The programme for the Pina Bausch company in London, June 2012, is here. You can book there as well. Book, now, for June 2012? Yes!
Putting on 10 major productions in one month... It's a company that doesn't believe in half measures.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Emilio Balcarce 1918 - 2011
I've enjoyed the documentary Si sos brujo very greatly, and in particular the modest, enthusiastic and very youthful presence of Emilio Balcarce, so I was very saddened to read this in the most recent edition Nº 207 of Tito Palumbo's B.A. TANGO. I hope I can quote it:
Emilio Balcarce (b. Emilio Juan Sitano) on January 19, at the age of 92. Composer, violinist, bandoneonista, arranger and conductor. In 1939 and then in 1947 he conducted the orquesta that had Alberto Marino as singer. Later, he was part of the Edgardo Donato, Luis Moresco and Manuel Buzón orquestas. In 1949 he organised an orquesta that accompanied Alberto Castillo. Later that year he joined the orquesta of Osvaldo Pugliese, where he stayed for almost 20 years until the separation of a group of a group of musicians that formed the Sexteto Tango in 1968. He composed La bordona, Si sos brujo, Bien compadre, Mi lejana Buenos Aires, Qué habrá sido de Lucía, among others. He travelled far, in America, Europe and Asia. Since 2000 he dedicated himself to teaching as director of the Orquesta Escuela de Tango de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, which was renamed in his honour in 2007 when he retired, and it was in this capacity that he took part in the documentary, Si sos brujo. He also took part in the show and film, Café de los Maestros.
Emilio Balcarce (b. Emilio Juan Sitano) on January 19, at the age of 92. Composer, violinist, bandoneonista, arranger and conductor. In 1939 and then in 1947 he conducted the orquesta that had Alberto Marino as singer. Later, he was part of the Edgardo Donato, Luis Moresco and Manuel Buzón orquestas. In 1949 he organised an orquesta that accompanied Alberto Castillo. Later that year he joined the orquesta of Osvaldo Pugliese, where he stayed for almost 20 years until the separation of a group of a group of musicians that formed the Sexteto Tango in 1968. He composed La bordona, Si sos brujo, Bien compadre, Mi lejana Buenos Aires, Qué habrá sido de Lucía, among others. He travelled far, in America, Europe and Asia. Since 2000 he dedicated himself to teaching as director of the Orquesta Escuela de Tango de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, which was renamed in his honour in 2007 when he retired, and it was in this capacity that he took part in the documentary, Si sos brujo. He also took part in the show and film, Café de los Maestros.
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Change roles, please!
I danced recently with a young woman from Buenos Aires who started tango just last summer, and spoke excellent English. An interesting perspective on learning, from someone who came to it recently, but in that dream place where the milongas never cease. Reminded me that someone challenged me a while back to come up with a better format for classes. My only qualification is that I have have survived a wide range of them...
The obvious candidate is traditional: guys learn by dancing with each other. I'm not sure there's any reason why that should be a perfect model for us: social circumstances change. This has been tried in London: I've been to workshops where it was men-only for the first hour, and then the women came in for the second hour. It didn't really feel as if worked that well.
People often complain about 'steps', but we can't avoid them. Even walking involves steps! Tete taught 'steps', so did Ricardo Vidort. It's how they are taught that matters. What happens in most mass classes is that cause and effect get separated. Typically, the male teacher takes the men to learn the men's role, while the female teacher teaches the women their role. In other words, the cause, the lead, is separated from the effect, since the effect is learned separately. This works well in big classes since the results are obvious during the class. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate into good dancing with other partners in milongas. Leaders struggle to repeat choreographies they've learned in classes and fail to take account of other dancers around them.
Of course, tango can be taught in small fragments, steps, which can be strung together in classes, much as they would be strung together in a milonga. But one way of reconnecting cause and effect might be for the teachers, around half way through the class, to say 'Change roles, please!' instead of 'Change partners please!' Five or 10 minutes of aimiable chaos might ensue, but that doesn't necessarily harm a class, and it's just possible that a new mutual understanding of how tango can work might arise. Women are often curious about the lead, without wanting to be leaders, and it's always been said that you dance better if you understand the other half.
The obvious candidate is traditional: guys learn by dancing with each other. I'm not sure there's any reason why that should be a perfect model for us: social circumstances change. This has been tried in London: I've been to workshops where it was men-only for the first hour, and then the women came in for the second hour. It didn't really feel as if worked that well.
People often complain about 'steps', but we can't avoid them. Even walking involves steps! Tete taught 'steps', so did Ricardo Vidort. It's how they are taught that matters. What happens in most mass classes is that cause and effect get separated. Typically, the male teacher takes the men to learn the men's role, while the female teacher teaches the women their role. In other words, the cause, the lead, is separated from the effect, since the effect is learned separately. This works well in big classes since the results are obvious during the class. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate into good dancing with other partners in milongas. Leaders struggle to repeat choreographies they've learned in classes and fail to take account of other dancers around them.
Of course, tango can be taught in small fragments, steps, which can be strung together in classes, much as they would be strung together in a milonga. But one way of reconnecting cause and effect might be for the teachers, around half way through the class, to say 'Change roles, please!' instead of 'Change partners please!' Five or 10 minutes of aimiable chaos might ensue, but that doesn't necessarily harm a class, and it's just possible that a new mutual understanding of how tango can work might arise. Women are often curious about the lead, without wanting to be leaders, and it's always been said that you dance better if you understand the other half.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Osvaldo Centeno again
I admit that the connection between some rather North-American-sounding books on the virtues of hard work, and Osvaldo Centeno dancing tango were fairly tenuous, although I've no doubt that he and many others did get through 10,000 hours pretty quickly: that's four or five milongas a week for seven years at most. Enjoyment and a passion for tango is the key, rather than wanting to be 'good at it' and, as Ms.H points out, one can dance perfectly well with fewer hours. However, another video of Osvaldo has just appeared from Cachirulo. I don't think anyone is likely to dance like this without quite a few years at milongas.
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Osvaldo Centeno and 10,000 hours
Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success suggests that 10,000 hours' practice is the key to success in any field; 20 hours a week for 10 years. Matthew Syed's book, Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice reinforces this. If you tell kids, or any students, that they are 'talented' you suggest they don't need to work hard. But of course, no one works hard if they're not enthusiastic. We often ask 'How long have you danced tango?' where 'How many hours have you clocked up, to date?' might be more appropriate. At a rough estimate, I've got about 6,000 hours ahead of me: being a tango commuter limits the hours available.
It's strange to think of the 'old milongueros' as teenagers, desperate to reach 18 so that they could get into the milongas and dance the smooth, perhaps revolutionary dance of 60 years ago, milonguero/salon. Enthusiastic, they must have passed 10,000 hours by their early 20s. One of these is Osvaldo Centeno, the latest in Practimilonguero's great series of interviews and dances. His account of how he learnt the cabeceo is wonderful, as is his description of the tango police patrolling the dance floor and throwing out anyone aged under 18: it's great that the interviews are now longer and give time for these insights. Curious that so many 'milongueros' were born around 1935. & so many of them define tango as 'pasión': I wonder if this means extreme enthusiasm, which we express by the rather negative word, 'addiction'.
Osvaldo Centeno's dance is worlds away from the cloned elegance of too many younger dancers and teachers. His Troilo is a revelation; I wonder if Troilo is an acid test for tangueros. Like the dance of all his generation, it's totally individual, reflecting his own nature, as well as the circumstances he learned and danced in. I could recognise him immediately on a dance floor by the way he moves. 10,000 hours, and no shortcuts.
It's strange to think of the 'old milongueros' as teenagers, desperate to reach 18 so that they could get into the milongas and dance the smooth, perhaps revolutionary dance of 60 years ago, milonguero/salon. Enthusiastic, they must have passed 10,000 hours by their early 20s. One of these is Osvaldo Centeno, the latest in Practimilonguero's great series of interviews and dances. His account of how he learnt the cabeceo is wonderful, as is his description of the tango police patrolling the dance floor and throwing out anyone aged under 18: it's great that the interviews are now longer and give time for these insights. Curious that so many 'milongueros' were born around 1935. & so many of them define tango as 'pasión': I wonder if this means extreme enthusiasm, which we express by the rather negative word, 'addiction'.
Osvaldo Centeno's dance is worlds away from the cloned elegance of too many younger dancers and teachers. His Troilo is a revelation; I wonder if Troilo is an acid test for tangueros. Like the dance of all his generation, it's totally individual, reflecting his own nature, as well as the circumstances he learned and danced in. I could recognise him immediately on a dance floor by the way he moves. 10,000 hours, and no shortcuts.
Saturday, 7 May 2011
Pina
Back in the mid-1980s, when UK TV still showed contemporary dance, I watched Cafe Muller, fascinated, on a small, black-and-white TV; Pina Bausch dancing with those extraordinarily expressive arms. It seemed too 'angst-focused', the dancers throwing themselves at the walls, the floor, the furniture and each other, but it imprinted itself irrevocably on my memory. I tried to book twice for Bausch company performances at Sadlers Wells, always too late to get a seat, even six weeks before a performance.
3D is a revelation in Pina. Dance is physical, Pina Bausch dance is particularly physical, and 3D conveys physicality, the roundness of the body, and the space surrounding it. You get even more than the best seat, since the camera follows performers around onstage. Sometimes it's filmed in the theatre: extracts from Rite of Spring are featured at the start, and the impact of moving bodies, in both tight and open groups, really is palpable. Elsewhere, the industrial landscape of Wuppertal is the background, including the wonderful, futuristic overhead railway, and 3D brings out the vulnerability, strength, weakness, sexiness, grace, elegance, power of the human body against these backgrounds.
Dancers weren't Pina Bausch's marionettes. Her work seems to have come from questioning and challenging them, as much from them as from her; from their desires, fears, joys, loves, hatreds, too, and from their intelligence and humour and creativity. We meet them close up: they talk about her, to her, they remember her, they create brief performances for her. 'She told us to keep on searching. & so you keep on searching, never knowing what you are looking for, or whether you are on the right track.'
She met 'Tete' Rusconi in BsAs, and immediately found herself dancing tango. He and Silvia were invited to Wuppertal, and added their experience of dance to a new production. There's nothing of this in Pina but there is one tango, La Cachilla, written and performed (it says) by Eduardo Arolas, but the recording sounds more recent, and I've been unable to find an Arolas recording of it. But the dance isn't tango: it's a man, dressed in a ballerina's dress, trying to perform a ballerina's step and repeatedly falling over, while being pushed along a dark, graffiti-scrawled train tunnel on a flat railway bogie. It's funny, absurd, and touching, too, as is the dance of the hippo monster and the ballerina in mid-river...
'I'm not interested in how people move but in what moves them' she said. You could think of that in connection with tango, too, couldn't you?
Extracts from Kontakthof, meeting place, the dance hall, are also featured, dramatising the rituals of the social dance, as well as the many layers of fears, desires and fantasies beneath it; written for performance by two 'teams' of ordinary people, teenagers and over-65s. Pina also shows extracts from Vollmond (Full Moon) with the astonishing rainstorm, and some of the most ecstatic dancing I've ever seen. It really is staggering to watch dance at this level, at this intensity, from so close.
To some degree I judge work by the extent to which it changes the way I see the world I emerge into: children and parents moving in the streets, the spaces you walk through, even the pigeons strutting and the airplanes overhead, it all seemed part of a dance, because her dance doesn't seem to be some world apart, but it is in us, it's our own fears and love.
The website for Pina with a (2D) trailer is here. There will be a Pina Bausch retrospective in London in June and July 2012 as a highlight of the Cultural Olympiad preceding the 2012 Olympic Games.
Saturday, 30 April 2011
Carlos Di Sarli Instrumental 1928–1931
A fascinating CD has been released: I've just come across it in Spotify and it seems to have been released just two days ago on April 28. It's fascinating because it's a collection of some of Di Sarli's first recordings from 1928 to 1931 – with a sextet. (Given the date, it's strange that the CD cover photo appears to show Di Sarli in later years.)
I know I'm not the only one to love dancing to Di Sarli, while finding I don't really want to listen to his music while off the dance floor. The emotional grandeur of it can seem excessive when you're not dancing. But the early sextet is a much more spare, more reflective music, reminiscent of early Fresedo. It's mainly orchestral: the sound of the human voice comes as a bit of a surprise in the last track.
I remember Pedro Sanchez being very enthusiastic about a CD he had of Di Sarli, which I understood as being late Di Sarli with a quartet. I've never come across it elsewhere, but it sounded a bit like this sextet. I hope to catch up with Pedro later this year, but if anyone knows what it might be, do let me know. Until then, Carlos Di Sarli Instrumental 1928–1931 (20 Grandes Exitos) in the Tango Collection is going to get a lot of listening to. Hopefully it'll turn up in a milonga soon.
Available if you're within reach of Spotify here. On Amazon it's here.
I know I'm not the only one to love dancing to Di Sarli, while finding I don't really want to listen to his music while off the dance floor. The emotional grandeur of it can seem excessive when you're not dancing. But the early sextet is a much more spare, more reflective music, reminiscent of early Fresedo. It's mainly orchestral: the sound of the human voice comes as a bit of a surprise in the last track.
