Insularity

The UK has a reputation for insularity, which I thought was simply an old platitude. Then I discovered tango... or rather, English tango!

Here's 'El Flaco' Dany, the greatest traditional milonga dancer in Buenos Aires teaching a workshop in Darmstadt two weeks ago. Look how good he is! & nobody in the UK except you and me has even heard of him! Let alone got him here to teach. Jantango tells me he's 73, which is only just believable.

So are we insular or not? Don't we need to broaden our horizons a bit? If this clip is anything to go by, we might have a lot more fun.

Grand endings

Reading some interesting ideas about grand endings... yes! that makes sense, and it's nice to have a good ending. But if you watch BsAs tango – check out some of the videos around – grand endings don't always feature. Essential in stage tango, of course, which is danced to be watched. I think what's essential in BsAs tango is connection*: you might have a great connection for a few moments of a tango, for a whole tango if you're lucky, or in some mythic, wonderful world, for a whole tanda.

One neat video somewhere (tangoandchaos probably, but I can't remember where) the couple fit some lovely moves to the music early on, then finish dancing before the end of the music. Whatever feels right: they'd had their moment. You've had a lovely intimate conversation: no need to ruin it by going out of your way to shout a platitude. & grand endings aren't inevitable in the music either: the music often ends in a bit of a throwaway fashion.

'It’s a song with a sentimental voice…
its beat is the rhythm of my city.
It's not vulgar,
and it's not pretentious.
It’s tango... and nothing more'

(From Rick McGarrey's translation of Una Emoción, tangoandchaos.)

* Connection with a partner AND with the music.

PS. Found it, the tango where the couple finish dancing before the end of the music. It's here. And that whole page on 'entrega' - getting lost - is very interesting.

Picasso in London and Paris

I kicked myself last year for missing the Picasso show in the Prado and swore I'd go to the Picasso show in the Grand Palais, but when I got back from BsAs this January it was sold out except for a few tickets at 2.30am. By all accounts it was an extraordinary feast of painting, Titians from Florence, Goyas from Madrid... and a few Picassos too. Not something I could digest at 2am.

The Picasso show in the pit at the National Gallery is a bit disappointing. The pit (the basement gallery for changing shows) never seems well-lit. For Velazquez they used the upstairs (daylit) galleries: they could have done a stunning show upstairs with these same Picassos alongside gallery paintings. Nevertheless there's some lovely work there. The first room takes off: clockwise some early self portraits, middle aged self portraits, the man with the ice cream, the painter's family, then the aging lovers, tongues entwined -- and finally the minotaur's skull. (There are quite a few skulls in the show.) But somehow it feels strangely half-hearted, disconnected, which it shouldn't.

I had a couple of hours last Monday afternoon so I visited the Musee Picasso in Paris (the website is a disaster, very little material and many broken links). It's a wonderful, spacious old building with great windows, and the space and light make the paintings look good. But, more interesting, they display sculpture alongside, and even in front of, paintings, and I realised that I've found Picasso shows with 3D work far more satisfying than shows of just paintings: even better if there are prints and drawings too. I've always thought of a dialogue with 3D in the paintings: in cubist paintings space is deliberately flattened, then in the 1920s the volumes are equally deliberately rounded. Later, perhaps, they settle down (if anything in Picasso ever settled down) into constructions of marks and colour with less emphasis on volumes.

The Musee Picasso shows his own collection of paintings, including a marvellous Matisse, the one of the oranges. It hardly has the vivacity of a Picasso but it manages, with an effortlessness born of huge effort, to be flat and three-dimensional, with colour precisely in place to create space on a flat surface. Magical.

Links, and a tree of stories

Links within links. Pugliese is a name I've always associated with Puglia, the deep south of Italy, the coast looking towards Greece, where Greek continued to be spoken in villages despite the rise and fall of the Roman empire. It seems to be a strange, mixed part of the Mediterranean, where east and west met, where different worlds, Byzantium, Egypt, Africa, Greece, the East, and their images, co-existed. & this came to mind while watching Tempo di Viaggio, a film about and by Andrey Tarkovsky.

