Geraldine and Gerardo

Four years ago I wrote something about this video. A number of videos of this show, Marisa Galindo's La Milonga in 1991, had been released, and this was one of many videos. Recently I re-discovered it.

When I first watched it I was struck by the complete seriousness of Portalea's attitude to his young partner. There's nothing in the least bit patronising in it: he takes her as seriously as his wife or any other partner he dances with. I found that level of respect very beautiful, and I believe it's typical of Argentine tango culture. Watching it again, I'm struck by how clearly this clip shows that basic, simple tango technique, done well, is very beautiful in itself. I watch the way they both move, change weight, step; the emphatic way they have of stepping and the energy that results, and the energy that comes from the swift act of 'collecting': moreover, it reassures your partner, it says 'this is where I am, my centre'. In a way it's a very simple dance, very basic, but the energy put into it makes it very striking. It's slow and unhurried, there's nothing at all elaborate, but it's not lacking in energy. There's a lot to be learned from this.

I showed it to a friend who saw Portalea many times over the years, and the reply came: '...he didn’t change one bit – either in his look or his dancing. Muy elegante!' As for Geraldine: 'However did she manage to 'get it' at 8 years of age, when so many don’t at many times that? I think this should be required viewing. How about when someone signs on for a beginners class, they have to sit in a corner and watch it first before they are taught anything at all? I met Gustavo Naveira at about that time, and Portalea, the dancer who hardly seemed to dance more than four steps, amazed him.'

As to how Geraldine 'got it' at eight, well, perhaps not surprising, considering her background. & considering that children can learn fast, and that you can drill them: they can't escape! They can't go off to another parent who gives them an easier time. If teachers start drilling adults and pulling them up every time they get careless, their students might seek out more compliant teachers, and never develop good habits. Adults will be impatient to dance something more elaborate – and consequently may never dance with this kind of intensity. Besides, 'Dance? It's about having fun, isn't it?' 'Playing at tango' is fun for many people, but there's more to it. Dance always seems the most relaxed art, but it has to be the most disciplined, too. We tend to be impatient of discipline, but the dance of Geraldine and Portalea is very disciplined. It's simple, beautiful to watch, and I'm sure it was beautiful for them too.

As to this video being required viewing... of course! What a great suggestion! Not just once, but many many times. Our bodies learn movement by watching, which is how we can mimic, whether it's Chaplin's walk, or a Madonna strut. We hardly need to practice or learn these things: we just watch and absorb. Who better to mimic than Geraldine and Portalea? I must put it on a loop! Once you can move like this you are already dancing great tango.

(HELP! I can no longer embed video. The embed code simply prints out in the blog, it doesn't link to the video. If anyone knows how to deal with this I'd be glad of help!)

El último aplauso

I really enjoyed El último aplauso (2009 dir. German Kral). It's in Spanish without subtitles, but subtitles don't matter so much as a lot of the film is music. It looks great throughout. Really a pity I didn't come across it earlier.

Bar El Chino in the Pompeya barrio of Buenos Aires was started by El Chino Garcia's father, an immigrant from Spain, as a bar and grocery. El Chino grew up passionate about tango, and a singer, so under his direction the groceries disappeared, and the bar became known as a restaurant bar, with music several nights a week. Kral began filming there in the late 1990s. El Chino died in 2001, but his vivacious, gregarious, open-hearted personality lives on in the early footage, included in the film. The first 25 minutes is the old footage from El Chino's day. Then it jumps to 2003 with the visit of one of the singers, Cristina De Los Angeles, to El Chino's grave in Chacarita. Recollections of El Chino follow. In the economic meltdown of 2001-2 the property owners needed to sell the bar, and the singers and musicians who had performed regularly alongside El Chino no longer had a place there: we see two of them busking in Calle Florida. Then Christina visits La Ideal and meets the young tango Orquesta Tipica Imperial. Rehearsals of the orquesta with the four surviving singers follow, and the film concludes with their performance together in the Bar El Chino. Some of the most memorable scenes for me are when the older performers meet up with the young musicians of the orquesta and start rehearsing, start putting their musical experience together. It's interesting: singers accustomed to sing with a guitar suddenly have an orquesta behind them – and they relish it! For one last evening, people come to the Bar El Chino to eat and drink and enjoy the music.