I remember Pedro Sanchez being very enthusiastic about a CD he had of Di Sarli, which I understood as being late Di Sarli with a quartet. I've never come across it elsewhere, but it sounded a bit like this sextet. I hope to catch up with Pedro later this year, but if anyone knows what it might be, do let me know. Until then, Carlos Di Sarli Instrumental 1928–1931 (20 Grandes Exitos) in the Tango Collection is going to get a lot of listening to. Hopefully it'll turn up in a milonga soon.
Available if you're within reach of Spotify here. On Amazon it's here.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Alejandro Chaskielberg
Alejandro Chaskielberg was named Sony world photographer, just this evening, April 27. No, me neither. It turns out he's from Buenos Aires, which is neither here nor there, really: what really counts are the extraordinary images he's made. The series that so impressed the jury were of the residents of islands on the Rio Parana, upstream from Buenos Aires, and worlds away, a somewhat familiar landscape very like Tigre. Flash balanced against natural lighting makes strange dream-like landscapes.
I was really struck by the photos of Buenos Aires in the Argentina crisis in 2001, which aren't at all dream-like, but still strange. Look at the image with the water cannon, and see the guy on the left, arms raised as if expostulating with the 'policia'; how can you do this to us? & then look at all the other demonstrators, all in positions of movement, all running in different directions, as if the whole scene had been posed for the camera, which is wrong for reportage but still somehow manages to take you deeper into the strange heart of the scene than the grainy blurred 'real' image you'd expect. & the photo of lightening over the Casa Rosada, artifice and natural forces, and a powerful statement and an astonishing image.
These are all in the Portfolios at www.chaskielberg.com.
I was really struck by the photos of Buenos Aires in the Argentina crisis in 2001, which aren't at all dream-like, but still strange. Look at the image with the water cannon, and see the guy on the left, arms raised as if expostulating with the 'policia'; how can you do this to us? & then look at all the other demonstrators, all in positions of movement, all running in different directions, as if the whole scene had been posed for the camera, which is wrong for reportage but still somehow manages to take you deeper into the strange heart of the scene than the grainy blurred 'real' image you'd expect. & the photo of lightening over the Casa Rosada, artifice and natural forces, and a powerful statement and an astonishing image.
These are all in the Portfolios at www.chaskielberg.com.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Some stats
I've been busy with an exhibition, which has sadly deprived me of tango time. But not for much longer!
In the meantime I've been looking at the Tangocommuter stats. Which have been the most-read of 400 posts? Well, nothing I've written! Top of the Tc charts turns out to be... Interview with Melina Sedó: part I with over 1,200 page views. Next, no surprise, are parts II and III, but with considerably fewer views. I was really pleased to find that the most-read post of mine was As good as it gets, the post with the video of that beautiful Cumparsita from Centro Leonesa. Of course it's not my writing that's attracted 217 hits; it's the video of Adela Galeazzi and Santiago Cantenys dancing, but I'm happy to have pointed out a video that so many people enjoyed.
Other than that, Tc gets read mainly in the UK and US, then Germany and then, surprisingly and gratifyingly, it's read quite a bit in Argentina too. But it's the bottom end of the scale that fascinates me: the two visitors from Iran, two from the Palestinian Territory, one visitor from Nepal, and one from Pakistan too. Two Egyptians, two (only two?) from South Africa, one from Morocco. Welcome! I hope you'll be back! Even more, I hope you have, or will be able to get tango where you live!
&, if you're in London, in the unlikely event that you have nothing to do on April 25, or if you're near Bankside, it's our closing party. No tango, but do drop by for a glass or two.
In the meantime I've been looking at the Tangocommuter stats. Which have been the most-read of 400 posts? Well, nothing I've written! Top of the Tc charts turns out to be... Interview with Melina Sedó: part I with over 1,200 page views. Next, no surprise, are parts II and III, but with considerably fewer views. I was really pleased to find that the most-read post of mine was As good as it gets, the post with the video of that beautiful Cumparsita from Centro Leonesa. Of course it's not my writing that's attracted 217 hits; it's the video of Adela Galeazzi and Santiago Cantenys dancing, but I'm happy to have pointed out a video that so many people enjoyed.
Other than that, Tc gets read mainly in the UK and US, then Germany and then, surprisingly and gratifyingly, it's read quite a bit in Argentina too. But it's the bottom end of the scale that fascinates me: the two visitors from Iran, two from the Palestinian Territory, one visitor from Nepal, and one from Pakistan too. Two Egyptians, two (only two?) from South Africa, one from Morocco. Welcome! I hope you'll be back! Even more, I hope you have, or will be able to get tango where you live!
&, if you're in London, in the unlikely event that you have nothing to do on April 25, or if you're near Bankside, it's our closing party. No tango, but do drop by for a glass or two.
Monday, 11 April 2011
Tango without mirrors
Tango dancers who've learned how to dance in front of mirrors; do you recognise the category? Like, so many of the younger teachers coming out of BsAs these days... Isn't it a kind of self-regarding, almost narcissistic style? We KNOW how good we look! How pretty we are! & if you've ever danced with a partner who is preoccupied with how he/she looks in a mirror, you'll probably know how alone you can feel while dancing with a partner. The mirror encourages the idea of dance as performance to be viewed: are my voleos the right height, do I extend my leg straight in my lapiz? I wonder if giving myself lifetimes of bad luck destroying mirrors in dance studios would result in people dancing better... Of course, mirrors are necessary for dance that's meant to be watched, but aren't they distracting to the tango of the milonga? Shouldn't every moment, even in classes, be in awareness of your partner, the music and the dancers around you?
I'm glad to see 'Chiche' Ruberto turn up in a Practimilonguero interview. He dances after the interview but he's had a knee operation recently. I really like the energy and directness of it. I can be bored with milonga (dare I say it!) but this brings a whole new personality and directness to the dance. He has some great stories, too, a wonderful view of tango in family life in BsAs in the 1940s. There's a handful of his milongas on YouTube; someone who learned by dancing a lot, all his life, by discovering what suited him and his partners, not by watching himself in mirrors!
Here he is again, last year in El Beso. They're really enjoying themselves! A fierce, direct dance. I've not seen younger dancers in this league.
I'm glad to see 'Chiche' Ruberto turn up in a Practimilonguero interview. He dances after the interview but he's had a knee operation recently. I really like the energy and directness of it. I can be bored with milonga (dare I say it!) but this brings a whole new personality and directness to the dance. He has some great stories, too, a wonderful view of tango in family life in BsAs in the 1940s. There's a handful of his milongas on YouTube; someone who learned by dancing a lot, all his life, by discovering what suited him and his partners, not by watching himself in mirrors!
Here he is again, last year in El Beso. They're really enjoying themselves! A fierce, direct dance. I've not seen younger dancers in this league.
Thursday, 7 April 2011
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
I remember where I was when I first saw photos of the images in the Chauvet caves... I opened a newspaper, and there was a full colour spread of rhinos, horses, tigers, all jumping off the page. The colour photocopy I made that morning is still on the wall, so of course I've been looking forward to Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. A Herzog film is always something to look forward to, a Herzog film of the 'Caves Chauvet' even more so, and in 3D too!
& the film didn't disappoint. Not that it showed any images I hadn't seen. It seems that there isn't a huge number of images in the cave and an internet search will reveal them all. It's just the extraordinary quality of them. The way the artist(s) have repeated lines, heads, legs: when I first saw the photos I saw this as something you do when you draw, you repeat a line until you get it right. But in Chauvet it looks much more, as Herzog points out, as if there was an attempt to suggest movement: there's something cinematic about it. (& the experience of going into the cinema is a bit like descending into the cave: dim subterranean passages leading to an underground hall.)
The word 'fresh' was used a lot to describe the images. In fact they've been preserved by a massive landslide that covered the entrance some time in the distant past. They were discovered in 1994, and entrance is severely restricted to preserve the images. But 'fresh' suggests 'freshly made', which is how they look. On-going research projects leave no doubt that the date is around 32,000BC, but the drawing line is so alive, vigorous, spare, assured, they really could have been made yesterday. The drawings of horses and bison suggest Picasso, both in subject and style, as does the strange half-woman, half bull...
When Picasso visited the much more recent Lascaux cave he said 'We have discovered nothing'.
What does all this tell us about ourselves and our past? & I wonder what part the discovery of resemblance, of how a group of marks can resemble appearances, played in the development of human consciousness. & that our aesthetic sense goes back that far...
Not only is the line assured: the placing of the images also is. They aren't in a disorganised jumble. Put it another way: if they were on canvas and a contemporary curator had to hang them in the cave, this is how they would look. This horse on its own in the alcove on the right, and the bison in the centre of the far wall. Then this group of tigers here, and those horses would look good over there... & as an exhibition, you could say it's not over-hung. Another wonderful feature is how the curves of the rock are used to suggest bulk: the way a rocky edge is used as the side of a horse's head and, curiously, how a concave area of rock is used to suggest the convex bulk of a horse's flanks. I suspect the images must have been 'given' to the artist(s) by the rocks, in the way that if you look at stains on the wall you can see faces or landscapes.
& being a Herzog film there's a delight in the events that occur in making the film. There's the 'experimental archaeologist' dressed in period costume, with a flute he made from a bone of a vulture's wing, an exact replica of an excavated one. & when he plays it, it gives a perfect pentatonic scale, which means that he also found it possible to play... The Star Spangled Banner. As for the albino crocodiles living in the effluent of the nearby nuclear power station...
It was the first 3D film I've seen. It works: it was wonderful to see how the paintings fit into the cave, and the space itself, as it's the nearest I'm ever likely to get. But I didn't find it exactly comfortable: I wore the glasses while I was inside the cave, but took them off outside. Herzog says he saw the use of 3D for the Caves Chauvet, but wouldn't have made any of his other films in 3D. (The thought of Klaus Kinski raving, close up and in 3D...)
It's just the beginning: Wim Wender's 3D film on Pina Bausch is due shortly, actually planned as a film to be made with Bausch, who died suddenly a week or so before shooting was due to begin, so it's something of a tribute and memorial to her by her company.
& the film didn't disappoint. Not that it showed any images I hadn't seen. It seems that there isn't a huge number of images in the cave and an internet search will reveal them all. It's just the extraordinary quality of them. The way the artist(s) have repeated lines, heads, legs: when I first saw the photos I saw this as something you do when you draw, you repeat a line until you get it right. But in Chauvet it looks much more, as Herzog points out, as if there was an attempt to suggest movement: there's something cinematic about it. (& the experience of going into the cinema is a bit like descending into the cave: dim subterranean passages leading to an underground hall.)
The word 'fresh' was used a lot to describe the images. In fact they've been preserved by a massive landslide that covered the entrance some time in the distant past. They were discovered in 1994, and entrance is severely restricted to preserve the images. But 'fresh' suggests 'freshly made', which is how they look. On-going research projects leave no doubt that the date is around 32,000BC, but the drawing line is so alive, vigorous, spare, assured, they really could have been made yesterday. The drawings of horses and bison suggest Picasso, both in subject and style, as does the strange half-woman, half bull...
When Picasso visited the much more recent Lascaux cave he said 'We have discovered nothing'.
What does all this tell us about ourselves and our past? & I wonder what part the discovery of resemblance, of how a group of marks can resemble appearances, played in the development of human consciousness. & that our aesthetic sense goes back that far...
Not only is the line assured: the placing of the images also is. They aren't in a disorganised jumble. Put it another way: if they were on canvas and a contemporary curator had to hang them in the cave, this is how they would look. This horse on its own in the alcove on the right, and the bison in the centre of the far wall. Then this group of tigers here, and those horses would look good over there... & as an exhibition, you could say it's not over-hung. Another wonderful feature is how the curves of the rock are used to suggest bulk: the way a rocky edge is used as the side of a horse's head and, curiously, how a concave area of rock is used to suggest the convex bulk of a horse's flanks. I suspect the images must have been 'given' to the artist(s) by the rocks, in the way that if you look at stains on the wall you can see faces or landscapes.
& being a Herzog film there's a delight in the events that occur in making the film. There's the 'experimental archaeologist' dressed in period costume, with a flute he made from a bone of a vulture's wing, an exact replica of an excavated one. & when he plays it, it gives a perfect pentatonic scale, which means that he also found it possible to play... The Star Spangled Banner. As for the albino crocodiles living in the effluent of the nearby nuclear power station...
It was the first 3D film I've seen. It works: it was wonderful to see how the paintings fit into the cave, and the space itself, as it's the nearest I'm ever likely to get. But I didn't find it exactly comfortable: I wore the glasses while I was inside the cave, but took them off outside. Herzog says he saw the use of 3D for the Caves Chauvet, but wouldn't have made any of his other films in 3D. (The thought of Klaus Kinski raving, close up and in 3D...)
It's just the beginning: Wim Wender's 3D film on Pina Bausch is due shortly, actually planned as a film to be made with Bausch, who died suddenly a week or so before shooting was due to begin, so it's something of a tribute and memorial to her by her company.
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
A tango event 2
& the winner is... (are) Irene and Man Yung, of course. Un abrazo grande is on its way to you, to be used within one month of the date of issue at a milonga of your choice!
