In case anyone within reach of Paris hasn't seen this...
SPRING! PARIS! TANGO!
Tete Rusconi and Silvia Ceriani, legendary teachers of the tango of the 'Golden Age' in Buenos Aires, will be teaching in Paris next month.
Thursday 14 May
Beginners, 19.30 to 21.00.
Intermediate and advanced: 21.00 to 22.30: how to differentiate vals from tango sequences, rhythm, movement around the dance floor. This workshop will begin with tango and then move on to vals.
Saturday 16 May
Beginners, 14 to 15.30: vals workshop.
All levels, 15.30 to 18.00. Supervised practica with Tete and Silvia. This will include teaching on floorcraft, as well as on dancing to different orchestras.
Sunday 17 May
Intermediate and advanced, 11.15 to 12.45. Changes of direction and turns in salon tango.
All levels, 12.45 to 14.15. Combining simple sequences, the importance of pauses.
Monday 18 May
Intermediate and advanced 19.30 to 21.00, continuation of vals. Combined sequences and turns in time to the music.
21.01 milonga, during which there will be a demonstration.
Speaking a bit of French will be helpful, but Silvia speaks excellent English, and language won't be a problem.
Contact Nathalie Clouet (who also speaks English) by email at unriendetango@free.fr or phone +33 01 40 18 09 18. Booking essential, from Tuesday 28 April onwards. All sessions €15 per person, except for the supervised practica, which is €8. Nathalie promises that if you are on your own you will be paired up. Further information here.
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
El Sur
Fernando E Solanas went into exile in Paris in 1976, and returned to Buenos Aires when democracy was restored in 1983. He wrote and directed two films, as far as I can find out, based in tango. Tangos: Exilio de Gardel (1985) has Piazolla's Tanguedia as a score, and the film is about an Argentine theatre and dance group in exile in Paris: it's serious and entertaining too. Piazolla provided incidental music for Sur (1988). Sur is a very dark film, quite literally. It takes place almost entirely at night, and out of doors. The streets are cold and windy: it's often raining. For most of the film we are denied the comfort of interiors. Everyone is bundled up in sweaters and coats. Darkness, shafts of light, mists, appearances, disappearances, occasionally a group of playful children in the darkness. The few scenes of daylight are overcast, muted. & it's a long film.
Floreal has been arrested and imprisoned. On his release after five years he goes to his apartment to be reunited with his wife and child, and raps on the shutters. It is night-time. She wakes up and knows immediately it is him, throws on a coat and rushes out into the street, calls out after him. But he has gone. Perhaps he knows it is possible she isn't alone (although she is), perhaps his return is too sudden. His night is a journey in the streets, reliving in flashback his past as a prisoner of the military, in the company of an old friend who we know is dead, casually shot by the military as they loot someone's apartment (not unusual apparently). Through his dead friend he learns what happened during his imprisonment. On the pavement outside the Cafe Sur (which is closed) and elsewhere, is a tango group, singer Roberto Goyaneche with Nestor Marconi on bandoneon. Out in the street, in the darkness, the wind and rain, they make music, and their songs structure the film. Finally it is dawn. Floreal makes his way home, ready to meet up with his wife, who awaits him.
Not tourist-board Buenos Aires or the city of nice tango tours and holidays, but I guess it's a distillation of the memories of anyone over 40 you meet there. Not a time anyone wants to recall, but Solanas made an extraordinarily imaginative epic out of it. His choices of story and setting must define an era, the cold, the night, the dislocations of people's lives. & of course the story is the archetypal journey through the underworld, of the hero who confronts demons to become whole again. Solanas creates Fellini-esque dream-like scenes, but avoids Fellini's sentimental humour. He's a committed political film-maker, but the film isn't a political tract: it's poetic from start to finish. Essentially it's a film about love: 'I return to the south/as one always returns to love/I return to you/with my longing, my anxiety' as the final song says (Vuelvo al Sur, lyrics by Solanas, music by Piazolla). & it is full of tango music (but no dance). Goyaneche's powerful, expressive voice and Marconi's bandoneon, the songs of Anibal Troilo. The music is amazing. Intense feelings pour out of it and saturate the film, the reassuring voice of tango in a very hard time.
It's astonishingly difficult to get hold of: my understanding of the film is very limited since I saw it dubbed into German, which was somewhat bizarre, on a friend's VHS cassette recorded from German TV. These two films of Solanas must be two of the great films of the 20th century, and yet are hardly available. There's a very expensive 2-DVD box set from a very small distributor, and Sur seems to have become available recently on file-sharing sites: I've no understanding of the legality of this (tho' I can guess), but I'm delighted if it makes a rare and great film more easily available. But we are lucky: the beginning and the end are on YouTube, with several songs from Goyaneche. Well worth watching and listening to.
Floreal has been arrested and imprisoned. On his release after five years he goes to his apartment to be reunited with his wife and child, and raps on the shutters. It is night-time. She wakes up and knows immediately it is him, throws on a coat and rushes out into the street, calls out after him. But he has gone. Perhaps he knows it is possible she isn't alone (although she is), perhaps his return is too sudden. His night is a journey in the streets, reliving in flashback his past as a prisoner of the military, in the company of an old friend who we know is dead, casually shot by the military as they loot someone's apartment (not unusual apparently). Through his dead friend he learns what happened during his imprisonment. On the pavement outside the Cafe Sur (which is closed) and elsewhere, is a tango group, singer Roberto Goyaneche with Nestor Marconi on bandoneon. Out in the street, in the darkness, the wind and rain, they make music, and their songs structure the film. Finally it is dawn. Floreal makes his way home, ready to meet up with his wife, who awaits him.
Not tourist-board Buenos Aires or the city of nice tango tours and holidays, but I guess it's a distillation of the memories of anyone over 40 you meet there. Not a time anyone wants to recall, but Solanas made an extraordinarily imaginative epic out of it. His choices of story and setting must define an era, the cold, the night, the dislocations of people's lives. & of course the story is the archetypal journey through the underworld, of the hero who confronts demons to become whole again. Solanas creates Fellini-esque dream-like scenes, but avoids Fellini's sentimental humour. He's a committed political film-maker, but the film isn't a political tract: it's poetic from start to finish. Essentially it's a film about love: 'I return to the south/as one always returns to love/I return to you/with my longing, my anxiety' as the final song says (Vuelvo al Sur, lyrics by Solanas, music by Piazolla). & it is full of tango music (but no dance). Goyaneche's powerful, expressive voice and Marconi's bandoneon, the songs of Anibal Troilo. The music is amazing. Intense feelings pour out of it and saturate the film, the reassuring voice of tango in a very hard time.
It's astonishingly difficult to get hold of: my understanding of the film is very limited since I saw it dubbed into German, which was somewhat bizarre, on a friend's VHS cassette recorded from German TV. These two films of Solanas must be two of the great films of the 20th century, and yet are hardly available. There's a very expensive 2-DVD box set from a very small distributor, and Sur seems to have become available recently on file-sharing sites: I've no understanding of the legality of this (tho' I can guess), but I'm delighted if it makes a rare and great film more easily available. But we are lucky: the beginning and the end are on YouTube, with several songs from Goyaneche. Well worth watching and listening to.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Lost in translation
...not the film but a cultural import, tango, and its social background. If we hang out with good dancers, listen to the music and let it carry us along we can begin to dance good tango. But how much of the social background do we need? Do we need to play tangos in tandas of three? Do we need cortinas between tandas? I think regular use of cortinas is recent in London tango. In Buenos Aires it is general practice to dance no more than three consecutive tangos with any one partner, and cortinas are a sign to clear the floor: your time's up. But here it seems discourteous to abandon a partner after two or three dances; a good conversation should last a bit longer than 10 minutes. So cortinas aren't so useful here, although they are still a good way to change the sound a bit, refresh the ears, since most tangos have similar characteristics, and they also help dancers to mix more widely. But the convention of everyone going back to their seats after three tangos doesn't suit us, it's not a part of the social background we need.
But there is one part of the social background I really miss: empanadas. When you go to a milonga in Buenos Aires you settle in for more than a quick evening out, so you need to eat, and empanadas and toasted sandwiches are always available. How can you dance if you are hungry? Drinking without eating isn't such a great idea – especially if you are dancing. You meet your friends, enjoy food and a drink with them, and dance. Of course the social background is different: in the Mediterranean tradition the main meal tends to be lunch, and people snack in the evening. & of course our milongas don't usually run late. However, it is just possible that people would want to stay later if good snacks were available. You tend to settle in if there's food and drink, and night transport and arriving home late might seem a little more bearable.
But there is one part of the social background I really miss: empanadas. When you go to a milonga in Buenos Aires you settle in for more than a quick evening out, so you need to eat, and empanadas and toasted sandwiches are always available. How can you dance if you are hungry? Drinking without eating isn't such a great idea – especially if you are dancing. You meet your friends, enjoy food and a drink with them, and dance. Of course the social background is different: in the Mediterranean tradition the main meal tends to be lunch, and people snack in the evening. & of course our milongas don't usually run late. However, it is just possible that people would want to stay later if good snacks were available. You tend to settle in if there's food and drink, and night transport and arriving home late might seem a little more bearable.
Friday, 24 April 2009
Five
Every film Kiarostami makes is different, inventive. Life and Nothing More, in which a young Iranian meets a beautiful girl, claims to be a well-known Iranian film-maker, gets carried away by his fiction and ends up in court before a judge: a true story. Kiarostami persuaded everyone in the story, the judge included, to re-enact what they said and did, and makes a film out of it. Ten, made up of material filmed with two cameras in an Iranian woman's car as she drives around, picks up her son, meets her friends. One thing they all have in common: you can't find a better way to see what life in Iran is like.
& then Five is different again. Five long takes is the full title. & that's what the film is. No plot, nothing acted, framed and edited with movie-director skill. & it's very refreshing. We watch, and almost nothing happens. At dawn a pack of dogs wakes at the water's edge. We watch for 15 or 20 minutes. One dog moves a few metres. One by one the others follow. That's it. The camera is set up on a promenade: people walk by, stop and talk, walk on. It's as if he gives us space to reflect, dream, just as we do in real life. All except for the fifth 'take' which he himself admits (there's an interview in the Extras) was compiled from a number of occasions. In effect it isn't a single take, and it shows: it feels contrived. The moon is shining on the water, corkscrewed by ripples. Clouds pass over. Frogs croak. Thunder and a rainstorm. Dogs bark. Then cocks crow: it starts to get light. Strangely enough, too much seems to be happening, as if we've become very convinced by nothing much happening. When it gets light, it gets light, from darkness to visibility, in three or four minutes. It feels wrong! Nothing at all about life in Iran, but definitely different.
& then Five is different again. Five long takes is the full title. & that's what the film is. No plot, nothing acted, framed and edited with movie-director skill. & it's very refreshing. We watch, and almost nothing happens. At dawn a pack of dogs wakes at the water's edge. We watch for 15 or 20 minutes. One dog moves a few metres. One by one the others follow. That's it. The camera is set up on a promenade: people walk by, stop and talk, walk on. It's as if he gives us space to reflect, dream, just as we do in real life. All except for the fifth 'take' which he himself admits (there's an interview in the Extras) was compiled from a number of occasions. In effect it isn't a single take, and it shows: it feels contrived. The moon is shining on the water, corkscrewed by ripples. Clouds pass over. Frogs croak. Thunder and a rainstorm. Dogs bark. Then cocks crow: it starts to get light. Strangely enough, too much seems to be happening, as if we've become very convinced by nothing much happening. When it gets light, it gets light, from darkness to visibility, in three or four minutes. It feels wrong! Nothing at all about life in Iran, but definitely different.
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Now showing in my garden...
Same time as last year and the year before... No surprises there.
Cox's orange,
morello cherry and
lilac and clematis.
Cox's orange,
morello cherry and
lilac and clematis.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
You Made me a Monster
William Forsythe again. We are invited on stage at Sadler's Wells, in groups, round tables on which card models of skeletons are joined up in non-sense, grotesque ways, and asked to contribute to the distortion of that symbol of death. The story of the slow death from cancer of Forsythe's wife, by all accounts a remarkable dancer, is projected on the screen. Three dancers appear, and dance out the agony, taking visual cues from the grotesque distortions we have assisted in creating. Their cries are distorted, amplified, protracted electronically.
