendly and busy. The driver gives a 'bon dia' and is off into the airport whirlpool of traffic. Pale violet jacaranda blossom. Then we're on the motorway into town. Landscape like southern Spain. Trucks pulled off the road into the shelter of a tree: it is 1.30 pm after all. I don't try to talk with the driver: I've been travelling 28 hours and anyway, my Spanish isn't up to it. American pop on the radio 'Listen to the song of the city: it's speaking your native language' -- good news.

Then a brick shanty town, but by no means a slum, individually-built houses piled together, no higher than two floors, immediately like India, could be Delhi outskirts. High-rise housing blocks on the other side: the city begins. Soon the motorway reaches downtown and branches like a tree in different directions. I remember the city maps and know where we are. We enter a wide boulevard: 'Nueve de Julio?' I ask. 'Si, Nueve de Julio'. City traffic. Soon we pull into a maze of narrow straight streets, high buildings, an orchestra of horns from near-gridlocked traffic. A tough, bleak cityscape; nowhere in Spain would be this busy and developed, and so well-used and run-down. And nowhere in India, which it otherwise resembles, would be lacking in noticeable 'shrines'. Temples, obviously, but I'm thinking of the little reminders everywhere, images in the taxis, string tied round a tree, a few marks of pigment on a stone, little prints stuck on walls, signs that, like the physicist's wormholes, are portals to alternate, imaginative, magic worlds, and instructive too. None of that here. Then, caught up in a jam the driver reaches over and switches to a tape, and suddenly there's a gentle, warm sound, something familiar, but quiet as if far away, Cumparasita from the Orquestra Escuelo de Tango, followed by several tracks of De Angelis, what relief from gridlock! Recognising that music was a moment of arrival: in a taxi in Buenos Aires with Cumparasita playing. Struck me later the driver could be a milonguero, no energy to spare on needless conversation, apparently well-groomed, and yawning profusely on the motorway. But then it was a hot afternoon.

Some hours later, after getting the flat sorted, and solving the riddle of the local cashpoints I finally sit down to a pizza and a glass of wine, and watch the city go by. It's a hardworking, slightly desperate place, a tough urban environment if ever, but everyone I've met seems good-hearted. It's hard to think that this is the city of Borges, for instance, but then he didn't live downtown, and when you see the bookstores on Corrientes it begins to fit. A city that was one of the wealthiest in the world before the 30s depression, and you still see it in the architecture. The city of Los Desaparecidos, of years of terror that anyone over 40 must remember well. The city that has survived the economic catastrophe of 2002. & of course the city of the music called tango that developed from a mix of musical traditions (immigrants came from everywhere), and of the dance that evolved with it. Glimpses of Buenos Aires.

Bill Viola: I do not know what it is I am like, a feature-length film with a cast courtesy of a local zoo, and an actor. Le jour se leve: Marcel Carne on an absolute peak of pre-WW2 French cinema. Grizzly Man: Werner Herzog continues to make films out of what seems like thin air, but there's always a theme of extreme experience which, as in Little Dieter wants to Fly, he gets his subjects to relive. Here the grizzly material is all extraordinary but the man is rather less so, a bit of a misfit who finds he can tell grizzlies to stop, and rather revels in doing it, and in the danger, for his camera. In the end he miscalculates, and a hungry bear eats him and his girlfriend. But the additional feature is an hour in the studio recording music and sounds for the film, which entirely makes up for the man of the main feature. A real pleasure to watch the musicians working to make a sound that is spacious and harmonious, and yet disquieting. Pasolini, Hawks and Sparrows is hijacked by a talking jackdaw, or at least a jackdaw that strides alongside the actors: I suspect his lines were dubbed. Something rare and remarkable, a charming and amusing Pasolini film that winds through time along an open road, somewhere between Voie Lactee and Felini, but ultimately with nothing much more than charm. The additional feature tho' was Notes for a Film about India: Pasolini wandering around with the story of a raja who feeds himself to a tiger, deliberately, because the tiger is hungry, and trying to see how he can film this in modern India, a very recognisable India of 1968. What do people think of the story? How should his Maharaja look? He even talks to a Maharaja and his wife, wondering how they would feel and behave if they were in the story. An improvised, open-ended film that suggests many possibilities. Edipo Re arrived soon after, a very intense retelling of the Oedipus story that begins with the child in contemporary Italy and ends with the blind ex-king a beggar in contemporary Italy, with the rest of the film in landscapes of Morocco in the late 60s, clear strong light and intense colour.

