Les Cigales 2010

(I've renamed this...)

I also hear that the monthly Nijmigen milonga might appeal to some and not to others, particularly if the others prefer things a bit more formal, and if a massive tango love-in isn't your kind of thing...

Les Cigales happens from time to time in my favourite part of France. In fact it's happening this year in late May in Toulon: Les Cigales 2010.

Here's a quick translation of the website.

"In the foyer of the Marin of Toulon, this year, during the four days of the Pentecost weekend, our 'milonguero' get together will happen on a real and huge parquet. It's in a residence that is a hotel and a restaurant just a couple of steps from the centre of Toulon. The prices are ranged to make it accessible to as many of us as possible. Near the shore, easy to get to, and with all commodities on site or nearby, what more could you ask for than to find yourself in the sweet Provencal springtime of the Varois shores? The programme ensures meetings, partaking, respect and the best music, with care to offer you always the best quality. And even if you do become exhausted, a massage space will allow you to restore your feet. One of those rare yearly opportunities to meet with friends coming from afar. In short, what happiness!!!

Programme:

Friday 21 May: Milonga from 21.30 to 2h: DJ melina Sedo
Saturday 22 May: 20 to 21.30h: dinner together. Milonga from 22h to 4h.
Sunday 23: 9.30 to 4am milonga
Monday 24: 15h to 20h: farewell milonga."

There's also an 'apero' for two hours before each milonga: I don't know the word, but I'd guess it's an introductory class, although a DJ is announced for each 'apero'.

All of this can be enjoyed with a four-day pass for €60, or €16 a night for the apero and milonga. Booking online ('Reserver en ligne') essential. It says that a 2 – 3 person room can be booked for around €30 a night, which is very reasonable: €30 a head I'd imagine.

A quick YouTube check for 'Les Cigales' came up with this from last year. Just to get an idea of it.

Looks familiar. Now haven't I posted that before?

Gardel in 1917

I have to confess: I've never listened much to Gardel. I used to avoid vocal tracks, and you don't dance to Gardel or hear him in milongas. The Argentine veneration of Don Carlos passed me by, and I had no idea why Gardel was so important to tango until recently when I connected a few events in 1917 because the information just came together. A friend in Buenos Aires read the post and sent me a link to a radio-on-demand station with a wonderful interview with singer and tango researcher José María (Pepe) Kokubu. & that's when I realised the real significance of 1917. (Thanks, Ali!)

First, I found out more about the song, Mi Noche Triste, Gardel's first great success in 1917. Pascual Contursi (1888 – 1932) was a poet, lyricist, playwrite and amateur singer. Around 1914 he started to write lyrics to pre-existing music, lyrics that introduced sorrow, melancholy, the failure of love, ambition, decadence and injustice. In some cases he even narrated a complete story in a few verses – and so he recreated tango as the sentimental song of Buenos Aires. (Todotango)



The tune of Mi Noche Triste had been published as a piano solo called Lita. Contursi took this melody and renamed it, adding words that define in intense verse the heartbreak for a lost love. I can't find an old version of Lita, but this is a typical tango from 1912 by Juan 'Pacho' Maglio, on YouTube. The rhythm, as of most the old music, is what we'd recognise as milonga. There are quite a few Maglio recordings, and they all sound much like this, jolly music (despite the title!), bandoneon, violin and guitar, I think. & a great photo too.

Pacual Contursi's son, José María Contursi, was asked what he knew about his father and Gardel. He replied: 'Some months after my father's death, I met Gardel at the tearoom Las Violetas on Rivadavia and Medrano, and he told me: "For some years I hadn't seen Pascual because he loved Montevideo, but one day he turned up here, borrowed my guitar and asked me to listen to a tango. I was struck; a tango? He said it belonged to an Uruguayan boy who passed it to him at the Royal. I liked it so much that I quickly learned it. I sang it for my friends who enjoyed it, but I didn't dare sing it in public, until one day, a bit afraid, I sang it at the Esmeralda (now the Teatro Maipo). It was a hit, and then I discovered that Pascual was the author..."' (Todotango)

So on April 9 1917 Gardel made his very first recording, Mi Noche Triste, for the Nacional-Odeon label. Thanks again to YouTube we can listen to it here. The rhythm is still milonga, but the singing is something else altogether. How few musical reputations have been made from something as simple as that first ascending minor chord? & what a fabulous voice! Gardel was either 27 or 30 at the time (depending on where he might have been born) and had worked backstage in theatre and opera most of his life, learning directly from opera singers and from listening. It's recognisably 'bel canto', with the singer assuming freedom with the rhythm, hanging onto notes and running notes together. Mi Noche Triste, a cross between the habanera and the European operatic tradition, with a perfect match between nostalgic lyrics and music, heralded a new era for tango. The lyrics, with a translation, are here. (The 'English version' is much better than the 'singing version'.)(Todotango)

José María Kokubu comments that Gardel's innovation in this recording was to take the words seriously, and to sing them in a 'bel canto' style. A song about heartbreak couldn't be sung as a cheerful ditty. By respecting the emotional content of Contursi's lyrics, Gardel gave birth, according to Kokubu, to the kind of tango we now recognise. As the music had to catch up with the new emotional intensity in the song, the habanera rhythm we call milonga began to settle into the more lyric sound we recognise as tango. & Kokubu comments further that the new sound suggested a new way of walking, of moving, as the rhythm and the emotional charge developed. Milonga might suggest regular movements, but music like this demands the attention of your whole body. So tango as we know it, both in music and in dance, began with Gardel and this recording – and with Contursi's genius for words and music.

Kokubu's book, Mozart y Gardel – La Musica de las Palabras suggests that Mozart was the first European composer to make an expressive whole of music and words, and he elaborates this convincingly in the interview, singing all his musical examples with a clear musical voice. His English is excellent. The interview is here.

Pascual Contursi wrote around 33 tango lyrics, including Cumparsita. He lived the life of the old tango, and is said to have died mad. Succeeding lyricists turned to more sentimental themes. His son, José María Contursi, was a prolific lyricist, known for the words to Milonga de Mis Amores, Gricel, Bajo de un cielo de estrellas and many others. He died in 1972. (Todotango)

And Las Violetas... Las Violetas, where Gardel and Contursi met, probably in 1916, is still there on the corner of Rivadavia and Medrano. It was opened on September 21st 1884 as a coffee house, with gilded chandeliers and Italian marble, and extraordinary French painted-glass windows. (There are photos on the website.) Not only is it an amazing place to visit, but the chocolate mousse there is world-class. With a pot of best Oolong tea. (Thanks again!)

Videos thanks to HAranguiz and el gardeliano.

Nijmegen

A good friend, who has danced all over Europe and Buenos Aires, and London too, and whose judgment I'd trust, has assured me that the best milonga is El Corte in Nijmegen. I checked out the El Corte website a while back, but didn't find it entirely clear, so I went back and studied it more closely. The following paragraphs, I hope, are an accurate summary of what's going on there over the next few months. I hope it will be corrected if I've got something wrong.

On the 1st Saturday of the month people from all over the world come for a lot of dancing and social contacts. The 1st Saturday salon runs from 15.00 till midnight. Than, after a 30 minute break we will continue in the big hall until 3am! Then on Sunday there's a brunch salon in the big hall from 12 till 15.00. (Brunch is served only for people staying overnight in El Corte). Afterwards you can still go to one of the TANtango salons in the region of Arnhem/Nijmegen. Every bead of the 'chain' has its own atmosphere.

This is held monthly until April 2010, and will resume in the autumn.

It is possible to sleep in El Corte if you reserve in advance. If you bring your own bedding, it costs €12.50. Dormitory beds and a room can also be reserved.

April 30 and May 1st

The Orange Salon will be held on Friday April 30, 2010, with a milonga from 20.00 until 02.00. Come dressed in 50% orange and earn 1, 2 or 3 drinks by doing so. This way you can earn back part of your entrance fee. Reservations ONLY through direct sale from El Corte. Availability only for couples or single men at present.

Saturday May 1st 2010: 12:00-19:00 workshops, afternoon snack. 19:30-21:00 dinner, 21:00-01:30 salon with DJ Andreas. €80 (cash presale: €75) includes 1 practica, 2 workshops, snack, dinner, all drinks & salon included. If you want to come to the salon ONLY (limited to 50 persons) it is €15 (all drinks included). Reservations through direct presale in El Corte. Availability for couples or single men only at present.