Obviously a difficult piece but I'm uneasy about the three energetic, young, healthy bodies of the dancers mimicking the agonies of a body racked by cancer. It seemed excessive: it seemed like elaborating and mimicking, hardly re-enacting. Of the three the woman was the most effective, but the piece relates to a woman. I could only think that only one person could really dance this piece. Perhaps one woman since it is about a woman. Or perhaps Forsythe himself, whose experience it is, with just the one, the original, card skeleton that he says set the piece in motion. But it is a scary, challenging piece of theatre.
How can art deal with grief, loss, chaos? The piece seemed too close to trying to depict appearances, suffering, grief, chaos, when what we need, and expect, is resolution, a way of relating to suffering, grief, chaos. But perhaps that grief is irresolute. Perhaps the howling and contortions are cathartic, an exorcism.
A parallel suggested itself with Claire Denis's film L'Intrus, based on the brief study by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy of his experience of a heart transplant, and subsequent cancer caused by anti-rejection drugs, two 'intruders' into his body, that suggested to him a whole study of the intruder, the 'other', the foreign, in society. L'Intrus is extremely beautiful, thoughtful, and quite mysterious too. But then it isn't about grief, bereavement, about the anger of loss: it is about intrusion. & Jean-Luc Nancy is still alive.
Obviously a difficult piece but I'm uneasy about the three energetic, young, healthy bodies of the dancers mimicking the agonies of a body racked by cancer. It seemed excessive: it seemed like elaborating and mimicking, hardly re-enacting. Of the three the woman was the most effective, but the piece relates to a woman. I could only think that only one person could really dance this piece. Perhaps one woman since it is about a woman. Or perhaps Forsythe himself, whose experience it is, with just the one, the original, card skeleton that he says set the piece in motion. But it is a scary, challenging piece of theatre.
How can art deal with grief, loss, chaos? The piece seemed too close to trying to depict appearances, suffering, grief, chaos, when what we need, and expect, is resolution, a way of relating to suffering, grief, chaos. But perhaps that grief is irresolute. Perhaps the howling and contortions are cathartic, an exorcism.
A parallel suggested itself with Claire Denis's film L'Intrus, based on the brief study by French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy of his experience of a heart transplant, and subsequent cancer caused by anti-rejection drugs, two 'intruders' into his body, that suggested to him a whole study of the intruder, the 'other', the foreign, in society. L'Intrus is extremely beautiful, thoughtful, and quite mysterious too. But then it isn't about grief, bereavement, about the anger of loss: it is about intrusion. & Jean-Luc Nancy is still alive.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Untied shoelaces
The untied shoelace is a recurrent tango nightmare. It is usually noticed early in a particularly intimate dance with a favourite partner, to the greatest music. The man (and it usually is a man, for somewhat obvious reasons) wonders whether to risk the terminal embarrassment of a bad fall – or apologise and meekly bow down to retie the offender.
It turns out that this predicament hasn't escaped the notice of sociologists. Norbert Elias, retired after a distinguished career, wandered around Europe with an untied shoelace, noting the differing responses it got. Press here for the full article. 'Norbert Elias likened networks of interdependent human beings —'figurations' as he named them, hence the term figurational studies — to a dance: in constant flux, yet structured.' (Structured? I wish.)
It turns out that this predicament hasn't escaped the notice of sociologists. Norbert Elias, retired after a distinguished career, wandered around Europe with an untied shoelace, noting the differing responses it got. Press here for the full article. 'Norbert Elias likened networks of interdependent human beings —'figurations' as he named them, hence the term figurational studies — to a dance: in constant flux, yet structured.' (Structured? I wish.)
Monday, 20 April 2009
'El Flaco' Dani at Porteno y Bailarin
Strange that I've come across a number of older-generation teachers and dancers since I left Buenos Aires in December! A few of them are still travelling, but it's hard to find the schedules of the less commercialised teachers. It looks as if I'll just have to tangocommute across the Atlantic again.
'El Flaco' Dani was someone I came across in February, and I suddenly realised I'd seen him at Porteno y Bailarin every night I was there. He'd come in looking, for some reason, as if he'd been swimming all afternoon, very healthy and active, and happy to meet up with his mates for another great night out. I only saw him dance once, and that was during a show organised by Carlos Stasi. The star attraction was Miguel Zotto, and there were two singers as well. I filmed Zotto, but just two days ago I discovered I had filmed the whole show, and it was a real pleasure to discover this video of 'El Flaco' with Silvina Valz. He has the reputation for the fastest feet in Buenos Aires when it comes to milonga, and I've enjoyed watching clips of his dance. He also has the most effortlessly straight back. Needless to say, he's visited and taught in Europe but not London as far as I know, and whether he comes again is another matter. After all, I understand he's 72 now...
'El Flaco' Dani was someone I came across in February, and I suddenly realised I'd seen him at Porteno y Bailarin every night I was there. He'd come in looking, for some reason, as if he'd been swimming all afternoon, very healthy and active, and happy to meet up with his mates for another great night out. I only saw him dance once, and that was during a show organised by Carlos Stasi. The star attraction was Miguel Zotto, and there were two singers as well. I filmed Zotto, but just two days ago I discovered I had filmed the whole show, and it was a real pleasure to discover this video of 'El Flaco' with Silvina Valz. He has the reputation for the fastest feet in Buenos Aires when it comes to milonga, and I've enjoyed watching clips of his dance. He also has the most effortlessly straight back. Needless to say, he's visited and taught in Europe but not London as far as I know, and whether he comes again is another matter. After all, I understand he's 72 now...
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Rodolfo Mederos
Great! Two recent films on how the musical tradition is being continued: Si Sos Brujo with Emilio Balcarce, and El Ultima Bandoneón with Rodolfo Mederos, as well as A Different Way: Tango with Rodolfo Mederos. Thanks for all the info, Jantango and Simba. I see that El Otro Camino - Tango con Rodolfo Mederos is available from Amazon, but it is expensive.
'Were Bach to be born again he would surely be a bandoneon player' (Rodopho Mederos).
The music is well served... is there no film about the dance? What can you show? Video and dance go well together, but traditional tango is curious, much more an intimate, inter-personal experience, effectively much less visual. I guess it is possible to make a drama out of learning with some of the older teachers, but it might be hard to make a drama out of something so intimate, the 'feeling that is danced'. Wouldn't it?
Here's seven minutes of intimate, personal music: Rodolfo Mederos playing solo. I couldn't take my eyes or my ears off it. He played with Pugliese and Piazolla, and more recently with Daniel Barenboim in Tangos among Friends.
'Were Bach to be born again he would surely be a bandoneon player' (Rodopho Mederos).
The music is well served... is there no film about the dance? What can you show? Video and dance go well together, but traditional tango is curious, much more an intimate, inter-personal experience, effectively much less visual. I guess it is possible to make a drama out of learning with some of the older teachers, but it might be hard to make a drama out of something so intimate, the 'feeling that is danced'. Wouldn't it?
Here's seven minutes of intimate, personal music: Rodolfo Mederos playing solo. I couldn't take my eyes or my ears off it. He played with Pugliese and Piazolla, and more recently with Daniel Barenboim in Tangos among Friends.
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Bandoneóns for sale
Thanks to Jantango for the reference to the article about the shortage of bandoneóns: it is here.
I said that the Arnold family 'continued limited production' after fleeing to the West: in fact they only tuned and sold instruments, so there were no new instruments after 1950. The full article from Todotango is here.
The film, El último bandoneón, is on DVD but not in a PAL version, and so not available in the UK. It is available through the US Amazon.com and could be shipped to the UK, but it's not that cheap. If anyone sees it and recommends it, I'd be glad to hear. If there's good footage of the older generation of dancers, I'd be interested.
I said that the Arnold family 'continued limited production' after fleeing to the West: in fact they only tuned and sold instruments, so there were no new instruments after 1950. The full article from Todotango is here.
The film, El último bandoneón, is on DVD but not in a PAL version, and so not available in the UK. It is available through the US Amazon.com and could be shipped to the UK, but it's not that cheap. If anyone sees it and recommends it, I'd be glad to hear. If there's good footage of the older generation of dancers, I'd be interested.
Practica
Many thanks to David Bailey and Ghost for organising the practica last night. There are plenty of milongas in London and too few practicas, but practicas are really valuable, places where friends and guests can get together and learn from each other. & the place, The Room, in Walthamstow is ideal. A good space, good floor, good lighting and a huge collection of tango CDs! I hope this was the first of many, and look forward to being back there.
Apologies for leaving fast: it's called Tangocommuting in Action. I get anxious about my last train, and didn't realise how quick the trip into central London is.
Apologies for leaving fast: it's called Tangocommuting in Action. I get anxious about my last train, and didn't realise how quick the trip into central London is.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
The Last Bandoneón
A few films involving tango have been made recently: I've seen two, but there are others I know just from YouTube. El último bandoneón (2005) looks interesting from some good clips on YouTube. It features a young musician, Marina Gayotto (a student of Joaquín Amenábar, among others) who makes a living with her bandoneón busking on the buses and subway in Buenos Aires. She auditions for the orchestra of Rodolfo Mederas. She plays well, but they see her struggling with a difficult instrument: they open up her bandoneón and see it is completely shot, the bellows, the keyboard, the valves, the reeds... everything. Moreover it is held together with string where she's repaired it. Impressed by her playing on a virtually useless instrument they offer her the job – so long as she gets hold of an AA bandoneón. The film follows her through the tango world of Buenos Aires, meeting the musicians and dancers, searching for an instrument. You can't tell from the clips how much dance is shown, but it is all 'milonguero': no names are given, but the dancers have obviously been around for a few years, and look really excellent. Dancers and musicians talk about themselves and their lives. Geraldine and Javier feature too, awestruck by an older couple. In the end, of course, she gets her bandoneón and all is well.
The AA or 'doble A' is the Strad of the bandoneón world, named after the Alfred Arnold bandoneón company. AAs were played by everyone, Troilo, Piazolla of course, but the company was on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall and was appropriated and turned into a diesel engine workshop. The last of the Arnold family fled to the west, and the company continued limited production until his death in 1971. That accounts for the poignancy of the film's title: there's a limited number of good quality bandoneóns available. I read recently (in El Tangauta, I think) that laws are proposed, or have been implemented, to prevent the export of bandoneóns from Argentina: tourists pay more than musicians. A few contemporary instrument makers are trying to match the quality of the 'doble A'.
The AA or 'doble A' is the Strad of the bandoneón world, named after the Alfred Arnold bandoneón company. AAs were played by everyone, Troilo, Piazolla of course, but the company was on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall and was appropriated and turned into a diesel engine workshop. The last of the Arnold family fled to the west, and the company continued limited production until his death in 1971. That accounts for the poignancy of the film's title: there's a limited number of good quality bandoneóns available. I read recently (in El Tangauta, I think) that laws are proposed, or have been implemented, to prevent the export of bandoneóns from Argentina: tourists pay more than musicians. A few contemporary instrument makers are trying to match the quality of the 'doble A'.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
London Tango Festival
On 21 March, under the heading 'Alberto Dassieu', I posted some dreams of a London tango festival. I called it the first London tango festival because it would be the first festival of the traditional tango of Buenos Aires. I'd been frustrated in efforts to arrange a visit to London for Tete and Silvia on their tour of Europe this spring; one London organiser was very sympathetic, but told me 'It's not the kind of tango people want here'. &, to be fair, it was rather short notice. I started to notice how many traditional teachers visit Europe regularly – but never England. True, they are no longer young and perhaps never were acrobatic or glamorous, but they each have 50-odd years experience of tango!
It was only a wishful dream, so I was very gratified that it interested several people. Many thanks, Sabailar and MsH, for your enthusiasm and kind comments. I thought it would be a good idea to repeat the original post under this heading, and to dig out the main comments from the bottom of a long list and put them alongside, so we know where we are. I've added some (I hope) more practical thoughts at the end.
If anyone else is interested, has any ideas or suggestions, please post comments, or email me. Something on this scale would be difficult without a lot of money, but if there is interest we might be able to manage something smaller.