During this period, Impressing the Czar at Sadlers Wells: the extraordinary intense fertile body and mind of William Forsythe. Worth more than all the films I've had from Lovefilm.

Films: The Beast. One of the most bizarre film fantasies I've ever seen. Can't really be compared to The Holy Mountain, but what can? No such outrageous visual imagination, under such complete control. No such luck.

Syndromes and a Century. Can't find the exact translation of the Thai: I believe it means 'Light and Century'. Interview with the director Apochatpong Weerasethakul: he's fascinated by people in light. In the first half it's mainly natural, and in the second, indoors, artificial. Nothing much happens, which means that lots happens. As he says, there's a lot of plot, but none of it leads anywhere. A lot of long takes of nothing very much. The interaction of the people, and their lives, is very charming, engaging. A lot of mirroring: at two interviews (with a different interviewee) the dialogue is the same. A group of boys in a corridor, one stoops to tie a shoelace: a group of girls, one stoops to tie a shoelace. The outdoor sequences are very natural and charming: people surrounded by vegetation: contrasted with the aseptic corridoors and rooms of the hospital.

'Worldly Desires' included on the DVD. A film crew are filming in the jungle a girl pop group singing about their parents' love: they also seem to be filming a couple searching desperately thru the jungle for a tree(?) The image of the couple, isolated, usually framed in a viewfinder, stumbling thru jungle, contrasted with the casual relaxed existance of the crew.

& he doesn't use professional actors, for much the same reasons as Robert Bresson. & it works. No sense of performance.

Carieres d'ochre: the dust sticks. People's pants are coloured if they sit down. Something sticky, clay-like, although really it is sand. Altamira earth is actually greasy, rather than powdery.

Monday 1 Sept. Lightning on the horizon last night, but a clear night so full of stars I'd not seen since Bonnieux 10 years ago, waking thru dawn. Magic, meaning that is way outside mundane experience. Walking in intense dark with the stories of the stars. New moon soon. Later, thunder in the distance, but Monday dawns clear, warm autumn suchshine, coffee in Rustrel. Leaves beginning to yellow on the plane trees.

Ochre in the blood: ochre is iron, iron in the blood, blood-red. Strenth is iron. For 100 years ochre and iron supported this area.

Good to be able to live out of doors again.

Wednesday 3 Sept. The little laugh at the end of the dance. After Milonga it is a bit different, the laugh of having kept something together?

Antibes has beconme a state of mind, always pesent, sometimes more so than at other times, always the same, olluted, restless, over-run, planes drone overhead, and still it is desirable.

Lightning flickers on horizon of
a night intense with stars my feet
swallowed by intense darkness:
all that brilliance, stories potential in my mind.
Owls drift screeching over lichen ancient oaks
new moon soon.

Thunder rumbled round the tents at night
but no rain fell. Listening to D'Angelis.
Morning clear and bright, sun hot.
Campsite grove, dry leaves flicker in autumn wind.

Red, big-bellied man in turquoise sea:
'It was very hot until the 28th and
turned stormy since'. Chatting in the sea will soon be
memory.

30 August: Gordon Douglas at the Lambert (Avignon). Couldn't contrast more with Twombly last year. All darkened windows, tinted deep or closed over, not a direct trace of a human hand, video, 'slogans' on the walls, old film posters. A hermetic, closed-in world: unlike the coloured marks of Twombly that invited in the light, the videos present a fragmentary vision, unless you watch for ever. The big main upper rooms, normally overlooking gardens from big windows, the windows covered over and just two big video screens with close-up of an elephant walking, close-up of the feet. Fragmenting, and a bit lost in the gloom. It's called 'Where are the keys?'

