Gricel: un amor en tiempo de tango

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

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

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

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

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

(Information and photos from Todotango.)

Message...

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

Nocturno a mi Barrio

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

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

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

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

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

Tango Negro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ricardo Suarez in Buenos Aires

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between tangos

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

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

(Words and a recent translation of Sur here.)

'El Flaco' Dany

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

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

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

Ricardo Vidort in Rome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silvia Ceriani

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

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

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

She's put forward a teaching agenda:

Beginners

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

All levels

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

Medium and advanced

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

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

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

Les Indes Gallantes

Some wonderful, kind, beautiful, public-spirited, good-natured person has uploaded the whole of Les Indes Gallantes by Rameau, the 18th-century French composer, to YouTube. It's a Paris Opera and the Opera Ballet production; it was written as an opera-ballet, and it's an all-singing, all-dancing production, vividly coloured throughout, joyful, lively, visually inventive and sometimes ridiculously funny. Three hours of it, and I wanted more. Music played by Les Arts Gallantes with William Christie, one of the best period instrument ensembles. Subtitles in English. I'm going to have to buy the double DVD because of the music, and because it's such fine entertainment, exactly the cure for a cold, dark wet winter afternoon. 

Sadly, this upload has cut out the encore, in which the entire cast and the conductor sing and dance to the best dance number in the piece. Generally the style of dance is basic modern ballet, but the choreography throws in stuff from popular dance, silly disco moves and all. There is also a stream from Balletoman.com which includes this encore. The subtitles to this version are in Russian, although it hardly matters, as the sense is pretty clear. But both the YouTube and Balletoman versions suffer from poor synch of sound and image.

Balletoman is organised by a Russian dancer and gives access to hundreds of dance videos: literally dozens of versions of the classics like Swan Lake, but there's a substantial amount of contemporary choreography there too, including, for instance, the whole of Pina Bausch's Vollmond (the one with the big rock and a lot of water). Also contemporary versions of the classics: Mats Ek's version of Sleeping Beauty is a great retelling of the old classic.  

'Les Indes Gallantes': they are well-behaved in exotic lands. It fascinated me that in a 1735 libretto a French and a Spanish conquistador are shown as clowns. They are clowns in this production, and the script is clear; they try to bribe the Indian princess, and when this doesn't work they try to force her. She outwits them and laughs: she has thoughts only for her lover. People from exotic countries could be more 'gallant' than the French and Spanish.

Enriqueta Kleinman 1953 - 2014

Very saddened to open my laptop this morning and find the following brief email from Jantango: 

Enriqueta died January 9, 2014, in her home in Buenos Aires. 

(It was sent as a comment to my post on Enriqueta Kleinman and Osvaldo Nattucci.)

I can't write much about her as I didn't know her at all well. But I remember 'classes' with her, December two years ago; it was hot and attendance was dropping off pre-Christmas. In fact, at the last class I was the only 'student', so it became another private class.

I have to use inverted commas because it was never as if she was The Teacher: people who came to her classes were there to dance, and she'd do what she could to help them enjoy it. With me, we just danced a lot, and I also enjoyed sitting and chatting to her, as we had common interests outside tango. She was a painter and a printmaker, too, and she'd begun working with glass: as she said, it's a nightmare to carry work around with you! She was cheerful and friendly, and I remember her as a tango friend as much as a teacher. I got a lot of confidence from the time I spent with her, and a better feel for dancing with different kinds of music. Sometimes you learn just by absorbing, and it helped that she was completely confident in expressing herself in English, as she'd lived and studied in New York and was truly bilingual. I used to see her two or three nights a week in the milongas. She seemed tireless on her feet, dancing mainly with the older guys.

Other than that, I know that she grew up with classical music, became an artist, and was absorbed into the tango world of Buenos Aires about 20 years ago. She'll also be missed throughout the States, which she visited regularly, as well as in Europe and the UK, although she wasn't here much. It's hard to believe I can't go back to another beautiful Buenos Aires summer like that, hot afternoons, courtyards cool with flowering plants, and an hour or two of dance ahead.

By Invitation Only - Redux

It's taken me months to realise that the title is open to misinterpretation, which perhaps is why some people objected. It might suggest that the organisers pick the guests they want at their milonga – which would be gross. 'Him, oh yes, he can come. But not that friend of his, no way. & she's all right, but isn't there anyone better?' I hope my description of the milonga left it clear that invitation is by personal recommendation: people recommend friends, and the organisers invite everyone recommended. My title might have given the wrong first impression.

Once again, I think it's a pity it's necessary to resort to this so we can enjoy a good afternoon of dance. But organisers here don't have the kind of authority some of them have in Buenos Aires, and the dance isn't generally understood or respected here in the way it is there. There are people here who've watched a few TV dance programmes, taken a few tango classes and go out and don't even notice how much disturbance they are causing. They probably think they are bringing a bit of life into a boring evening. All these couples making their way slowly round the room; let's barge into them, wake them up a bit!

There's also another slightly different system here: there are a few milongas that are open to all, but aren't advertised. You hear about them by being on a mailing list. This has a similar effect. There's a bit of a 'tango underground', but I can't see anything wrong with that, except that it's much harder for the organisers to make ends meet without open access and advertising. They do it because they enjoy a certain kind of milonga: in the circumstances the guest list is the only way to make it happen.