- - - - -
“I'm planning the first London Tango Festival. The star attraction won't be the choreographer of a Broadway show, but probably Tete and his partner Silvia. We'll have, I hope, Facundo and Kely, and Dany 'El Flaco' Garcia with Silvina Vals, to teach milonga. We'll invite Ana Schapira and her partner; we'll invite Myriam Pincen and Alicia Pons, Rubén de Pompeya and Miguel Balbi. And Alberto Dassieu and his wife Paulina Spinoso. Those are the main stars: there will be others. We'll invite a few orchestras, take over Wild Court for two weeks, have endless workshops and milongas, and perhaps readjust London tango. All we need now is about £30,000.”
Sabailar said...
I ... would love your festival idea to become reality. What a joy it would be to attend and to think of the effect it could have on the London tango scene.
Everyone talks about how London isn't ready for this and all we want is flashy show tango, but surely it isn't just me who got over being impressed and now finds this a little boring and disappointing. I know it isn't just me.
I find the fact that Amanda and Adrian Costa's classes are so well attended when they are here encouraging - surely this shows that we do want basic technique and floor craft.
So if you need cheering on to keep the idea alive, I'm cheering. And happy to help if it comes to it.
msHedgehog said...
I think your dream is beautiful, and Sabailar is correct. That's why I think it's worthwhile to make attempts to raise expectations. And also why I asked the question - because money and lawyers are to be had for such things if there's a feasible business plan. (I've already been asked to volunteer for a festival later this year and I got the impression that the idea was along the same lines as yours, but I don't remember the details and I think it was at an early stage).
- - - - -
Some random thoughts: I like the idea of 'a festival' (as against 'several teachers visiting in a short time') as it gives a bit of focus for publicity, if nothing else. Getting two couples here for five or six days each, for programmes of workshops, and preferably without too much of a break between the visits. The programme for Tete and Silvia in Paris is just coming in: five days, two workshops a day, with a long supervised practica on Saturday afternoon and a closing milonga with a demonstration on Monday evening.
April – May is when the annual migration starts. This year between April and May Tete and Silvia are teaching in Italy, France and Germany, and Alberto Dassieu is in Switzerland in May. If we'd started this nine months ago, we might have been able to get them all in London around the same time.
The costs might not be prohibitive if the trips to the UK are included in a wider tour and if accommodation can be arranged with friends. I've no experience of this, but I gather it usually can be. A venue for workshops is necessary. With sufficient advanced notice, classes and demos can also be arranged at the regular venues.
Problems like other big local tango events can be avoided. Visits by the likes of Pablo Veron and Miguel Zotto are more difficult, as they seem to arrive at a moment's notice and claim everyone's attention. Legal problems (immigration, work permits) are serious but I'm told they can be dealt with. I'd assume that a one-off consultation with an expert in the field would be necessary, but that once the system is understood it would not be a recurring cost. But that might be wishful thinking too.
It was only a wishful dream, so I was very gratified that it interested several people. Many thanks, Sabailar and MsH, for your enthusiasm and kind comments. I thought it would be a good idea to repeat the original post under this heading, and to dig out the main comments from the bottom of a long list and put them alongside, so we know where we are. I've added some (I hope) more practical thoughts at the end.
If anyone else is interested, has any ideas or suggestions, please post comments, or email me. Something on this scale would be difficult without a lot of money, but if there is interest we might be able to manage something smaller.
- - - - -
“I'm planning the first London Tango Festival. The star attraction won't be the choreographer of a Broadway show, but probably Tete and his partner Silvia. We'll have, I hope, Facundo and Kely, and Dany 'El Flaco' Garcia with Silvina Vals, to teach milonga. We'll invite Ana Schapira and her partner; we'll invite Myriam Pincen and Alicia Pons, Rubén de Pompeya and Miguel Balbi. And Alberto Dassieu and his wife Paulina Spinoso. Those are the main stars: there will be others. We'll invite a few orchestras, take over Wild Court for two weeks, have endless workshops and milongas, and perhaps readjust London tango. All we need now is about £30,000.”
Sabailar said...
I ... would love your festival idea to become reality. What a joy it would be to attend and to think of the effect it could have on the London tango scene.
Everyone talks about how London isn't ready for this and all we want is flashy show tango, but surely it isn't just me who got over being impressed and now finds this a little boring and disappointing. I know it isn't just me.
I find the fact that Amanda and Adrian Costa's classes are so well attended when they are here encouraging - surely this shows that we do want basic technique and floor craft.
So if you need cheering on to keep the idea alive, I'm cheering. And happy to help if it comes to it.
msHedgehog said...
I think your dream is beautiful, and Sabailar is correct. That's why I think it's worthwhile to make attempts to raise expectations. And also why I asked the question - because money and lawyers are to be had for such things if there's a feasible business plan. (I've already been asked to volunteer for a festival later this year and I got the impression that the idea was along the same lines as yours, but I don't remember the details and I think it was at an early stage).
- - - - -
Some random thoughts: I like the idea of 'a festival' (as against 'several teachers visiting in a short time') as it gives a bit of focus for publicity, if nothing else. Getting two couples here for five or six days each, for programmes of workshops, and preferably without too much of a break between the visits. The programme for Tete and Silvia in Paris is just coming in: five days, two workshops a day, with a long supervised practica on Saturday afternoon and a closing milonga with a demonstration on Monday evening.
April – May is when the annual migration starts. This year between April and May Tete and Silvia are teaching in Italy, France and Germany, and Alberto Dassieu is in Switzerland in May. If we'd started this nine months ago, we might have been able to get them all in London around the same time.
The costs might not be prohibitive if the trips to the UK are included in a wider tour and if accommodation can be arranged with friends. I've no experience of this, but I gather it usually can be. A venue for workshops is necessary. With sufficient advanced notice, classes and demos can also be arranged at the regular venues.
Problems like other big local tango events can be avoided. Visits by the likes of Pablo Veron and Miguel Zotto are more difficult, as they seem to arrive at a moment's notice and claim everyone's attention. Legal problems (immigration, work permits) are serious but I'm told they can be dealt with. I'd assume that a one-off consultation with an expert in the field would be necessary, but that once the system is understood it would not be a recurring cost. But that might be wishful thinking too.
Monday, 13 April 2009
BM again
A room guide in the BM sticks in my mind, but not in much detail. By the late Bronze Age in the Levant, cities had developed and prospered on trade. However, with a collapse of power in Egypt, this trade ceased and the entire area went into a profound recession. Cities could no longer support their populations, and people were dispersed. Many died.
Looking further into it, there was a widespread disintegration of Eastern Mediterranean civilization at the end of the late Bronze Age (late thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C.), which has also been blamed on the irruption of new peoples into this area, and on climatic change affecting agricultural output.
The combination of concepts – trade decline, recession, climate change, was familiar, and the vulnerability of cities, of the specialised lives they require, is underlined.
Looking further into it, there was a widespread disintegration of Eastern Mediterranean civilization at the end of the late Bronze Age (late thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C.), which has also been blamed on the irruption of new peoples into this area, and on climatic change affecting agricultural output.
The combination of concepts – trade decline, recession, climate change, was familiar, and the vulnerability of cities, of the specialised lives they require, is underlined.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
A good evening at the Crypt
A Paul and Michiko night, not as crowded as I expected although it was Bank Holiday weekend. Talked with El Milonguero Terry about the dynamics of evenings: how one can be pleasant and another difficult. This was a good one: not too many people, some of the best London dancers, and anyway it was a wedding reception, cake, champagne and all. The bridegroom an Argentine tango singer living in London, generous and friendly -- but then I said he was Argentine. He sang a vals for us while dancing with his bride. Not so many of the partners I usually dance with, but some I hadn't seen for a while, since I haven't been to the Crypt for nearly five months: very enjoyable.
BM on Sunday morning: not the best time for the BM. The Egyptian paintings, more fragmentary than I'd assumed, but still marvelous. The clear ochre line, the precise drawing. Such a wholehearted celebration of the fullness of life it takes your breath away to remember that they are actually from a tomb. Remembering the best bits of life, and like a prayer that the afterlife should have all the best bits. I note that the flute player alongside the dancing girls is frontal: everyone else is profile.
Photography grows – and grows. Wonderful that everyone and their granny was taking/making photos in the BM. The Rosetta Stone like Madonna surrounded by paparazzi. Ways to remember, be reminded.
Art and death: the earliest portraits I know of are the encaustic Egyptian tomb paintings, 5th century AD I think, predating European portraits by 1,000 years. Painted for a death, for remembrance, absence. I never believe talk of the death of anything, tango included, remembering talk of the 'death of painting' some years ago. I saw an exhibition of paintings by Dutch/South African painter Marlene Dumas recently. Each painting recalled something that was supposed to have died: the death of painting, the death of the author, the dead poet, death of the maiden, the death of history ... the list went on... and on. It was at the same time macabre and funny. I enjoyed the paintings, especially 'The Death of Painting'. The 'death of tango' didn't figure but it could have done.
Famous dancing girls in the tomb paintings, and I'd never seen so clearly the Nereids are dancers too, their movement carried out into the space around them by their flowing garments. Weightless, and in marble.
Gandhi statue framed
by flowering cherry
planted for Hiroshima.
Return in a gray-green landscape, white splashes of hawthorne.
BM on Sunday morning: not the best time for the BM. The Egyptian paintings, more fragmentary than I'd assumed, but still marvelous. The clear ochre line, the precise drawing. Such a wholehearted celebration of the fullness of life it takes your breath away to remember that they are actually from a tomb. Remembering the best bits of life, and like a prayer that the afterlife should have all the best bits. I note that the flute player alongside the dancing girls is frontal: everyone else is profile.
Photography grows – and grows. Wonderful that everyone and their granny was taking/making photos in the BM. The Rosetta Stone like Madonna surrounded by paparazzi. Ways to remember, be reminded.
Art and death: the earliest portraits I know of are the encaustic Egyptian tomb paintings, 5th century AD I think, predating European portraits by 1,000 years. Painted for a death, for remembrance, absence. I never believe talk of the death of anything, tango included, remembering talk of the 'death of painting' some years ago. I saw an exhibition of paintings by Dutch/South African painter Marlene Dumas recently. Each painting recalled something that was supposed to have died: the death of painting, the death of the author, the dead poet, death of the maiden, the death of history ... the list went on... and on. It was at the same time macabre and funny. I enjoyed the paintings, especially 'The Death of Painting'. The 'death of tango' didn't figure but it could have done.
Famous dancing girls in the tomb paintings, and I'd never seen so clearly the Nereids are dancers too, their movement carried out into the space around them by their flowing garments. Weightless, and in marble.
Gandhi statue framed
by flowering cherry
planted for Hiroshima.
Return in a gray-green landscape, white splashes of hawthorne.
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Muma
Thanks to MsH for reminding us of Amster's blog. I read a bit of it a while back but his account of Muma's class is more recent.
Muma is another dancer who grew up with traditional tango: she has taught in the US, but not yet in Europe. Muma gives this teaching on posture, which is invaluable advice: if you don't get this right, dancing close-hold is problematic. Roughly speaking, stretch up and yawn, then keep the back and chest still while lowering the arms and you will be in the posture of any of those great milongueros and milongueras. But staying there is the problem. It feels stiff and unnatural if, like me, you grew up with bad posture. & no need to restrict it to dancing: the muscles will get used to it if you remember while out walking.
I also checked out Muma's website a while back: it's fairly basic, but has some videos, of which this is one. I immediately noticed the timing of her feet: there's almost a sense of laziness, she's totally unhurried but always manages to step at exactly the right moment. She's never rushed, it looks easy and well-controlled. By contrast her partner, Carlos Rojas, seems to be working quite hard...
It forms an interesting contrast with the video of Alberto Dassieu I linked a few weeks back, two D'Arienzo vals danced by top 'milonguero' couples. Alberto charges round the room like a force of nature, Carlos Rojas and Muma dance very much on the spot, a dance of turns rather than walks, though Alberto's turns are spectacular. His partner, Elba Biscay, almost literally drags her feet. I think these videos show that 'milonguero' tango can be exciting to watch. I can watch them over and over and still enjoy them and learn from them.
Here's a neat milonga from Muma, dancing with Dany 'El Flaco' Garcia.
I will, of course, invite Muma to my London Tango Festival too. In the mean time she's certainly one of the dance teachers to look up if you are ever in Buenos Aires. (Which might be sooner.)
There seems to be a long list of dancers who never come to London: we could add Javier and Andrea, who are regularly in Europe – but not London. Is it just my impression that London is a bit of a tango backwater?