31 August. Red squirrels playing around the campsite trees, too wary for me to photograph them. No side effects from an evening of tasting the best Cote du Rhone. Packing in the morning.

29 August: Waking and leaving the house at first light, thinking for no apparent reason of L'Intrus, and noticing suddenly that the main character is very much the inverse of Jean-Luc Nancy, on whose medical condition the film is based. & he dies, tho Jean-Luc Nancy is still alive. So much the inverse that it must be intentional. So much of that film reamins mysterious, but it is so assured and certain of itself it reamisn clear. I'd been talking to Chris about it at the Dome, so I'd been thinking of it.

Three weeks at the Dome, each week one dance stood out, a dance with a parner I hadn't met before and who turned out to be 'foreign': an Argentinian, a Frenchwoman and an Italian from Palermo. The latter, this week, we went straight into energetic valse. She seemed very sure, and we danced close. Didn't seem to speak much English. I hadn't seen her there before and didn't notice her again. Wonderful that a happy time can arise between cmplete strangers who have no linguistic communication.

Dance is special. Kate immersing herself in a seriously tough ballet course over the summer. Interesting. She really values strength in herself and other women. My impresssion tht really tango to her isn't much of a challenge. I wonder about working that hard at it. Performing requires great discipline. Perhaps the creative side of tango just isn't amenable to that kind of pressure and training. You need to be absorbed in it continually so the mind remains occupied by the music and movements, but I wonder if hours and hours of training really can make a better dancer. I propose to find out this winter.

Lyons, after an hour or so of upland farmland and forest, rolling felds of cattle. A relief to have sunshine after the last month in the UK. New prints taking forward what I found in the 'Worlds' but opening it out and simplifying. Opening, the paper as part of the area. Perhaps silkscreen vegetation overprinted with wood figure.

Dances that end with a little laugh, and those that just finish. The laugh is the release of tension, but it's not a stressed tension, the opposite. Attention, and the pleasure of finishing something together. These are always the best dances. A sign of emotional involvement, and it's usually reciprocal. As if you've spent the last three minutes holding your breath.

One film I had problems with: The Book of Revelation. A young male dancer finding his feet again after being abducted and sexually abused by three women. Perhaps the director dwelt too much on the scenes of abuse, which were in effect flashback. They slowed down the story, his struggle to deal with what has happened to him and get back to work again. But then they were real enough to him. A difficult story and a difficult film. I had problems in that it didn't quite fit together, yet it is an immensely powerful and immediate story, one that deals with difficult and painful issues. The treatment doesn't quite seem to get it right.

No problem with the Bill Douglas trilogy. First off, how well scripted: someone who learnt from those who grew up in the silent era, who knew how to make visual films. Dialogue is very much secondary to the moving image, and there's little enough of it. There are great gaps in the story telling: Jamie runs away and is rejected even by his relatives in the bleak Scottish town. What is he going to do now? The desert from a moving truck. Palm trees waver by. A hesitating dialogue: 'Wha's yur name?' Slowly we realise he's joined the forces. The suddenness of a new life.

The story is autobiographical and heavy: the children brought up by a grandmother who dies, whose mother is insane and whose fathers don't care. Jamie becomes increasingly an outsider, a miss-fit, emotionally blank. Friendship with a young serviceman in Egypt slowly brings him back to being a human being, with interests beyond survival. Made in 1972 -8, dealing with the early 50s. The trilogy begins in 1945.

The Scottish background was partly familiar: my grandparents were not that poor, but the cast-iron hearth with the oven to the left, the doors with latches, and made from vertical lengths of wood, were very familiar.