Not all tango dancers practised on street corners. In the 1940s, some of the leading lights of Buenos Aires tango met three times a week at El Club Social y Deportivo Nelson to practise, led by the tanguero known as Petroleo, and by 'El Negro Lavandina', 'the black bleacher', whose daytime job seems to have been whitewashing. Mingo Pugliese was invited to join the Club Nelson group at the age of 12, in 1948: it's his description of the dancer who 'held tightly onto his partner and had her do a headfirst somersault'. He says the dancer was Salvador Lorenzo Piazza. (Robert Farris Thompson: Tango: the art history of love p. 254.)
(Have you seen that move yet at your local milonga? Do let me know.)
Petroleo himself was a bank clerk by day who wrote accounts of tango for his bank's newsletter: tango was respectable by now. Thompson claims that Lavandina and Petroleo 're-thought tango', and he lists 23 tangueros who met regularly at the Club Nelson to practice amongst themselves, and to develop the dance. They all had nicknames, their tango identities: one, Roberto Marcos, was called La Biblia because of his encyclopaedic knowledge of tango moves.
It's too bad Thompson completely ignores the tango of the sophisticated Buenos Aires crowd of the late 30s and 40s, and instead focuses entirely on what's usually called 'fantasía'. The fantasía dancers were the exception: they danced (according to Thompson) at dance floors where there was plenty of room, which was where Copes and María Nieves practised and found the material for their shows. Extravagant tango was an old tradition. Thompson points to descriptions of competitions: in the 20s and 30s El Cachafaz danced competitions against all the best dancers of his day, including José Méndez, who later opened a studio where he taught Mingo Pugliese in the early '50s. This kind of dancing wasn't the smooth intimate dance of the confiterias: it was a competitive display of skill, the dance of a country that had also influenced the way football was played.
José Méndez also appeared in films. I found this clip from the 1951 film, Derecho Viejo, about the life of the musician Eduardo Arolas. This is the kind of tango that was danced in the 1930s; this is old tango!
There's a kind of assumption that 'milonguero' is the old style, the old people's style, and that the dance of display and competition, 'nuevo', is new, but this doesn't seem to be the truth. The dance that is 'más nuevo', the real innovation, seems to be 'milonguero', the close-hold dance that developed in crowded clubs. Until another Thompson researches it, its exact point of origin is probably a mystery. I can only think that it is more of an emotional innovation than a physical one. It's about that union with the music and a partner that is so unexpected and overwhelming every time that we have to keep returning to it, week after week, and never get tired of it (I hope). Just when was this discovered?
Another pointer to how revolutionary this was might be found in the accounts of the dancers on the Practimilonga blog. It's clear from these accounts and many others that this kind of dance, the one all the kids wanted to get into, was strictly protected by bouncers, and under-18s weren't allowed in. Of course they all tried to cheat their way in, and tall guys were at an advantage, but it sounds serious. & of course they all wanted to be there! We've heard the descriptions of the grim 'barrio milongas', where the guys stood in the middle of the room and the girls and their mums sat round the periphery, fanning themselves and deciding who was worth dancing with. Who wouldn't want to get away from that! To get out of the barrio and into a downtown milonga, where men and women eyed each other across the floor, and danced close...
There are so many questions. Thompson does a great job, just by talking to many people and gathering memories and stories, and by digging into archives, in uncovering the African influences in the growth of tango, and his book is an enthusiastic history. Wouldn't it be great if someone could do the same for the origins of milonguero tango? It might not help us dance better, but it's useful to know where and how it began, and if no one studies it soon, it'll be beyond memory. When and where did it start? Who have been the great dancers of the milongas? Was it exclusively close-hold? The bouncers at the door: was this city regulation, or was it just because the dancers expected it? Who were the women who turned up at the confiterias to dance? Was there a generation of women then who could go out unaccompanied and choose a dance partner at will? (For that matter, who were the women who danced with the Club Nelson dancers?) Various people have mentioned clubs and confiterias: it would be great if someone could get a list, and a history of them. & so on. There are so many questions.
But anyway, I don't buy the view that 'nuevo' is new. The real 'nuevo' is milonguero.
Not all tango dancers practised on street corners. In the 1940s, some of the leading lights of Buenos Aires tango met three times a week at El Club Social y Deportivo Nelson to practise, led by the tanguero known as Petroleo, and by 'El Negro Lavandina', 'the black bleacher', whose daytime job seems to have been whitewashing. Mingo Pugliese was invited to join the Club Nelson group at the age of 12, in 1948: it's his description of the dancer who 'held tightly onto his partner and had her do a headfirst somersault'. He says the dancer was Salvador Lorenzo Piazza. (Robert Farris Thompson: Tango: the art history of love p. 254.)
(Have you seen that move yet at your local milonga? Do let me know.)
Petroleo himself was a bank clerk by day who wrote accounts of tango for his bank's newsletter: tango was respectable by now. Thompson claims that Lavandina and Petroleo 're-thought tango', and he lists 23 tangueros who met regularly at the Club Nelson to practice amongst themselves, and to develop the dance. They all had nicknames, their tango identities: one, Roberto Marcos, was called La Biblia because of his encyclopaedic knowledge of tango moves.
It's too bad Thompson completely ignores the tango of the sophisticated Buenos Aires crowd of the late 30s and 40s, and instead focuses entirely on what's usually called 'fantasía'. The fantasía dancers were the exception: they danced (according to Thompson) at dance floors where there was plenty of room, which was where Copes and María Nieves practised and found the material for their shows. Extravagant tango was an old tradition. Thompson points to descriptions of competitions: in the 20s and 30s El Cachafaz danced competitions against all the best dancers of his day, including José Méndez, who later opened a studio where he taught Mingo Pugliese in the early '50s. This kind of dancing wasn't the smooth intimate dance of the confiterias: it was a competitive display of skill, the dance of a country that had also influenced the way football was played.
José Méndez also appeared in films. I found this clip from the 1951 film, Derecho Viejo, about the life of the musician Eduardo Arolas. This is the kind of tango that was danced in the 1930s; this is old tango!
There's a kind of assumption that 'milonguero' is the old style, the old people's style, and that the dance of display and competition, 'nuevo', is new, but this doesn't seem to be the truth. The dance that is 'más nuevo', the real innovation, seems to be 'milonguero', the close-hold dance that developed in crowded clubs. Until another Thompson researches it, its exact point of origin is probably a mystery. I can only think that it is more of an emotional innovation than a physical one. It's about that union with the music and a partner that is so unexpected and overwhelming every time that we have to keep returning to it, week after week, and never get tired of it (I hope). Just when was this discovered?
Another pointer to how revolutionary this was might be found in the accounts of the dancers on the Practimilonga blog. It's clear from these accounts and many others that this kind of dance, the one all the kids wanted to get into, was strictly protected by bouncers, and under-18s weren't allowed in. Of course they all tried to cheat their way in, and tall guys were at an advantage, but it sounds serious. & of course they all wanted to be there! We've heard the descriptions of the grim 'barrio milongas', where the guys stood in the middle of the room and the girls and their mums sat round the periphery, fanning themselves and deciding who was worth dancing with. Who wouldn't want to get away from that! To get out of the barrio and into a downtown milonga, where men and women eyed each other across the floor, and danced close...
There are so many questions. Thompson does a great job, just by talking to many people and gathering memories and stories, and by digging into archives, in uncovering the African influences in the growth of tango, and his book is an enthusiastic history. Wouldn't it be great if someone could do the same for the origins of milonguero tango? It might not help us dance better, but it's useful to know where and how it began, and if no one studies it soon, it'll be beyond memory. When and where did it start? Who have been the great dancers of the milongas? Was it exclusively close-hold? The bouncers at the door: was this city regulation, or was it just because the dancers expected it? Who were the women who turned up at the confiterias to dance? Was there a generation of women then who could go out unaccompanied and choose a dance partner at will? (For that matter, who were the women who danced with the Club Nelson dancers?) Various people have mentioned clubs and confiterias: it would be great if someone could get a list, and a history of them. & so on. There are so many questions.
But anyway, I don't buy the view that 'nuevo' is new. The real 'nuevo' is milonguero.
Monday, 28 March 2011
A tango event
Found it! 'He held tightly onto his partner and had her do a headfirst somersault.'
I knew I'd read this description of a tango event in a well-researched history of tango, and it's taken me a while to re-find it. The question is: did this event occur in a) 1948: b) 1997: c) 2009?
Bonus points for answering where: a) on the set of 'The Tango Lesson': b) Club Nelson; c) Cachirulo milonga?
I knew I'd read this description of a tango event in a well-researched history of tango, and it's taken me a while to re-find it. The question is: did this event occur in a) 1948: b) 1997: c) 2009?
Bonus points for answering where: a) on the set of 'The Tango Lesson': b) Club Nelson; c) Cachirulo milonga?
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
My right arm
Talking with a partner recently who's not danced long, but has a lifelong (literally) love of tango music: 'In one class I was told to hold my hand like this, and in another...' A not unfamiliar story. I reply: if you ask me, classes can be useful, but don't take anything you hear as scripture. What matters is what works on the floor, what's comfortable for you and your partner, what helps you dance together with the music. Hard advice, since if you pay for a class you expect to get The Truth, and it takes a while to realise that what you pay for isn't necessarily any use whatever. It happens. Perhaps the only 'scripture' in tango is that there is no scripture.
The embrace is a particularly complex area since every body is shaped differently, is a different size, has different habits of movement even within a similar pattern of steps.
My right arm has discovered this of its own accord. It's sometimes been blamed for holding a partner too tightly, which is uncomfortable, and I realised that, curiously, the complaints increased with the height of the partner. Shorter partners never had any problems, while a tall (taller than me) partner I danced with found it the most uncomfortable. All the same, other tall partners were perfectly comfortable.
I've also danced with one of the older generation of UK tangueras, one of that fabled generation who found their way to Buenos Aires in the late '80s, a generation with more than two decades of tango under their belts. (There aren't many of them, and they know each other well.) & when I dance with this lady my right arm finds it's completely redundant. I don't need it at all: it simply floats off her back, when we're walking and even when we're turning. True, she's not tall, and she moves very easily, although no longer young. I'm guessing that it's a matter of trust; I know from the embrace that she'll follow effortlessly, and this makes for great dances. So perhaps it's not entirely my fault after all!
I wonder about other dancers' experiences of right arms: your right arm or your partner's right arm. I'm curious about our collective experience of right arms.
PS. When I said that there's no 'scripture' in tango, I was thinking of the embrace, which is going to vary with every partner. I wouldn't want to suggest that everyone is entitled to do as they please on the dance floor! & there is scripture in the form of videos, particularly of the older generation.
The embrace is a particularly complex area since every body is shaped differently, is a different size, has different habits of movement even within a similar pattern of steps.
My right arm has discovered this of its own accord. It's sometimes been blamed for holding a partner too tightly, which is uncomfortable, and I realised that, curiously, the complaints increased with the height of the partner. Shorter partners never had any problems, while a tall (taller than me) partner I danced with found it the most uncomfortable. All the same, other tall partners were perfectly comfortable.
I've also danced with one of the older generation of UK tangueras, one of that fabled generation who found their way to Buenos Aires in the late '80s, a generation with more than two decades of tango under their belts. (There aren't many of them, and they know each other well.) & when I dance with this lady my right arm finds it's completely redundant. I don't need it at all: it simply floats off her back, when we're walking and even when we're turning. True, she's not tall, and she moves very easily, although no longer young. I'm guessing that it's a matter of trust; I know from the embrace that she'll follow effortlessly, and this makes for great dances. So perhaps it's not entirely my fault after all!
I wonder about other dancers' experiences of right arms: your right arm or your partner's right arm. I'm curious about our collective experience of right arms.
PS. When I said that there's no 'scripture' in tango, I was thinking of the embrace, which is going to vary with every partner. I wouldn't want to suggest that everyone is entitled to do as they please on the dance floor! & there is scripture in the form of videos, particularly of the older generation.
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Comments on comments on comments on...
Chris, thanks for taking up the problems of openness, but I'd distinguish between criticism, which I welcome, and derogatory remarks, which are close to character assassination. As Mari says, you shouldn't use someone else's blog for such remarks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm the publisher of Tangocommuter, so I believe I'm legally responsible for everything on it, whether I write it or not, and I don't want to be sued for defamation, or even involved in defamation. Ever. (& I was once threatened with legal proceedings for something I wrote... True.) So I've got to be able to draw a line. & why shouldn't I be able to comment on comments? I didn't say that anything was Unacceptable, just that it's unacceptable and discourteous to slag other people off (to use basic English). It happens too much on the net. I'm sure you'll agree.
I linked the video, but Janis has drawn huge attention to it, and got everyone watching it.
I didn't say much about the dancing, but I was curious about the music, a very contemporary, blues-influenced piece. Definitely not golden age tango. Watching the clip again I'm struck again that Pancho leads a heavy, fairly basic dance that feels more like canyengue and seems to suit the music very well. I don't think you could dance a more elaborate 'classic' tango to music like that; it just wouldn't feel right.