Muma is another dancer who grew up with traditional tango: she has taught in the US, but not yet in Europe. Muma gives this teaching on posture, which is invaluable advice: if you don't get this right, dancing close-hold is problematic. Roughly speaking, stretch up and yawn, then keep the back and chest still while lowering the arms and you will be in the posture of any of those great milongueros and milongueras. But staying there is the problem. It feels stiff and unnatural if, like me, you grew up with bad posture. & no need to restrict it to dancing: the muscles will get used to it if you remember while out walking.
I also checked out Muma's website a while back: it's fairly basic, but has some videos, of which this is one. I immediately noticed the timing of her feet: there's almost a sense of laziness, she's totally unhurried but always manages to step at exactly the right moment. She's never rushed, it looks easy and well-controlled. By contrast her partner, Carlos Rojas, seems to be working quite hard...
It forms an interesting contrast with the video of Alberto Dassieu I linked a few weeks back, two D'Arienzo vals danced by top 'milonguero' couples. Alberto charges round the room like a force of nature, Carlos Rojas and Muma dance very much on the spot, a dance of turns rather than walks, though Alberto's turns are spectacular. His partner, Elba Biscay, almost literally drags her feet. I think these videos show that 'milonguero' tango can be exciting to watch. I can watch them over and over and still enjoy them and learn from them.
Here's a neat milonga from Muma, dancing with Dany 'El Flaco' Garcia.
I will, of course, invite Muma to my London Tango Festival too. In the mean time she's certainly one of the dance teachers to look up if you are ever in Buenos Aires. (Which might be sooner.)
There seems to be a long list of dancers who never come to London: we could add Javier and Andrea, who are regularly in Europe – but not London. Is it just my impression that London is a bit of a tango backwater?
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Tango and strut
'Strut your stuff' is an Anglo-American synonym for 'dance': dance = display. Which, of course, dance always has been, on some level.
There was a fascinating piece of research, promoted on the Today programme last year. The professor, an ex-professional dancer, divided dance into categories of big, medium and small movements, combined with simple, medium and complex gestures. He filmed men dancing disco-type individual dance and asked women to evaluate them. Big or small movements? Simple or complex gestures? The overwhelming favourite was a complex dance of small movements.
There's always been display in tango. Dance competitions were common. Then as now people enjoyed watching. Copes realised that this tradition of display tango could be choreographed and performed in shows, resulting in his shows in the 1970s and 80s. His hero was Gene Kelly. In 1984, he managed to arrange a booking for three weeks in Paris. The story is that they couldn't afford the air tickets to Paris but someone had connections with the military, and they were taken on board a military transport, alongside an Exocet missile that had failed to go off during the war over the islands, and was being returned to France for repair. Their three weeks in Paris turned into six months and led straight to Broadway, and Gene Kelly wanted to meet Copes. Tango the display, the stage dance, was suddenly popular. Europeans and Americans wanted to learn it, and its popularity began to revive in Buenos Aires.
But of course in Buenos Aires it wasn't the choreographed stage dance of big gestures that was enjoyed in crowded dance halls, it was the traditional dance, a dance of small movements, its complexity limited only by the improvisational skills of the partners. It wasn't intended to be watched, it was an intimate meeting with a partner and the music, in a space shared on equal terms with many other couples, and regulated quite strictly by the protective social traditions of the milonga.
There was a fascinating piece of research, promoted on the Today programme last year. The professor, an ex-professional dancer, divided dance into categories of big, medium and small movements, combined with simple, medium and complex gestures. He filmed men dancing disco-type individual dance and asked women to evaluate them. Big or small movements? Simple or complex gestures? The overwhelming favourite was a complex dance of small movements.
There's always been display in tango. Dance competitions were common. Then as now people enjoyed watching. Copes realised that this tradition of display tango could be choreographed and performed in shows, resulting in his shows in the 1970s and 80s. His hero was Gene Kelly. In 1984, he managed to arrange a booking for three weeks in Paris. The story is that they couldn't afford the air tickets to Paris but someone had connections with the military, and they were taken on board a military transport, alongside an Exocet missile that had failed to go off during the war over the islands, and was being returned to France for repair. Their three weeks in Paris turned into six months and led straight to Broadway, and Gene Kelly wanted to meet Copes. Tango the display, the stage dance, was suddenly popular. Europeans and Americans wanted to learn it, and its popularity began to revive in Buenos Aires.
But of course in Buenos Aires it wasn't the choreographed stage dance of big gestures that was enjoyed in crowded dance halls, it was the traditional dance, a dance of small movements, its complexity limited only by the improvisational skills of the partners. It wasn't intended to be watched, it was an intimate meeting with a partner and the music, in a space shared on equal terms with many other couples, and regulated quite strictly by the protective social traditions of the milonga.
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
Orquesta Escuela
If you want to listen to the Orquesta Escuela, better to go here. The concert footage is great, but the sound isn't wonderful. In the past month Varchausky's association, Tangovia, has uploaded many clips of concert footage onto YouTube, and a few of historic film, including this magical film of the Orquesta Francini-Pontier in Japan. For emotional and musical clarity it can hardly be equalled. The orquesta split up in the mid-1950s. Enrique Francini was a marvellous violinist: can't help thinking he would have been equally at home in the Mendelssohn violin concerto.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Si Sos Brujo
Si Sos Brujo, 'if you know magic', is a tango composed by Emilio Balcarce, and it's what bassist Ignacio Varchausky was told when he said he wanted to establish a tango orchestra that could bring the surviving musicians who had played with Troilo, D'Arienzo, Pugliese, Gobbi, to teach the younger generation. You can do it – si sos brujo. Si Sos Brujo is also the name of a great film by Varchausky's wife, American filmmaker Caroline Neal, about how the Orquesta Escuelo de Tango was born. There are interviews with her here.
Varchausky makes the problem clear. They had the records, they had the music on paper, but that's not how the musicians learned to play, and it would be incredibly laborious, and perhaps not very fruitful, simply to copy the music from records. In the 30s and 40s there were many orquestas where musicians learned first-hand how to phrase the music, make the sounds, hear how to be part of an ensemble. But in the 50s the big bands, both in American jazz and in tango, seemed outdated. Even Troilo downsized. Apart from Pugliese, perhaps, there were no longer orquestas where newcomers could learn – and Pugliese wasn't much help since the same musicians stayed with him. Slowly the orquestas tipicas died away, and their leaders died too. But, by 2000, when Varchausky got funding for the first year of the orquesta escuelo, there were musicians still alive to sit in with the young players, give masterclasses, play alongside them. & Emilio Balcarce, bandoneonista, violinista, composer and arranger, who played with many orquestas and for many years arranged for and played with Pugliese, and is very much the star of the film, became its director. He retired two years ago, aged 89. There's a posting on his final concert here.
With the help of musicians from the Golden Age, the orquesta learned how to recreate the sounds of the older orquestas, creating a very complete record of tango music for future generations. They learned how to play accurately in the styles of Troilo, Pugliese, D'Arienzo. But they are far more than a glorified tribute band. Their music is immediately distinctive: having learnt directly from older musicians they are highly proficient and their ensemble playing is striking, they've learned the music from inside. But they also bring their contemporary sensibility to what they play. Balcarce himself remarks on the distinctive energy of their music, which he relates to the feel of contemporary Buenos Aires. If they had simply copied the old records, they wouldn't have learned to play like this.
And it's a great film to watch, beautifully shot, beautifully put together, and a real insight into the world of tango music. It's always a pleasure for me to watch musicians at work, and it's just great to watch the older generations sitting with younger players and showing them how to play the music. & always a pleasure to listen to, too. Si Sos Brujo. You don't have to know magic to get hold of it. This is the trailer.
I can't help adding this, in case you've never heard what is now called the Orquesta Escuela de Tango Emilio Balcarce.
Varchausky makes the problem clear. They had the records, they had the music on paper, but that's not how the musicians learned to play, and it would be incredibly laborious, and perhaps not very fruitful, simply to copy the music from records. In the 30s and 40s there were many orquestas where musicians learned first-hand how to phrase the music, make the sounds, hear how to be part of an ensemble. But in the 50s the big bands, both in American jazz and in tango, seemed outdated. Even Troilo downsized. Apart from Pugliese, perhaps, there were no longer orquestas where newcomers could learn – and Pugliese wasn't much help since the same musicians stayed with him. Slowly the orquestas tipicas died away, and their leaders died too. But, by 2000, when Varchausky got funding for the first year of the orquesta escuelo, there were musicians still alive to sit in with the young players, give masterclasses, play alongside them. & Emilio Balcarce, bandoneonista, violinista, composer and arranger, who played with many orquestas and for many years arranged for and played with Pugliese, and is very much the star of the film, became its director. He retired two years ago, aged 89. There's a posting on his final concert here.
With the help of musicians from the Golden Age, the orquesta learned how to recreate the sounds of the older orquestas, creating a very complete record of tango music for future generations. They learned how to play accurately in the styles of Troilo, Pugliese, D'Arienzo. But they are far more than a glorified tribute band. Their music is immediately distinctive: having learnt directly from older musicians they are highly proficient and their ensemble playing is striking, they've learned the music from inside. But they also bring their contemporary sensibility to what they play. Balcarce himself remarks on the distinctive energy of their music, which he relates to the feel of contemporary Buenos Aires. If they had simply copied the old records, they wouldn't have learned to play like this.
And it's a great film to watch, beautifully shot, beautifully put together, and a real insight into the world of tango music. It's always a pleasure for me to watch musicians at work, and it's just great to watch the older generations sitting with younger players and showing them how to play the music. & always a pleasure to listen to, too. Si Sos Brujo. You don't have to know magic to get hold of it. This is the trailer.
I can't help adding this, in case you've never heard what is now called the Orquesta Escuela de Tango Emilio Balcarce.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
How they organise things in Buenos Aires...
...when there are visitors who haven't been house-trained.
Friday, 27 March 2009
Siobhan Davies at Victoria Miro
Siobhan Davies started making dance in the 70s. The first piece I saw was the stunning 13 Keys to Scarlatti, played live, upstairs in the Atlantis building on Brick Lane, on an X-shaped stage raised about 50cm, in a huge hall. There were no seats: you walked around and could stand quite close to the dancers. Siobhan Davies says it's a privilege to work close to dancers in the studio and likes to offer that proximity to the public. It was an energetic piece with, I think, three dancers from the Royal Ballet as well as her own group, and to watch dancers like that from a couple of metres away, instead of from a distant seat, was unforgettable.
Victoria Miro moved her gallery from Cork Street to an old warehouse near the canal in lower Islington about eight years ago. It's a wonderful space to wander round and look at what she's showing. She now has an even more wonderful huge room up on the roof, one wall being floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at London skies, and a floor that dreams of milongas. I think this is the second piece she's invited Siobhan Davies to make to complement a gallery exhibition. Called Minutes, the 'dancing' is neither strenuous nor physically demanding: at times it resembled a rather genteel 60s happening, people in ordinary clothes doing slightly unusual things. But it accumulated into a relaxed, enjoyable 40 minutes: Davies sat with a watch counting out the minutes and I arrived as she counted '20'. At '60' all the performers left. The work is continuous, so I guess that after a short pause they start again.
I filmed an installation outside, and a video installation of dance by Idris Khan and Sarah Warsop. Then the batteries died, so I have only how I remember Minutes.
I'd like to add a bit to the above. The dance 'language' used isn't in any way the language you normally expect of highly-trained dancers. There are no moves that only highly skilled dancers can do. This is choreography in the broadest sense of the organisation of movement. There's nothing breath-taking in it, apart from its simplicity. But this actually involves the watchers, the audience, even more, as it's easier for one's body to partake, passively, in something that close to the movements of everyday life. Thus we sit, are involved in small but significant ways, and the minutes are counted as they pass. Some of them seem long, some seem short. Time and movement.
Victoria Miro moved her gallery from Cork Street to an old warehouse near the canal in lower Islington about eight years ago. It's a wonderful space to wander round and look at what she's showing. She now has an even more wonderful huge room up on the roof, one wall being floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at London skies, and a floor that dreams of milongas. I think this is the second piece she's invited Siobhan Davies to make to complement a gallery exhibition. Called Minutes, the 'dancing' is neither strenuous nor physically demanding: at times it resembled a rather genteel 60s happening, people in ordinary clothes doing slightly unusual things. But it accumulated into a relaxed, enjoyable 40 minutes: Davies sat with a watch counting out the minutes and I arrived as she counted '20'. At '60' all the performers left. The work is continuous, so I guess that after a short pause they start again.