Trouble Every Day and Bataille... It could almost be Angela Carter, although her horrors are grim ly humorous, and Denis's vision is surprisingly cold and analytic. AC's The Bloody Chamber: short stories based on stories like Bluebeard. Grimly humorous and poetic: actually quite unlike Trouble Every Day, which is cold, analytic and despairing. And surprisingly brutal. But the film world isn't the real world. Murders go unreported and undiscovered: victims (at least the chambermaid at the end) don't scream or knee their (male) attacker.

Two weeks ago I ended up having a great time with an Argentinian tango partner... & last week, same venue (the Dome) I asked someone I'd danced with at the class. I knew she was hesitant but OK with all the basics -- and again I had a great time, different, but very enjoyable, perhaps more personal, since it's necessary to take more care of a partner who isn't so practiced, and since she will be more surprised and pleased. We started out in a relatively open embrace but as she relaxed she found it comfortable to be closer. & I began to get the sense I only get with some very practiced dancers that I am placing her feet, especially in ochos, which means I have better control of the direction we travel in. I can probably do this with anyone: it just means turning and being very clear.

Seeing L'Aventura again: all I could remember of it was Monica Vitti's hair in the wind. Seeing it again, I wonder if that might be the best part of it. OK, it's a long and ambitious project, but I suspect the screenplay isn't well-realised. The film seems static and episodic in a rather dull way. Great sets - the Aeolian Isles, and Sicily, but very static. At least Monica Vitti's hair moves! The film involves characters, but they are one-dimensional and rather unbelievable.

Trouble Every Day - Claire Denis again. I realised at the first shot I saw it a while back and couldn't quite make it out. No indication where the story comes from: like L'Intrus it seems to be her own. Perhaps the attitude to the horror is key. It's not shock-horror, the horror intended to be scary. Instead, there's something very matter-of-fact about it, which comes over in the very clear way it is presented visually. Although the visual details are fairly extreme there's a sense almost of weariness, inevitability; this is something we can't escape. Unfortunately no 'Extra' interview with Claire Denis, so Beatrice Dalle's comment 'It's not about cannibalism... I thought it is a love story' must suffice. She, Denis, does work from philosophical premises and this film, for all its gory details, seems to have the rigour and distancing of a thesis, or a story intended metaphorically.

Denis's style: she excels at telling a story visually, rarely using words or dialogue unless essential. She seems to withhold information if possible, drawing the viewer into interpretation, leaving events with as little explanation as possible to give us space to be involved. Visually immaculate in detail and in sequence of scenes, in montage, and always beautifully shot.

Amazing: thought-provoking seems a wrong description since the effect is of a space we are invited to visit and revisit in recollection, a space that has similar points to our everyday 'reality' and yet has points completely unlike it. In the end it's so irrational that thinking isn't relevant, and yet that irrationality is why it is so close. If L'Intrus came out of reading Nancy, Trouble could have come out of reading Bataille.

...but I have to conclude I didn't dance too well on Saturday largely, I think, because I danced a lot. Sitting out and watching for a few tandas is great for seeing/remembering movements and connections, for refreshing the attention and hearing. Otherwise it gets seriously repetitive and I don't enjoy it.

& I wrote that I really like some partners, as if there were some I don't really like, which isn't the case. Partly, I tend to dance with partners I know, and those I've got to know better tend to be those I like more, inevitably. But it's worth noting that it seems possible to like everyone at a milonga: perhaps it goes with the territory. There are partners I wouldn't dance with but that's usually for technical reasons like they don't seem to hear the compas clearly or are just too proficient for my level. & I hesitate to dance with tall partners because it's not always comfortable to dance closehold with a tall partner, although it can be good.

For once I'm thinking about tango, after a whole evening dancing, from 8.30 very nearly till 1.30 and only a few breaks. I think there were more women than men so it wasn't hard to stay busy. It might be useful to log some general comments on partners to try and express something of what tango dancing is like, its attraction. Some partners can't always keep attention: it must be strange to be physically active and yet mentally passive (if that's the right word), at least receptive all the time to the leader's movements. Some feel they ought to add ornaments, while I think ornaments should arise out of relaxed movements rather than being added on top. And some dance effortlessly, in varying degrees according really to experience. I wonder if hearing the music is key. If you can immerse yourself in the music you can lead/follow: it takes time and practice, but that's where it comes from.