Tarkovsky came to Italy in 1983, a few years after completing Stalker, to meet up with Tonino Guerra. Tonino Guerra has written the scripts for over 100 films, including most of Antonioni's films, films by Fellini, Theodoros Angelopoulos (including Ulysses' Gaze) and Tarkovsky's Nostalgia. Tempo di Viaggio follows Guerra and Tarkovsky, two authors looking for a character and that character's environment for the film that was to be Nostalgia. Tarkovsky talks about film, looks at Italy for scenes.

They visit Otranto. (The name might be familiar: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was the first gothic novel.) Otranto is in Puglia and has a modest-looking cathedral, the entire floor of which is taken up by a single enormous mosaic, a most extraordinary mosaic of a tree whose branches seem to hold all the stories the artists could remember. Adam and Eve, of course, Abel and Cain, the 12 signs of the zodiac, Solomon and Sheba, Alexander Rex... even Rex Arturus – King Arthur.

There are a few short images of it in the film, but I found photos here on Paradoxplace, a site which claims to have over 6,000 photos of strange and interesting places, but particularly cathedrals and the sculptures and images in them, and a wealth of written detail too. & a lot of links. A real maze of a site.

Bari is just up the coast from Otranto, and that's where Tete and Silvia are currently teaching in the latest part of their Europe tour. Too bad I can't be there to dance to Pugliese in Puglia, but it's comforting to know that when I get to see the magical mosaic in Otranto, I'll also be able to spend an evening or two dancing tango.

Tarbes

Continuing the theme of France and tango, and if you happen to be on holiday in France this summer, the Tarbes tango festival, 17 to 23 August, might be worth a visit, about 100km from Toulouse and 50km from the Spanish border. (The website has an English link, but there's no English translation yet.) A number of free outdoor events, as well as indoor milongas, workshops, concerts. But hotel accommodation is booking up fast.

Luisito Ferraris and Mirta Tiseyra

Thanks to Jantango for drawing my attention to Luisito Ferraris and Mirta Tiseyra. Argentines, they've lived and taught in Italy for nine years. I'd like to know what anyone thinks about their dance. I love it, especially the last 30 seconds, when their torsos follow the swirl of Fresedo's violins, while their feet keep the beat. It looks like the best social tango: it's a display but it could also be in a milonga.

The significance of living and teaching in Italy is that they might well have automatic entitlement to visit and teach in the UK too. I wonder if it's worth trying to get them to visit London from time to time.

PS: He might normally be named Luis Ferrari. & I'm not sure they teach regularly together. Will try to find out.

Kuniyoshi at the Academy

Kuniyoshi, Japanese artist, died 1861. I can't say 'printmaker': he didn't make prints. He made brush paintings which were meticulously translated onto woodblock by highly skilled woodblock cutters and printers. The idea that an artist should make prints is by and large 20th century. Rembrandt made his own prints, only a few artists did. Munakata is the 20th century Japanese artist printmaker who drew and cut his own woodblocks, near-blind, with his nose to the wood.

There's just one of Kuniyoshi's drawings: a quick brush sketch establishing a composition. The brushed line has the energy of time and movement: however skillfully it is cut in wood, that energy is flattened out, lost. The printed line doesn't move like the brushed line. But the prints make up for this in colour and pattern.

Kuniyoshi loved pattern and colour. The prints are a riot of graphic imagination, brilliant colour and finely detailed pattern, not only of clothing and architecture but also of tatoos on the bodies of his samurai. Patterned as a whole, patterned in detail. I've the feeling it switches something on in the brain: you come out tuned into pattern. Wonderful, and quite different from our minimalist preference.

Wonderful, omnivorous drawing. My companion delighted to point out a renaissance figure: Kuniyoshi devoured books of engravings and recycled them. But chiefly I remember how imaginative his ideas are: this skeleton is about to pull the backdrop away from the two noblemen, pulling at their world and all it contains as if it were no more than a painted cloth.