It seems that the bar was later gutted and relaunched as a tango theme bar. How is it that people can make such totally wrong decisions? 

The film shows another side of tango. It's not the tango of dance halls and recording studios, the tango we hear at milongas, the product of highly trained arrangers, band leaders and musicians, tango controlled by the music industry. This is live music made by a couple of performers for an audience, tango sung to a guitar – which I think is how most tangos began, as a guitar or piano score with lyrics. In a particularly magical scene, one of the singers sings with a guitar and violin while the others clap the beat, and it's astonishing how tango can suddenly sound Andalucian, although something similar could probably be found in Italian folk music, and in non-European folk music too. It's like seeing the folk roots of tango, but the songs are the same old favourites you hear in the milongas, Naranja en Flor, Por una cabeza, Cambalache, Ventarrón, Malena, Barrio de Tango, Romance de Barrio...

This isn't tango for dance halls, but it's tango at its most popular level since the music has always been more widely popular than the dance. When the dance lost popularity and the orquestas were no longer financially viable, I assume people still sang these songs, listened to them with a singer and guitar, whistled them in the streets. The dance, and to a lesser extent the music, has achieved world-wide popularity, but what I hear in this film is the basis of the music, outside the star system of singers and musicians.

Several of the performers passed away during the decade or so of filming, and subsequently. These were people who were around when the recordings were still new, when the songs we dance to were first heard, people who have sung them all their lives. It's wonderful that this film gives us the opportunity to share their enthusiasm and experience. It's a remarkably sympathetic and respectful presentation of this world, and of tango. Much credit and thanks to the director, German Kral, who was born in Buenos Aires in 1968, studied film in Germany and has worked both in Europe and Argentina: his Tango Berlin (1997) was made with Wim Wenders. The entire film is currently available on YouTube but without subtitles. There might be a German version on DVD, and it's really a pity it hasn't appeared on DVD with English subtitles. It would be great one day to watch it with the words of the songs in English for those of us who aren't fluent in Spanish. 

El último aplauso is not to be confused with Bar El Chino (2003, dir. Daniel Burek), which also has footage from the bar and of El Chino and the other performers, but sadly just as a background to a tedious story of film-makers meeting, falling in and out of love, all the while rushing around trying to complete a film about the bar against a background of the economic crisis... Something of a self-parody, and the music hardly gets a look in. It's also on YouTube, and well worth avoiding. 

This is a general background piece about the bar and El Chino.

Gricel: un amor en tiempo de tango

Three films I've recently come across: this one is Argentine, with one Argentine and one German/Argentine to follow.

Contursi is a big name in tango lyrics: it was Pascual Contursi who met up with a young singer called Carlos Gardel in Violettas in 1917 in Buenos Aires, and sang him his latest song, Mi Noche Triste. Gardel recorded it, and it made him famous. It's regarded as as the first tango song. (These days you might not be allowed into Violettas with a guitar, and almost certainly you wouldn't be welcome to work through your latest song with a friend, but you can get the best chocolate mousse in town and a pot of green tea to go with it. & you can enjoy a wonderful Art Deco interior.)

Pascual Contursi's son, José María Contursi, was a prolific tango lyricist who wrote the song called Gricel. The lyrics and a translation are here, and this is probably the best-known version, Troilo with Fiorentino. It's a tortured song: the poet has seduced a woman, regrets it and can't forget her. According to his daughter and friends, Contursi always maintained that Gricel was a fictional character, and the story behind the song was imagined. But after his wife's death in the early 1960s Contursi asked his daughter's permission to bring someone into his house... and it was Gricel. The song quite definitely was not a fiction. Contursi had met Gricel when he was in his mid-twenties and she was a beautiful 16-year old on a visit to Buenos Aires, around 1936. There is a photo of them from around this time. She returned home to the hills around Córdoba, and he returned to his wife, but they kept in touch, and he visited Córdoba a few times. Then in 1942 he sent her the song, Gricel. It's a sad outpouring of love and regret, and as he titled it with the name of the woman herself it was personal, and also a message. She married in 1949 and had a daughter, but her husband abandoned her. In 1962 Contursi's wife passed away, and in 1967 he and Gricel married. He died just five years later.