I should log my own dancing too. It was a successful evening but uneven. There were OK and indifferent dances, but it was good to have a really long evening. I've practiced the tight right turn a lot and can fit it into a very small space, which is good. Must get the tight left turn working now. It gets a bit repetitive: one partner said that doesn't matter, and that's probably true for a partner, but I make those moves all evening and would like more variety. Beginning to work on getting little corridas working, which is fun and adds variety. & I still lurch a bit every now and again, but it seems that it happens less the more relaxed I am. With one partner I like very much and sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed by I am less relaxed: with another who I also like very much but am very relaxed with when dancing it doesn't happen. She has danced for years, first salsa then tango, and is very sure on her feet. I find I start to turn my upper body a lot more when I dance with her because I'm confident she'll follow, and we've had some memorable dances, flying round the room. & it was she who said last night: 'At this time of night I start to follow in my sleep. Time to go home.'

Returning to the Dome after weeks... Perhaps there's an advantage in expecting little. I just hoped to see a few old friends... get a few dances. Nothing too much as it's not been much good recently. The class, OK, so I have difficulty with some right turns, but no problem to the left. I like the beginning of classes: the moves are easy, nothing much is expected, a few simple moves and I keep to the music, make a dance of an exercise. Which may be why one one of the partners came over to me afterwards, and we started to dance right off. She used a totally full embrace from the start (slightly familiar, that one!) eager, warm, wonderfully ready to be led, a closeness and enthusiasm that weren't at all English, but to which I responded willingly. And she expects to keep the full embrace or at least chest in front of chest even in turns, So where is she from? Begs the question, where am I from, too. We had five, six, seven wonderfully enthusiastic dances and are about to part when... a vals tanda starts. We look at each other because we know what fun it's going to be, and off we go. Couldn't be better. She was from Argentina: where else. I looked out for her later: most of the evening she was talking to a thin, tallish guy I'd never seen there before. I'd never seen her there before, either, but that's tango. All of a sudden you find someone you dance passionately with, and then, all of a sudden it's as if nothing had happened.

& S was there later, and we had a few excellent dances too, as ever: she flies around. So I woke up happy this morning. Went for a first Alexander session this pm: letting the body sort itself out. It knows, naturally. So instead of stretching a stiff neck a bit forcefully, maybe look for the tensions that have created it.

Crypt: sometimes being a tango commuter gets to me. Five hours' travel for an hour or two of dance. How can I get out of this? With the economic situation it's getting harder to sell, and I've still got work to finish on this place. So I danced, badly or just unadventurously, but enjoyed some Pugliese with Kay, who knows her Pugliese too. But I was really too tired to do much. Didn't go in to tango al fresco but spent the day drawing taf onto lino to make prints for Anna's show. Hope something comes of that as I don't have much time left to finish it.

'L'intrus' Claire Denis again. The great addition of 'extras' to DVD: how 'Vertigo' was made and restored, Raoul Coutard on working with Godard, Bresson on his work, actors from Bresson films on how the making of the films affected them. And Claire Denis, at length on 'L'Intrus'. It started from a short (13 page) text by Jean-Luc Nancy, which I found and downloaded: the first few paras are his thoughts on intrusion and the intruder in general, and develops into the desperate story of the heart transplant he had, it's rejection and his subsequent struggle with cancer caused by the anti-rejection drugs. Levels of intrusion. Reading this, she said, affected her profoundly, and the film arose out of this. She says everything is in the text: Nancy himself queried this, and she says she assured him, everything. But the character played by Subor (le petit soldat) is made out to be heartless, callous, certainly unlike Nancy (who has survived all the medical complications).

The film is visually extraordinary: it seems to have time to dwell on visual detail without interrupting the story. The story is told with little narration: you have to look to find out what is happening. It is often unclear: flash backs which could be nightmares of Subor's past, which remains mysterious. What is being 'told' is the story of rejection, of death, of whose death isn't eventually clear.