Tango in Paris 4

So it was a really excellent weekend, a lot more dance than I'd get in London, and generally I think the quality was a lot higher. I'd recommend a visit to Paris to anyone who wants to spend a few days in tango. & I found the atmosphere very friendly and supportive.

When I first saw video of Tete and Silvia three-and-a-half years ago I was really impressed. I'd been going to classes with an ex-ballroom dancer who'd learned from a few Pablo Veron workshops. I was told that the music didn't matter, but from my very first beginners class it was clear to me that the music led the dance. Tete's musicality and energy were much closer to how I wanted to respond to the music. Since then I've seen dancing in the old style that I thought much finer, both on video and in the Buenos Aires milongas, and occasionally in London too. But I found them very committed teachers who work hard and give a lot: their commitment and attention is inspiring. & I've been grateful to them for watching my dancing and for comments that have led me to change how I stand and walk in general, without any attempt to get me to dance like them. This is the huge benefit of the teacher's presence: it's what you miss out on when you watch video. I've found video very useful, although it must be worst possible practice to copy a style you see in a video. It just takes time to learn how to lead and follow what you've watched and memorised from video or in a class, to make it your own. But in the end, what changes everything are the observations, whether of a partner or of an experienced dancer who is watching.

A few numbers: I'm trying to get an idea of the attendance and costs involved in bringing a couple to the UK. Tete and Silvia gave eight workshops and a practica. There were around nine couples at each of the workshops and 12 at the practica. At £13.25 a head for the workshops that's a total of £1,908. The practica was £7 per head, £168. There was also another milonga, so in all the total 'take' might have been around £2,400. Obviously there were additional expenses for travel, accomodation, space hire, possibly legal costs too.

Tango in Paris 3

Anyone who assumes that, outside of Buenos Aires, London is the centre of the tango world, should take a look at the Paris tango listings. There are 11 (eleven!) milongas every Saturday night, and most of them go on to two or three in the morning. There are 15 milongas listed for Sunday afternoon/evening... and five or six every weekday night. If Buenos Aires seems a long way away, think about a trip to Paris!

First, videos of two of the three dances in Tete and Silvia's demonstration, the first with an intro by Nathalie of unriendetango. The hall is excellent; probably an old industrial workshop with pine pillars and rafters, and an excellent new floor. Spacious, but small enough to feel intimate.





Now a few short video clips. First something you won't find anywhere on YouTube: only on Tangocommuter, Tete and Silvia dancing... a milonga! A very short clip, but look how smoothly they dance. Milonga often looks a jumpy dance, but not when danced by milongueros. This was on the boat, La Demoiselle, moored in the basin of a canal, during the Saturday practica.



The next clip: Tete showing the four moves he taught on Monday night. Note that he shows them, counts them in sequence and fits them perfectly to the music. A Frenchman wandered over to me after the class and said how astonished he was that Tete can always fit whatever he does to the music, but Tete simply knows his music backwards. If you watch his videos closely you sometimes see him fit in a few odd steps so he can get his big move in time to the music, because he knows when the big chords are coming. I've added a slo-mo version.



A couple more things they taught. I didn't video at the time, so I've cut clips from the demo. The first, a very Tete-esque double saccada involving a 90 degree turn on one leg. It's a hard one, but at his best Tete can make it look totally casual. (Try this at home first.)



Next, a very simple move from an ocho into a cruzada: the 'danseur' makes one fewer steps than the 'danseuse'. Two versions.



I can't find the 'passing move' sequence exactly: it's a 90-degree change of direction followed by a saccada leading into a turn. In this clip Tete starts from a turn, which adds another change of direction, but the basis of what he taught is here.



This isn't a 'style' to be copied: only bad artists copy. Steal these moves, make them your own, work on them so they are right for you and any partner you dance with in a milonga. (There was an amazing old violinist who played with the Tarifa Haiduks, the gypsy band from Romania. Someone asked him where he learned to play violin: 'You don't learn this job,' he said, 'you steal it.')