I filmed an installation outside, and a video installation of dance by Idris Khan and Sarah Warsop. Then the batteries died, so I have only how I remember Minutes.
I'd like to add a bit to the above. The dance 'language' used isn't in any way the language you normally expect of highly-trained dancers. There are no moves that only highly skilled dancers can do. This is choreography in the broadest sense of the organisation of movement. There's nothing breath-taking in it, apart from its simplicity. But this actually involves the watchers, the audience, even more, as it's easier for one's body to partake, passively, in something that close to the movements of everyday life. Thus we sit, are involved in small but significant ways, and the minutes are counted as they pass. Some of them seem long, some seem short. Time and movement.
Monday, 23 March 2009
Alberto Dassieu cont.
Since links don't always work well out of 'Comments', here are Eva Garlez and Alberto Dassieu giving a demo in El Beso during the MILONGUERO08 festival.
There's also a clip of them dancing a vals in the same daylit room as before. For completeness, here are two more clips, Alberto and his wife dancing a Donato vals and an amazing slow Pugliese tango
I like the dance he leads because there's nothing superfluous in it, because his partner has space to express her sense of the music, and because they do simple things very fluently. He might not be that well-known, even in Buenos Aires tango, but like a few other survivors, his experience of tango goes back to the 1950s. My point is that there are dancers out there with over 50 years' experience, who get invited most summers to teach in Europe and the USA, and we never see them in the UK. Soon it will be too late.
There's also a clip of them dancing a vals in the same daylit room as before. For completeness, here are two more clips, Alberto and his wife dancing a Donato vals and an amazing slow Pugliese tango
I like the dance he leads because there's nothing superfluous in it, because his partner has space to express her sense of the music, and because they do simple things very fluently. He might not be that well-known, even in Buenos Aires tango, but like a few other survivors, his experience of tango goes back to the 1950s. My point is that there are dancers out there with over 50 years' experience, who get invited most summers to teach in Europe and the USA, and we never see them in the UK. Soon it will be too late.
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Alberto Dassieu
I'm planning the first London Tango Festival. The star attraction won't be the choreographer of a Broadway show, but probably Tete and his partner Silvia. We'll have, I hope, Facundo and Kely, and Dany 'El Flaco' Garcia with Silvina Vals, to teach milonga. We'll invite Ana Schapira and her partner; we'll invite Myriam Pincen and Alicia Pons, Rubén de Pompeya and Miguel Balbi. And Alberto Dassieu and his wife Paulina Spinoso. Those are the main stars: there will be others. We'll invite a few orchestras, take over Wild Court for two weeks, have endless workshops and milongas, and perhaps readjust London tango. All we need now is about £30,000.
I enjoyed writing that, except for the last sentence. & I would love to see Alberto Dassieu in London -- and all the others too, of course. Here are a couple of videos of him: I tend to link videos here so I can find them quickly when I want to watch them, and these are two I want to watch often.
I love the second, the vals, in particular, the energy and precision of it, the musicality, but I also like the spare elegance of the Pugliese. There's not a superfluous gesture, not an ornament not related directly to basic movement, no distraction from feeling. Form arises from function. Doing simple things very very well, and expressing the phrases and compas of the music. I think it's easier to learn a flash move, and to force it into a dance, than to do a simple turn really well, as smoothly as that generation of dancers turn. To me there's no doubt which is best to watch, and which I'd prefer to do. & they are totally centred. Wonderful dancing, and two favourite pieces of music, especially the D'Arienzo vals. When you dance it you know it's building up to a double-speed section at the end, and you will have to fly.
Dassieu is in his 70s now, and started dancing over 50 years ago in the Villa Urquiza barrio. & he teaches in Europe and the USA: he'll be in Zurich in May. This is his website (Spanish only, unfortunately, as there's a long reminiscence of his life in tango), and there is an interview with him in English and Spanish here.
I enjoyed writing that, except for the last sentence. & I would love to see Alberto Dassieu in London -- and all the others too, of course. Here are a couple of videos of him: I tend to link videos here so I can find them quickly when I want to watch them, and these are two I want to watch often.
I love the second, the vals, in particular, the energy and precision of it, the musicality, but I also like the spare elegance of the Pugliese. There's not a superfluous gesture, not an ornament not related directly to basic movement, no distraction from feeling. Form arises from function. Doing simple things very very well, and expressing the phrases and compas of the music. I think it's easier to learn a flash move, and to force it into a dance, than to do a simple turn really well, as smoothly as that generation of dancers turn. To me there's no doubt which is best to watch, and which I'd prefer to do. & they are totally centred. Wonderful dancing, and two favourite pieces of music, especially the D'Arienzo vals. When you dance it you know it's building up to a double-speed section at the end, and you will have to fly.
Dassieu is in his 70s now, and started dancing over 50 years ago in the Villa Urquiza barrio. & he teaches in Europe and the USA: he'll be in Zurich in May. This is his website (Spanish only, unfortunately, as there's a long reminiscence of his life in tango), and there is an interview with him in English and Spanish here.
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Tango and Goosepimples
Tango: Baile Nuestro (Tango Our Dance if you are looking to buy it) is an Argentine film from 1988, an imaginative film, an ambitious film, a defective film, even irritating, but still fascinating. Defective in that, although people are imaginatively introduced at the beginning, as the film goes on new people appear, talk, perform, dance, without any introduction, so we don't know who they are. Irritating: any tango film with a section on a New Zealander from the Arthur Murray school of tango – standardised ballroom tango – teaching classes is irritating when there's so much more interesting material. On the other hand it's a general survey of tango in 1988, from Copes with his collection of Betamax cassettes of dancers, to the milongueros who work in cemeteries and scrap yards -- via the Arthur Murray dance schools.
The film hovers on the edge of 'the Milongueros' without ever really getting close to them, although we see brief episodes of wonderful tango at a milonga. Those people danced smooth! Then there's a lively scene when a visiting NBC crew films 'tango' – synchronised tango! In front of a 1920s car! All the while the film-maker talks to the audience. No, that's not the tango we dance and feel. It's cold, rehearsed, it's a laboratory product. It's not from the heart, not done with your feelings. Tango is sweetness. We think tango must be felt close to your heart: your ear, heart, and finally your feet speak. What we are seeing here is a fraud. It's not our tango, the one we feel when we dance... Sad that 'our tango' is shown only in glimpses, though I understand that if you know your milongueros there are many legends in those glimpses.
But it is of its era. 1988. Five years after the end of military rule. Over five years of massive success for Copes in Paris and on Broadway. Show tango of the highest order had made Argentina and tango famous: the film maker recognised the importance of the milongueros, but it might have been rash of him to spend time showing something his audience might not recognise. But there is a wonderful section with Portalea, at home and in the milonga: good to see him apparently in great health because in the BBC's Tango Salon, first shown in 2005, he is much older, and his dancing less intense. (He died last year.) & the film irritates again: at home he demonstrates with his wife how footwork has changed, allowing dancers to perform more figures. He's talking about his feet, and demonstrating with his feet, and the camera only shows head and shoulders!
& the goose-pimples? 'Tango has to give you goose-pimples, otherwise it's no good, brother.'
The film hovers on the edge of 'the Milongueros' without ever really getting close to them, although we see brief episodes of wonderful tango at a milonga. Those people danced smooth! Then there's a lively scene when a visiting NBC crew films 'tango' – synchronised tango! In front of a 1920s car! All the while the film-maker talks to the audience. No, that's not the tango we dance and feel. It's cold, rehearsed, it's a laboratory product. It's not from the heart, not done with your feelings. Tango is sweetness. We think tango must be felt close to your heart: your ear, heart, and finally your feet speak. What we are seeing here is a fraud. It's not our tango, the one we feel when we dance... Sad that 'our tango' is shown only in glimpses, though I understand that if you know your milongueros there are many legends in those glimpses.
But it is of its era. 1988. Five years after the end of military rule. Over five years of massive success for Copes in Paris and on Broadway. Show tango of the highest order had made Argentina and tango famous: the film maker recognised the importance of the milongueros, but it might have been rash of him to spend time showing something his audience might not recognise. But there is a wonderful section with Portalea, at home and in the milonga: good to see him apparently in great health because in the BBC's Tango Salon, first shown in 2005, he is much older, and his dancing less intense. (He died last year.) & the film irritates again: at home he demonstrates with his wife how footwork has changed, allowing dancers to perform more figures. He's talking about his feet, and demonstrating with his feet, and the camera only shows head and shoulders!
& the goose-pimples? 'Tango has to give you goose-pimples, otherwise it's no good, brother.'
Monday, 16 March 2009
Another kind of dance
William Forsythe: American choreographer who's worked in Frankfurt for many years; not to be confused with an Australian showtime choreographer, or a Hollywood actor... The DVD includes 'Just dancing around?', a docu by Mike Figgis, and 'From a Classical Position' danced by Forsythe and Dana Caspersen. The docu is a straightforward, well-made account of Forsythe, his company and work. Trained in the classical Balanchine tradition, working with classically trained dancers, but expecting just about anything from them. Very creative with movement on an individual level, on a group level, and with the theatrical spectacle, and capable of taking on and dealing with complex and extreme subjects and emotions.
The docu shows clips of 'The loss of small detail' from on stage, a massive, extraordinary explosion of energy, very beautiful. There's a wonderful scene of Forsythe teaching a young dancer a few minutes of a ballet he choreographed to a Handel Concerto Grosso: he dances with amazing fluency and energy, she follows and copies, phrase by phrase. Then she puts it all together with the music for the first time. If you sit close enough to the stage during a performance you hear the heavy breathing and know how much hard work that effortlessness takes. But to be in the studio and watch the mental effort of learning, of recreating something for the first time, is really a privilege.
There are plenty of clips on YouTube, many from the DVD he made to explain his improvisation techniques. Most of the clips are the classical end of his work. This is Forsythe rehearsing 'In the middle something elevated', with Sylvie Guillem at the Paris Opera Ballet, some years ago (dated by an XXXX T-shirt). As the French says, poor quality film but worth watching for the end.
The docu shows clips of 'The loss of small detail' from on stage, a massive, extraordinary explosion of energy, very beautiful. There's a wonderful scene of Forsythe teaching a young dancer a few minutes of a ballet he choreographed to a Handel Concerto Grosso: he dances with amazing fluency and energy, she follows and copies, phrase by phrase. Then she puts it all together with the music for the first time. If you sit close enough to the stage during a performance you hear the heavy breathing and know how much hard work that effortlessness takes. But to be in the studio and watch the mental effort of learning, of recreating something for the first time, is really a privilege.
There are plenty of clips on YouTube, many from the DVD he made to explain his improvisation techniques. Most of the clips are the classical end of his work. This is Forsythe rehearsing 'In the middle something elevated', with Sylvie Guillem at the Paris Opera Ballet, some years ago (dated by an XXXX T-shirt). As the French says, poor quality film but worth watching for the end.
Saturday, 14 March 2009
An evening at Carablanca
It sometimes happens on a not-too-crowded floor that the dancing is more perilous than on a crowded floor, and Carablanca was a bit like that last night. I give myself marks for not bumping anyone: it shouldn't ever happen, but what can you do when you lead a simple ocho cortado and bump the leader of the couple behind, who has his back to you? It just shouldn't happen. You're taught never to drive close to the car in front for good reason. Tangoandchaos has some excellent new pages on floorcraft, complete with diagrams: they explain general principles, and also show how the crowded floorspace in Buenos Aires is used. As I noticed when I was there, the 'lanes' aren't strictly observed: if a space opens up to the leader's left, he'll use it, then filter back into the line of dance. What it doesn't explain is how a practised dancer like “Tete” can, like a quantum particle, appear in different places apparently without passing through the space between them.
& there was a demonstration by Pablo Pugliese and Noel Strazza which, like most demonstrations, left me cold. No, not cold, just vaguely bored. A demonstration of... how not to dance? Ok, it had entertainment value as a stage act, but was it anything more? I can be/have been very moved watching older dancers dancing calmly, slowly, savouring every note of the music, responding with their whole bodies to the rise and fall of every phrase, dancing as part of the music, as if they found their whole life experience in the songs they danced to, with intimacy and complete attention to each other, and with consideration to other dancers dancing the same dance... That's tango.