Tango: a class with Alexandra and Stephano for a change, with F, who told me about it. A well-organised two hours, and a very musical approach. Last class before the August break, so the intermediate class was more social dancing. I enjoyed it as the social dancing mixed with general instruction, so there were always things to be aware of and think about. F going to Italy and the BsAs: hope to meet up for a few dances in between. So I can get a sense of before and after, as I joked.

1. Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien
2. by Brian Winter Reviewed by Judith Mackerell, Guardian 26 July.
   

Two or three things I know about her: the next Godard on the list. Background of mid-60s Paris being torn down and rebuilt: 'her' the actress and Paris. I don't remember a great deal of it, except the narrator's voice (Godard) and the extraordinary bubbles whirling round on an espress: they seem to take on characters and stories of their own. 'If you can't afford LSD buy a TV'.

Masculin Feminin: Leaud, ex-army, finding life confusing. He takes to interviewing women. The interview was taken seriously at that time: intimate questions were asked and answered. His girl friend is becoming a pop star, like Sandie Shaw. Somehow the shallowness of consumerist pop 60s is focussed by Leaud, but sometimes I had the irreverent thought that women were being interviewed for the role of the next Mme Godard. Even Bardot is there, being given instructions on how to read a passage of text. Like a series of screen tests. Yes, one of the women answers back, in the end. In the end we learn he has fallen from a balcony of a tower block. Not really a stunning film but, as usual with Jean-Luc, there's much to think about. Not Coutard, and it shows. The mono is muddy and unclear, the cool silver greys just aren't there.

& A Man Escaped. Catching up on Bresson. Slow relentless accumulation of detail, the pitiless world of prison, as dehumanised as possible, the death-defying escape. Astonishing and of course recent memory when it was made.

&, well, learning a choreography is a valuable exercise in learning a sequence of movements which is, after all, what we do in class every time. The choreography is just a bit longer, so it's good for me.

Catching up on films... 10 minutes older, the Claire Denis film really caught me. Simple: philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy and a student on a train. She (student) describes her experience as an outsider, an intruder, arriving in France as a student from another country. Calmly, lucidly, he analyses and explains her feelings. In the corridor of the train is a black African. Back in the carriage the intimate, thoughtful conversation continues. Suddenly the door opens and the African enters and starts to talk to the professor and student. The shock of intrusion before we realise that he is actually with them.

Then the Goddard season continued. I watched Le Mepris years ago on a small b&w tv and remembered nothing very clearly. Seeing it widescreen on a good colour monitor is breathtaking. Godard working beyond full stretch. The central scene between Bardot and Piccoli an extraordinary 30 minutes. We sit and watch a relationship falling apart. Just how far writing combined with acting, directing, cinematography and editing can reach. Unforgettable: somewhere many of us must have been. He doesn't realise how seriously she needs to be taken and in the end she leaves in scorn, mepris. & I never realised how seriously Bardot should be taken as an actor. After this 30 minutes confined in a flat we are suddenly on location in the Mediterranean, endless space and harmony enhanced by that feeling of confinement within a small destructive circle. Stunning doesn't do it justice.

The back problem after the Tuesday class seems to have cleared up after a day of being rather sore. F cheered me up a lot by saying very encouraging things about my leading: that I never get her off-balance, never wrestle her with my left arm. She has the strong central balance that comes from 14 years doing pirouettes on the point of one toe.

Finally, on Monday, booked apartment for BsAs. Before I booked I felt hesitant: after booking I felt really pleased and relieved. I'm on my way, at least to sunshine in November if not to a lot of good tango.

Last night, L&R's last class before their holiday, the Tuesday night advanced class, a bit of a disaster. It was one of their choreographies, which I'm not so keen on in class, but OK once in a while. I guess it gives everyone the feel of actually dancing to the music, and practice in combining moves. Early on it was going well until I picked a partner who said she was a beginner. Partners say that if they're not confident but unfortunately she really was -- and it was an advanced class. So I confidently led a giro, she didn't have a clue what I was doing and tripped on her own legs. Supporting someone's full weight, even for a moment, in a twisted position isn't great for the back, and mine is sore today. She was so much a beginner she didn't even know the giro pattern. The problem with open classes: anyone can turn up.