The trailer for Gricel: un amor en tiempo de tango (2012: dir. Jorge Leandro Colás) is on YouTube, and it includes extracts from interviews with Contursi's daughter and with one of his friends. However, instead of being just a remarkable documentary of an era of tango history, the film uses a framing device: Pablo Basualdo, a lead singer with the Teatro Colon company, wants to make an opera around the story of Gricel, a story which might well have inspired a Puccini or a Busoni. The film follows him as he researches the story and interviews people who knew Contursi, and as he sings extracts of the opera. He's a great singer, but the music doesn't come from a tango background which I thought is a pity, as a tango opera on the story of Gricel could be a really interesting project. Perhaps the entire opera is in the full film: it's impossible to tell from the trailer. However, the cast list on IMDb  shows that a lot of people talked to camera, so I hope the film is more documentary than opera, and I certainly look forward to seeing it. It doesn't appear to have a DVD release yet.

Gricel herself passed away in 1994. This must be a photo of her late in life, as it's said the dog survived her.

(Information and photos from Todotango.)

Message...

... to someone who occasionally emails me from @orange.net: my reply to your email got bounced back with a message that this is a permanent error and that the domain has no valid mail exchangers. 

Nocturno a mi Barrio

I came across another pre-golden era tango to add to the above (below, actually) list: it's here, and dated 1920.  I was curious who the Orquesta Típica Select might be – and it turns out to be led by a bandoneonista called Osvaldo Fresedo, who must have been about 23. The regular, repetitive habanera rhythm of the two earlier recordings is being replaced by a kind of syncopation: it's just three years after the first recordings of jazz, and it sounds as if Fresedo had already heard this recently recorded North American music and is working hard to incorporate syncopation into tango.

I also came across a TV performance by Troilo from the 1960s, which I find very poignant. By this time, the great Troilo of the golden era can no longer afford to perform with an orquesta: it's the time of the quartet. It's also the era when his recording company destroys all the masters of his great recordings to free up space for the new music: tango is just an outdated product. So here he is in a carefully staged TV performance, a cultural relic performing an old music, surrounded by solemn young faces who listen sympathetically to a song about an era that has long gone, their parents' background, not theirs. This is their cultural heritage and is treated with respect: perhaps they are briefly moved, but it's not their world and they are probably looking forward to an evening of rock and roll. Then Troilo snaps shut his bandoneon and stands up, towering over them. Troilo himself wrote these words and music in the mid-1950s when tango was already in decline. The tango of the golden age was often nostalgic, but Nocturno a mi Barrio is doubly so: that era when the radio was always tuned to tango, when dancing was a family activity and everyone's social life, is largely over. I can't help wondering if any of those young faces now sit at milongas, thinking 'Yes, I saw Troilo perform once'.

There's an excellent page in English in Todotango about the song and its creation. The words of the song are still in Spanish: thanks to Ozan Bulut for pointing out that much of the song is translated in the text. 'It's said that I left my barrio... When? But... when? I'm constantly returning'.

These five clips effectively bookend the tango of the golden age.

P.S. Enrique Binda, an engineer and tango researcher, has suggested that early '78s' were almost certainly not recorded at 78rpm. Early recordings were made at between 70 and 80 rpm, and the versions we hear these days may well be played too fast. Interesting to think that the jaunty, upbeat feel of some of these early recordings may be an illusion based on a technical error. The music may well have sounded more melancholic. His essay, At what speed were 78s recorded? is here.

Tango Negro

So what is this music Ricardo Suarez enjoys dancing to? It's certainly not a 'golden age' milonga like those of D'Agostino, Laurenz or Troilo. It sounds like a milonga that's arrived from a different direction, from common ground with Latin music further north, perhaps from Uruguay or Brazil. The milonga beat is in there, but there's more going on. The lyrics are on Todotango here.