Nijmegen is in the Netherlands, towards the German border. It could be approached through Amsterdam, but via Brussels is probably more direct. The El Corte website is here, and there is a TANtango page for other milongas in the area. Once again, any corrections, updates, additional information will be welcome.

Tango practice in small spaces

I wasn't sure whether to link this video, not least because partners might start turning up at milongas with sticks, and not need leaders at all, but it might be useful. Note that it can be practised even if you have extremely minimal floor space, but please try it out on a floor somewhere before practising it on your walls.

Wayward children: 2

So after the warm friendly rush of being in a London milonga again, my first real doubts creep in on the floor. I tend to keep to the line of dance, but that's no protection against being charged by a couple, or rather by a leader pushing his partner ahead of him, intent, I guess, on finishing an impressive move, a short choreography they've learned in a class. It means you can never quite relax. The enthusiasm is wonderful, and it's great that so many people enjoy the music so much, but we go to class and are taught 'moves', so we try and perform them. & since moves are taught in open embrace, dancers aren't looking where they're going: they are watching their feet. Unfortunately 'moves' convince people that their teachers are teaching them something. Walking, and getting the very simplest steps right, and musical, isn't always regarded here with the same kind of respect as in Buenos Aires, where people seem to start off by looking for simple ways of dancing well in milongas.

I'd be very content in a London milonga if the floorcraft was better, and fortunately there's more awareness of it now. But I don't think the problems have much to do with failing to learn 'floorcraft': I think the problems are the result of inappropriate teaching, with teaching stage moves and style to people who are going to dance in milongas. Dancing might be a lot more pleasurable and harmonious for everyone if there was more emphasis on simple basics.

Socially, London milongas are enjoyable. The only question I have is whether the freedom of interaction doesn't distract from the dancing. What do we want? Some of my most focussed and intense tandas have been with partners I don't know, and who I wasn't able to sit down and chat with. Intense feelings thrive on barriers, and perhaps it's possible to enjoy more intense, emotionally rich dances if you know that the barriers protect you. We'd probably not be comfortable lining up on opposite sides of the room, but we might get more tandas at that kind of level if we cooled down the social side a bit.

So I still think it would be interesting to experiment with a milonga which is more dance-focussed. Socially it might seem a bit dull, but the quality of the dance might make up for that. (Of course, there's a Friday night event once a month that has made a start in this direction.) & size has a lot of impact on social events. A lot of people means a great deal more activity: a small milonga with just a few dozen people could be a simple way to a quieter and more dance-focussed event, which would be easier and more relaxing to dance in.

Wayward children

Blog postings are sometimes like wayward children: you have a direction in mind for them, and off they go and do something else. I blog to keep track of myself. Writing is that wonderful memory tool that keeps the accounts, records impressions, thoughts, events. Memory rewrites, so a memory may be nothing like the original. A record written at the time can be fallible too, but at least it's of the time.

I'd planned a series of 'debrief' posts to remember my impressions when I got back to London tango from Buenos Aires, about milongas, what it's like dancing again in London, social customs, classes. The second of these, dancing in London, turned into a record of everything I could remember about the instruction I'd received about walking. Not walks, but walking; not cross system, parallel system, with and without the cruzada, but walking, the act of moving a leg and putting a foot to the floor, the sort of thing we all assume we know, but which is actually slightly different when we dance tango because it's not done just to get a solo individual from one place to another. So, it's different.

Milongas, I'll just have to let this wander where it will. London milongas are a real relief after the more rigid conventions of BsAs; no doubt about that. It's a relief to be able to go to the table of a friend who happens not to be the same sex as you, and sit and talk. The strict division of male and female, the segregation, seems archaic and unnecessary, and the lack of ordinary conversation seems to restrict the humour and enjoyment of the event. The London atmosphere seems a lot warmer, friendlier, more open, tolerant. But BsAs milongas are a lot more varied than London milongas, so generalising is a bit pointless. What interested me was the extent to which the 'set and setting' affected the general feel and experience of an evening.

Take the two 'milonguero' venues I know best. Maipu 444 is smallish, and a line of women faces a line of men across the floor. The lighting is excellent: you can clearly see every detail of the dance, and of the faces of people as they face each other during the cortinas. Socially, for me, that's about as intimidating as can be. Nevertheless, when I got dances there (almost always with other visitors, only a couple of times with local partners) I felt very at home on that small, relatively crowded floor. It ought to be intimidating to dance close to so many other couples, many of them older and excellent dancers, but you quickly realise that a) no one is going to make a sudden unexpected move straight at you, or very close to you and b) you always have a little space on each side. And you can see where everyone is! As a result, dancing there is actually relaxing and enjoyable, and the only real problem is getting a partner. Women go there to get dances with the very best male dancers, and the long line of them suggests Chinese whispers passing up and down about the best and the worst on offer. In dark moments they seemed like harpies ready to rend with exquisitely manicured talons any would-be tanguero whose dancing didn't quite meet the highest standards. (But I'm sure they're really very friendly.)

You see visiting women in the line but I don't think they look entirely at ease. They welcome the possibility of some excellent tandas, but the social situation isn't comfortable. A friend, a European woman who's an excellent dancer, emailed me about the 'big-egoed tangueros', and about the gossip and permanent judging among the women of other dancers, which she found unkind and depressingly trivial. (Perhaps we all have our dark moments.)

Salon Canning is very different; huge, rather dull lighting, tables spread around. As usual you get shown to a table, and a woman would never be expected to sit at a table with men she didn't know, although she might well sit at a table about one foot from a table of men she didn't know. Men tend to circulate, looking for partners they know, looking for partners generally. But it's quite discrete and courteous: pressure is never put on a woman to dance. It's still a form of cabeceo, so a woman who's talking to a friend won't have her conversation interrupted by a request or demand for a dance. There's little of the feeling of group scrutiny that I found oppressive at Maipu, because the place is so big. There's a kind of careless anonymity about it, which is very comfortable. The dance floor isn't that big, and gets very crowded, but it still feels like a real privilege to step onto it. Once again, it's enjoyable to dance there because you can be fairly sure there won't be any big, barely controlled movements suddenly close to you. Fairly sure, but not so sure as at Maipu 444. After all, no one can really see what's going on at Canning, and some dancers there aren't particularly good. But it's mostly close embrace, and movements tend to be small.

Eduardo Arolas

An afterthought to the previous post. I knew that tango was recorded from 1910 onwards, and read names of recorded artists – Juan Maglio, Eduardo Arolas, Agustín Bardi, Genaro Expósito – but never thought I'd come across the recordings. But recently I did.

The career of Eduardo Arolas started around 1911. He played guitar and then bandoneon, and became known as the 'bandoneon tiger' at a time when the bandoneon was supplanting the guitar. Here's a (literally) old favourite he recorded in 1913, Lagrimas y sonrisas. 1913: just short of a century ago. It sounds like a quartet: guitar, bandoneon, violin and flute. I love the controlled accelerando. Perhaps these are the performers: that's Arolas with the bandoneon.



By 1917 he had his own orquesta and invited Julio de Caro to join him. He had a head full of tunes and arrangements: with incredible melodic creativity in a few years he wrote over 100 tangos, including Adios Buenos Aires. It's still wonderfully fresh.

[These links open .mp3 tracks in another site, but two of the best antivirus programmes both assure me there are no dangers in the site.]

But his great success didn't last. He was a 'troubled artist': she ran off with his elder brother, and he descended into drink. He died of TB, an alcoholic, in Paris, in 1924. He was just 32.

You have to be patient with the recording quality. Microphones didn't begin to be used until the mid-1920s, the technology that lead quickly to the talkies. Arolas and his band must have played in front of a big horn, as a needle transcribed his music onto a wax disk.

1917

July 1917: Caruso performed in the new Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the vast and beautiful opera house opened just nine years earlier to replace a 50 year-old building.



Gardel had his first big success with Mi noche triste that same year, a hit throughout Latin America, which sold a massive 10,000 copies. He also appeared in his first (silent!) film Flor de Durazno, 'Peach Blossom'. It is said that Caruso and Gardel met: if they did they must have sung together, but sadly there's no recording of the event. Four years later Caruso was dead, aged 48.