I danced with a partner who said she's 'just a beginner'. I think she said that because she'd been persuaded by teachers like Pablo into thinking that tango = acrobatic display, that you aren't dancing tango well if you're not dancing wild kicks and dramatic turns. I enjoy dancing with partners who say they are 'just beginners' because I can lead simply, and check how clear my leading is, and because... well, because I enjoy dancing. So long as the lead/follow connection works well, it's good tango: for a few moments the separation between two people just dissolves in the music. That's tango, to me.
&, for the first time, someone came up to me and asked if I was tangocommuter. There has to be a first time.
& there was a demonstration by Pablo Pugliese and Noel Strazza which, like most demonstrations, left me cold. No, not cold, just vaguely bored. A demonstration of... how not to dance? Ok, it had entertainment value as a stage act, but was it anything more? I can be/have been very moved watching older dancers dancing calmly, slowly, savouring every note of the music, responding with their whole bodies to the rise and fall of every phrase, dancing as part of the music, as if they found their whole life experience in the songs they danced to, with intimacy and complete attention to each other, and with consideration to other dancers dancing the same dance... That's tango.
I danced with a partner who said she's 'just a beginner'. I think she said that because she'd been persuaded by teachers like Pablo into thinking that tango = acrobatic display, that you aren't dancing tango well if you're not dancing wild kicks and dramatic turns. I enjoy dancing with partners who say they are 'just beginners' because I can lead simply, and check how clear my leading is, and because... well, because I enjoy dancing. So long as the lead/follow connection works well, it's good tango: for a few moments the separation between two people just dissolves in the music. That's tango, to me.
&, for the first time, someone came up to me and asked if I was tangocommuter. There has to be a first time.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Learning tango
Historically, if you were a leader your elder brother taught you to follow so he'd have someone to practice his leading with, or your mum taught you a few moves in the kitchen and you went out and practised with your mates. & you watched dancers in social dances, and tried to work out and copy what they were doing. The incentive: being a good dancer boosted your social life. Men never danced together, but they practised with each other: Sally Potter makes a point of showing Pablo, Gustavo, and Fabian leading and following each other in The Tango Lesson.
These days we go to classes. In Buenos Aires, there seems to be a consensus in the teaching of 'milonguero' tango. All the classes I went to started with a gentle warm up that explored awareness of balance, progressed to leading or following walking in parallel and in close hold, in single and double time, and then focused on one of the many variations of the ocho cortado. A close hold, walking with the music and good posture, are insisted on. At one class I went to, I found myself in the change of partners with a very young woman – probably no older than 16 – who was clearly uncomfortable at dancing so closely with a stranger, a much older man. Of course I didn't insist, but the teacher, Susana Miller, saw us dancing somewhat apart, and gently but quite firmly pushed us into a close hold, which my partner then accepted.
The teachers in all the classes I went to gave everyone a lot of attention in matters of posture and musicality. This wasn't a problem because the basic material they were working with, walking and ocho cortados, didn't take a lot of time to demonstrate. That is, they concentrated on getting us to do simple things well and clearly.
The same pattern was followed by the late Ricardo Vidort in a class at the Dome in London 3½ years ago. He didn't push anyone into close hold: he just joked about it. “Boys and girls, hold your partner close. It is not for life! It is just for one dance!”: everyone laughed and adopted a close hold. Lovely guy. & he taught the ocho cortado.
Why so much ocho cortado? You notice it is used a lot in social dancing in Buenos Aires, partly I assume because it takes up little room on a crowded floor, it's what you do when a couple steps in front of you, it can be led from a walk in parallel, and of course it feels good when it's done well. In the context of a class it teaches leading and following from the torso, as both partners need to turn a lot from the waist to do a good ocho cortado in close hold. It also involves the use of double time, and like any tango move there are many possible variations. I expect there are other beginners' classes with different emphases, but I think it's safe to assume that most dancers in Buenos Aires begin in classes like these: close hold, musicality, posture, the ocho cortado.
It occurs to me that 'classes', which suggests a progression of learning, isn't quite the right word. 'Workshops' might be more apt, occasions when you do some work on a topic.
London is quite different. So far as I know, close hold is never insisted on in beginners classes, I don't remember musicality being emphasised so much at the start and, unless things have changed in four years, the eight-step salida is taught instead of the ocho cortado: not quite sure why it has such a hold on British tango. But I think the central difference is that there is no consensus here that a firm basis in close hold, walking to the music, and the ocho cortado is the best foundation. If you were taught this basis repeatedly you could go to another class and learn something different. You might think you were progressing fast because you might get a lot more varied and apparently quite complex material. But would you be able to go to a milonga and dance all that stuff with someone who hadn't been in the class with you? If not, you were being conned – unless, that is, you don't want to do anything else except go to classes where your partner knows her part, and you can imagine you are dancing on stage together, which suits some people.
Conned? Well, not intentionally. But I think that although teachers are well aware that a firm basis in simple things is necessary, they are also aware that if they don't seem to teach complex material their students won't feel they are doing well, and might take their class fees elsewhere. Another problem is that many London teachers have a stage background, and at heart perhaps rather less sympathy for, or experience of social dancing. & we don't live in a culture in which the milonga is central to the dance: generally speaking, stage and ballroom tango are more familiar than social tango. Perhaps as a result of this orientation of London dance, teachers of 'milonguero' tango don't get invited here: they go everywhere except the UK, all over Europe and the USA, because it's not what people want here, and they don't want it here because it's not the kind of tango they've been taught. In a way there's too much on offer, and too little consensus.
The result can be confusing. Am I an inferior leader because I can't lead back saccadas, or ganchos, with the kind of ease that makes them look natural, and should I stand in a milonga trying to wrestle my partner into a gancho? Am I a hopeless follower because I can't wave my legs around four times to each beat with unexpected decorations that risk of tripping myself and the leader? These crises of confidence might keep teachers in business, but they shouldn't arise. As a basis we need to be able to stand upright, walk in time to the music and dance a few variations of the ocho cortado, and I think we should be aware that there's nothing wrong with enjoying whole evenings of dance, leading clearly and following the music, with little more than that. That seems a reference point for tango in Buenos Aires, it's what most people do when they go out dancing, it's a necessary foundation on which a lot can be built, but it seems it's a reference point we aren't close to enjoying in London.
These days we go to classes. In Buenos Aires, there seems to be a consensus in the teaching of 'milonguero' tango. All the classes I went to started with a gentle warm up that explored awareness of balance, progressed to leading or following walking in parallel and in close hold, in single and double time, and then focused on one of the many variations of the ocho cortado. A close hold, walking with the music and good posture, are insisted on. At one class I went to, I found myself in the change of partners with a very young woman – probably no older than 16 – who was clearly uncomfortable at dancing so closely with a stranger, a much older man. Of course I didn't insist, but the teacher, Susana Miller, saw us dancing somewhat apart, and gently but quite firmly pushed us into a close hold, which my partner then accepted.
The teachers in all the classes I went to gave everyone a lot of attention in matters of posture and musicality. This wasn't a problem because the basic material they were working with, walking and ocho cortados, didn't take a lot of time to demonstrate. That is, they concentrated on getting us to do simple things well and clearly.
The same pattern was followed by the late Ricardo Vidort in a class at the Dome in London 3½ years ago. He didn't push anyone into close hold: he just joked about it. “Boys and girls, hold your partner close. It is not for life! It is just for one dance!”: everyone laughed and adopted a close hold. Lovely guy. & he taught the ocho cortado.
Why so much ocho cortado? You notice it is used a lot in social dancing in Buenos Aires, partly I assume because it takes up little room on a crowded floor, it's what you do when a couple steps in front of you, it can be led from a walk in parallel, and of course it feels good when it's done well. In the context of a class it teaches leading and following from the torso, as both partners need to turn a lot from the waist to do a good ocho cortado in close hold. It also involves the use of double time, and like any tango move there are many possible variations. I expect there are other beginners' classes with different emphases, but I think it's safe to assume that most dancers in Buenos Aires begin in classes like these: close hold, musicality, posture, the ocho cortado.
It occurs to me that 'classes', which suggests a progression of learning, isn't quite the right word. 'Workshops' might be more apt, occasions when you do some work on a topic.
London is quite different. So far as I know, close hold is never insisted on in beginners classes, I don't remember musicality being emphasised so much at the start and, unless things have changed in four years, the eight-step salida is taught instead of the ocho cortado: not quite sure why it has such a hold on British tango. But I think the central difference is that there is no consensus here that a firm basis in close hold, walking to the music, and the ocho cortado is the best foundation. If you were taught this basis repeatedly you could go to another class and learn something different. You might think you were progressing fast because you might get a lot more varied and apparently quite complex material. But would you be able to go to a milonga and dance all that stuff with someone who hadn't been in the class with you? If not, you were being conned – unless, that is, you don't want to do anything else except go to classes where your partner knows her part, and you can imagine you are dancing on stage together, which suits some people.
Conned? Well, not intentionally. But I think that although teachers are well aware that a firm basis in simple things is necessary, they are also aware that if they don't seem to teach complex material their students won't feel they are doing well, and might take their class fees elsewhere. Another problem is that many London teachers have a stage background, and at heart perhaps rather less sympathy for, or experience of social dancing. & we don't live in a culture in which the milonga is central to the dance: generally speaking, stage and ballroom tango are more familiar than social tango. Perhaps as a result of this orientation of London dance, teachers of 'milonguero' tango don't get invited here: they go everywhere except the UK, all over Europe and the USA, because it's not what people want here, and they don't want it here because it's not the kind of tango they've been taught. In a way there's too much on offer, and too little consensus.
The result can be confusing. Am I an inferior leader because I can't lead back saccadas, or ganchos, with the kind of ease that makes them look natural, and should I stand in a milonga trying to wrestle my partner into a gancho? Am I a hopeless follower because I can't wave my legs around four times to each beat with unexpected decorations that risk of tripping myself and the leader? These crises of confidence might keep teachers in business, but they shouldn't arise. As a basis we need to be able to stand upright, walk in time to the music and dance a few variations of the ocho cortado, and I think we should be aware that there's nothing wrong with enjoying whole evenings of dance, leading clearly and following the music, with little more than that. That seems a reference point for tango in Buenos Aires, it's what most people do when they go out dancing, it's a necessary foundation on which a lot can be built, but it seems it's a reference point we aren't close to enjoying in London.
Thursday, 5 March 2009
The Terence Davies Trilogy
Like the Bill Douglas trilogy, and made just a few years later. But whereas Bill Douglas is closely autobiographical, and thus about the film-maker, the Terence Davies films are more generally about suffering, loosely based on autobiography. A grim childhood, a young adult, a dying man. It was a relief to watch the extra feature on the DVD, in colour instead of gritty mono, an interview with Davies, who came over as reassuringly serious but cheerful, and willing to admit that the trilogy was made at a very dark time in his life. Wonderful to see storytelling with a minimum of story telling: stories told visually have impact, are much more compact, than anything spoken in dialogue. I look forward to Of Time and the City, out next month.
D'Agostino: Barrio de tres esquinas
You can still visit the Barrio de Tres Esquinas: Rick McGarrey has a whole page on the song, with a full translation: he describes a recent visit to the barrio, with photos.
Friday, 27 February 2009
D'Agostino: film
I always enjoyed the clear, spare sound of the Angel D'Agostino orchestra without wondering how it was created. This clip shows how: it wasn't an 'orquesta'. It was a quartet, the leanest possible tango group; piano (D'Agostino), bandoneon, violin, bass. The individual lines sing and the singer, Angel Vargas, is the fifth line.
And this clip from a 40s film has subtitles, so the whole little story is clear, as is the sense of the song, Barrio de tres esquinas, one of the classics of tango. The local kid comes back from the big city, contemptuous of the barrios of Buenos Aires: his childhood friend, the singer Angel Vargas, reminds him that the barrio is a place of affection and friendship. & then there's a second song, a comic interlude, in which everyone moves back 50 years.
An 'orquesta tipica' would have at least two more bandoneons and violins. It would have a more dramatic impact, but I still value the intimacy of the D'Agostino sound. & I wonder how many other Argentine films there are (preferably subtitled) with the musicians and dancers of the period.