Pancho chose the music, and invited Allison to dance with him. The video was made by the Cachirulo milonga, and uploaded by Héctor 'Cachirulo' Pellozo. The thing I like about Cachirulo is that it's never, ever po-faced. There's room for laughter there, as well as for the intensity of great tango. It certainly feels like the friendliest place I've ever been in. As Tina, who has long acquaintance with it, says: 'Cachirulo is a family, and Pancho is one of their own, and this is his "thing". His way.' So why focus the blame on Allison? As Anon says, '...this is meant to be a fun performance between friends, right?' & why not?
I still hope Jantango will withdraw her comment, or replace it with a more reasoned one. I have to say that I can't leave any future comments like it on this blog. But otherwise, of course, you're all always welcome!
I linked the video, but Janis has drawn huge attention to it, and got everyone watching it.
I didn't say much about the dancing, but I was curious about the music, a very contemporary, blues-influenced piece. Definitely not golden age tango. Watching the clip again I'm struck again that Pancho leads a heavy, fairly basic dance that feels more like canyengue and seems to suit the music very well. I don't think you could dance a more elaborate 'classic' tango to music like that; it just wouldn't feel right.
Pancho chose the music, and invited Allison to dance with him. The video was made by the Cachirulo milonga, and uploaded by Héctor 'Cachirulo' Pellozo. The thing I like about Cachirulo is that it's never, ever po-faced. There's room for laughter there, as well as for the intensity of great tango. It certainly feels like the friendliest place I've ever been in. As Tina, who has long acquaintance with it, says: 'Cachirulo is a family, and Pancho is one of their own, and this is his "thing". His way.' So why focus the blame on Allison? As Anon says, '...this is meant to be a fun performance between friends, right?' & why not?
I still hope Jantango will withdraw her comment, or replace it with a more reasoned one. I have to say that I can't leave any future comments like it on this blog. But otherwise, of course, you're all always welcome!
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Comments
I read Melina's recent post announcing that she was enabling 'comment moderation' because of anonymous threats and insults. I've begun to realise that Tangocommuter is about the only tango blog of my acquaintance that hasn't enabled comment moderation. (Perhaps I should try harder to annoy people.) I've never seen the need for it, and I like to be an open house where people can say what they like, and it's worked well. There's been a bit of trivia but there have been a lot of great conversations, and lots of interesting feedback. Three years of it this month, and nearly 400 posts. & anyway I've never had to wonder whether a comment is acceptable or not... until last week.
I didn't want to mention names, but everyone else has, so OK: Jantango's comment on the Cachirulo video. Of course I can simply delete that comment myself, but that feels too easy. (Thanks, by the way, to La Reina and Joli for your comments: thanks for making me laugh out loud.)
You – the whole wide world – are welcome to say what you like about tango on Tangocommuter; that it should be danced like a cancan, on stilts, spouting pseudo-Argentine nonsense, dressed like chickens and definitely off the beat. I'll disagree with you, but let's talk about it. But derogatory remarks about other people definitely aren't acceptable.
Jantango, most of us entirely agree with your views on tango. We're on your side! We respect your experience and knowlege. But one of the things you admire in your Argentine hosts is their tradition of courtesy and politeness. You've tried hard to become a porteña: can't you adopt that too?
Moreover, you got it wrong. You don't know the milonga: I hear you never go to Cachirulo. You don't know what the arrangement was that evening, and you don't know Allison. We always look forward to your tango comments, but this kind of comment makes you no friends.
So I won't delete your comment myself, but I invite you to delete it. Simply log in, go to the comment and click on the little dustbin icon. It's easy, it'll disappear. Think about it. & write to us about tango.
Tangocherie recently wrote a long and very heartfelt post about the corruption of tango as a result of visitors' attitudes. That kind of comment is really valuable.
I didn't want to mention names, but everyone else has, so OK: Jantango's comment on the Cachirulo video. Of course I can simply delete that comment myself, but that feels too easy. (Thanks, by the way, to La Reina and Joli for your comments: thanks for making me laugh out loud.)
You – the whole wide world – are welcome to say what you like about tango on Tangocommuter; that it should be danced like a cancan, on stilts, spouting pseudo-Argentine nonsense, dressed like chickens and definitely off the beat. I'll disagree with you, but let's talk about it. But derogatory remarks about other people definitely aren't acceptable.
Jantango, most of us entirely agree with your views on tango. We're on your side! We respect your experience and knowlege. But one of the things you admire in your Argentine hosts is their tradition of courtesy and politeness. You've tried hard to become a porteña: can't you adopt that too?
Moreover, you got it wrong. You don't know the milonga: I hear you never go to Cachirulo. You don't know what the arrangement was that evening, and you don't know Allison. We always look forward to your tango comments, but this kind of comment makes you no friends.
So I won't delete your comment myself, but I invite you to delete it. Simply log in, go to the comment and click on the little dustbin icon. It's easy, it'll disappear. Think about it. & write to us about tango.
Tangocherie recently wrote a long and very heartfelt post about the corruption of tango as a result of visitors' attitudes. That kind of comment is really valuable.
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Melingo in London
So, that music, 'bluegrass meets canyengue', that so intrigued my ear with a refreshing, heart-felt sound, even if it's not the sound of the golden age, which after all was quite a while ago...
It's always interesting to hear music developing. It's what music has always done. Musicians have always listened, and helped themselves to what suits their own paths. As Jean-Luc Godard (who's borrowed a few things in his time) said: 'It's not where you take it from that matters: it's where you take it to'. Or did he take that from Picasso?
Thanks, Ali: the music in that video is a track called Luisito and it's on Daniel Melingo's second album, Tango Maldito, available as a download from Amazon. It's the most interesting growth of tango music I've heard. Orquesta Escuela de Tango Emilio Balcarce has done wonderful work in getting golden-age musicians to train young players, and they play golden age tango with real individuality, but it's still the old music, the old arrangements and songs. Gotan Project spoiled (to me) the music by bringing in the inflexible beat of the drum. Melingo, '...bohemian of Buenos Aires, and so of the world', writes his own music, and sings his songs with a classic quartet; bandoneon, bass, violin, guitar. He looks back to the songs of Edmundo Rivero and Roberto Goyeneche, who he sounds like. Fascinating music and song, even if it's not really played as music for dancing.
& it so happens that the Melingo quartet will play at the Barbican in London on April 6 as part of the wonderful La Línea festival that highlights the best Latin music each year. Curiously, they are the support act for the singer Yasmin Levy, who explores Judeo-Spanish song and Flamenco. To put all that into one concert!
Most of the YouTube videos of Melingo are from a 2001 concert, and the balance isn't good, but this one is a neat animation, and the music is well recorded. & here he is again, talking about his music and singing. See you at the concert!
Oh, and the Melingo website is here. In English, and a fun read.
It's always interesting to hear music developing. It's what music has always done. Musicians have always listened, and helped themselves to what suits their own paths. As Jean-Luc Godard (who's borrowed a few things in his time) said: 'It's not where you take it from that matters: it's where you take it to'. Or did he take that from Picasso?
Thanks, Ali: the music in that video is a track called Luisito and it's on Daniel Melingo's second album, Tango Maldito, available as a download from Amazon. It's the most interesting growth of tango music I've heard. Orquesta Escuela de Tango Emilio Balcarce has done wonderful work in getting golden-age musicians to train young players, and they play golden age tango with real individuality, but it's still the old music, the old arrangements and songs. Gotan Project spoiled (to me) the music by bringing in the inflexible beat of the drum. Melingo, '...bohemian of Buenos Aires, and so of the world', writes his own music, and sings his songs with a classic quartet; bandoneon, bass, violin, guitar. He looks back to the songs of Edmundo Rivero and Roberto Goyeneche, who he sounds like. Fascinating music and song, even if it's not really played as music for dancing.
& it so happens that the Melingo quartet will play at the Barbican in London on April 6 as part of the wonderful La Línea festival that highlights the best Latin music each year. Curiously, they are the support act for the singer Yasmin Levy, who explores Judeo-Spanish song and Flamenco. To put all that into one concert!
Most of the YouTube videos of Melingo are from a 2001 concert, and the balance isn't good, but this one is a neat animation, and the music is well recorded. & here he is again, talking about his music and singing. See you at the concert!
Oh, and the Melingo website is here. In English, and a fun read.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Allison at Cachirulo
Here's Allison having a great time on the floor at Cachirulo in El Beso just last night. Last time I saw her dance was with Pedro Sanchez and it was... a bit more restrained.
& that music! Bluegrass meets canyengue! I like it, but canyengue appeals to me. Canyengue is fun.
PS. I love it that the 'demos' at Cachirulo are always the local folk with some event - a birthday, an anniversary - to celebrate. They aren't all perfect, although the best are fantastic. (Refreshing after some of the demos from professional teachers we get in London...)
& that music! Bluegrass meets canyengue! I like it, but canyengue appeals to me. Canyengue is fun.
PS. I love it that the 'demos' at Cachirulo are always the local folk with some event - a birthday, an anniversary - to celebrate. They aren't all perfect, although the best are fantastic. (Refreshing after some of the demos from professional teachers we get in London...)
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Vals in the minor, again.
Chopin! Thanks to Halbert for answering my query as to whether there were waltzes in the minor in European music. I was thinking about dance music, so I looked at the music of Johann Strauss, Director of Music for the Imperial and Royal Court Balls, rather than at the music of Chopin, the melancholic exile, music that wasn't written for the dance floor. Halbert's link in the comments might not work (Blogger doesn't make links in comments easy), but there's an extract here, while spotifiers can listen to the entire, very familiar, Waltz No. 7 in C sharp minor (Op. 64,2) of 1847.
And thanks to Chris, UK for the link to the Arolas version of Lagrimas y sonrisas on Audio AM. While on that site I found a version of Pabellón De Las Rosas by Arolas, also from 1913, which is in the major except for the ending. & I also found a version of the Champagne tango by Roberto Firpo from 1914: listening out for major and minor I realised that it starts out in the minor, moves into an effervescent major – and ends once more in the minor. Which I found amusing.
I explored the sadly short life of the wonderfully gifted Eduardo Arolas a year ago.
I'm fascinated by these old recordings of tango music from very nearly a century ago, recorded before the days of the electric microphone (around 1928). The sound quality isn't great, but there's a freshness and direct simplicity about the music. It was new music then: Pabellón De Las Rosas was written by José Felipetti who was born in 1890, so was only 23 when it was recorded. Manuel Aróztegui, composer of the Champagne Tango was born only two years earlier.
And thanks to Chris, UK for the link to the Arolas version of Lagrimas y sonrisas on Audio AM. While on that site I found a version of Pabellón De Las Rosas by Arolas, also from 1913, which is in the major except for the ending. & I also found a version of the Champagne tango by Roberto Firpo from 1914: listening out for major and minor I realised that it starts out in the minor, moves into an effervescent major – and ends once more in the minor. Which I found amusing.
I explored the sadly short life of the wonderfully gifted Eduardo Arolas a year ago.
I'm fascinated by these old recordings of tango music from very nearly a century ago, recorded before the days of the electric microphone (around 1928). The sound quality isn't great, but there's a freshness and direct simplicity about the music. It was new music then: Pabellón De Las Rosas was written by José Felipetti who was born in 1890, so was only 23 when it was recorded. Manuel Aróztegui, composer of the Champagne Tango was born only two years earlier.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Vals in the minor
I've always loved vals above anything else, but it's taken me five years to notice something that has been staring me in the face ever since I first struggled to dance it: that a good many tango valses are in the minor. I'm really curious about this: perhaps there's someone out there who can tell us more. As far as I know, the European waltz is always in the major, the giddying, swirling dance of smiling dancers. We all know that tango vals isn't like this.
Some things I've found out recently:
The vals was danced in BsAs as early as 1810: the polka too goes back to early in the 19th century. Various local versions grew up and developed.
One of the oldest recorded vals I can find is still a great favourite, Lagrimas y sonrisas, which was recorded by Eduardo Arolas in 1913 – and it is in the minor. (Sadly, I can't find that recording on Spotify: a pity because it's a wonderfully controlled accelerando, it starts slow and gets faster and faster.) 'Tears and smiles': appropriately, the lively cheerful rhythm of the vals is tempered by the melancholic minor key.
Desde el alma by Rosita Melo, recorded by Firpo in 1920 and recorded in many different arrangements since, of which the D'Arienzo and Pugliese versions are especially well known – minor.
Orillas del Plata written and recorded by Juan Maglio, who died in 1934, minor.
Many of the great early Canaro valses including El triunfo de tus ojos, Adios juventad, Con tu mirar, Palomita blanca, all recorded pre-1932, all minor.
D'Arienzo valses may be more inclined to the major: Pabellon de las rosas, for instance, is major. Arrangers would use pre-existing material, which probably included a lot of vals in a minor key.
I ran a quick check on the waltzes of Johann Strauss: all the best-known ones are in the major. But Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Schubert, Liszt all wrote waltzes, and I can't check them all, so there might be a European precedent for waltz in a minor key. I'd be curious to know if there are European waltzes in the minor. Or is the vals in the minor an Argentine innovation?
Wherever vals in a minor key originated it seems to have settled in Buenos Aires, where that peculiar mixture of cheerful rhythm and melancholic scale are still, to many people, the ultimate in tango, the music that above all else wakes up our hearts and makes us want to dance.