Also in 1917, prompted by his friends, an 18-year old Julio de Caro went on stage during a tango performance at the Palais de Glace, borrowed an instrument from one of Firpo's violinists, and was given a standing ovation for his performance. Eduardo Arolas, who led another prominent tango orquesta, offered him a permanent place.

Julio and his brother Francisco, an excellent pianist, had been frequenting tango performances for several years, despite the anger of their father, who had left his post as director of the Conservatory in La Scala, Milano, to emigrate to Buenos Aires, and who disdained popular music. So Julio had to resort to stealth to join Arolas' orchestra, for which he wrote his first tango, Mon beguin. Fortunately, perhaps, later that same year his father threw him out of the house. His brother joined him, and they went on the road with the Arolas orchestra in Argentina and Uruguay. After a US tour with Fresedo, Julio established a sextet with his brother in 1923, with Pedro Laurenz and Pedro Maffia on bandoneons. With this sextet he brought a lyrical sensitivity to tango, and musical sophistication, while retaining the rhythmic intensity. He also collaged whistling, strange groaning, meaningless (I believe) voices and laughter into tango, which still seems extraordinary. I read somewhere that he was a sickly child: I can imagine these were the sounds that represented the outside world to the house-bound child. His instrument was a Stroh violin, a sort of Dizzy Gillespie violin with a horn to project the sound.



The orquesta was invited to France in 1931, where they enjoyed success and high society, performing for the Rothschilds' galas and others. Julio was music director for Las luces de Buenos Aires, starring Gardel, and shot in the Paramount Studios in France. (Gardel had made 11 films in 1930.) Their success continued back in Buenos Aires, where the orquesta was invited to appear at the Teatro Colón in 1935. Gardel died in June that year.

In 1936, the de Caro orquesta presented Evolution of the Tango at the Teatro Opera on Corrientes, which traced tango from the 1880s. It must have been a tango concert, rather than a dance. A surprise visit by the brothers' aging parents to one of these performances led to a family reconciliation.

Julio had the same birthday (in different years) as Gardel, December 11, which is now National Tango Day. He died in 1980. Here he is, interviewed late in life, with his violin and some archival footage.

(Some of this is from Wikepedia: I don't know how accurate it is but I like the story. Someone should make a film of it.) (P.S. Oops, no romantic interest. That won't do at all.)

Image of Teatro Colón thanks to Kakashi. Video thanks to HAranguiz.

Walking 2

'Anonymous' left a comment asking where regular walking classes could be found in London, and I'm afraid I don't know. Walking can be a prelude to a main class: Adrian and Amanda Costa, and Los Ocampo work on it, as does Andreas Wichter, and others no doubt. It's not always a priority for dancers: Tango en el Cielo recalls classes disappearing to the bar during the walking part of a class.

I tried to describe Cacho Dante's walking exercise for a friend, and in some earlier posts I included what I remembered of his advice, so it occurred to me that I could put it all together here. Distance learning, especially at second-hand, isn't the best, but it might be useful, and perhaps better than nothing. It would also be interesting to hear from others with other experience.

Step forwards, right foot flat to the floor so the ball of the foot as much as the heel makes contact, foot pointing straight forwards, and keeping the right leg straight. If the foot points outwards, rather than forwards, it will make a slight change of balance, which might suggest a turn to a follower. If the leg isn't straight at the knee, the body tends to slouch forwards rather than be upright. & one foot should be in a line in front of the other.

Then rock the weight back onto the left foot, so the toes and ball of the right foot lift up, pivoting on the heel. Then transfer weight back to the right foot and do a back kick or two (depends on the music) with the left foot, up and down, and then a lapiz, drawing a quarter circle to the side and round to the back. Then bring the left foot alongside the right foot, ready to start again. As the left foot passes the right ankle there should be an impulse forwards, a push, a slight kick, which emphasises the beat.

(The lapiz is an ornate figure. I don't think Cacho would use it in dance, but it's excellent for balance and for stretching the upper leg, hip muscles and lower back. Useful for followers' back step, too.)

I find the slow weight transfer back and forwards, and the emphasis on the ball of the foot, makes it a good way to develop control and balance. It can be practised anywhere you can walk, really, but perhaps avoid crowded places...

Cacho Dante gets his classes to practice this walk for two or three tangos, and then dance a tango in couples to relax a bit. He treats it as a unisex exercise: I don't recall followers doing it backwards. It's something you can practice daily. As you do it with music (Tanturi is particularly good), it's a good way to learn to listen to the music: in a milonga your attention is divided. Remembering his classes, I like to practise it for two or three tangos, and then walk one freely, thinking how I could dance to it.

I've also been told that the torso should move first, before the feet. You lean forwards, back, or to the side and because this slightly upsets balance, a step will have more urgency. It also tells a follower what is going to happen.

We're lucky that we have tools for distance learning; we can watch Ricardo Vidort's posture, his way of stepping and walking on YouTube, for instance here . We can look at other dancers: Osvaldo and Coco, Tete Rusconi, Pedro Sanchez. They all move quite differently, but the basis of walking, the emphasis of the feet meeting the floor, and the posture, is much the same. Personally I don't see this as a 'style' to be learned. In dancing close embrace, improvised, on a crowded floor, walking in this way emphasises the beat and the leader's intention, so the follower can relax and enjoy dancing. I think it's functional and practical to walk like this. & it does look good.

& we can video ourselves walking, even solo, for comparison!

Mimí Santapá focuses even more closely on the walk and on how, if it's done properly, it leads naturally into figures such as saccadas. Her teaching is incredibly precise. She came to the UK last summer and taught in Sheffield: I'm still amazed that we didn't get to have workshops in London. She told me she has been invited to London this summer, and I very much hope that her visit will happen, and that we can all benefit from her knowledge and experience. Keep an eye open for that name!

PS. Someone else who's way of stepping is really worth looking at is Alberto Dassieu. Here he is with Paulina, his wife.

Andrea Missé and Javier Rodríguez comment

Somewhat sad words from Javier Rodríguez and Andrea Missé: this is also from El Tangauta.

JR: Eight years ago, Europe was the place to be. For a long time tango dance celebrities outside Argentina were to be found in Germany, Italy and France. Today the old continent still offers very good milongas and organises the best festivals. However, the level of the dancers has lowered compared to those in Asia... To dance tango men and women need to feel and think about the partner they dance with. Today there is a lot of hidden resentment, repressed relationships and there is fear. People are attracted by tango because of its embrace, they search for it, but once they come to class they prefer a more open position where each dancer is in his own axis, maintaining his feeling of independence. They want to dance with each other, they are dying to be embraced, they need each other, but they neither show nor accept it. In the end they get tired of it...

AM: Whereas for us to learn how to dance was like a game which we played with brothers, uncles, fathers and mothers: therefore we don't have such a complicated attitude towards it.

Tete on Tango

The current edition of El Tangauta includes some recollections of Tete, and Sylvia recalls some observations from his notebooks.

"Dancing does not start with steps: the music comes first.

What is tango? Tango is like flirtatious talk (chamuyo) between a couple. It is the constant joy, the sensuality and the sexuality that is always latent between a man and a woman: memory, the memories of friends and of many past nights. Past and present.

What is tango? A mystery where everybody knows everything and nobody knows anything.

What is tango? A passion for music as huge and as immense as our own existence. Without it, our lives would not be complete. I think the magnificence of this music is to be able to know it by being able to surrender (entregarse) with all your body and soul, and to know its infinity and to feel where it leads us to be free and full of passion and love.

Tango: thanks to these five letters we come closer to each other and learn to know each other more."

Debrief: walking

Returning from a visit to the city of soft breezes can be strange. Everyone who knows you will be queuing up for a dance, which is nice, but the assumption is that there's going to be some special magic, even an extraordinary array of new 'steps'.

Actually I'm trying to remember and put into practice what I was taught about walking. My attention is largely on the shift of weight, on the foot pushing forwards with an emphasis (as if you were kicking a football, said Pedro Sanchez) and with keeping the stepping leg straight (as Cacho Dante insisted). & then I have Mimí Santapá looking over my shoulder and checking that the transfer of weight leads me into the right position, at the right moment, alongside my partner. Those long explanations in voluble castellano! It was for this that I went to the city, this is what I came back with, my trip was a success. Or will have been, once it all becomes second nature.