Tango Negro is called a candombe rather than a milonga. The music, lyrics, vocals and piano are by Juan Carlos Cáceres, and it's dated Paris 2003. (There's also another Tango Negro, a milonga by Vicente Demarco dating back to 1940, but of course it's different.) Cáceres is an exact contemporary of film maker and politican, Fernando Solanas, and like him spent years in exile in Paris. More accurately, Cáceres left Buenos Aires for Paris in 1968, and still lives there. A musician and painter who lectures on art history and on the history of the music of the Rio Plata area, he's founded and recorded with a number of groups in Paris. Tocá Tangó is another of his tracks that gets played in milongas. 

Like Robert Farris Thompson (Tango: The Art History of Love) Cáceres argues for the black roots of tango, suggesting that tango has distanced itself from any African heritage. The music never uses percussion – although the instruments are played percussively. (I've heard a couple of Fresedo tracks with percussion, but it just sounds wrong.) Thompson suggests the dance ironed out any African background, adopting (and adapting) the upright stance of European ballroom in the 1920s and 30s. Childhood friends Rudolfo Cieri and Manolo were unfashionable in growing up dancing crouched (as in canyengue) rather than upright, as in tango: a crouching dance with bent knees was thought to be of African origin. 

I really enjoyed Thompson's book, but I wonder if he overstates the case. His arguments aren't always convincing: he draws attention to words similar to 'tango' in central African languages but I'm sure there are words similar to 'tango' in most languages. A 'tango' in Spanish is also a particular kind of flamenco song. I doubt anyone would disagree that there's African influence in tango dance and the music, but there's a great deal that's European too: the vals, polka and mazurka were popular dances in the largely immigrant population. To be fair, Thompson is in no doubt about the influence of these dances in Argentina.

As to the music, here are four recordings, 1911 to 1927, from YouTube:

Hotel Victoria (1911) Vicente Greco y su Orquesta Tipica Criolla

Mi Noche Triste (1917) - Carlos Gardel/Jose Ricardo (guitarra) 

Aromas (1923) Orquesta Osvaldo Fresedo
Coquetta (1929)Orquesta Tipica Victor

A simple over-view of pre-golden age tango: European roots seem broader than African. Perhaps it's a matter of semantics: a 'root' suggests a definitive source. There are African influences in tango music and dance, although the influences of European society and music might seem stronger. ('Criolla' meant locally born of Spanish origin. People of mixed-race origin could not be Criolla.)

Simba tango posted on the recent film, Tango Negro (2013: dir. Dom Pedro): I discovered a couple of days ago that it was shown in London at the end of March. I didn't see any notice of it on the TangoUK noticeboard or I would have gone over to Camberwell to see it.

& 'Tango Negro' is described as a candombe. Candombe is still the great street music of Uruguay. I filmed this prominent Uruguayan Candombe group in Buenos Aires for a festival a few years ago. (There are plenty of other candombe clips on YouTube.) This kind of candombe (I assume there could be others) is a very complex music: three types of drum playing three separate rhythms, against each other. It's very powerful, but I don't think it resembles tango – or even 'Tango Negro'.

Ricardo Suarez in Buenos Aires

After seeing Ricardo Vidort's milonga in Rome, I started to look for other milongas from that generation... and remembered Ricardo Suarez, who was five years older than Ricardo Vidort and celebrated his 90^th birthday a few weeks ago.

When I first watched him in Maipu 444 six or seven years ago I didn't know who he was: he certainly appeared to be the oldest dancer there, and yet didn't miss out many tandas. I kept watching him because he seemed to have an incredibly precise sense of the beat: he seemed more 'on the beat' than anyone else in a room full of some of the most experienced tangueros in Buenos Aires. Every time I've been there I've seen him at a milonga two or three evenings a week, dancing most tandas, dancing with old and young, dancing all evening.

His movements aren't big, but look very precise. Small movements doesn't mean movements without energy: his steps are absolutely decisive. That back-step has a sudden precision to it: you don't need to take a big back step to get the energy of the movement. As usual it's not what you do it's how you do it. Useful on crowded floors, and also useful if you want to keep dancing all night: no energy is wasted.