Vals at at the Monday night milonga: looks familiar. Tete and Silvia danced the Pugliese version of Desde el Alma for their demo: this is a D'Arienzo version.



A rather disorganised spontaneous Chacarera at the milonga. A number of the dancers are Argentine or S. American. A fun evening!

London-Paris

Tango in Paris 2

My final night, Monday night. Another vals workshop. We dance a vals or two to warm up, and then get a lecture on keeping to the line of dance. Tete and Syliva then teach two turning and advancing moves they often use. I'm very familiar with these moves from video but I've never tried to use them in dance, so it's a useful class. Two turning moves: then a saccada is added to one of the turns, and we are then shown the walk, in single and double time, to the left of the follower. Four useful sequences. As ever, musicality is emphasised, and there's a lot of personal attention to detail. In my experience few teachers work so hard with individual couples, give so much individual attention. As with their other workshops it is demanding, intense, and very rewarding. Silvia has a very positive, even a forceful personality, is very encouraging, leads as easily as she follows, seems to be everywhere at the same time, helping everyone, and has a big laugh to go with it. They both work hard, give the impression they feel they owe it to us.

I've been immensely impressed that at any of the three workshops or the practica, it has been immediately possible to make a good connection with any partner I get to dance with. Coming from London, where I find few partners with whom I can easily make a good connection, this seems extraordinary. I've no idea if this applies to Paris tango generally or just to Nathalie's students. The only partner I had any problem with was very much a beginner who made a good connection but had problems interpreting the lead, and even she managed a lot easier second time round. & some of the partners were unusually good to dance with. My impression is of a very good level of dance in Nathalie's group.

After the Monday evening workshop was a milonga, a great ending to the visit. It wasn't organised by Nathalie, and like any milonga was open to anyone who paid admission. I would like to say that the floorcraft was immaculate, that everyone followed the line of dance perfectly and that there were no backward steps or high kicks, but... Actually the floor was quite crowded with enthusiastic dancers, and quite difficult to navigate early on, although there must have been a higher percentage of good close dancing than you'd usually see in London. It was a crowded evening, very cheerful and friendly. Considerably more women than men, perhaps one reason why I found all the partners I danced with extremely pleasant and friendly, but I think that's just the way it is in Paris tango. It was incredible to be able to make such immediate and friendly contact with people from another city. If any of them happens to read this, thanks for everything, and do keep in touch.

One thing I really liked: in France you don't have 'leaders' and 'followers': you have 'danseurs' and 'danseuses'.

Tete and Silvia gave a demonstration, which I filmed part of. The floor thinned out quite a bit after that, and I had a dance first with Silvia, and then with a partner I'd danced with earlier in the evening. A great half-hour of tango to end up with. Tete was also on the floor, ignoring his own lecture about the line of dance... & so I rushed out into the cool night for a late Metro and an early-morning Eurostar. Tangocommuting could hardly be better, except that I didn't really want to come back...

Tango in Paris

In a delighted haze after two afternoons of workshops with Tete and Sylvia it's good to sit back in an internet cafe in front of a familiar screen, and an unfamiliar keyboard, and recall a few things. I've already extended my stay by a day in order to take one more workshop and go to the milonga. I couldn't leqve without going to a Pqris milonga.

First, Tete and Silvia. I've mentioned them to three people who took their classes 12 years ago on their last visit to London: Tete, they say, not that guy. It was their first teaching tour, and you might say that Tete had, and still has, a few rough edges, apart from not knowing how to teach -- but that was then. You could also say that what I'm told was a difficult character has become simply 'a character', one who teaches tango well and tirelessly, with great active support from Silvia. The practica and the two workshops were fun and hard work: they are attentive, observant and enthusiastic teachers, and everyone got a lot out of the classes. The two classes today both began with a bit of jazz dance, some walking steps, a fun warm up. Tete pointed out some basic similarities in the movements. The first class centred around change of direction, several easy enough moves, and simple and more difficult ways to lead out of them. The second class was centred around dancing to the music of Di Sarli, D'Arienzo, Fresedo and Pugliese, the differences in cadences and how to dance to them. Dance with your head empty and your heart full, Tete advised us. The classes all over-ran, and they actively taught the whole time.