Not only that, but also the nature of London dancing has to be contended with. For a month I've watched almost every day, and danced most days, even briefly, amongst people who can dance precisely, musically and often beautifully in small spaces. A few people do this well in London, but most people charge around, trying to practice what they learned, often from stage dancers, because of course tango means charging around doing extravagant steps. They are so intent on these 'steps' that they can hardly look where they're going, and don't care too much if they bump into someone else or dash into the space immediately in front of them. Getting the step right is what matters! & to get the step right they have to watch their feet! But there's nothing malevolent about it, it's all tremendously good-natured and happy: the music alone would see to that. It's wonderful that people enjoy dancing to it, and that's the best starting point.

So I worry about how I put my feet on the floor but after five or six evenings it's all started to settle down again. You get used to the unpredictable use of space around you again. Without thinking, the leading leg starts to go straight forwards with that little push you see in the videos of the best dancers. The body straightens, and everything starts to feel a lot better.

When I started tango I was always impressed by mysterious tales of old milongueros who would spend hours making sure you walked right, and I was told that even experienced dancers would spend time getting their peers to check their walking. Whatever could that mean? Unfortunately, in London, apart from telling stories and emphasising the importance of walking, little time was spent on the activity itself. There is a way of walking in tango, but it probably seems too basic, and teachers worry that if they spend time on it their students will drift off to someone teaching back voleos and side saccadas. But if you get the walk right it emphasises the beat, and I think that makes your lead a lot clearer to your partner, which makes you an easier person to dance with. Mimí Santapá in particular emphasises how attention to walking facilitates everything else. Walk right and the saccadas will come of their own accord: try to learn a saccada and you might struggle to lead it, and your partner might struggle to follow gracefully. Mimí Santapá, Pedro Sanchez and Cacho Dante have an awful lot of experience between them.

En la huella del dolor

I discovered this in late December when I still watched Tete often in one milonga or another, and it's stayed with me. I'm not quite sure why it seemed so special then, or now that he's no longer there. The music, well, it's an amazing piece of Fresedo from 1934, En la huella del dolor ('in the path of sorrow', I think): it's achingly familiar although I can't find it on any current CD. The video quality isn't great, although the colour is saturated and the orange dress shines, and the automatic exposure does a wonderful job of losing the dancers in dramatic darkness and a few moments later obliterating them in a blaze of light, which seems much more expressive than a more regular exposure could ever be, a marvelous technological accident. There are three YouTube videos from this demonstration, but this is the one that grabs me. Why tango? Just watch this.

& the dancing... Well, first off, of course, that's not Sylvia, Tete's regular partner. Rosanna Remon is Argentine, and has taught for many years in Italy, and often accompanied Tete on his yearly visits there. I gather she studied with him in Buenos Aires – although perhaps 'studied' isn't the right word. I met a young dancer at Salon Canning last December who seized every opportunity to dance with Tete, respected him very highly and would ask his advice whenever possible, which he was always happy to give, and I can imagine that Rosanna Remon was like that 20 years ago. Several women who learned from him then are well-known teachers now. It's partly her dancing that makes this video special; she's supple and quick and totally musical, and elegant in this functional milonguero style. & it seems to be a very passionate and intense dance, right from the very start. I don't know about Tete and Rosanna, and I don't know about you, but it gives me goose-pimples. Every time. There again, that music on its own could do that.

I'm not sure how far Tete's exhibitions are a good model for leaders: his musicality, passion and quickfootedness can be admired but hardly copied. But I find a lot I can learn. Since I first watched his videos I've admired the fluency and inventiveness with which he changes from one 'step' into another: there are no distinct steps, just a fluid movement that follows the music. A hard lesson!

North Italy seems a great place for tango: Rosanna Remon, Mirta Tiseyra and Luis Ferraris all moved there from Buenos Aires to teach and dance. & there are other videos of Tete with Rosanna in Italy, but not quite like this one.

&... I can't help adding another Tete video, with a different partner again, and unexpectedly sweet, too. Now that's a word I never thought I'd use of Tete dancing.



Videos thanks to Susheta and turckgrisleda

PS. Jantango informs me that Rosanna Remon did not learn with Tete. However, my point is that there are three reliable teachers of 'milonguero' not so far away in northern Italy.

Why tango?

The question gets asked frequently enough. I think my reasons are obvious enough, but it's interesting to think over them once in a while. Incidentally, I always insist that I dance 'Argentine social tango', which seems to suggest something a bit more straightforward than what's generally seen on TV or the stage. 'Social tango', that is, as against 'unsociable tango'...

Because there's always something awesome about holding an other close, even for the duration of a dance, about that physical proximity, so close that you might just feel the other's heartbeat. The late Ricardo Vidort joked, to reassure reluctant close-embracers, 'Hold your partner close! It is not for life, it's just for a dance!' - suggesting that you don't have to take too seriously what you do in a dance, that a dance is of no real consequence. But perhaps he was being just a little disingenuous. Are life and dance really so remote and opposite as he suggests? '...just for a dance!' As if!

I've heard he also said that 'Tango es una terapia que hace liberar el alma'. So, why tango? Because 'tango is a therapy that liberates the soul'.

The fact is that tango 'allows' us to be close to an other and to enjoy that closeness, and I've come to believe that it's one of the really good human creations. Absorbed into the music 'self' and 'other' cease to mean much for a while, as we move into the unknown, joyfully stepping out without the slightest idea what comes next, or where we're going, or how it will end. This temporary abandoning of the daily need to be a 'self' is where tango can be so liberating. One of the consequences might be that little laugh of pleasure at the end of a good tango: what was that about, where were we? Was that a dance or... was that life?

Being close to someone else is a responsibility too. You shouldn't step carelessly into that intimacy. If you get the balance between dance and life right, you can be carried away and brought back renewed. If you get it wrong, you step into a mess. We need a bit of control to keep life and dance in a balance that we can trust. To be that close means that perhaps we need to be able to rely on a certain distance, a slight restraint. That restraint is partly created by social convention, by the setup of the milonga, and it's also partly internal: yes, we need to remember that this is a dance, it isn't life. In part it's that social formality that gives us the freedom to lose ourselves in an other, and in the music.

I hope I can quote something Tango en el Cielo wrote recently as a comment to my post on 'Dreaming again...' It seems very passionate and clear, and it seems too good to leave at the end of a series of comments. 'I like the formality of the traditional BsAs milongas. The cabeceo system is the best one I know for getting to dance with the partners you want to dance with. I like music to be arranged in tandas so I can choose the right partner for the right music. I like to be in the company of people who respect the music, who care about it, and dance with attention to it. I like to share the floor with people who are respectful of my space and are trying not to bump and kick me. I like to dance with men who have taken care over their grooming and personal hygiene. I like a bit of decorum, a sense of occasion.'

There's always debate about how far we copy the customs of Buenos Aires, customs that grew up far away, and way before any of us were born, and we need to think about these things. But in the end it might just be that those customs still work best to give us the best experience we can have from that balance of life and dance we call tango. Perhaps, after all, we're not really so different from those people far away, and way before we were born.

Tomás Eloy Martínez (July 16, 1934 – January 31, 2010)

I know of Martinez, journalist, novelist and university lecturer, only through his novel The Tango Singer. The narrator, trying to follow a mythic singer whose performances in unexpected places in the city may or may not relate to the stories of Borges, finds himself passing through some of the stories and landscapes, many of them violent, of the history of Argentina from its founding, through the military period and into the 2002 financial crisis, stories upon stories within stories.

He lived through the worst years of Latin American history in exile. There's an interview with him by Maya Jaggi here.

PS. There's a Guardian obituary here.

Antichrist

Antichrist has been widely reviewed and gossiped about, so even people who haven't seen it have probably made their own mental film of it. 'Antichrist' is a medieval theological view of women, a view the woman in the film is researching, but the research starts to take form in the present. It's the debate about nature: good or bad? On that topic the talking fox, disembowelling itself, has the last word(s): 'Chaos reigns'.

Von Trier aimed to make a 'horror' film, but unlike most horror films, which are made for laughs, Antichrist seems seriously intended. Von Trier is author and director: if you ask an author why a character behaves in a certain way the answer is usually that it's because that's what that character did. We accept that authors don't always control their characters, and authors who write scripts are no different.