Some things I've found out recently:
The vals was danced in BsAs as early as 1810: the polka too goes back to early in the 19th century. Various local versions grew up and developed.
One of the oldest recorded vals I can find is still a great favourite, Lagrimas y sonrisas, which was recorded by Eduardo Arolas in 1913 – and it is in the minor. (Sadly, I can't find that recording on Spotify: a pity because it's a wonderfully controlled accelerando, it starts slow and gets faster and faster.) 'Tears and smiles': appropriately, the lively cheerful rhythm of the vals is tempered by the melancholic minor key.
Desde el alma by Rosita Melo, recorded by Firpo in 1920 and recorded in many different arrangements since, of which the D'Arienzo and Pugliese versions are especially well known – minor.
Orillas del Plata written and recorded by Juan Maglio, who died in 1934, minor.
Many of the great early Canaro valses including El triunfo de tus ojos, Adios juventad, Con tu mirar, Palomita blanca, all recorded pre-1932, all minor.
D'Arienzo valses may be more inclined to the major: Pabellon de las rosas, for instance, is major. Arrangers would use pre-existing material, which probably included a lot of vals in a minor key.
I ran a quick check on the waltzes of Johann Strauss: all the best-known ones are in the major. But Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Schubert, Liszt all wrote waltzes, and I can't check them all, so there might be a European precedent for waltz in a minor key. I'd be curious to know if there are European waltzes in the minor. Or is the vals in the minor an Argentine innovation?
Wherever vals in a minor key originated it seems to have settled in Buenos Aires, where that peculiar mixture of cheerful rhythm and melancholic scale are still, to many people, the ultimate in tango, the music that above all else wakes up our hearts and makes us want to dance.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
The King's Speech... and more
'His majesty's pleasure … The King's Speech sets used for gay porn
London property used to film Oscar frontrunner was previously hired for a porn film
Its distinctive decaying wallpaper and Palladian windows made it an atmospheric double for speech therapist Lionel Logue's 1930s treatment rooms in bromantic [sic] Oscar frontrunner The King's Speech. Yet that was not the first time the property at 33 Portland Place, London, has caught the eye of film-makers. Reports confirm that in 2008 it was also used as a location for gay porn film, Snookered...
The rooms are owned by Lord Edward Davenport, described on his own website as "one of Britain's most flamboyant entrepreneurs, a businessman renowned for taking chances and living a life of adventure". The £30m property was once the location of the high commission for Sierra Leone but was taken over by Davenport, who was initially hired to refurbish it, in the late 1990s following a legal wrangle. In an interview with the Independent three years ago, Davenport's press secretary boasted that the rooms were used for orgiastic parties.'
Guardian Thursday 24 February 2011
& we danced there, too...
London property used to film Oscar frontrunner was previously hired for a porn film
Its distinctive decaying wallpaper and Palladian windows made it an atmospheric double for speech therapist Lionel Logue's 1930s treatment rooms in bromantic [sic] Oscar frontrunner The King's Speech. Yet that was not the first time the property at 33 Portland Place, London, has caught the eye of film-makers. Reports confirm that in 2008 it was also used as a location for gay porn film, Snookered...
The rooms are owned by Lord Edward Davenport, described on his own website as "one of Britain's most flamboyant entrepreneurs, a businessman renowned for taking chances and living a life of adventure". The £30m property was once the location of the high commission for Sierra Leone but was taken over by Davenport, who was initially hired to refurbish it, in the late 1990s following a legal wrangle. In an interview with the Independent three years ago, Davenport's press secretary boasted that the rooms were used for orgiastic parties.'
Guardian Thursday 24 February 2011
& we danced there, too...
Friday, 18 February 2011
Tango journeys
I was fascinated by Miriam Pincen's account of her life in tango for several reasons. First, if anyone hasn't watched it yet, it contains a hitherto unseen few minutes of video of Ricardo Vidort dancing with Miriam. It's from the collection of Oscar Casas, and I hope someone will twist his arm to make him release more! (Only joking.) But it's likely he has more, perhaps even a lot more.
Her comment on 'entrega' was interesting. I've seen the word defined only in relation to the female partner: 'She has good entrega', meaning she gives herself up to the dance. But I've always wondered if it also applies to the way the leader becomes part of the music (in fact how both dancers together become part of the music) and she confirms this: she says she prefers dancing with partners who surrender (entregan) their bodies to the music.
& her 'journey' through tango must be somewhat familiar to all of us. She grew up at a time when tango was no longer the passion of BsAs, encountered it when she was older, and was completely intrigued by it. So how to learn it? To learn something you go to classes, of course. So she took classes, with Todaro and Copes among others, and learned to dance a complex, display tango. But the world of the milongas really captivated her to the extent that, although fluent in display tango, she spent a couple of years watching before she dared to dance socially. Her respect for the world of the milongas is very clear.
I guess we all start off intrigued by walking to the music, move on warily to the world of high kicks and exaggerated movements (I groan at the memory of 'Intermediate Classes'!), until realising that all we really want to do is to dance close and let ourselves be absorbed into that music...
Her comment on 'entrega' was interesting. I've seen the word defined only in relation to the female partner: 'She has good entrega', meaning she gives herself up to the dance. But I've always wondered if it also applies to the way the leader becomes part of the music (in fact how both dancers together become part of the music) and she confirms this: she says she prefers dancing with partners who surrender (entregan) their bodies to the music.
& her 'journey' through tango must be somewhat familiar to all of us. She grew up at a time when tango was no longer the passion of BsAs, encountered it when she was older, and was completely intrigued by it. So how to learn it? To learn something you go to classes, of course. So she took classes, with Todaro and Copes among others, and learned to dance a complex, display tango. But the world of the milongas really captivated her to the extent that, although fluent in display tango, she spent a couple of years watching before she dared to dance socially. Her respect for the world of the milongas is very clear.
I guess we all start off intrigued by walking to the music, move on warily to the world of high kicks and exaggerated movements (I groan at the memory of 'Intermediate Classes'!), until realising that all we really want to do is to dance close and let ourselves be absorbed into that music...
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Friday, 11 February 2011
Speaking of practicas...
... Oktango have just announced that from today onwards they will be opening the Welsh Centre every Friday from 6.30 to 11pm for... a practica!
The Welsh Centre is at 157-163 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8UE, and entry is only £3 for the evening. Details on the Oktango website. I hope it will be well used! It's a great floor to dance on, and there's a bar upstairs.
The Welsh Centre is at 157-163 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8UE, and entry is only £3 for the evening. Details on the Oktango website. I hope it will be well used! It's a great floor to dance on, and there's a bar upstairs.
Monday, 7 February 2011
Comments on comments
Sound systems: as I said in my original post, I'm sure many London sound systems are of good quality. The problem is the arrangement of the speakers, and it's no good relying on two speakers at one end of a hall. The volume has to be turned up to reach and to overcome the inevitable loss of sound, and then people who aren't dancing start shouting at each other to make themselves heard. I take Chris, UK's point about the limitation of house systems, but streamed audio is now possible, and I look forward to the day when neat, efficient speaker systems deliver adequate sound all over the dance floor, preferably without wiring. I agree with Charles Long that good quality sound is really important. If sound is well-focused it can change the dynamic of a milonga.
Several people have agreed that less teaching is good. My feeling is that London tango could do with many more practicas, guided or otherwise. After all, even in 21st century London, men can't dance on street corners with other men, and won't be able to until tango is vastly more widely known and accepted. We all need more secluded places to practice in. Then it should be possible for the dancers to invite in teachers to help and comment, rather than teachers running classes. Then dancers engaged in dancing would call the shots.
& Jantango tells me that Maipu 444 has closed. The upstairs room that housed seven milongas a week has been sold, along with the parquet floor that has welcomed the soles of many great names of tango. It's like losing a friend, even though I can't claim to be at all well acquainted with the place. No more videos on the Cachirulo YouTube channel with the familiar red and black tablecloths! Or maybe the tableclothes will move to Villa Malcolm, where the Saturday night Cachirulo Milonga will relocate, along with the house video camera.
PS: Melina has left a long and very interesting comment here as a reply to what Chris, UK said. There was a problem of emphasis in the translation, and she clarifies the kind of help she and Detlef try to give, to enable people to dance more easily together.
Several people have agreed that less teaching is good. My feeling is that London tango could do with many more practicas, guided or otherwise. After all, even in 21st century London, men can't dance on street corners with other men, and won't be able to until tango is vastly more widely known and accepted. We all need more secluded places to practice in. Then it should be possible for the dancers to invite in teachers to help and comment, rather than teachers running classes. Then dancers engaged in dancing would call the shots.
& Jantango tells me that Maipu 444 has closed. The upstairs room that housed seven milongas a week has been sold, along with the parquet floor that has welcomed the soles of many great names of tango. It's like losing a friend, even though I can't claim to be at all well acquainted with the place. No more videos on the Cachirulo YouTube channel with the familiar red and black tablecloths! Or maybe the tableclothes will move to Villa Malcolm, where the Saturday night Cachirulo Milonga will relocate, along with the house video camera.
PS: Melina has left a long and very interesting comment here as a reply to what Chris, UK said. There was a problem of emphasis in the translation, and she clarifies the kind of help she and Detlef try to give, to enable people to dance more easily together.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Tango correctness
Back early last November, here, I was delighted to post a three-part interview with Melina Sedo, who teaches tango along with her partner, Detlef Engel. Just last week, Chris UK left a comment on it, which has set me thinking. I hope Melina and Chris won't mind if I repeat the exchange, which is preceded by something Melina said in the interview:
"There are loads of mistakes that followers can make. If that wasn’t the case, they would hardly need lessons, would they?"
Chris replied: 'Melina, girls generally don't need lessons. Take a look at the great social dancers of the BA milongas, almost none of whom took a lesson in their life. Is their dancing full of "mistakes" that need your lessons to correct? Of course not. A typical girl having an affinity for the dance needs only a guy who can dance well. She can learn all she needs to know by dancing.' (As usual, the context matters: Cassiel said he believed that when things went wrong it was the leader's fault, and Melina is replying that it's not that simple.)
'Take a look at the great social dancers of the BA milongas, almost none of whom took a lesson in their life'? This seems manifestly untrue. True, they didn't go out to classes, pair up with men they didn't know and be dragged into leg-wraps and ganchos: that kind of class hardly existed when they were young, and their mothers wouldn't have allowed it. But all the accounts (listen to them on Practimilonguero) show that tango was THE popular dance of the 1940s; it was danced at family get-togethers, at parties, at neighbourhood festivals, as well as at local milongas. So where did everyone learn? The answer seems to be: from their mothers. Many accounts by dancers who grew up in the 1940s mention mothers as the source of their dance. The basics of tango were learned to the radio around the kitchen table, while the boys who'd already learned a thing or two (from the same mothers) would be out on the street corners swapping moves with each other, and perfecting their style. 'My dad didn't care much for dancing, but my mother really loved it' is a common sentiment.
The local milongas seem to have been very formal: the men stood in the middle of the floor trying to make eye-contact with the girls sitting with their mothers around the floor. I'm rather glad I've never found myself in that situation.
So, no, you can't really say that the girls never took lessons, that all their wonderful fluency came simply from the embrace of the right guy. Romantic, but unlikely. But at the same time, is it right to say that 'There are loads of mistakes that followers can make'? 'Mistakes'? By what canon of correctness? Perhaps something has gone amiss in translation here. I can think of more or less effective ways to lead or follow: of more or less comfortable, or pleasing, or even acceptable. But 'mistakes' suggest a rigid right-and-wrong reminiscent more of ballroom, where the judges mark you down for your 'mistakes'. (A system that's sadly creeping into tango via the 'mundiales'?)
And even if we think in terms of effective, comfortable, pleasing, acceptable lead-and-follow, we're likely to end up with identical dancing. Look at the YouTube videos of Ricardo Vidort, and compare them to videos of Osvaldo Cartery. Could their dance be more different? & yet they grew up as lads together, practicing with each other on street corners, but they found what worked for them, how best they each could follow the music with a partner; they found what their partners appreciated, what didn't go down well, what felt good, and that became their tango, and it was different from each others' tango. Or from anyone else's. Perhaps there's an anti-authoritarian streak to tango.
Osvaldo y Coca Cartery in their Practimilonguero interviews talk about the increasing similarity of the tango of young dancers, and they use the word 'clones'. Perhaps that's the result of too many classes, of too much tango correctness.
"There are loads of mistakes that followers can make. If that wasn’t the case, they would hardly need lessons, would they?"
Chris replied: 'Melina, girls generally don't need lessons. Take a look at the great social dancers of the BA milongas, almost none of whom took a lesson in their life. Is their dancing full of "mistakes" that need your lessons to correct? Of course not. A typical girl having an affinity for the dance needs only a guy who can dance well. She can learn all she needs to know by dancing.' (As usual, the context matters: Cassiel said he believed that when things went wrong it was the leader's fault, and Melina is replying that it's not that simple.)