Yesterday I arrived in time for a supervised practica on a boat moored in a canal basin. Interesting that when everyone stepped in time the boat gently vibrated underfoot.

There must be a number of tango groups in Paris, but I've really enjoyed meeting this group, unriendetango. It's been a very gentle and enjoyable experience: lots of good dances, many good-natured partners, never any competitive feeling, and seriously attentive and helpful teaching. Tete and Silvia are among the most popular of traditional Argentine teachers. Year after year they fill workshops across Europe and the USA: dancers everywhere enjoy and value their teaching and look forwards to meeting them again.

As I look forward to another nonstop workshop tomorrow, and to a milonga in Paris.

La ronda

If that video of Ricardo Vidort and Myriam Pincen looks rather formal (the music is slow), there's another one I like: I can't embed it because it's not on YouTube, but it's here (the second clip on the page), poor sound but a wonderful dance in a small space. The music and a translation of the poem are here.

I can't help noticing, in both these videos of Vidort and in the video of Harymbat, the way they 'throw' their feet onto the floor, hardly stamping but a kind of emphatic stepping. It's very obvious, perhaps even exaggerated with Harymbat. I gather that this is a characteristic of true 'milonguero' style. I've heard it described as 'adoquin', cobblestones, the way you walk on cobblestones. Whether it matters, whether it makes any difference to the lead or musicality I've no idea, but I'd imagine it emphasises the beat.

Another thing: Vidort uses the entire length of the small space he dances in. We live in a place and time where the ronda is becoming optional. Tango, for more than 50% of the dancers on any floor in London, could well be static, and often is. Tango is said to be a walking dance, but walking movements, or movements that take a couple down the line of dance, aren't taught so often. & tango now takes more space: movements are bigger and less predictable.

Change came from within tango. Here are Todaro and his daughter dancing in the early 50s: they perform all the steps of 'nuevo', but for me the really scary thing is that, like jive or salsa, it all takes place almost entirely on the spot, although the space is about the same as Vidort and Alejandra dance in. Your worst nightmare in a milonga! Change also came from the exchange between tango and contemporary dance: trained dancers like the challenge of a more complex dance and, like many dancers, are fascinated by the possibilities in the synergies between partners, how the movement of one person can suggest a movement to another. So many rich possibilities in the dialogue of tango! It's only really regrettable when dancers ignore the health and safety of those around them: it's usually in the attempt to impress, but the impression of a steel heel can be life-threatening.

The tango of the ronda still predominates in Buenos Aires. Sometimes non-traditional tango is tolerated (until someone gets kicked a lot), sometimes traditional dancers amuse themselves by bunching together to restrict the space available to a non-traditional couple. But in general the two species don't share the same floors, which seems the best solution.

Ewa Kielczewska

As I walked into the Dome at the end of the class last night I could see something different. The dancers were neatly organised round the periphery and many were in some approximation to close hold: Eric Jeurissen was teaching. With over 20 years teaching experience he knows the answers. Sadly the organisation didn't last into the milonga but several good dancers came with him to brighten the evening.

But the real star (for me) was Ewa Kielczewska, partner of the late Ricardo Vidort, who looked after him up to his death in 2006. She sat at the edge of the floor in the company of Jill Barrett, sitting very upright and enjoying what she saw, and she danced too, a great pleasure to watch. Thanks for visiting us, Ewa.

It was a good opportunity to remember him. I took just one lesson from him, in the Dome in 2005, and it reassured me that the tango I wanted to dance wasn't an acrobatic display at arms' length: I learned a whole style of dance that evening. His warmth and energy filled the Dome: it's hard to believe he was terminally ill at the time.

Here he is in Buenos Aires.

Just in case...