At the end you discover that it's dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky. At first it seems an unlikely pairing, but the similarities become increasingly apparent. The landscape is wild and overgrown, with water running through it. On another level, Tarkovsky's book on film-making is called Sculpting in Time, and Antichrist is marvellously well put together, sequence by sequence, in time, but although Tarkovsky put his characters into extreme situations, he never made a horror film. Antichrist has a soundtrack that's a work of art in itself, and Von Trier remarks that if you put a soundtrack like that to a Tarkovsky film, it could make it seem to be a horror film.

In ancient Greek drama violence was described but never shown, which seems an intelligent choice. Wonders can be done with silicone, but life-like simulation of violence seems more insidious than the real thing as it's a confusing blurring of the boundaries between real and fantasy. In any case we are perfectly aware that the violence isn't real, so why go to great lengths to make it look literally real? It's a dream-like, visionary film, beautifully filmed, beautifully acted, and violence has its place in it, and it's fitted well into the flow of the whole film. But years ago censorship meant that violence could only be suggested, and imaginatively suggested horror can be more uncertain and more unsettling than silicone reality.

Dreaming again...

I've been dreaming again, about a London milonga this time. A smaller, more intimate venue, big enough for 15 to 20 couples maximum, since fewer than 12 couples probably wouldn't make for a varied and interesting evening. The aim would be a concentration on dance and music, and rather quieter socialising. Sort of a dance club, a dance evening; friends, acquaintances and guests getting together to dance. Probably no class: just turn up and dance.

Preferably there would be space around the dance floor for tables and chairs and it would be great to have a venue with sufficient chairs and tables so everyone has a place for the evening. The floor needn't be big, just big enough to make a line-of-dance possible: several people have observed recently that the quality of dance tends to improve when there's less space available. I know a couple of small milongas in central London, but there's not much space around the floor.

One BsAs custom that probably can't be replicated here is waiter service to all tables, which changes the group dynamic a lot. Bars are a focus for meeting and talking, and when the bar is in the actual hall it can become a place where people gather and therefore group and talk, and consequently become noisier. Without that grouping together within the dance hall, milonga evenings tend to be quieter, more dance-focused. In my ideal London milonga, waiter service could be replaced by bring-your-own, or by a bar in another room. & the lighting should be reasonably good; certainly no dark areas on the dance floor.

Not that I'm against socialising: a milonga at which no one talks to anyone else would be plain daft. I'd just like to see a change of emphasis. It's a cooler, calmer, quieter, more intimate atmosphere I'd like to see, both socially and in the dance, and I think it's something worth aiming for. If anyone's already organising something like that but keeping quiet about it (and why not?) I'd be delighted to be on your guest list at some stage!

An asado with Pedro Sanchez

I've been looking forward to this post. The film celebrates an exceptionally happy and enjoyable tango evening in Buenos Aires, an asado with Pedro Sanchez, organised so we could film him dancing. In fact he seemed much more interested in teaching, but the film of the evening as a whole, and the brief moments of his dance, were so good that it seemed a real waste not to put it all together as a short film. I'm also happy to have put together something resembling a film, rather than just uploading videos of performances.

Moreover, YouTube tells me that I've been uploading clips for two years this month, and that this one is my 50th! Celebrations all round. Hope you enjoy the asado.

PS. The section of Pedro talking actually lasts about 40 minutes, a fascinating story of his life in tango and in Buenos Aires. I hope we can YouTube it, or at least some longer extracts from it, in the not-too-distant future. It's full of stories, and thoughts about tango as dance and music.

Oh, the cabeceo...

There are lots of stories about the cabeceo; the ones that worked, the ones that didn't, the ones that worked but only just, the ones that got away. Here's one of mine.

My friend arrived much later than me, and we were seated at opposite ends of the room. I was looking forward to a dance with her, but she'd been given a seat behind a large gentleman, and most of the time I couldn't even get a glimpse of her. She danced one tanda, then disappeared again. & then there was a cortina and suddenly I could see her smiling at me and nodding. I stood up and walked firmly across the floor.

However, just as I arrived in front of her I became aware that the guy sitting next to me was walking beside me, in the same direction, and I saw a look of consternation on her face. Had it all gone very wrong? My confident walk faltered: I envisaged having to walk straight past her and on to the toilets, as if that had been my confident intention all along. & then, equally suddenly, it was resolved. The girl sitting next to her rose to greet the guy walking next to me. I greeted my friend, and two happy couples took to the floor.

It usually works pretty well, once you get used to it. Perhaps it would be less nerve-racking if we used texts... but you wouldn't want to spend half a tanda fumbling with a mobile!

Rare video

In case anyone has missed it, Tango and Chaos recently updated with an extraordinary and very rare piece of video. It's here. Essential viewing.

Joaquín Amenábar workshops

Thanks to the weather, I arrive towards the end of the first workshop on tango melody. I'd always assumed the structure of tangos was A-B-A, but I find out immediately that they are usually much more complicated. Five sections are not uncommon: A-B-A-C-A, for example.

Then the milonga workshop. Different kinds of traspie: a kind of simple basic rock-step, useful for slow intros, then the 'real' traspie, then a simplified version of it, more like a feint, which serves as traspie when dancing fast milonga. Recognising different parts of the milonga: tendency in milonga to use major and minor keys ('happy' and 'sad') alternately in sections. There are sections of a milonga with the traspie beat/rhythm, and there are sections without it when we dance lisse. Occasionally there are sections where we hear the traspie beat, but the melody is so smooth that we would naturally dance lisse. We walk through a milonga several times to get familiar with the sections in the music and rhythms, then dance it in open embrace with a partner, then again, swapping roles. We study and practice three milongas in this way. The method is practical and well-organised.

Finally, a workshop on Troilo. Joaquin objects to the idea of learning to dance 'to Troilo', 'to D'Arienzo', 'to Di Sarli': 'Which D'Arienzo?' he asks. Each orquesta sounded different at different periods, and they all sound remarkably similar to each other at any one period. He plays a track from 1942 and asks us which orquesta it is. We'd been listening to Troilo and just danced a track of Di Sarli: it could well be Di Sarli. But it's D'Arienzo.

He takes us through phrases that have syncopated rhythms and double-times in three Troilo tangos from a 1936 sextet, an orquesta from the 1940s, and another from the 1950s. With time, the sound becomes bigger and more symphonic: at the same time, the bandoneon, Troilo's bandoneon, becomes more and more flexible, almost ignoring the rhythm behind it. Again, we walk through the rhythms, practicing the phrases with double-tempo beats and syncopation. He shows a simple walking step for the double tempo, but he says he's not there to teach us 'steps'; 'Ask your teachers for that'.

He just wants us to be able to pick out and walk correctly through the rhythms, but that's not easy. In fact, these are subtleties in the music that casual listening, or casual dancing, would probably ignore, but if you can pick them out and respond to them then a simple basic dance can become full of interest, even just walking and using the simplest steps. But it isn't easy. For instance, a phrase with four repetitions of a double-time might recur later, but with five repetitions of the double time instead of four. All of this means paying very careful attention to what's in the music.

We learn the melodic structures of the three Troilo tangos, we walk through each of them several times to familiarise ourselves with the different sections, and with the double-time passages within them, and then dance them once or twice as freely as we wish (or can!). For comparison, we dance to a Di Sarli version of Tinta Verde, one of the three Troilo tangos we've been through, so we can see that, although it is a different version and sounds different, it's recognisably the same piece of music. He draws a clear distinction with jazz: as he says, four jazzmen who've never played together can sit down one evening and play together, while in his experience it takes up to two years to get together a tango orquesta with a repertoire of 17 tangos, by the time the arrangements have been worked out and rehearsed. He talks about the background of the tango in European classical music.

Joaquin is very engaging because of his enthusiasm for both music and dancing, and his English is better than excellent: he can really express his enthusiasm and explain things simply and clearly, and he seems to understand the problems people have with the music and the dance. As a tango musician, a bandoneonista, he is aware of the subtleties of rhythm and melody, and of melodic structure, and he wants to bring this awareness to dancing. I can't help thinking that this is how the dance should be taught: the dance is always a response to the music, so we need to learn to listen to the music and to respond to the melodic and rhythmic structures in it. Just learning steps and dancing them against a background of tango music isn't the same thing: it's an unfortunate concentration on a superficial part of the whole, it's putting the cart before the horse.