And this clip from a 40s film has subtitles, so the whole little story is clear, as is the sense of the song, Barrio de tres esquinas, one of the classics of tango. The local kid comes back from the big city, contemptuous of the barrios of Buenos Aires: his childhood friend, the singer Angel Vargas, reminds him that the barrio is a place of affection and friendship. & then there's a second song, a comic interlude, in which everyone moves back 50 years.
An 'orquesta tipica' would have at least two more bandoneons and violins. It would have a more dramatic impact, but I still value the intimacy of the D'Agostino sound. & I wonder how many other Argentine films there are (preferably subtitled) with the musicians and dancers of the period.
Monday, 23 February 2009
Histoire[s] du cinéma
M. Godard could never make anything simple because he's too aware of complexity. These six 1/2-hour videos are stories and history, but hardly a detailed chronological history. Cinema was born in the 19th century against a background of narrative painting and literature, and blossomed in the 20th. The films are a study of cinema, to be studied, but they are great to watch as montage of film, painting and photography. Visions, memories of stories, of films, flicker in front of our eyes in strange complex collages: glimpses of Renoir's French Cancan, Demy's Parapluies de Cherbourg, Eisensteins' Alexander Nevsky, the dialogue of Last Year at Marienbad... After all, Godard must have seen (and remembered) more films than anyone else alive.
Beyond that the films feature big characters from the world of film, Howard Hughes (sarcastically), Hitchcock (with great praise: 'Hitchcock succeeded where Alexander the Great, Napoleon and Hitler failed: he controlled the universe'.) & there's a long and very central discussion between Godard and his producer about the project.
Apart from that there are endless shots of Godard + cigar and typewriter, proclaiming things like 'Solitude de cinéma: cinéma de la solitude', all overlaid with the inevitable typographic word-plays. But on the whole, very fascinating. Similar in style to his episode, Dans le Noir du Temps in 10 Minutes Older: the Cello, which condenses the 20th century into 10 minutes of image, using newsreel and scenes from his own films.
Beyond that the films feature big characters from the world of film, Howard Hughes (sarcastically), Hitchcock (with great praise: 'Hitchcock succeeded where Alexander the Great, Napoleon and Hitler failed: he controlled the universe'.) & there's a long and very central discussion between Godard and his producer about the project.
Apart from that there are endless shots of Godard + cigar and typewriter, proclaiming things like 'Solitude de cinéma: cinéma de la solitude', all overlaid with the inevitable typographic word-plays. But on the whole, very fascinating. Similar in style to his episode, Dans le Noir du Temps in 10 Minutes Older: the Cello, which condenses the 20th century into 10 minutes of image, using newsreel and scenes from his own films.
Saturday, 21 February 2009
At the Royal Ballet
The Seven Deadly Sins by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weil (1933) a ballet chanté from the start, first choreographed by Balanchine and sung by (who else?) Lotte Lenya. Good to see it onstage at Covent Garden. A new choreography by Will Tuckett, sung by Martha Wainwright and danced by Zenaida Yanowsky. The music stands out, great singing and dancing. The Wainwright voice is excellent, rich in the lower register, clear and bright higher up. She might not be used to singing the longer lines of Brecht/Weil, but it's a great performance. Carmen, Mats Ek choreography, great fun. Inventive with steps and moves as with whole scenes. Synchronised smoking to March of the Toreodores then, having amused and played around with illusion, he can suddenly produce real pathos. Tamara Rojo in red, you (I) watch every moment. In fact Ek makes colour sing too. DGV: Wheeldon choreography to Nyman music. Wheeldon makes great modern classical choreography, but this didn't show me much more than great modern classical choreography, fast, Danse à Grande Vitesse. Enjoyable, and a good evening out.
Friday, 20 February 2009
Eating and dancing: noches bravas en El Nino Bien
Checking out 'El Flaco' Dany clips I came across this one of a night out at El Nino Bien. Not much of El Flaco, but a good record of what a tango night at one of the main Buenos Aires milongas looks like. & if you like slow jive, and Fever, check out 'El Flaco Dany boogies with Silvina Valz' -- Munich again.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
El Flaco Dany and Silvina Vals
I'm still not really at home in milonga so I love watching people who dance it easily. Here's a couple of them:
The video calls him 'El Falco', but he's El Flaco Dany. I recognise him from Porteno y Bailarin although I didn't notice him dance there, and in any case there's not room to dance like this. She was always there too, dancing. Great the way they go straight from some quick walking steps into a series of breathtaking turns. There are a few more videos of them on YouTube; one from Munich, just to remind us that top dancers do come to Europe but don't often get invited to the UK.
The video calls him 'El Falco', but he's El Flaco Dany. I recognise him from Porteno y Bailarin although I didn't notice him dance there, and in any case there's not room to dance like this. She was always there too, dancing. Great the way they go straight from some quick walking steps into a series of breathtaking turns. There are a few more videos of them on YouTube; one from Munich, just to remind us that top dancers do come to Europe but don't often get invited to the UK.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Strange days in Antigua
Working 12-hour days to meet a deadline means the radio tends to be on more than usual. & this time there was a test match in Antigua to help me through the hours. It began at the new Viv Richards stadium and ended after 11 balls, as the pitch was judged unusable and the match called a draw. With a huge effort the old Antigua stadium pitch was brought back into play, and a new match started.
With hindsight there were a number of odd circumstances. Commentators kept praising the effort involved in getting a pitch ready for a cricket test: it normally takes two weeks and the ground staff had succeeded in two days. So if it took two weeks to prepare the original pitch, how come it was unusable? The question wasn't really asked: after all, a match was ongoing, the main thing. Then, although they'd just decisively beaten England at Kingston, the West Indian team were said to be very reluctant to start another game in Antigua. & then very few local supporters turned up to the new match. Cricket legend Sir Viv Richards was asked about this by the commentator. “Oh, I guess they are in church” he replied easily. A slight pause. At 4pm? “Oh it goes on all day here.” With all due respect this sounded slightly more than absurd. Since when did Antiguans spend a whole day singing hymns when there was a test match on? Even if it was Sunday.
Monday morning, this morning, dawned brilliant and hot in Antigua – and still there were very few Antiguans on the ground. What was on their minds? The bombshell, the breaking news, came around 4pm. "Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford and three of his companies have been charged over a $8bn investment fraud, US financial regulators say. The Securities and Exchange Commission said the businessman had orchestrated 'a fraudulent, multi-billion dollar investment scheme'."
Stanford is huge in Antigua, one of the island's biggest employers, a massive investor in cricket. The Antiguans must have heard rumours, and were anticipating a terrible crash: Sir Viv must have been in the know. & according to a local commentator a number of players had invested their match earnings in Stanford's schemes: the money would now be frozen, probably lost, which makes it more dreadful. The players... and who else?
A Ponzi scheme is fraudulent because payments are financed by taking on new capital. I guess it differs slightly from standard capitalist practice where, at least in theory, the money is used to finance money-making business. But if the money-making business fails, doesn't standard capitalist practice become a Ponzi scheme? But for the world banking crash, would the Standfords, the Madoffs, the Cosmos, be normal successful investors? I'd really like to know.
With hindsight there were a number of odd circumstances. Commentators kept praising the effort involved in getting a pitch ready for a cricket test: it normally takes two weeks and the ground staff had succeeded in two days. So if it took two weeks to prepare the original pitch, how come it was unusable? The question wasn't really asked: after all, a match was ongoing, the main thing. Then, although they'd just decisively beaten England at Kingston, the West Indian team were said to be very reluctant to start another game in Antigua. & then very few local supporters turned up to the new match. Cricket legend Sir Viv Richards was asked about this by the commentator. “Oh, I guess they are in church” he replied easily. A slight pause. At 4pm? “Oh it goes on all day here.” With all due respect this sounded slightly more than absurd. Since when did Antiguans spend a whole day singing hymns when there was a test match on? Even if it was Sunday.
Monday morning, this morning, dawned brilliant and hot in Antigua – and still there were very few Antiguans on the ground. What was on their minds? The bombshell, the breaking news, came around 4pm. "Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford and three of his companies have been charged over a $8bn investment fraud, US financial regulators say. The Securities and Exchange Commission said the businessman had orchestrated 'a fraudulent, multi-billion dollar investment scheme'."
Stanford is huge in Antigua, one of the island's biggest employers, a massive investor in cricket. The Antiguans must have heard rumours, and were anticipating a terrible crash: Sir Viv must have been in the know. & according to a local commentator a number of players had invested their match earnings in Stanford's schemes: the money would now be frozen, probably lost, which makes it more dreadful. The players... and who else?
A Ponzi scheme is fraudulent because payments are financed by taking on new capital. I guess it differs slightly from standard capitalist practice where, at least in theory, the money is used to finance money-making business. But if the money-making business fails, doesn't standard capitalist practice become a Ponzi scheme? But for the world banking crash, would the Standfords, the Madoffs, the Cosmos, be normal successful investors? I'd really like to know.
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Polka, candombe and milonga
One evening recently at 33 a friend alarmed a few people: a milonga was playing and she suddenly started to jump up and down, saying 'One two three hop... It's a polka! One two three hop!' Calm down dear, someone said. But she was insistent, and I was intrigued. The music was some kind of milonga, and the rhythm she was dancing fitted it well. & I believed she knew what a polka was.
So I was delighted to read that the polka was very popular in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th century, and that it may well have played a part in developing the slow habanera rhythm of the candombe, a dance with strong African roots, into... the milonga. Was milonga a cross between polka and a candombe on speed? & is the Brazilian samba an Africanised polka?
Somebody thinks so. Robert Farris Thompson, Professor of the History of Art at Yale wrote TANGO: the art history of love (Vintage Books, 2006) to demonstrate the profound, but now almost invisible, influence of Africa on the music and dance of Argentina.
Invisible if you don't know where to look. Old documents, artwork and photos, and people's memories, contradict the quite striking absence of Africans from the streets, public transport and milongas of Buenos Aires. I was stunned to read that the milonguero Facundo Posada recalls as a child being warned not to bother people who had fallen into a trance while dancing to the cadombe rhythm at the Shimmy Club in Buenos Aires around 1945. Upstairs at the Shimmy Club tango and jazz were danced: the basement was blacks-only, and at night the drums would start up and the spirits of Africa would manifest themselves.
In 1810 Buenos Aires was 34% black but by 1887, after years of immigration, it was 2%, around 8,000. By the mid-20th century the black community numbered about 2,000. Thompson charts the significance of African roots in tango. Black musicians were prominent, including several early bandoneon players who helped define the use of the instrument in tango. There were black lyricists: Gabino Ezeiza wrote over 500 songs. And the rich African tradition of dance fed into tango. A short film, Tango Argentino, featuring a dancer called El Negro Agapito was made around 1904, but sadly it no longer exists. Three great 20th century dancers, El Cachafez, Todaro and Petroleo acknowledged black teachers, partners, influences. Copes' first teacher was black.
Thompson writes to show black influence, but doesn't mention social tango. He calls dances 'choreographies', and the line of dance he follows to Copes leads rather to the stage, to tango fantasia, than to the milongas. & sometimes the comparisons are a bit forced: the distant facial expressions and lack of conversation in tango shows African origin. He clearly has no idea how much attention it takes for most of us to follow the music and navigate a crowded floor! & that we choose to enter a world of conversation without words. With music and without words we can fly; it's not a style copied from anywhere. But he has unearthed a rich background and a lot of detailed information about the music and dance: I just wished the book had at least a CD.
He claims that the habanera was Afro-Cuban: others have traced it to the European contredanza which came to Cuba from French Haiti with refugees from the 1791 Haiti revolution. He himself talks about how rhythms and dance moves traveled up and down the South American coast. Realistically, where does any good tune or rhythm come from? Tunes and rhythms travel easier than viruses because people, musicians especially, seek them out, and they take no storage space. I can't help remembering the story about the record company in the late 50s/early 60s that sent a team of recording engineers far up the Amazon to record the purest, unadulterated tribal music. When they listened to it again in the studio they were horrified to realise they were listening to a version of... Jailhouse Rock. The missionaries must have given the tribals a transistor tuned to edifying matter and told them not to touch that dial... Music travels instantly now, but even two centuries ago it traveled fast. A mariner whistles a tune he heard in a port, a local boatman hears it and it's copied from him far up-country by a merchant who crosses the mountains to...