'Take a look at the great social dancers of the BA milongas, almost none of whom took a lesson in their life'? This seems manifestly untrue. True, they didn't go out to classes, pair up with men they didn't know and be dragged into leg-wraps and ganchos: that kind of class hardly existed when they were young, and their mothers wouldn't have allowed it. But all the accounts (listen to them on Practimilonguero) show that tango was THE popular dance of the 1940s; it was danced at family get-togethers, at parties, at neighbourhood festivals, as well as at local milongas. So where did everyone learn? The answer seems to be: from their mothers. Many accounts by dancers who grew up in the 1940s mention mothers as the source of their dance. The basics of tango were learned to the radio around the kitchen table, while the boys who'd already learned a thing or two (from the same mothers) would be out on the street corners swapping moves with each other, and perfecting their style. 'My dad didn't care much for dancing, but my mother really loved it' is a common sentiment.
The local milongas seem to have been very formal: the men stood in the middle of the floor trying to make eye-contact with the girls sitting with their mothers around the floor. I'm rather glad I've never found myself in that situation.
So, no, you can't really say that the girls never took lessons, that all their wonderful fluency came simply from the embrace of the right guy. Romantic, but unlikely. But at the same time, is it right to say that 'There are loads of mistakes that followers can make'? 'Mistakes'? By what canon of correctness? Perhaps something has gone amiss in translation here. I can think of more or less effective ways to lead or follow: of more or less comfortable, or pleasing, or even acceptable. But 'mistakes' suggest a rigid right-and-wrong reminiscent more of ballroom, where the judges mark you down for your 'mistakes'. (A system that's sadly creeping into tango via the 'mundiales'?)
And even if we think in terms of effective, comfortable, pleasing, acceptable lead-and-follow, we're likely to end up with identical dancing. Look at the YouTube videos of Ricardo Vidort, and compare them to videos of Osvaldo Cartery. Could their dance be more different? & yet they grew up as lads together, practicing with each other on street corners, but they found what worked for them, how best they each could follow the music with a partner; they found what their partners appreciated, what didn't go down well, what felt good, and that became their tango, and it was different from each others' tango. Or from anyone else's. Perhaps there's an anti-authoritarian streak to tango.
Osvaldo y Coca Cartery in their Practimilonguero interviews talk about the increasing similarity of the tango of young dancers, and they use the word 'clones'. Perhaps that's the result of too many classes, of too much tango correctness.
Monday, 24 January 2011
Pedro Sanchez and Rosanna Remon
I made a mistake a few weeks ago: I titled a post 'As good as it gets'. I had a feeling at the time that this was unwise. It highlighted a wonderful piece of dancing, Adela Galeazzi and Santiago Cantenys, but we live in such a wonderful decade that within weeks there's bound to be another wonderful piece of dance on YouTube, and the title suggested that all the others will always be inferior. & that's what's happened.
Pedro Sanchez and Rosanna Remon. They're not in the romantic setting of the last tanda at Centro Leonesa around 4am, with just two other couples left on the floor. It's daylight, and they're in someone's neat but not too spacious kitchen, with a CD player on the worktop. Does it matter?
It seems absurd to me that she's not known in London: as far as I'm aware she's never visited. She's Argentine, teaches and lives not that far away in Milan, so she's at least an EU resident, possibly a citizen. Wouldn't it be great to see her here every once in a while, to get some workshops, perhaps? I like the way she looks completely absorbed in her dance, which is so uncluttered by superfluous ornaments that even the slightest toe tap (and they are slight) attracts attention. There are very few videos of her: the other five are of her dancing with Tete when he taught in Italy.
It's great to see Pedro dancing with her. Many thanks to Jantango for filming and uploading this.
Pedro Sanchez and Rosanna Remon. They're not in the romantic setting of the last tanda at Centro Leonesa around 4am, with just two other couples left on the floor. It's daylight, and they're in someone's neat but not too spacious kitchen, with a CD player on the worktop. Does it matter?
It seems absurd to me that she's not known in London: as far as I'm aware she's never visited. She's Argentine, teaches and lives not that far away in Milan, so she's at least an EU resident, possibly a citizen. Wouldn't it be great to see her here every once in a while, to get some workshops, perhaps? I like the way she looks completely absorbed in her dance, which is so uncluttered by superfluous ornaments that even the slightest toe tap (and they are slight) attracts attention. There are very few videos of her: the other five are of her dancing with Tete when he taught in Italy.
It's great to see Pedro dancing with her. Many thanks to Jantango for filming and uploading this.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Sound systems
There's a kind of rumour that sound systems in BsAs are not that good. Does this suggest that sound systems elsewhere, in London, say, are far superior? Because I don't think they are necessarily.
Many of the halls that are home to milongas in BsAs are home to nothing else: they have milongas night after night, with different Djs and organisers, so it's likely that the systems have evolved to give the best possible sound. Sadly, this is never the case in London, where organisers can face the trouble of setting up speakers and amplifiers, and removing them at the end of the evening. The set-up might be adequate or not, even if the equipment is excellent.
Salon Canning is an interesting example of a hall which functions as both a milonga and, because it is so extensive, as a place where people sit and chat. There's never room on the dance floor for everyone who is there: you dance in shifts, so to speak. The square dance floor is at the centre of a massive square room, and the speakers are on a rig over the floor itself, so the music is angled down onto the floor from all four sides. This works well: the dancers have sufficient volume of music, while people sitting around the sides of the floor aren't so deafened that they have to shout at each other. Moreover, the system delivers excellent bass, so the dancers get a strong rhythm. It may be that the equipment in Canning isn't the best, but it's certainly well organised. The upper register of music is much the same pitch as conversation, and if people can't hear themselves talk because of the high notes, they simply shout louder. As people drink their voices get louder anyway, but this may be less of a problem at Canning, where you might have to wait half the evening for the waiter to deliver your drink!
Some smaller halls in London have built-in speakers which aren't necessarily focused on the dance floor, but so long as the bass is strong and clear the volume doesn't need to be high, and a strong bass conflicts less with conversation. It tends to be larger venues that are more difficult to organise for good sound.
Many of the halls that are home to milongas in BsAs are home to nothing else: they have milongas night after night, with different Djs and organisers, so it's likely that the systems have evolved to give the best possible sound. Sadly, this is never the case in London, where organisers can face the trouble of setting up speakers and amplifiers, and removing them at the end of the evening. The set-up might be adequate or not, even if the equipment is excellent.
Salon Canning is an interesting example of a hall which functions as both a milonga and, because it is so extensive, as a place where people sit and chat. There's never room on the dance floor for everyone who is there: you dance in shifts, so to speak. The square dance floor is at the centre of a massive square room, and the speakers are on a rig over the floor itself, so the music is angled down onto the floor from all four sides. This works well: the dancers have sufficient volume of music, while people sitting around the sides of the floor aren't so deafened that they have to shout at each other. Moreover, the system delivers excellent bass, so the dancers get a strong rhythm. It may be that the equipment in Canning isn't the best, but it's certainly well organised. The upper register of music is much the same pitch as conversation, and if people can't hear themselves talk because of the high notes, they simply shout louder. As people drink their voices get louder anyway, but this may be less of a problem at Canning, where you might have to wait half the evening for the waiter to deliver your drink!
Some smaller halls in London have built-in speakers which aren't necessarily focused on the dance floor, but so long as the bass is strong and clear the volume doesn't need to be high, and a strong bass conflicts less with conversation. It tends to be larger venues that are more difficult to organise for good sound.
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Between milongas
At Tate Modern: Gauguin's mask-like faces; masks, idols. Faces dream, rarely look you in the eye, even in the Brittany paintings. More similarity between Brittany and Tahiti than I'd imagined: different clothing. & animals constantly, dogs, lizards, birds, horses. The other. And riders on horses, suggesting the transitory, passing through. These days a rider on a horse suggests affluence: it's different. But Gaugin seems to set up an environment in which a horse and rider seem to be passing through the present, from and into the unknown. Polychrome wooden bas reliefs and paintings: similar lack of depth, animated by colour. The marvelous, massive carving for the entrance to his house, where he was to die, 'Maison de Jouir' carved large on the lintel, and at ground level "Soyez mystérieuses" on one side, and "Soyez amoureuses et vous serez heureuses" on the other. And a striking painting in the last room: a youth with his arm around his girl, looking straight out. Nostalgie for youthful love, confronting a feeling of inevitable loss.
Brigid Riley at the National. As Adrian Searle said, you don't look at her paintings, you watch them.
He also commented that they are 'made' by assistants, and it's nonsense that the artist's hand must be there; it's the presence of the artist's mind that matters. Yes, but it's great to visit the exhibition of 20th century drawings at the British Museum and see both the mind and the hand of a good many artists there.
“I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing, the contingent way that images arrive in the work, lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world. It is in the strangeness of the activity itself that can be detected judgement, ethics and morality.” William Kentridge.
A lot of drawing at the BM, because there's also the show of Egyptian prayers drawn for the dead to use, maps of the afterlife, instructions. Negotiating the wonderfully strange world of the afterlife a bit like logging on, with passwords to remember, and questions to answer correctly. Amazing stuff. This, from 1,200BC, really caught my eye:
Two priests: they carry implements to open the mouth of the mummy, so the spirit can fly out (as a bird). But they are coloured slightly differently, and their bodies are actually interlaced in a way that is physically impossible. Perhaps whoever coloured in the outlines got it wrong, but I took it as deliberate, the artist enjoying the potential of drawing.
1,100 years later they were still making the same images, but all that humour and spirit had gone out of it. The drawing becomes lifeless, crude, dull.
Brigid Riley at the National. As Adrian Searle said, you don't look at her paintings, you watch them.
He also commented that they are 'made' by assistants, and it's nonsense that the artist's hand must be there; it's the presence of the artist's mind that matters. Yes, but it's great to visit the exhibition of 20th century drawings at the British Museum and see both the mind and the hand of a good many artists there.
“I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing, the contingent way that images arrive in the work, lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world. It is in the strangeness of the activity itself that can be detected judgement, ethics and morality.” William Kentridge.
A lot of drawing at the BM, because there's also the show of Egyptian prayers drawn for the dead to use, maps of the afterlife, instructions. Negotiating the wonderfully strange world of the afterlife a bit like logging on, with passwords to remember, and questions to answer correctly. Amazing stuff. This, from 1,200BC, really caught my eye:
Two priests: they carry implements to open the mouth of the mummy, so the spirit can fly out (as a bird). But they are coloured slightly differently, and their bodies are actually interlaced in a way that is physically impossible. Perhaps whoever coloured in the outlines got it wrong, but I took it as deliberate, the artist enjoying the potential of drawing.
1,100 years later they were still making the same images, but all that humour and spirit had gone out of it. The drawing becomes lifeless, crude, dull.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Héctor 'Cachirulo' Pellozo
Here's someone I really look forward to seeing again, Héctor Pellozo. (I always thought he was actually called Héctor Cachirulo!) Seeing him again will mean I'll be climbing the stairs at Maipu 444, and there I hope he'll be, welcoming guests he knows and those he doesn't know too.
It's a great story. The 8 year-old who once sold papers on the trams now runs the Cachirulo milongas, among the best in town. With respect, and a passion for tango: 'You owe respect to the others, to the dance floor, to the people... for me this is essential'. He says he's the good cop and the bad cop: he enthusiastically welcomes anyone dressed well enough to his milongas, but he'll confront anyone dancing without care for other people on the floor, give them their money back, and see them off the premises. The tango floor is not for entertainment, and that's how he's going to keep it.
I just wish there were more of him! I just wish he could open a weekly milonga in London, too. It probably wouldn't survive, but what a treat that would be! The milonga is for dancing tango, and dancing tango is about the expression of love and tenderness. Inexpensive alcohol and cheap entry for non-dancers would get short shrift, as they encourage people to hang out and talk loudly. If you want to amuse yourself there are other places.
Many thanks to Practimilonguero for highlighting Héctor. Without doubt he's one of the really accomplished dancers of his generation, as well as running the best milongas in town, and it's great to hear him talk and in Part 2 to watch him dance. To... Cachirulo – what else?
Here are the codes, displayed in several languages in Cachirulo. 'Respect' occurs four times:
Welcome to the best milonga in Buenos Aires. Tanguero friends, please pay attention.
Here we dance milonguero style tango, and we learn to respect the codes of the milonga.
We dance with a warm, respectful and close embrace.
We follow the line of dance, in a counter-clockwise direction.
We try not to step backwards into the line of dance, always walking forward, as it should be.
We do not lift our feet too much from the floor; this way we avoid hitting other dancers.
We invite women to dance through the classic “Cabeceo del caballero”.
Furthemore, and “very important”, respect is the first card we play in the game of the milonga.
Much to our regret, not respecting these codes will make it impossible to dance in Cachirulo.
It's a great story. The 8 year-old who once sold papers on the trams now runs the Cachirulo milongas, among the best in town. With respect, and a passion for tango: 'You owe respect to the others, to the dance floor, to the people... for me this is essential'. He says he's the good cop and the bad cop: he enthusiastically welcomes anyone dressed well enough to his milongas, but he'll confront anyone dancing without care for other people on the floor, give them their money back, and see them off the premises. The tango floor is not for entertainment, and that's how he's going to keep it.