There have been a few recent videos related to his birthday, and several are milonga. The feeling that he's more 'on the beat' than anyone else is still there, and I assume that his partners are exactly with him, very precisely on the beat too. (There's nothing approximate about 'on the beat' in traditional Buenos Aires tango, as I've been reminded a few times while there.)

For some reason the 'embed' isn't working: the video is here. Abretango also has other videos of Ricardo's birthday celebrations.

Here's Ricardo and the late Enriquetta Kleinmann at Ricardo's 89^th birthday last year, a well-lit and very clear video. (You have to fast forward to about 2:40 to get to the dance.) Same music: curious how similar Tati Caviglia and Enriquetta Kleinman are, both in height and dance, although I think Enriquetta looks more assured.

And to return to the 90th birthday: Ricardo Suarez dancing with Muma. Not a milonga, but a lovely tango. The film is mainly close up on upper body, and the movements of the dancers are very clear, and it's extraordinary just how much movement there is, up and down, side to side and round, little movements back and forth, like a conversation. It's not exaggerated, and it is precise. But when the camera does pull back... Muma is dancing barefoot! Wonderful. In conversation once, a 'porteña' deplored women wearing jeans to milongas: But, I said, just last night I saw Muma at Cachirulo in jeans! 'Ah! Well. Muma!' she replied. Muma can wear jeans to a milonga, and she can dance barefoot too. But that's Muma.

One thing clear in this clip: Muma and Ricardo actually look as if they are dancing together, and enjoy dancing together. Sad to say, that's not so with some of the other dancers visible. A pity they are surrounded with dancing that seems to lack this personal, interior absorption, lost to the world in each other for a few moments.

Between tangos

A partner who's danced in Buenos Aires most summers for many years describes as best she can the feeling of dancing with the older/more experienced dancers there: 'Soft energy'.

& another partner tells me she thinks of tango as 'consolation', not a word I'd associated before with tango. (All those Practimilonguero interviewees, who grandly and unanimously describe tango in a single word as 'pasión'.) But 'consolation' makes sense. Consolation is what gets you through a sense of loss, which accords with the nostalgia perceived in golden-age tango. Sur, that great anthem of golden-age tango, looks back at the wonderful times of trembling with love in youth, the waiting, the peaceful walks under starry skies... '...and it's all died, I know'. The place has changed, the experiences are only a memory, the dream has faded, leaving bitterness. & at the same time it's a wonderful song with great music. That's consolation.

(Words and a recent translation of Sur here.)

'El Flaco' Dany

Looking up from the ronda at a recent Sunday-afternoon milonga in London I suddenly noticed a face I hadn't expected to see there: 'El Flaco' Dany, sitting at a table. I shouldn't have been surprised: he's patron of that milonga, and I knew he was in London.

& especially great to see him take to the floor just like everyone else. Just to dance, not to give a 'demo'. It was great to watch that easy, comfortable grace: the experience of a lifetime of the ronda there! Nothing fancy, just the kind of salon everyone else was dancing – but with a distinctive relaxed elegance. Easy is the word I keep wanting to use: as ever, if someone makes something look easy, natural, effortless, it usually reflects a lot of experience. A real inspiration, and to my mind the best kind of tango 'demo'. &, at 78, he's a lot more upright than most of the dancers around. It's wonderful that a tanguero of his generation can now go to a London milonga and not look completely out of place.

Yellow mimosa (or is it acacia?) blossoms on every table: a soft scent of spring all afternoon.

Ricardo Vidort in Rome

Thanks to several friends who alerted me to this video of Ricardo Vidort, uploaded recently to YouTube. Four dances from Rome, including two milongas, which I think are the only available videos of Ricardo dancing milonga. An extraordinary dancer; I'm really glad to see this. Absolutely my favourite milongas on film! There's a warmth and intensity I find nowhere else. & his partner I guess is from a ballet background; those fast, flexible ankles seem to show that much. Perhaps they hadn't danced a lot together, and use the same music for both performances. Viejo tigre! There are several clips of Ricardo dancing to Viejo tigre. Perhaps he felt it was apt.