So I was delighted to read that the polka was very popular in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th century, and that it may well have played a part in developing the slow habanera rhythm of the candombe, a dance with strong African roots, into... the milonga. Was milonga a cross between polka and a candombe on speed? & is the Brazilian samba an Africanised polka?
Somebody thinks so. Robert Farris Thompson, Professor of the History of Art at Yale wrote TANGO: the art history of love (Vintage Books, 2006) to demonstrate the profound, but now almost invisible, influence of Africa on the music and dance of Argentina.
Invisible if you don't know where to look. Old documents, artwork and photos, and people's memories, contradict the quite striking absence of Africans from the streets, public transport and milongas of Buenos Aires. I was stunned to read that the milonguero Facundo Posada recalls as a child being warned not to bother people who had fallen into a trance while dancing to the cadombe rhythm at the Shimmy Club in Buenos Aires around 1945. Upstairs at the Shimmy Club tango and jazz were danced: the basement was blacks-only, and at night the drums would start up and the spirits of Africa would manifest themselves.
In 1810 Buenos Aires was 34% black but by 1887, after years of immigration, it was 2%, around 8,000. By the mid-20th century the black community numbered about 2,000. Thompson charts the significance of African roots in tango. Black musicians were prominent, including several early bandoneon players who helped define the use of the instrument in tango. There were black lyricists: Gabino Ezeiza wrote over 500 songs. And the rich African tradition of dance fed into tango. A short film, Tango Argentino, featuring a dancer called El Negro Agapito was made around 1904, but sadly it no longer exists. Three great 20th century dancers, El Cachafez, Todaro and Petroleo acknowledged black teachers, partners, influences. Copes' first teacher was black.
Thompson writes to show black influence, but doesn't mention social tango. He calls dances 'choreographies', and the line of dance he follows to Copes leads rather to the stage, to tango fantasia, than to the milongas. & sometimes the comparisons are a bit forced: the distant facial expressions and lack of conversation in tango shows African origin. He clearly has no idea how much attention it takes for most of us to follow the music and navigate a crowded floor! & that we choose to enter a world of conversation without words. With music and without words we can fly; it's not a style copied from anywhere. But he has unearthed a rich background and a lot of detailed information about the music and dance: I just wished the book had at least a CD.
He claims that the habanera was Afro-Cuban: others have traced it to the European contredanza which came to Cuba from French Haiti with refugees from the 1791 Haiti revolution. He himself talks about how rhythms and dance moves traveled up and down the South American coast. Realistically, where does any good tune or rhythm come from? Tunes and rhythms travel easier than viruses because people, musicians especially, seek them out, and they take no storage space. I can't help remembering the story about the record company in the late 50s/early 60s that sent a team of recording engineers far up the Amazon to record the purest, unadulterated tribal music. When they listened to it again in the studio they were horrified to realise they were listening to a version of... Jailhouse Rock. The missionaries must have given the tribals a transistor tuned to edifying matter and told them not to touch that dial... Music travels instantly now, but even two centuries ago it traveled fast. A mariner whistles a tune he heard in a port, a local boatman hears it and it's copied from him far up-country by a merchant who crosses the mountains to...
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Being grounded
Dancing after visiting BsAs: a few recent comments from friends made me look back at the post I wrote after the first milonga back in London (Sunday 11 January). The entire post was about what I saw that evening compared with what I'd seen. Time to revisit the experience.
One comment: I was asked if I felt that my dancing had been deconstructed. That puzzled me a moment or two: it was the passive I found confusing. Nobody deconstructed my dancing. But I did spend the middle weeks of my stay being rather cautious. My first instinct was to get on the floor. Then I started to wonder if I was doing the right thing, doing it well enough. At least I was prepared for the style of dance there, but you become aware that there are people around you who have danced on and off for 60 years, whose experience of milongas goes back to the 40s and 50s. I thought I should regard dancing there as a privilege, not a right: to be on the floor at Canning certainly feels like a privilege! I started to tune in to the Spanish-language classes and to dance with local partners. I also started to sit and watch. You see amazing dance: not amazing in the 'tango fantasia' sense of high kicks and choreographed sizzling sensuality, just people moving beautifully, effortlessly, simply for their own pleasure. Watching became quite important for a few weeks. Some of those dancers, some of that experience, won't be around much longer.
My experience of dancing the first milonga after I got back was confusing because I was recovering from a serious cold, I was deaf in one ear, my own voice sounded strange. I couldn't dance easily because I felt my partners were expecting some amazing experience: how could I live up to it? Hard to explain that for five weeks I actually hadn't been dancing a lot. My feeling of that evening was that the lesson I'd brought back was to be very grounded. I was aware of the strength of gravity now, of weight, whereas before I'd danced around on tiptoe. This was what I learned (apart from actual steps) from Tete and Silvia. “Tango can be danced in a thousand different ways, but let’s step on the ground in the first place, because that is where we ought to dance to the music... Kids these days tend to dance in the air. You can do many nice things, but please do them on the floor.”
So it was strange and very helpful to be told that the impression from dancing with me that first night back was that my posture was a lot better. I wasn't in the least aware of posture that evening, but I'm wondering if the feeling of being grounded isn't related to a partner's perception of better posture.
Other than that: it's hard to change overnight. But, partly because of all this writing, I've still got a lot in mind, a lot of work still to do.
One comment: I was asked if I felt that my dancing had been deconstructed. That puzzled me a moment or two: it was the passive I found confusing. Nobody deconstructed my dancing. But I did spend the middle weeks of my stay being rather cautious. My first instinct was to get on the floor. Then I started to wonder if I was doing the right thing, doing it well enough. At least I was prepared for the style of dance there, but you become aware that there are people around you who have danced on and off for 60 years, whose experience of milongas goes back to the 40s and 50s. I thought I should regard dancing there as a privilege, not a right: to be on the floor at Canning certainly feels like a privilege! I started to tune in to the Spanish-language classes and to dance with local partners. I also started to sit and watch. You see amazing dance: not amazing in the 'tango fantasia' sense of high kicks and choreographed sizzling sensuality, just people moving beautifully, effortlessly, simply for their own pleasure. Watching became quite important for a few weeks. Some of those dancers, some of that experience, won't be around much longer.
My experience of dancing the first milonga after I got back was confusing because I was recovering from a serious cold, I was deaf in one ear, my own voice sounded strange. I couldn't dance easily because I felt my partners were expecting some amazing experience: how could I live up to it? Hard to explain that for five weeks I actually hadn't been dancing a lot. My feeling of that evening was that the lesson I'd brought back was to be very grounded. I was aware of the strength of gravity now, of weight, whereas before I'd danced around on tiptoe. This was what I learned (apart from actual steps) from Tete and Silvia. “Tango can be danced in a thousand different ways, but let’s step on the ground in the first place, because that is where we ought to dance to the music... Kids these days tend to dance in the air. You can do many nice things, but please do them on the floor.”
So it was strange and very helpful to be told that the impression from dancing with me that first night back was that my posture was a lot better. I wasn't in the least aware of posture that evening, but I'm wondering if the feeling of being grounded isn't related to a partner's perception of better posture.
Other than that: it's hard to change overnight. But, partly because of all this writing, I've still got a lot in mind, a lot of work still to do.
Monday, 2 February 2009
Facundo and Kely, Candombe and Humberto 1 1462
I just chanced upon this video in the hall of Humberto 1 1462. You get a glimpse of the entire hall after a marvellous candombe by Facundo and Kely Posadas: 50 years dancing together.
I took one class with Facundo, a great milonguero. He was incredibly courteous, and very helpful and attentive. When someone gives that much patience and attention their teaching becomes part of you. He's black, which I mention because that is strikingly unusual in Buenos Aires. He teaches throughout the USA, but hasn't been to London for many years.
I took one class with Facundo, a great milonguero. He was incredibly courteous, and very helpful and attentive. When someone gives that much patience and attention their teaching becomes part of you. He's black, which I mention because that is strikingly unusual in Buenos Aires. He teaches throughout the USA, but hasn't been to London for many years.
Did tango die?
You hear lots of stories. TV and rock swept Argentina in the late 50s and 60s. The Argentine musician Joaquín Amenábar says that tango declined, then died, killed off by the later military rule, and there was a period when there was no tango dancing. Miguel Balbi, a singer and dancer who danced through the 70s, says that as few as 30 couples were still dancing when the military finally lost power in 1983. Well, all you need is a terrace or reasonably-sized room, 20 or so friends, some music, drink and food and you can have your own milonga and who would know about it? So tango may well have continued.
But research here suggests that quite a few milongas stayed open at least some of the time. They were cheap and some even had live music. A picture is worth many words, so here's the picture:
That's a familiar address. Humberto is the street, building no. 1462, first floor, and it's still a tango venue. I've been there. The Nino Bien milonga is held there every Thursday night. It's big enough for several hundred people to dance. 1976 was the grim year in which some 47% of all the “desaparecidos”, perhaps as many as 14,000 people, were seized and last seen.
& more: “...many old-timers credit Copes with keeping the Tango flame alive through the years of the cruel military rule in Argentina when the generals did their best to kill Tango as a popular expression. Many others quit; Copes kept going and mounted the highest of quality shows continually. Even though there was a curfew in Buenos Aires, there was a Copes show, often with Goyeneche, Troilo, even Pugliese making his music. Only the Best. He and his company were "untouchable" by those seeking to hold tango back in the wild Argentina political atmosphere... In the audience, the generals would be on one side of the room; the mafia on the other; the "people" in the middle. Everyone left their politics and rivalries at the door.”
The generals on one side, the mafia on the other, and the people in between: plausible enough. And I read that in 1977 Copes appeared with Nievas in Argentina es asi, a film shot in part on Corrientes Street, although there's no record of it on IMDb.
All of this may be true, or partially true. For what it matters, it seems tango never died out in Buenos Aires. But for sure it was the tours by Copes and his company that created and revived an interest in tango outside Argentina. Leandro Palou remarked to me, “Things become popular in Argentina because they are popular elsewhere. It's sad, but true”.
A postscript: I often wondered what Pugliese did during the 'dirty war': he was openly a communist, hardly the flavour of the decade. I found this in Tango: the art history of love: 'The management of the Michaelangelo, a San Telmo nightclub that staged big tango shows, loved him too: ignoring bomb threats they kept him employed during the grim days of the Proceso, 1976-1983. The junta did not dare "disappear" him: as Copes explains, "he was simply too popular".'
No, tango did not die.
But research here suggests that quite a few milongas stayed open at least some of the time. They were cheap and some even had live music. A picture is worth many words, so here's the picture:
That's a familiar address. Humberto is the street, building no. 1462, first floor, and it's still a tango venue. I've been there. The Nino Bien milonga is held there every Thursday night. It's big enough for several hundred people to dance. 1976 was the grim year in which some 47% of all the “desaparecidos”, perhaps as many as 14,000 people, were seized and last seen.
& more: “...many old-timers credit Copes with keeping the Tango flame alive through the years of the cruel military rule in Argentina when the generals did their best to kill Tango as a popular expression. Many others quit; Copes kept going and mounted the highest of quality shows continually. Even though there was a curfew in Buenos Aires, there was a Copes show, often with Goyeneche, Troilo, even Pugliese making his music. Only the Best. He and his company were "untouchable" by those seeking to hold tango back in the wild Argentina political atmosphere... In the audience, the generals would be on one side of the room; the mafia on the other; the "people" in the middle. Everyone left their politics and rivalries at the door.”
The generals on one side, the mafia on the other, and the people in between: plausible enough. And I read that in 1977 Copes appeared with Nievas in Argentina es asi, a film shot in part on Corrientes Street, although there's no record of it on IMDb.
All of this may be true, or partially true. For what it matters, it seems tango never died out in Buenos Aires. But for sure it was the tours by Copes and his company that created and revived an interest in tango outside Argentina. Leandro Palou remarked to me, “Things become popular in Argentina because they are popular elsewhere. It's sad, but true”.
A postscript: I often wondered what Pugliese did during the 'dirty war': he was openly a communist, hardly the flavour of the decade. I found this in Tango: the art history of love: 'The management of the Michaelangelo, a San Telmo nightclub that staged big tango shows, loved him too: ignoring bomb threats they kept him employed during the grim days of the Proceso, 1976-1983. The junta did not dare "disappear" him: as Copes explains, "he was simply too popular".'
No, tango did not die.
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