I just wish there were more of him! I just wish he could open a weekly milonga in London, too. It probably wouldn't survive, but what a treat that would be! The milonga is for dancing tango, and dancing tango is about the expression of love and tenderness. Inexpensive alcohol and cheap entry for non-dancers would get short shrift, as they encourage people to hang out and talk loudly. If you want to amuse yourself there are other places.
Many thanks to Practimilonguero for highlighting Héctor. Without doubt he's one of the really accomplished dancers of his generation, as well as running the best milongas in town, and it's great to hear him talk and in Part 2 to watch him dance. To... Cachirulo – what else?
Here are the codes, displayed in several languages in Cachirulo. 'Respect' occurs four times:
Welcome to the best milonga in Buenos Aires. Tanguero friends, please pay attention.
Here we dance milonguero style tango, and we learn to respect the codes of the milonga.
We dance with a warm, respectful and close embrace.
We follow the line of dance, in a counter-clockwise direction.
We try not to step backwards into the line of dance, always walking forward, as it should be.
We do not lift our feet too much from the floor; this way we avoid hitting other dancers.
We invite women to dance through the classic “Cabeceo del caballero”.
Furthemore, and “very important”, respect is the first card we play in the game of the milonga.
Much to our regret, not respecting these codes will make it impossible to dance in Cachirulo.
Monday, 3 January 2011
Magic tandas
Irene and Man Yung commented on height in dance, something we are all aware of, particularly with partners we've not danced with before. I'm always cautious about dancing with a partner who's taller than me: the embrace might not feel so comfortable, your partner's head completely blocks out your right-hand view, and height changes the centre of gravity. Shorter partners usually have problems trying to sort out how to use their left arm, but I danced once with a truly tiny Argentine woman who'd got that one sorted: she just reached straight up with her left arm and put it around my neck. I don't know if she found it comfortable, but we danced a fast vals tanda as if we were a single entity.
So when I face a partner I don't know and realise she's rather taller than me, I have an apprehensive moment, but the great thing is that without thinking I pull myself up and stand tall. It's too easy for me to start to lean over a shorter partner; uncomfortable for her, and my dance suffers. Not having good natural posture is a problem in tango; maybe not if you dance open embrace, but if you want to dance close you really need good posture. Leandro Palou remarked in class that a lot of the problems people have in tango result from poor posture.
Having a tanda of early Canaro to dance to, the music Martha and Manolo use for canyengue, is always going to help. That relaxed, earthy beat is calm, reassuring and buoyant. It's music that hardly suggests anything elaborate. If you have a fairly empty floor you have space to walk too, and if you happen to have found a partner who responds to all that, it's as if you can do no wrong. A really good dance can stay with you for a long time, and leaves you wondering what made it feel so good.
It's a pity tango dancers sometimes look as if they're trying to be teenagers again. Why? Nothing to be ashamed of in listening to that music and savouring it as you dance. & 'Dance like your partner is your first love, or don't dance at all' as Irene and Man Yung say, reflecting no doubt the views of their Argentine friends! The result can be magic.
Sadly, the main source of that early music, Francisco Canaro: Las Grandes Orquestas del Tango, is currently unavailable.
So when I face a partner I don't know and realise she's rather taller than me, I have an apprehensive moment, but the great thing is that without thinking I pull myself up and stand tall. It's too easy for me to start to lean over a shorter partner; uncomfortable for her, and my dance suffers. Not having good natural posture is a problem in tango; maybe not if you dance open embrace, but if you want to dance close you really need good posture. Leandro Palou remarked in class that a lot of the problems people have in tango result from poor posture.
Having a tanda of early Canaro to dance to, the music Martha and Manolo use for canyengue, is always going to help. That relaxed, earthy beat is calm, reassuring and buoyant. It's music that hardly suggests anything elaborate. If you have a fairly empty floor you have space to walk too, and if you happen to have found a partner who responds to all that, it's as if you can do no wrong. A really good dance can stay with you for a long time, and leaves you wondering what made it feel so good.
It's a pity tango dancers sometimes look as if they're trying to be teenagers again. Why? Nothing to be ashamed of in listening to that music and savouring it as you dance. & 'Dance like your partner is your first love, or don't dance at all' as Irene and Man Yung say, reflecting no doubt the views of their Argentine friends! The result can be magic.
Sadly, the main source of that early music, Francisco Canaro: Las Grandes Orquestas del Tango, is currently unavailable.
Thursday, 30 December 2010
Tango at the RFH
One of tangocommuter's new year resolutions is to write shorter posts. This is simply practical: time is always short. But this resolution has failed even before the new year begins, and I have to make time to add to what I wrote about the post-xmas milonga at the Festival Hall. There was just one point I wanted to make: it was much too short! Well, it was free, and the music was live, but one single hour just isn't enough for a tango event in the post-xmas period, particularly an event with live music. & it took many of us more than an hour just to get there!
I haven't been in London the last two midwinters, but I think there has been an afternoon milonga of a good length at the RFH, organised possibly from within the tango community. I get the impression that the event this year was organised by the Festival Hall itself, so if you were disappointed by how short it was, it's certainly worth getting in touch with the Royal Festival Hall! & please do! They must already be aware of how popular the event was, both with the considerable number of dancers who turned up, and with a large number of people listening and watching. Surely it's to the advantage of the Hall to have lots of people there enjoying themselves. I think they should have some feedback in case they plan an event next year, although the budget for a three or four-hour free event is likely to be more difficult.
But it was a real pleasure to have live music to dance to. It makes a huge difference: you can never be quite sure how a live 'orquesta' is going to play, how the music will be phrased, what the tempo will be or how it might change. Live music feels alive, and we don't get enough of it. The set was excellent: there was sufficient music in a familiar, traditional 'compas' which was straightforward to dance to, mixed in with some music that was much more of a challenge. Very enjoyable! But too short!
I haven't been in London the last two midwinters, but I think there has been an afternoon milonga of a good length at the RFH, organised possibly from within the tango community. I get the impression that the event this year was organised by the Festival Hall itself, so if you were disappointed by how short it was, it's certainly worth getting in touch with the Royal Festival Hall! & please do! They must already be aware of how popular the event was, both with the considerable number of dancers who turned up, and with a large number of people listening and watching. Surely it's to the advantage of the Hall to have lots of people there enjoying themselves. I think they should have some feedback in case they plan an event next year, although the budget for a three or four-hour free event is likely to be more difficult.
But it was a real pleasure to have live music to dance to. It makes a huge difference: you can never be quite sure how a live 'orquesta' is going to play, how the music will be phrased, what the tempo will be or how it might change. Live music feels alive, and we don't get enough of it. The set was excellent: there was sufficient music in a familiar, traditional 'compas' which was straightforward to dance to, mixed in with some music that was much more of a challenge. Very enjoyable! But too short!
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
Happy new year - and some bits and pieces
A rather grim-faced picture of Nestor La Vitola has headed my blog for too long. Afraid I have no control over the photo chosen. Time for a change.
A happy new year to everyone who comes across this, and may your best wishes come true in a peaceful and wonderful 2011!
Just back from a post-xmas milonga at the Festival Hall. It's a great space, and one of the best ballroom floors in London. There must have been well over 100 people there to dance – and it lasted just one hour. Well, it was free. So one of my wishes for the new year is at least one decent milonga post-xmas!
Three films to escape into, post-xmas. Talking Heads Stop Making Sense with David Byrne in his massive suit: a great concert, wonderfully filmed. Then the reworking of Sleeping Beauty by the Swedish choreographer Mats Ek, which is funny, constantly inventive, colourful and full of breathtaking full-on dancing. I've got it on an old tape from TV, from the days when UK TV broadcast dance: in fact I discovered over an hour of video dance shorts on the same tape, all experimental film-making and choreography. Nobody would broadcast that here today.
& Flamenco by Carlos Sauros. I have to admit I was very turned off by his Tango which seemed to lack any real substance. I understand he went to BsAs to film Copes and Maria Nieves, but couldn't persuade them to dance together. I know people who think it's marvelous, but it somehow seems to have missed the point. Only the scene of eight-year-olds learning tango in school seemed at all realistic, and I couldn't help wondering about kids of that age being taught tango: it looked like a school exercise, a cultural heritage class, strange. But Flamenco is another story altogether. He got together some of the best flamenco singers, dancers and musicians and provided them with a succession of stages to perform on. I know very little about flamenco except I love the music, and I watch this film again and again. The emotional intensity of it is extraordinary, and the colours are warm throughout. Another great concert for the north-European midwinter.
Curious that Flamenco shows the dance as something the whole community, young and old, are involved in and enjoy, whereas tango solemnly performed by schoolchildren looks incomprehensible to them.
& a new blog on the block. Many thanks to Bora for her wonderful account of a visit to BsAs. This is her first day: a wonderful breathtaking, breathless read. A lot of the blog is taken up with detailed descriptions of classes and technique, but then one uses – well, I use – a blog as a way of keeping track of oneself: I go back to posts from a year or two ago to remind myself of what I was discovering then. Interesting how younger teachers, both European and Argentine, are working on trying to improve the interaction between partners, the mechanics of lead and follow, of the embrace. So long as the musical passion that has sustained tango for so long doesn't get forgotten amidst the details of a recently-elaborated technique. Perhaps it needs to retain some rough edges.
This email arrived recently:
'LES CIGALLES MILONGUERAS in the wonderful south-west of France from 20 to 23 May 2011 in Eauze (Gers). A meeting with a total immersion in Tango: 50 hours of dance on a parquet floor during four days, with first-rate Djs, food and lodging on-site in a 100% Milonguero spirit of sharing. The complete programme soon on our site.' (Which is here.)
A happy new year to everyone who comes across this, and may your best wishes come true in a peaceful and wonderful 2011!
Just back from a post-xmas milonga at the Festival Hall. It's a great space, and one of the best ballroom floors in London. There must have been well over 100 people there to dance – and it lasted just one hour. Well, it was free. So one of my wishes for the new year is at least one decent milonga post-xmas!
Three films to escape into, post-xmas. Talking Heads Stop Making Sense with David Byrne in his massive suit: a great concert, wonderfully filmed. Then the reworking of Sleeping Beauty by the Swedish choreographer Mats Ek, which is funny, constantly inventive, colourful and full of breathtaking full-on dancing. I've got it on an old tape from TV, from the days when UK TV broadcast dance: in fact I discovered over an hour of video dance shorts on the same tape, all experimental film-making and choreography. Nobody would broadcast that here today.
& Flamenco by Carlos Sauros. I have to admit I was very turned off by his Tango which seemed to lack any real substance. I understand he went to BsAs to film Copes and Maria Nieves, but couldn't persuade them to dance together. I know people who think it's marvelous, but it somehow seems to have missed the point. Only the scene of eight-year-olds learning tango in school seemed at all realistic, and I couldn't help wondering about kids of that age being taught tango: it looked like a school exercise, a cultural heritage class, strange. But Flamenco is another story altogether. He got together some of the best flamenco singers, dancers and musicians and provided them with a succession of stages to perform on. I know very little about flamenco except I love the music, and I watch this film again and again. The emotional intensity of it is extraordinary, and the colours are warm throughout. Another great concert for the north-European midwinter.
Curious that Flamenco shows the dance as something the whole community, young and old, are involved in and enjoy, whereas tango solemnly performed by schoolchildren looks incomprehensible to them.
& a new blog on the block. Many thanks to Bora for her wonderful account of a visit to BsAs. This is her first day: a wonderful breathtaking, breathless read. A lot of the blog is taken up with detailed descriptions of classes and technique, but then one uses – well, I use – a blog as a way of keeping track of oneself: I go back to posts from a year or two ago to remind myself of what I was discovering then. Interesting how younger teachers, both European and Argentine, are working on trying to improve the interaction between partners, the mechanics of lead and follow, of the embrace. So long as the musical passion that has sustained tango for so long doesn't get forgotten amidst the details of a recently-elaborated technique. Perhaps it needs to retain some rough edges.
This email arrived recently:
'LES CIGALLES MILONGUERAS in the wonderful south-west of France from 20 to 23 May 2011 in Eauze (Gers). A meeting with a total immersion in Tango: 50 hours of dance on a parquet floor during four days, with first-rate Djs, food and lodging on-site in a 100% Milonguero spirit of sharing. The complete programme soon on our site.' (Which is here.)
Friday, 17 December 2010
The man in black
It's wonderful that Tango and Chaos, Jantango and Irene and Man Yung have done so much to widen our experience of tango tradition by filming the older dancers whose experience goes back to the 1940s and 50s.
Practimilonguero too, with videos made in 'practimilongas' rather than in milongas, that include interviews. This video caught my eye a while back.
The man in black is Nestor La Vitola. In the first 40 seconds he looks quite different from the other dancers. There's a calm assurance about his movement. His posture, like that of so many of his generation, is straight-backed but not in the least stiff, and perfectly balanced. Compared to the other dancers there's something quite formal about his posture. He doesn't look as if he's trying to sink into his partner. Some of this may be through stepping forwards with a straight leg - Cacho Dante's revelation - but how can we learn to get all that right?
The interviews show a pattern. Dancing used to start at neighbourhood dances and family events around the age of 14. The mother is often the teacher. Then at 18, attendance at salons, and close embrace tango. I particularly enjoyed Rodolfo Diperna's story of watching the good dancers and then rushing out into the street with a friend to practice what they'd seen so they didn't forget it. That's how they learned. I imagine they'd have been YouTube addicts if it had been around.