...'the older generation of Buenos Aires dancers' suggests elderly couples supporting each other around the ronda, take a look at Ruben Harymbat and Enriqueta Kleinman giving a demonstration at a workshop in Portland, Oregon, in February. I love the wit, inventiveness, musicality. It doesn't get much better.

Tango on-line 2

More thoughts on setting up videoconference links with some of the older generation of Buenos Aires dancers. Thanks to Jantango in Buenos Aires for the idea and support.

This technology could offer wonderful possibilities, even perhaps a programme of weekly sessions at which we can meet and interact with older milongueros and milongueras and share their long experience of the dance. It will require camera, PC and projector at both ends, and a translator. The sessions, with demonstrations, dances, questions, answers, can be available on DVD afterwards.

A quick guess at costs: private classes with a couple in Buenos Aires often cost around £60 an hour, so a two-hour session, plus equipment rental and technical support might cost in the region of £220. Technical costs at this end might be minimal as the equipment is probably easier to come by, and room hire would be around £25. So a two-hour session could cost as little as £250, around £30 each for four couples.

Obviously there will be shortcomings, and if you are serious you will take a flight to Buenos Aires to get the real thing! Videoconferencing is limited, and might be a bit confusing to begin with, but one thing I'm sure of: these people are genial and very happy to share their experience, and many are experienced teachers and great communicators. To spend a few hours in their company will be very enjoyable, and the best possible guide to tango as a social dance. I hope we can set up a trial session this summer to get an idea of what can be done, how effective it can be, and plan a series of sessions, perhaps four sessions with different couples, in the autumn.

Zatoichi

Kitano 'Beat' Takashi is a phenomenon of contemporary Japanese film. A university drop-out who drifted into stand-up comedy and thence into making 'yakuza' films, he won the Golden Lion for Hana-bi at the Venice Film Festival in 1997. Films that he writes, directs, stars in and edits himself. He's also a writer, painter and talk show host.

Zatoichi won best director at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. Zatoichi is a blind itinerant masseur whose cane conceals a sword: he is also a master swordsman whose speed and intuition has no equal. Of course he fights evil: like a comic book hero he is ordinary, almost completely helpless, one moment, and invincible the next. The film is about corruption and retribution, corruption of civil society and of innocent children too. The retribution is sudden and thorough.

There is sudden violence, but in context it isn't excessive. It isn't the violence of an Arnie film (not that I've ever been able to watch more than a scene or two) or of a Clint Eastwood film, which can seem humourless and downright creepy by comparison. Zatoichi is humorous throughout: a humorous and human background to sudden and very brief action scenes.

The extraordinary fight in the rain, for instance, lasts hardly 90 seconds and consists of 20 or so shots, either of sudden movement or pauses as we watch simulations of injury. Takashi chose to film it in bright sunshine, the rain provided by hoses, hence the vivid 'rain' streaking down, as in 19th century samurai prints. Directed, acted and edited by Takashi. (The theatrical gushes of blood were pumped through pipes in the actors' costumes and digitally enhanced: I'm a great fan of the 'Extras' on DVDs.) The effect is stunning, underlined by slow sad music. & in every fight, despite the carnage, there is no 'blood' on Zatoichi's clothing afterwards. In real life he'd be drenched in it. Too much reality would distract rather than enhance the scene.

Timing is crucial throughout, impeccable cutting and inventive camerawork. Takashi's sense of humour is particularly evident in the ending, where a Shinto ritual segues effortlessly into a modern tap dance routine, with all the main characters and many, many more, continuing rhythms that have been building up throughout the film. It's ridiculously good entertainment, and thoughtful too. & of course it looks fabulous throughout. Thanks for the recommendation, MsH.

Tango on-line

Jantango recently emailed me from Buenos Aires:

“A tango friend in the USA is trying to promote tango as it is danced by milongueros from the 50s. He wants to organize a conference for November. He can't afford to bring milongueros, so I suggested seeing how to incorporate the attendance of milongueros via webcam.

As you know, they are free transmissions. I have yet to use a webcam myself, but it could be one way of having the presence of a milonguero with someone on your end doing the translation.