Carlos Gavito: The important thing is to know why we want to dance. We dance a solitude that we have inside us and cannot occupy with anything. This gap, that emptiness to which we put movement is the tango. "Lo importante es saber para qué queremos bailar. Bailamos una soledad que tenemos dentro de nosotros y no la podemos ocupar con nada. Ese vacío al que le ponemos movimiento es el tango."

‘Art’, Tilson has written, 'is a symbolic discourse of which mankind alone is capable… I think of art as a tool of understanding, an instrument of transformation to put yourself in harmony with the world and with life … The basic given data of experience and the physiological and psychological aspects of procreation, birth, growth and death remain relatively unchanged.' The themes Tilson chooses for his work aspire to transcend time and cut across cultures to communicate the sacred in nature via references to pre-classical mythology, the Norm American Indians, the Dream Time of the Australian Aboriginals, and alchemy. Modular structuring devices - the letters of the alphabet, the days of the week, the circular mnemonic devices of Alchera which relate to the four Cardinal points, to the four Elements and to the four Seasons, the lunar months, labyrinths, ladders, words, symbols - are assembled in matrices layered with complex universal meaning.

A good evening at the Welsh-Centre-now-Conway-Hall. It felt like a good evening of work, work done well, satisfying. Not too crowded, so not too much pressure around, just the possibility to repeat and refine, to see what's going wrong. Realising how much I still look at the floor and how that, in a turn, pulls me off-balance. & great music, guitar and bandoneon: two people can stretch the beat much more than a band, and it becomes very interesting, if not easy, to dance to.

So this has all got very out of date because of the exhibition and related work. Much to catch up on.

Films first: the torture scene in Petit Soldat was familiar because Godard included it in his piece in '10 minutes', an extraordinary (what else from Godard) short 'Dans le noir du temps', a collage of his work and of events witnessed on film in his lifetime. The end of time, the end of love, the end of kindness..

'I can't grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing... Otherwise I'd never know what running means to me' wrote Haruki Murakami, and it set me wondering whether I might know better what tango means to me by writing. Which was the purpose of this blog in the first place, but it seems to have diverted itself to finding out what film means to me.

Talking to a friend after the Wednesday class: she regards me truly as a tango addict and says she likes it, but isn't that addicted. But I thought that the point is the addiction to dance, and she dances contemporary as well as tango. The start is dance, and you end up in what suits you best. So I'm not a tango addict as much as a dance addict. & I dance as much as I can because you can't do anything well without doing it a lot, and if it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well.

Highlights of the past month: eating cherries from a tree I planted last year. Just a few, sharp and full of taste. & leaving the gallery at 5 last Monday, looking back at a really good exhibition. The culmination of months of work.

ccc ddd

The Godard season continues: Le Petit Soldat. Made the same year as Bout de Souffle but censored by the French gov, so not released till '63. Terrorism, spying. The torture scenes are very simple and very memorable. In fact I didn't think I'd seen the film until the soldat is in the bath, chained to the taps (visual reference, conscious or otherwise, to crucifixion) matches being burned under his hands. Not sure when I saw it before: a long time ago. Godard scenes: people photographing, reading books, talking about music. Informed by b/w photography: the scene in which the soldat photographs Karina, light and dark, great cinematography. A photo is the truth and cinema is 24 truths a second. Her first film with Godard (?), looking solemn and rather hesitant, and actually more beautiful and convincing than the pretty Karina of subsequent Godard films. A film full of pain and defensiveness, reminding of the traumas post WW2 and of French involvement in Algeria. But then Godard never does deal much with intimacy.