Tete said, in his open letter, distributed in the milongas on his birthday four years ago, 'Tango is music, and it doesn’t begin with steps. We shouldn’t commit the mistake of not teaching how to walk different musical rhythms to recognize each orchestra'. It seems that Joaquin is one of the few teachers not making that mistake. I think he teaches exactly what Tete calls for: he teaches how to walk different musical rhythms, with the different orchestras, and also with the same orchestra at different periods.

Spending an afternoon listening with that much attention to the music really opened my ears to a lot that I was hardly aware of (if at all) in the music, to things that I would have ignored or registered simply as a problem in dancing, and to which I wouldn't have known the answer. I could do with a lot more classes like this, and I wish his approach could change completely the way tango is taught.

He talks about a number of other things too: in particular, outside the class, he's very scathing about the DJing in Buenos Aires. A pity we can't get him to DJ an evening in London.

Tete: just a bit more...

Jantango has just posted her response to the recent death of Tete: it consists of a quote from the open letter to the tango community that he wrote four years ago, making very clear his views on tango and how it is taught. She also includes a link to a video of Tete's last performance with Sylvia, at Salon Canning ten days before his death – and also a link to a video of Tete's nephew, Adrian Rusconi, dancing with Mirta Tiseyra at Maipu 444, just a few days ago, just a few days after Tete's death, as a tribute.

I find this extraordinary. I watched this guy dancing several evenings in December without knowing who he was, as I know nothing about Tete's family, and I was really astonished by him. In Europe it's not so unusual to see big guys who are amazingly light and sure on their feet, but watching this I can see the apparently reckless 'sin miedo' energy of Tete, the speed and certainty of foot to carry it off, the same grounded walk, that same delight in dancing, that same incredibly precise musicality. The dance just seems to pour out of him. & when I was watching him on a crowded floor he still managed to dance with a lot of this energy and delight without getting in anyone's way. Sadly it seems to be the only video of him at present, but it's enough to show that tango carries on, even when the older dancers are no longer there.

End of dream

...so I awoke to find myself walking down the steps from a jumbo jet onto the tarmac at Heathrow at 7am. It was bitterly cold and raining. Walked over to a bus, and was shuttled to the back door of Terminal 5, where we had to queue outside in the rain while passports were checked, pretty much at gunpoint: that's just to get into the terminal. Immigration comes later. At baggage reclaim I noticed the flight had come from that city of hot breezes, Buenos Aires. The airport 'welcome' made me feel like I live in a war zone, where I'm guilty until I prove I'm harmless. You don't think about it once you're inside. You used to wave a passport, maybe get it stamped, and that was that. Are we really a country at war, in a secretive, undeclared way, and why? At 7am, after 16 hours in the air, I wondered for a moment if I wouldn't rather live in a country that's not managed to make so many enemies for itself. & Argentina is generally big enough to absorb immigrants, and always has been.

& a bit later, I'm practically snowed in. Not sure if I can get up to London for Joaquín Amenábar's workshops tomorrow at Tango en el Cielo. The early morning trains get canceled, and there's plenty of snow forecast overnight.

Alberto Dassieu

It's been difficult: I contacted both Alberto and Pedro Sanchez before I arrived in the city of hot winds. Pedro invited me to meet him at Maipu 444 on my first Saturday there, and Alberto the following evening at the same place, and after that they continued to run in tandem. I took classes with both of them, as neither teach group classes any more, and I had a very affectionate friendship with both, and both were very kind and helped me a great deal. But I can't write about two giants at the same time, and it distresses me that putting one second seems to imply less importance, which simply isn't the case. I put Pedro first because I had all that video I wanted to share on the web. He's less well known, so it seemed important.

Alberto is much more widely known. Most years he's visited Switzerland, where he's invited by friends to teach, and he's taught on several tours of the US. There are also a number of videos of him, including the vals with Elba Biscay, but I've come to prefer the quieter dances with his wife, Paulina, as they seem more intimate. I can see in them the material he taught me: I couldn't follow all of it properly in his classes, but I was grateful that he went through it with me. He has a website, which sadly is at present only in Spanish (a pity because there are several substantial pieces of writing by him there).

I found him warm, generous and friendly - but I can say that of most of the people I met. His little living room on the fifth floor, with a balcony that has been turned into a miniature garden, where birds would fly in and the breeze brought relief from the summer heat, was always a delightful place to be invited into. Alberto and Paulina, many thanks for your kindness and friendship.

He'll be in San Fransisco and Chicago to teach this spring, and teaching in Switzerland this coming July, I believe.

Irene and Man Yung spent some time with him, and these are their posts about him.

& this is the vals he features on his own website:



Video thanks to Yesimlaturca.

Pedro 'Tete' Rusconi: flown away

I was very sad to hear the news of the death of 'Tete' Rusconi this morning. I first came across him with Sylvia on YouTube about four years ago. I was taking classes with a local dancer who'd studied with Pablo Veron, and feeling very uncomfortable. I got a great lift from the music, it made me want to dance: where did that go when I stumbled through a long choreographed sequence of back saccadas and giros? At that time there were just three videos of Tete and Silvia, dancing at Porteño y Bailarín, and they were a breath of fresh air. There were no long sequences of distinct 'steps': all the steps seemed to flow out of and into each other, and all immediately expressed the energy and onrush of the music. I knew immediately that this was the tango I wanted to dance, it was what the music was asking for. But finding where they were seemed impossible as they didn't have a website; they visited France and the Netherlands several times, and I didn't find out until videos appeared months later on YouTube.

So I went to Buenos Aires in November 2007 in the hope of meeting them. I'd found an email for Sylvia and contacted her when I arrived, and within five minutes I'd organised three private classes with them. My abiding impression is that they did nothing casually in tango. If they demonstrated a step, he would lead it with all the intensity and concentration and musicality that he would give it in a milonga. He could also be very funny: we laughed a lot. The classes weren't easy, but he gave me very important advice about walking, that grounded, musical walk of tango. He seemed to put all his energy into dance as if nothing else mattered, and I think he had a real affection for anyone else who took it seriously. 'Sin pensamiento!' 'Sin miedo!' Without thinking! Without fear! Five months later I went to Paris for their workshops: the best workshops I've ever taken.

There are some extracts from Daniel Tonelli's film about Tete on YouTube. & Irene posted an account of a dance with Tete on her blog just two days ago (towards the end of the page.)

I saw him in Buenos Aires again this midwinter: the same Tete, wandering round the milongas looking a bit disorganised until suddenly he was deep in a dance, that same sure footwork, those same smooth, muscular, grounded turns. & that's my last memory of him, about two weeks ago. There will be a space in the milongas where he would have been, and no one else was like that. There are many great dancers, but Tete was somehow larger than life.

Alberto Podestá sings at Porteño y Bailarín 2

Another section of Alberto Podestá's performance at Porteño y Bailarín, Buenos Aires, 2009.

Alberto Podestá sings at Porteño y Bailarín

When I was in Buenos Aires last year I heard that Alberto Podestá was to sing at Porteño y Bailarín. This amazed me: the singer, who sang with Miguel Caló, Carlos Di Sarli, Pedro Laurenz, Francini-Pontier, was still alive? I had listened to Podestá sing Paisaje and Recién with Laurenz, and Bajo un cielo de estrellas with Caló, over and over again. It was just the best tango music ever.

But I was leaving the morning of the day (or rather night) that Podestá was to sing. So there I was, six miles up over mid-Atlantic as he sang at Porteño y Bailarín. He was due to sing in London with the Cafe de los Maestros last summer, but didn't make it to the hall: he is 84. So I was delighted to hear that he was to sing at Porteño y Bailarín late in December. The place was packed, and he seemed to love being there, singing for us. I'd expected three numbers and a round of applause, but he sang on and on, taking requests from the audience. His physical voice is no longer wonderful, but his spirit and musicianship still drive him, and the emotional intensity of his singing was extraordinary.

There's a translation of an interview with him here. And it's well worth looking at this, a well-lit video of Podestá singing, with subtitles, which really makes good sense of what you are hearing and watching. Here he is in December.

Pedro Sanchez: vals and milonga

These are the last of the videos of Pedro Sanchez demonstrating his relaxed, musical tango. The vals is below: there are also two milongas, milonga 2 and milonga 3. Every time we recorded a vals, a bird, sounding to UK ears like a blackbird, starts singing at the other end of the patio!