It's not the same as being there, but it could be interesting and worthwhile.

What do you think?”

My first thought was that it's a wonderful idea and it might be an inexpensive way of holding a 'London Tango Festival', since it would save the cost and problems associated with travel. By definition the teachers are now in their 70s, so they'd probably find it preferable to 14-hour flights.

My problem is my lack of experience in both the technology, and in the teaching, so I thought I should open it out to anyone who happens to read this, because other people might have experience or good ideas.

Technically, it seems obvious that a projector would be required at both ends to give life-sized images, as it's hardly possible to work from a monitor, but that's not really a problem these days. I think the actual format of sessions to make the best use of the slightly disembodied experience might require more thought. & I don't know how dancers like Facundo and Kely, Dany 'El Flaco' Garcia and Silvina Vals, Myriam Pincen, Rubén de Pompeya, Miguel Balbi, Muma, Osvaldo Buglione, Ricardo Saurez, Pedro Sanchez, Ruben Harymbat, Elba Biscay, like to teach, what they think is important. Possibly we may well know as many 'steps' as we need, and need help rather with things like posture, musicality and finding new ways to combine steps.

My feeling is that what would be useful in any case would be a substantial amount of well-recorded video on YouTube. Of many of these fine older dancers there's a pathetically small amount of video publicly available and most of it poorly filmed in bad light and on what might well be mobile phones. Given that their experience might not be available for much longer I feel this is a potential tragedy. It is technically no problem to download YouTube video and work through it at leisure and in slow motion, which makes it a wonderful learning tool. Having worked through YouTube video like this it would then be great to have an online session with some of the dancers: five or six couples spending regular afternoons on line with several couples of the older dancers and a translator. I think it's an experience everyone could enjoy and benefit from, and the cost wouldn't be great.

I'd certainly jump at the chance to film and upload material any time I'm within reach of any of this generation of dancers. & if there's the interest, I'd be very glad to help set up a video meeting.

La última curda

I can't resist the temptation to link another song from Sur. (Note that the cafe is just closing. That's about as close as we get to being inside it.) I've been really knocked out by the music in the film. Most of what we listen to is the tango of the 30s, 40s, 50s, the golden age, a time of reasonable prosperity and stability in Argentina. I've also listened to music from the last nine years: El Arranque, Orquesta Escuelo Emilio Balcarce, and all the great new groups, Color Tango, Ciudad Baigon, Fernando Fiero, the music of a time in Argentina that's been sometimes difficult but reasonably optimistic, mostly a time of growth: music with great optimism and energy played by musicians who've grown up since the bad days. But I think the music of the 80s and 90s is something else. The musicians were older, had suffered through the dreadful tragedy of oppressive military rule, and moreover had no way of knowing that their music would ever become popular and vital again, let alone so soon. I think you hear all this in these clips from Sur. Great musicality, pouring out of the harshest environment.

I think you also hear it in the CD Pugliese en El Colon, the concert Pugliese and his orchestra, with Goyaneche singing, gave in the opera house on December 26 1985: you hear bitterness, anger, fierce joy, tenderness, defiance... They'd lived through it all, and for all they knew it was the end of tango, and they used the opportunity to say everything. As a group they'd stayed together for so many years they could play personally, and yet together. It's a CD I can't listen to that often: it's not something you can have on in the background.

I'd like to hear more from that time. There can't be that many releases, tango wasn't yet popular. It's not easy because CDs on the internet tend to give the date of the CD re-release, rather than the original recording. The only place to research this is a record shop with a lot of tango. But there is a Goyaneche CD called Vuelvo Al Sur from 1989, which is probably the film soundtrack.

PS: the 1989 album is a Piazolla album, not the film soundtrack. It includes Goyaneche singing Vuelvo al Sur, but that's the only track with Goyaneche, and the only track related to the film.

Tete and Silvia in Paris

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

'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...

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

How they organise things in Buenos Aires...

...when there are visitors who haven't been house-trained.

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.