Lust: Caution, first impression, first half, a dull screen adaptation of the story, made tedious by the laboriously recreated street scenes. Why do directors think that throwing huge amounts of money in massive recreations makes a film more real, more authentic? Because having spent the money they have to spend too long filming it, and the narrative suffers. The second half is less distracted and it's when Tony Leung and Wei Tang take over. His performance stunning, wartime, it's torture and kill or be killed. And I'm still alive, he says. And his performance shows the cost. This isn't in the book and it's a mesmerizing addition. So it's another film 'about' the suffering of war. You don't need detailed reconstructions of streets to tell this story. Wang Kar Wei's treatment of the same period is much less elaborate and much more atmospheric.

Tango: the problems of distance and maintaining energy levels. Best when I'm in London early and eat at Moro. Stayed for Milonga class on weds and had a really good time. It means I get an early train back, an added bonus these days with the show coming up. So I think I'll skip the Dome for a few weeks. A good time on weds and then a rather mediocre Welsh Centre. I just seemed tired and not very inventive, but it kept the ball rolling. So it goes.

Just a check that this is all working. I suddenly discovered I had two blogs of the same name on the same site: some of my postings on one, some on the other. So I amalgamated them and deleted one (having copied the first) and it seems to have worked. There's now one complete blog. Just a check.

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Tango commuter

Sunday, 11 May 2008

April 13th was it, my last sign in? Typical.

Films: Le Chinois, Godard. A Chinese man with a bandaged face says: this is what they did to me, unwrapping the bandages. But his face unwrapped is quite normal. The press denounce him as a fake. Comments Goddard: they failed to understand that this was theatre and not reality.

A film about theatre and reality, about politics and violence. In some ways dated, but in the discussions of terrorism quite contemporary. Coming to terms with the Cultural Revolution and the war in Vietnam, with violence and change. & it all preceded May '68, and prefigured it too. Extraordinary.

Werner Herzog: Cobra Verde. His last film with Kinski? Another visionary epic, a very dark one.

Pierrot le Fou. Again. And every time it's as brilliant as ever. The moment Karina and Belmondo step into a car together you know the world is going to fall apart. Godard's timing and pacing are just so good: the brief comic moment before Belmondo goes to the island, shoots Karina and blows himself up.

Une Femme est Une Femme, Godard's only joking film. Karina looking impossibly, self-consciously pretty, and then a woman in a bar turns round and says that Jules et Jim is going well: it's Jeanne Moreau, and very real. Similar story to Jules et Jim, but Truffaut does it better. 'Breathless' was a story by Truffaut: they wrote it together. 1960.

Oh, and tango. It was hot in there last Friday, so good to sit outside and talk. You're wearing turquoise, and red and white flowers, clean bright colours. And dance. I still struggle to lead turns well: perhaps the most difficult thing, to get in the habit of turning the shoulders before moving the feet. It was better last week, I'd forgotten; need to practice. And to lead the salida properly, too.

The garden is an hour so work daily. It's hot. And the prints are coming along, slowly, but just about perceptibly.

Saturday, 26 April 2008

Appleblossom since about five days.

Films: 10 Canoes -- extraordinary that it didn't occur to me when watching that this was a recreation of something that hadn't happened since the 1950s, that it was recreated using photos taken by an anthropologist in the 1930s, that it became a focus for the people who recreated their own past, re-membering an ancient way of life that had lasted just about into living memory. Amazing to look at and think about.

Pierrot le Fou. We take road movies for granted but I'm not sure they existed before Godard. God ard. And typographic play. We take rambling plots for granted, they just seem lifelike, following people around. Vigo, peutetre. & a most desperate despairing story. We kill the thing we love. Films about death, and the impossibility of love. And Raoul Coutard's cinematography: stunning saturated colours. He could make b&w sing, he could make colour sing.

Tango: the Welsh has been a real treat recently, not too crowded, good crowd. Jill#s music a bit too much at the same tempo throughout. I only got to dance with regular partners, but danced 8.30 to 10.45 and exhausted. When the floor isn't crowded you can dance almost anything you want. Some especially great Valses.

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