Pedro Sanchez: milonga and tango

Something worrying...

I uploaded the Pedro Sanchez vals above (i.e., below), and almost immediately got an email from YouTube to tell me that the music track is 'owned or licensed by WMG'. They tell me that 'for the time being' I needn't do anything. They have added a link to iTunes, where you can purchase the track as a download.

I thought this had happened because I identified the music in the writing, so I changed the wording, but then I noticed that the same thing has happened to another tango I uploaded two years ago. I didn't know what the music was, so I didn't identify it in writing but it's been spotted, so now I know what the track is, and which orquesta. Their software obviously crawls around YouTube's vast servers, emitting unpleasant odours every time it recognises a piece of music. I've noticed elsewhere that music tracks have simply been removed from videos because they violate copyright, so I guess I'm lucky '...for the time being': they can change their policy.

If all the owners of music start to do this we have a really serious problem. I've learned a great deal from watching tango on YouTube, and enjoyed fragments of a lot of other dance, but a dance without music, particularly an improvised tango, is close to meaningless. The reaction seems particularly harsh when the music is not taken digitally from a CD, but is recorded from a loudspeaker in another room, with the sounds of traffic, wind, birds and a sizzling barbecue mixed in. The answer, I guess: YouTube Downloader is simple and free, and there's a Mac version too.

I hope this doesn't go too far, as almost anything I watch on YouTube probably involves copyright material, often in low quality and in bits and pieces, but useful. (I tend not to watch home-made videos of teenage birthday parties, or of how to take a clock apart.) If anyone else has had problems with this, or knows anything about it, I'd be interested to hear. I believe it's very recent, so we may be at the beginning of a big change in the way we can use YouTube. It would be very sad if it reverts to being a storage for home-made videos of how to dismantle clocks.

Pedro Sanchez

I first heard about Pedro from Tina's site while she was living in Buenos Aires and working with him as a teaching assistant. There were just a couple of videos on YouTube. I gathered he was highly regarded as a teacher and milonguero, but the videos didn't seem that clear. He didn't seem to do much – but it was obvious that he kept his partners moving, and looking elegant. I planned a return visit to the city of soft breezes, and he was high on the list of dancers who teach that I hoped to meet.

Pedro no longer gives public classes and Tina had left by the time I arrived, but she gave me a contact email. Sure, Pedro would be glad to meet me at a milonga, which was appropriate, and we'd take it from there. So I met up with him and Allison, who is now his teaching assistant, at Cachirulo, the Saturday-night home of the best in milonguero, at Maipu 444, just two days after I arrived. I found him friendly and immensely good-natured, and subsequently took private classes with him. He himself asked if I had a video camera as he said I would benefit from watching myself dance: something I would have asked for if he hadn't suggested it first. From there it was natural for me to point out that there were very few videos of him on the web, and to ask if we could make more. The studio was small, so he suggested we meet for an 'asado' on the patio at his home. There we filmed a number of dances, and a long interview (actually a monologue!) about his life in tango. He talks as fluently and as clearly as he dances. It was a very happy evening, and a real privilege to spend a few hours with someone who's spent much of his spare time for nearly 60 years in tango. I won't say more about him for now, as the interview is exceptionally interesting, and I'll put it on YouTube as soon as we get subtitles written.

Here are two videos of him, dancing a vals and a milonga with Allison. There are three or four more videos of dance, and a demonstration of milonga, which I'll upload over the next few days. Our evening also resulted in a number of fragments of video, which I'm editing into a short film, Asado with Pedro Sanchez. Once again, it will be on YouTube as soon as we get the subtitles together, and I'll embed it here.

I'm really pleased to be able to watch such an elegant, effortless and musical tango so clearly, a tango that fits the music and doesn't distract from it, that can be enjoyed on the most crowded floor, and I hope others will enjoy it and find it useful. Few people can dance like this. It's distinctive, beautiful and relaxed. 'Take it easy!' he says over and over. 'Listen to the music!'

Some milongas: Confiteria Ideal

Confiteria Ideal should be one of the truly wonderful milongas of Buenos Aires. You can practically scrape tango off the old mirrors and hardwood panelling. Everything about it (even the waiters!) seems to predate the golden age. And yet...

The BBC did a marvellous job in creating the image of Ideal as a place where all the great milongeros and milongueras hang out, where people from all walks of life turn up just to dance. I guess it might have been like that six or seven years ago, although I doubt it, and it's definitely not like that these days. It's very sad for this wonderful old building to have suffered such a terminal tango decline. At El Arranque the ordinary people, good dancers and OK dancers, go to dance tango. It's a serious milonga. Relatively few people turn up at the daytime milongas at Ideal, and to judge by a recent afternoon, very few of them are serious dancers. The night-time milongas may well be better, as I remember from last year. In particular, Friday night is when Unitango play, so at least there's live music.

But the sparsely attended daytime milongas have their uses. Go with a partner, and you've got plenty of room. You can just walk! Something hardly possible in the downtown milongas. You just have to avoid the occasional couple drifting round the floor the wrong way. & in particular, we had to avoid the 'pareja' doing high boleos in platforms. It was that eccentric. But if your partner happens to enjoy people-watching, then you have some innocent entertainment in front of you too. & the music is OK, although they didn't play a single vals in over two hours. The floor is hard and slightly uneven, but tiled floors aren't unusual here. & if you are very lucky you might catch a waiter's eye and be able to order a coffee or a bottle of water. All in all, what a strange place!

Some Buildings

Downtown architecture: I lived just up the road. Too bad the beautiful ornate pink minaret on the roof gets lost in the view of the whole.



You never know what you're going to see next. This bit of Art Nouveau Plus reminded me of Khajuraho, with celestial nymphs hanging off the facade.



The marvelous opera house. Finished at the start of the 20th century, where Caruso performed. One of the biggest and most beautiful in the world, with one of the best accoustics. Soon to re-open. Sorry, the sun doesn't shine every day here.



The Ministry of Justice? The Foreign Office? The local equivalent of the V&A? Actually, the municipal waterworks. & it's vast: this is just the entrance. The building takes a whole block, with never a dull moment. I can only guess that it houses a turbine room that makes Tate Modern look like a toy, as it must pump water from the ground, filter it and pump it throughout the city under pressure, as there's no high ground in pancake land to feed water by gravity. Built in the 1880s. If you've read Tomás Eloy Martínez' novel The Tango Singer, you'll remember a description of the interior. I think it's possible to visit... But that will have to wait.

With feet on the ground

This image always astonishes me, not only for what it shows, but because of where it is. It shows a female figure, well over life-size, her hands tied behind her back, her pants/skirt around her ankles, serving as the support for a giant pair of feet, presumably male, bearing down on her shoulders. It's called 'Con los pies en la tierra', ('With feet on the ground'). It is very prominent, permanently installed in an arch in the centre of the big opulent downtown shopping mall, the Gallerias Pacifico, surrounded by Tiffany's, Polo Ralph Lauren, Christian Dior, Lacoste, Hugo Boss... The Gallerias, which also houses the four extensive galleries of the Jorge Borges Cultural Centre, also has a basement, part of which was used by the military as a detention and torture centre in the late 1970s.

The painting is by Carlos Alonso, one of the most respected Argentine artists. He was in London in the early 1960s, and his drawings and paintings remind me a bit of the work of the late R.B. Kitaj. In 1976, at the beginning of the 'proceseo', his daughter was among the 'disappeared', and he fled into exile in Europe for some years.

It's a very powerful image, with the intensity and imagination of a vision by William Blake. It doesn't describe a moment, or an event, or a temporary, superficial appearance: rather, it sums up a lot of history, experience, psychology, in a terrifying and very moving image. The message is direct: it's a warning to all who see it. & it's beautifully, vigorously painted, very solid. I don't know the history of how it came to be there: I assume there's an explicit link with the missing daughter and the previous use of the building.

& it occurs to me that there's probably not a shopping shopping mall in the UK that would tolerate an image like this under any circumstances. The traders and the local council would see to that. Perhaps the fact that it is so prominent here suggests the extent to which Argentina still sees itself as a European country with an enlightened, liberal attitude to creativity, and a respect for the European tradition, it's own tradition, of the arts. Perhaps it's a country perpetually in exile. & it worries me that this liberal attitude is threatened in the UK, if not elsewhere. We need warnings, and we have to trust creative minds to deliver them.