The film is dated 2006, but that's unlikely as Ricardo died in May that year. Clearly it's summer: everyone is in summer clothing, with fans too: this can't be Rome in the winter of 2006. His last visit to London was the previous summer, 2005, which might be more likely. Perhaps even an earlier year. I see Jantango also questions the date.

Presumably he was in his mid-70s when this was filmed, the more  extraordinary that he'd been ill for some years. He dances with terrific vigour, fire, energy. In fact when I first watched it I hadn't noticed the date, and assumed it was from some years earlier. He certainly puts everything into it: he said that if you dance tango, put everything into it. If you don't give it everything, don't dance. Autopilot isn't an option. & the sense of compás, the beat, is so precise that on occasions it's almost as if the dancers are actually making the music, instead of only responding to it. 

It is extraordinary, but at the same time... Well, I watched again one of his videos on the Tango and Chaos website* and  I must say I still prefer the videos of that relaxed afternoon milonga among friends in Lo de Celia. It's relaxed, intimate, tender, and still lively and inventive.

At the beginning of the Rome clip there's also the briefest glimpse of Ricardo dancing in a milonga: it would be wonderful to see more of this. It doesn't have the bravura of a show on an empty floor, but it's the real world. Many thanks to artymusetta for uploading this. 

& I hope artymusetta won't mind: I wanted to watch this in more detail, so I slowed down most of the second milonga. As usual the music sounds dire, but the opening 15 seconds show a lot: Ricardo on his toes, weight forwards, pushing forwards with the music, then a turn so fluent that for a moment he almost seems about to leave his partner behind. & there's a jauntiness to the dance that fits so well with the music, a slight bounciness; nevertheless, it stays grounded throughout, body weight so much a part of the dance. & even when he's hitting every beat he still shoots his legs out straight from the knee. Landing on a straight leg, and taking off with a bent knee, it's powerful.

* I notice Tango and Chaos says: 'I’ve thought about this page [about Ricardo] for a long time, but I just couldn't seem to get going. I kept putting it off. Part of the reason is that there’s so much video.' So much video? So where is all that video?

Silvia Ceriani

It's looking likely that Silvia Ceriani will be in Europe at the end of May.  In the UK in July she already has bookings as DJ at two milongas, and several workshops are planned.

Silvia was the late Tete's tango partner. They first visited Europe in 1995, at the invitation of Pina Bausch, who wanted to include tango in her piece, Nur Du. They started teaching in Wuppertal, and after that visited Europe regularly up until Tete's death 15 years later, teaching in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium and elsewhere. They visited the UK just once, but not at all recently. She became an excellent dancer, and a teacher in her own right, always insisting, as Tete did, on the importance of the basics of the walk. Her English is excellent, and she's a lively and engaging talker.

Her contact in Europe is Nadine Million nadinemillion@hotmail.com after 29 May. Anyone in the UK interested in meeting her or inviting her to teach or DJ can leave a message in the Comments to this post: I promise I won't publish it as a comment!

She's put forward a teaching agenda:

Beginners

Becoming friends with the music. The rhythm, cadence and elegance of Tango Salón. Embrace makes the difference. The importance of the pause.

All levels

Differentiating between Tango and Waltz. Simple sequences, rhythm and movement on the dance floor

Medium and advanced

Simple sequences, musicality, balance. Changes in direction and turns in Tango Salón. Sequences and turns combined in waltz rhythm. The importance of the pause.

(I hear Tete shouting 'Pausa!' at me from his table during a milonga...)

It doesn't sound 'content rich' but in this type of tango there's a big emphasis on how it is danced. She can also give a talk on the development of tango music. (She's regular tango DJ at Salón Canning and at La Catedral.) I'm sure she could be persuaded to give a talk on Tete as she has a collection of short films about him, some of which aren't available on public sites like YouTube. There's also talk of organising a DJ workshop. All this is likely to happen between July 4 and 20.