Practimilonguero also made the wonderful interview with Osvaldo and Coca, parts one and two. There's also an interview and dance with Pedro Sanchez. A pity Pedro's interview is short, but many thanks to Practimilonguero for the extended interview with Osvaldo and Coca! Que son fenomenales!
& I wondered who the woman is. Monica Paz visits Europe to teach, and has a website. She was teaching in Brussels in October. It's beginning to seem to me that if you want to meet the older – and younger – traditional dancers from BsAs it's necessary to travel to Europe. There just doesn't seem the interest to get them to the UK.
Here's Monica with Chiche Ruberto; one of my favourite milongas. I notice he dances most of it on his toes, or rather on the balls of his feet. Here's the same milonga with him at Cachirulo with Mirta Tiseyra, which is even more fluent. I like the direct energy of it.
PS> Chiche turned up again three days ago in another of Cachirulo's films, this one from the Tuesday night Cachirulo in El Beso.
Practimilonguero too, with videos made in 'practimilongas' rather than in milongas, that include interviews. This video caught my eye a while back.
The man in black is Nestor La Vitola. In the first 40 seconds he looks quite different from the other dancers. There's a calm assurance about his movement. His posture, like that of so many of his generation, is straight-backed but not in the least stiff, and perfectly balanced. Compared to the other dancers there's something quite formal about his posture. He doesn't look as if he's trying to sink into his partner. Some of this may be through stepping forwards with a straight leg - Cacho Dante's revelation - but how can we learn to get all that right?
The interviews show a pattern. Dancing used to start at neighbourhood dances and family events around the age of 14. The mother is often the teacher. Then at 18, attendance at salons, and close embrace tango. I particularly enjoyed Rodolfo Diperna's story of watching the good dancers and then rushing out into the street with a friend to practice what they'd seen so they didn't forget it. That's how they learned. I imagine they'd have been YouTube addicts if it had been around.
Practimilonguero also made the wonderful interview with Osvaldo and Coca, parts one and two. There's also an interview and dance with Pedro Sanchez. A pity Pedro's interview is short, but many thanks to Practimilonguero for the extended interview with Osvaldo and Coca! Que son fenomenales!
& I wondered who the woman is. Monica Paz visits Europe to teach, and has a website. She was teaching in Brussels in October. It's beginning to seem to me that if you want to meet the older – and younger – traditional dancers from BsAs it's necessary to travel to Europe. There just doesn't seem the interest to get them to the UK.
Here's Monica with Chiche Ruberto; one of my favourite milongas. I notice he dances most of it on his toes, or rather on the balls of his feet. Here's the same milonga with him at Cachirulo with Mirta Tiseyra, which is even more fluent. I like the direct energy of it.
PS> Chiche turned up again three days ago in another of Cachirulo's films, this one from the Tuesday night Cachirulo in El Beso.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
Choreographing You
I know 'choreography' isn't a good word in social tango circles: performance of planned, well-rehearsed sequences, danced with great skill and watched by a passive audience, doesn't fit into the free flow of a milonga.
But in the 1960s visual artists and dancers began to see choreography more broadly, looking to renew the sense of the body by intensifying the relation of an 'audience' to the environment, to heighten self-awareness of the body in space and time. Choreographing You (Hayward Gallery, London, till January 12) is about this.
A lot of the show is like a gigantic playground, great fun for physically adventurous and curious people to explore themselves in unexpected physical activities. & at the heart of it, when the fun of tilting platforms, the claustrophobia of enclosed passages, and the effort of negotiating hanging hoops wears off, is a massive archive of dance film, 147 films available to browse. Wide-ranging: among much more, there's film of Jackson Pollock painting, the records of Allan Kaprow's 1960s 'happenings', film of Pina Bausch dancing Cafe Muller, of Trisha Brown improvising a dance/drawing, and of an extraordinary 2½ hour solo performance by La Ribot (I cheated and watched it on fast forward). An archive of film from the 1960s to the present, more than can be watched on a cold London afternoon.
In the end it palls, and it's good to move back to physical engagement with unusual and sometimes challenging environments. If our 'comfort zone' of habitual bodily and mental activities is extended, habitual reserve starts to break down in a way that never happens confronted with a normal exhibition of dance or artwork. It felt cheerful and friendly.
But in the 1960s visual artists and dancers began to see choreography more broadly, looking to renew the sense of the body by intensifying the relation of an 'audience' to the environment, to heighten self-awareness of the body in space and time. Choreographing You (Hayward Gallery, London, till January 12) is about this.
A lot of the show is like a gigantic playground, great fun for physically adventurous and curious people to explore themselves in unexpected physical activities. & at the heart of it, when the fun of tilting platforms, the claustrophobia of enclosed passages, and the effort of negotiating hanging hoops wears off, is a massive archive of dance film, 147 films available to browse. Wide-ranging: among much more, there's film of Jackson Pollock painting, the records of Allan Kaprow's 1960s 'happenings', film of Pina Bausch dancing Cafe Muller, of Trisha Brown improvising a dance/drawing, and of an extraordinary 2½ hour solo performance by La Ribot (I cheated and watched it on fast forward). An archive of film from the 1960s to the present, more than can be watched on a cold London afternoon.
In the end it palls, and it's good to move back to physical engagement with unusual and sometimes challenging environments. If our 'comfort zone' of habitual bodily and mental activities is extended, habitual reserve starts to break down in a way that never happens confronted with a normal exhibition of dance or artwork. It felt cheerful and friendly.
Monday, 13 December 2010
Teteysilvia 2
Silvia's just published another extract from her conversation with Tete here.
You have to scroll down to find the translation: the sense is generally clear, and I think the castellano is fairly straightforward if you need clarification. Tete talks more about the beginnings of salón and the places it was danced, and how it arrived with a time of more relaxed social relations between men and women, this dance in which '...the body is leading, the hands following the body's lead. In this style, so different, the body is fortunate to be able to speak when it comes to dancing'.
Interested to note that the word for an installment is 'una entrega' (i.e., a handing over or delivery).
You have to scroll down to find the translation: the sense is generally clear, and I think the castellano is fairly straightforward if you need clarification. Tete talks more about the beginnings of salón and the places it was danced, and how it arrived with a time of more relaxed social relations between men and women, this dance in which '...the body is leading, the hands following the body's lead. In this style, so different, the body is fortunate to be able to speak when it comes to dancing'.
Interested to note that the word for an installment is 'una entrega' (i.e., a handing over or delivery).
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Teteysilvia
Teteysilvia.blogspot.com is the blog started recently by Silvia Ceriani as the home for her archive of material from the years she danced with 'Tete' Rusconi. She's recently published her second post, the first part of an interview with Tete dating from 2003, covering his recollections of his early years in tango. Like many of his generation, he starts dancing in neighbourhood clubs at the age of 14, where he's seen tango since he was a child. He practices with friends on the street corners, and when he's 18 he can get into the 'confiterias' and salons, where the tango is 'salon', close embrace.
Probably nothing very new here, but there's more to look forward to. Silvia posts the original castellano with an English translation, so posting involves a fair bit of work and doesn't happen regularly. All thanks to Silvia for this.
Probably nothing very new here, but there's more to look forward to. Silvia posts the original castellano with an English translation, so posting involves a fair bit of work and doesn't happen regularly. All thanks to Silvia for this.
Monday, 6 December 2010
Tango warmth
Tango commuting seemed unlikely on Thursday morning after what the heavens dumped on us overnight, and I envisaged a weekend keeping myself warm by working my way through all the videos on the Cachirulo site. But within 24 hours a rail route had opened up and, looking at the cold white all around, the long commute to the warmth of tango seemed a great idea.
YouTube might be a surrogate, but it's valuable. Years ago I had a serious back injury, and was given a fortnight off work. It was late June, and aha! I thought; I'll watch Wimbledon. & I couldn't. Why? Every time someone served, my back ached. I wasn't moving, but my muscles were following the movement, and it hurt. A programme on The Dancer's Body by ex-Royal Ballet principal Deborah Bull a year or so later explained that we understand any movement we watch by following it with our own muscles, and so we learn from watching the few videos there are of great dancers whose practice goes back 50 years. Sure we see where they put their feet, but we learn more than that; we get the 'feel' of their dance in our own bodies. If, that is, we think the tango of 50 years ago is still relevant!
(A correction: I said that before long we'll be uploading 3D videos to Youtube but I'm way behind the times: it's been possible to upload 3D content since July 2009, but you need the right glasses to watch it. But we'll have to wait at least a decade for life-sized moving holographic content...)
& the weekend was warm: we came out of the milonga to find the snow had turned to sleety rain. The power of dance! & the Sunday night had it's own wonderful warmth too. Neither night was crowded... OK, I should explain. Few milongas here are ever crowded in the BsAs sense, but give people room here and like children given a big space after being cooped up all winter, they'll run all over it, and bump into each other. So I should say the milongas were quite empty because of the weather, and it was a good opportunity to try to fit new possibilities to the music. It was useful to explore a much more upright walk and to explore the embrace, without having to take constant evasive action. & of course it was very enjoyable! The warmth continued on the late-night journey home between banks of snow, with Tanturi and Fresedo between my ears. & Monday morning? Ah well, Monday...
Monday, 29 November 2010
Cachirulo
Since YouTube began just over five years ago video has become an incredibly valuable resource, thanks to everyone who's made and uploaded videos of the dancers and milongas of BsAs. Videos bye-pass the filter of 'teaching'; not that teaching is necessarily inferior, but video gives an immediate feel of the dance and its environment, the milongas of BsAs. Tangoandchaos was among the first, and over the last year or two Jantango has uploaded videos from the milongas of the city centre, while Irene and Man Yung have recently uploaded a number of videos from the 'Barrio milongas': watch their recent videos of Roberto Segarra. (More in their previous post.) We can now see a wide range of BsAs tango, just in time to acquaint us with that generation of older dancers and the kind of environment they learned and grew up in.
& now Argentines themselves are beginning to upload their own videos of their own milongas. Hector and Norma Cachirulo run the marvelous Cachirulo milonga on Saturday nights at Maipu 444, and also at El Beso on Tuesday nights. Hector's probably the first person you'll meet after you've climbed the stairs, paid at the booth and pushed through the curtain into the milonga itself: you're welcomed with a kiss or a handshake like a long-lost friend, whether you're local or a visitor, and then he'll bustle off to find you somewhere to sit, carrying a spare chair or two over the heads of the dancers if need be.
& I've just discovered that since March they've had their own YouTube channel to which they are uploading their own 'home videos' of the Cachirulo milongas. It's almost too good to be true. There's tango from the best, both on the floor and in 'demonstrations', there's rock, chacarera, and birthday dances from the great and the good, and it all continues to be uploaded regularly. Camera quality isn't great, but the spirit comes over so strongly you can ignore that. Cachirulo is one of the great institutions of BsAs tango today, attracting some of the best dancers, and there's plenty here to dip into and enjoy on these cold dark evenings!
(& watching these videos might just oblige you to try and learn Spanish, spend all your spare time and more in tango, and everything you have on interminable flights south of the equator. & why not? If you like tango it's worth a great deal to step as a guest onto that velvet-smooth floor and join in all night with the music.)
So here's Norma's birthday dance with Hector last June. Eso!
& now Argentines themselves are beginning to upload their own videos of their own milongas. Hector and Norma Cachirulo run the marvelous Cachirulo milonga on Saturday nights at Maipu 444, and also at El Beso on Tuesday nights. Hector's probably the first person you'll meet after you've climbed the stairs, paid at the booth and pushed through the curtain into the milonga itself: you're welcomed with a kiss or a handshake like a long-lost friend, whether you're local or a visitor, and then he'll bustle off to find you somewhere to sit, carrying a spare chair or two over the heads of the dancers if need be.
& I've just discovered that since March they've had their own YouTube channel to which they are uploading their own 'home videos' of the Cachirulo milongas. It's almost too good to be true. There's tango from the best, both on the floor and in 'demonstrations', there's rock, chacarera, and birthday dances from the great and the good, and it all continues to be uploaded regularly. Camera quality isn't great, but the spirit comes over so strongly you can ignore that. Cachirulo is one of the great institutions of BsAs tango today, attracting some of the best dancers, and there's plenty here to dip into and enjoy on these cold dark evenings!
(& watching these videos might just oblige you to try and learn Spanish, spend all your spare time and more in tango, and everything you have on interminable flights south of the equator. & why not? If you like tango it's worth a great deal to step as a guest onto that velvet-smooth floor and join in all night with the music.)
So here's Norma's birthday dance with Hector last June. Eso!
Monday, 22 November 2010
Les Cigalles 2011
MILONGUERA SECOND MAJOR MEETING of CIGALES in Provence each May at TOULON (12/13/14 May 2011) - South of France. (From the YouTube channel of Celine Deveze.)
The website is still being prepared.
PS: Please read the comments: it turns out that Celine Deveze's info is premature, as the dates have not yet been fixed.
The website is still being prepared.
PS: Please read the comments: it turns out that Celine Deveze's info is premature, as the dates have not yet been fixed.
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