Some milongas: Salon Canning

Salon Canning is one enormous room. I don't know why it feels like a room: normally a room this big would be a hall. Perhaps because it's square, and halls tend to be rectangular, but probably because it really looks like a room scaled up at least 10 times: it has room-like proportions.

In the centre of this vast room is a beautiful polished hardwood parquet floor. Considering the size of the room it's not that big; I'd guess it's at most six metres square, surrounded by tables and chairs. Walking into Canning feels great because of the space, and standing on that dance floor in the middle of that room is an experience in itself.

As usual with these venues there's a different milonga every night of the week with a different name and run by different organisers, but it would be hard to differentiate between them. I've always visited on Friday nights. The pre-milonga class on Friday is taught by Ana Maria Schapira, and if she's away teaching in Europe, Alicia Pons takes over. They teach really useful, basic 'milonguero' close-hold tango. Both speak some English and have teaching assistants who will help.

Seating is by tables: men and women who don't know each other won't be sat at the same table, although they might be seated at adjacent tables. (You are always shown to a table in this part of the world, although if you arrive early for the class you can choose between the tables that aren't booked.) Since the effective cabeceo area is less than a quarter of the entire space, it's normal for guys to wander around, looking for friends or for glances in their direction. This occasionally (I'm told) does get a bit intrusive, and because of the size of the venue it's harder to pick out and contact the really good dancers. Once again, visiting guys might find it hard to make eye-contact, although visiting ladies might not find it in short supply. &, I'm told, they might find the quality of dancing variable. Best to go with a group of friends.

It's a real treat when you do get onto that floor. The dancing is generally good. You can usually assume that you can take a step, perhaps rather a small one, in any direction without encountering any obstacle, which means you can dance quite freely, albeit on a small scale. Once again, the 'second lane' is elusive: there's the line of dance and then there's everyone else inside it. The line of dance gets crowded and slow-moving, but it's worth persevering with a 'lap of honour': it's a test of skill to keep turning on the spot and inching forwards. At the start of a tanda one evening I turned and was startled to find, hardly a foot behind us, an old couple, Pocho and Nelly. There was another couple hardly a foot in front of us. His eye caught mine: it seemed to say 'You're doing fine! Just don't come any closer.' Here they are, the whole beautiful floor at Canning to themselves.



There's a good article and some excellent photos here. But I'm not sure when Natalie Laruccia found it this empty.

Video thanks to 2xtango.

Cacho Dante

Cacho teaches 'milonguero' tango. He's easily accessible at his group classes, which are normally three nights a week, shrinking to a single class every week in December, because of the holidays. He has a website. Under 'Recently' there are several interviews/pieces of writing, most with an English translation.

Cacho's classes feel more like supervised practicas, but they are still serous hard work. They start with a good period of social dancing, then various kinds of walking. He watches carefully, suggests corrections. He immediately came over to me and said: 'No, when you step forwards you must step with a straight leg. & don't turn your foot out when you walk straight. It will turn your balance out as if you are leading a turn.' He came back a few moments later and repeated: no, you must step with a straight leg.

It was news to me that I wasn't stepping forwards with a straight leg, but I found it awkward to do, so there was an obvious change. Watching myself over the next few days I realised that what he said was absolutely true, that I habitually walk with slightly bent knees, that this is in effect a slouching walk that throws forwards my shoulders. In tango, that means I lead not from the heart, the centre of the chest, but more from the shoulders, whereas hitting the ground with a straight leg pushes you upright. There's something really useful there: if people keep telling you your posture isn't right, simply straightening your back might not do the trick. You might need to look at how you are walking. Teachers often say: 'Walk as you walk in the street'. But some of us walk badly, so that advice isn't much use. Dancing since that class, I've found that the straight leg makes the dance feel a lot more confident. Of course, knees need to be soft a lot of the time, particularly in turns, but walking needs to be firm.

After the walking, more social dancing, then he teaches a few steps, and there's dancing concentrated on these. To end with, the last two or three tandas are free dance. It's as low key as it sounds, relaxed and useful. & he keeps a careful eye on it all, and makes suggestions when required. Interestingly, his classes seem to attract younger local dancers, much younger than at other tango classes, and it's a friendly group. Of course the classes are in castellano. & be prepared for the embrace: it's instant, trusting and whole-hearted. There's nothing hesitant or uncertain about it, and it feels really comfortable. If you want to know how it looks, try 0:00 to 0:02 of this video. Go for it!

So how does Cacho walk? It's a pity there's only one video of him on the whole of YouTube, thanks to altangobonn. I hope I can post two brief extracts. I wanted to slow down the first one, but don't have my usual editing software. Anyway, it's just a slow walk. &, yes, his legs and his back are straight.



The second extract shows Cacho in movement. His footwork seems astonishingly precise and clear.



I've watched him in milongas, and there's a kind of pared-down neatness about his lead. I keep wanting to use the word 'honest' about the tango I like: there's no pretense about it, no superfluous gesture. It feels like that in his class. It feels as if anything over-elaborate, showy, would be out of place. The dance in his classes is precise and simple, and very musical. From these classes, there must be a stream of wonderful new dancers in the milongas.

I was hoping to have a chance to film him, but time is short. I hope someone else will add to that single video.

Some milongas: Porteño y Bailarin

Porteño y Bailarin was a great favourite last time I visited the city of cool breezes. The place was heaving with excellent dancers: it was party time twice a week, the two floors were both packed, and dancers like 'El Flaco' Dany and his brother were regulars. Unfortunately it seems to have quietened down a bit, although the brothers are still often there, but it does mean that there's more room to dance. It always has a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, and there are usually more than a few extranjeros there, many of them excellent dancers. Carlos Stasi, the organizador is as friendly and welcoming as ever. It's good to watch him on the floor, he teaches, and he speaks English well.

I arrived with a friend I'd met at a class, and we weren't certain whether to sit together: it wouldn't have been right if she'd had to dance with me all evening! In the end there wasn't much choice, and we sat together, and danced a tanda, but after that she had no problem in getting dances with some of the older local men. She was very appreciative of the dances, and it goes without saying that she was treated with real courtesy, and was delighted to meet some of those older guys who just sit quietly at the side of the floor, waiting for the music they like and a partner to dance to it with. Sadly, I didn't get the same opportunity with porteñas, but there weren't a huge number of people there in the first place: it was a lot easier last year when it was crowded. I don't think it's ever easy for visiting males to get dances, except with other visitors, but it's a privilege and a learning opportunity to sit and watch how some some of the older generation dance, how they move with the music and use the available space.

All in all, a good night out, and I always look forward to going back there.

Mariano 'Chicho' Frumboli 'fesses up...

There's a fascinating interview with the great icon of what gets called the 'nuevo movement' in the most recent issue of El Tanguata. I can't link the article itself, but it's easy to go to the site, create a login and then download ('descargar') the .pdf: look for Edición Nro 182. He's talking to Milena Plebs, and there's an English translation.

He says that we are at the beginning of a powerful era of tango because so many people are now involved, but that something has been lost. He studied with 'the last great milongueros', but was crazy about creating and as a result he says he missed something, that he '...lost the way to be able to pass on the tango essence'. Consequently, '...there are a lot of people who don't understand or know what the real essence of this dance is', the way it expresses the entire body, the weight, density and importance of the dance. He said that there used to be a respect for the floor, that he himself didn't dare take to the floor for the first five months: he just watched. Now he finds that people dance to be seen from the outside, and he takes total responsibility for this, and says that other colleagues should as well. He wishes that 'the shared intensity, in the soul' of tango should return, that it should be felt inside. 'The essence of tango is the embrace and the person you are dancing with.'

I don't know who his masters were, but I'd guess there are still a good many dancers of Chicho's age and older who would have known them too, and who wouldn't have been distracted by same urge to be creative. If there are, they might not teach, aren't household names around the world, probably live quietly, and just turn up and dance at milongas as much as they can. They may not teach, but I believe you can learn a great deal by watching, and by meeting them socially, even briefly, if you get the chance. ('Rubbing shoulders' with them is what you try not to do, at least on the dance floor!) &, yes, it might take at least five months...