Feliz año, bonne année, felice anno, glückliches neues Jahr, с Новым годом, an nou fericit, 新年好, ハッピーニューイヤー

Happy new year to everyone!

(Milonga La Calesita, December 2008. A memorable place to dance on a hot December evening. At that time, Tete and Silvia ran a weekly milonga there during the summer months: I don't know if it is still in use.)

'My beautiful illness called dancing Tango' – Alberto Dassieu

There's a translation of the first part of Alberto's life story on Irene and Man Yung's blog: they knew him well. The rest of it was on his website, which unfortunately is no longer available. 

Tangoandchaos picks up the story, telling how Alberto and his childhood friend El Chino came under the influence of Luis Lemos, the patron of tango in the Villa Urquiza barrio. It's an interesting page. & it's impressive how tango drew in kids from poorer backgrounds and encouraged social skills, how it gave them a milieu, friends, partners, mentors. Music of the most extraordinary quality and feeling, the pop of their fortunate generation, rich in their everyday music.

I watch Alberto's videos and see the elegant precision of his walk, and can't help thinking how it looks as if he was drilled in it, disciplined, from an early age, made to practice until it was just so. He doesn't give the impression that he just picked up tango by watching and practicing; as if there's a voice in the past saying 'No! Do it again! Again! Otra vez!'

Perhaps it is a style, but he made it his own. Many people learn a similar style: stage dancers tend to learn 'style', many of them learn the same style and end up looking alike. It's easy to learn to look stylish, 'all style and no substance', but that's not the same as dancing well in a milonga. Too often style looks like a mannerism, something second-hand, copied. Alberto's dance has energy, it's his own way of moving.

& another thing: from start to finish his dance looks full of courtesy to his partner. It's also very dynamic; slow, then suddenly fast, compiling a dance with the music, but all the time the walk takes the feet into exactly the right place, at any moment, whoever is his partner. I don't think you can be that precise without also being incredibly aware of your partner. He had an elegant precision which isn't really like anyone else from his generation that I've watched (but I've not visited milongas outside the 'centro' much).

I came across this recently: it's very clear. There's not a moment in the dance that isn't precise and clear, yet everything is fluent and unhurried, the energy is exactly controlled. It's beautiful to watch.

It's easy enough to dance fast, and difficult to dance slow. In a crowded milonga like El Beso, Alberto appeared to dance slowly, almost cautiously, but it always looked extra intense.

When you miss someone, you think of all the questions you'll never be able to ask. Please teach me to walk, just like you learned to walk! 'No! Not like that! Again!'

Last time I saw him I asked him to teach me to dance the pauses. Sure! he said, laughing. Next time you're here...

'Dance the tango respecting the music, dance the tango respecting the people in the milongas, dance the tango with feeling' (Alberto, interview with Monica Paz.)

Alberto Dassieu: October 13, 1936 – December 5, 2013

My Tango is Salon style. My style of dancing is elegant, subtle, with rhythm and poetry. (Mi tango es el de Salón. Mi estilo es elegante, sutil, con cadencia, con poesía.)

Ricardo Vidort and Luisito Ferraris: videos

I came across this among MullerPatricia's clips: she didn't recognise the dancers, but anyone familiar with the informative TangoandChaos website will recognise the second part of it as film of Ricardo Vidort with Alejandra Todaro, and the first half is from the same session. However, this first part doesn't appear on the website, so it must come from the T&C private archives, which I think are very extensive, and I wonder if there's more of that available. It's just curious that the clip doesn't identify the dancers. TangoandChaos apologises on the website for the film quality, and points out that it's great to have film from when Ricardo was still energetic and in good health. I've always seen that second half as a really wonderful example of tango, and it's a treat to have the rest of it. I just can't help wishing for even more.

Jantango posted about that recent video of Luisito Ferraris on the same day as I did, and adds a link to a video I hadn't seen. She says it's also Luisito, and it does look like him, and it's his way of dancing. Once again, the clip doesn't identify the dancers, which makes it hard to find. It appears to be a commercial for something called tangoline: the website no longer seems to exist. But the dance does, and it seems very intense. In a way it doesn't matter who the dancers are.

I'm struck once again by how close the feet of the dancers are. Sadly, most of us managed to kick our longsuffering partners a few times when we were learning, and are cautious now about dancing with our feet that close. But stepping close, this very neat footwork, is a feature of social tango, something I notice in a lot of the clips. I think it's part of walking one foot in front of the other in line, which results in 'collecting' and also in a sharper stepping. If you dance in a practica with a partner who's accustomed to the dance of the BsAs milongas, she's likely to point out if you aren't stepping close and 'collecting'; similarly, a guy who's danced there all his life would notice the lack of 'collecting' in a partner who is careless about it. It adds a clarity and sharpness, as well as a kind of additional closeness to tango.

That's about it for Luisito Ferraris on YouTube, very sadly. But there is one more video which I'd watched just part of until recently, when I discovered with pleasure that the second half of it is a milonga. I really enjoyed it: it's a kind of milonga I can relate to, and which I haven't seen much in video. The traspies are subtle, and the dance flows. Much as I love watching 'El Flaco' Dany I know I can't in any way regard him as a role model.

I'd just written this and checked to make sure there was nothing more of Luisito on YouTube... and came across this, posted just one week ago, and 15 minutes long. It seems to be the conclusion of a private workshop earlier this November, and we see Luisito dancing with his students there. He seems to be able to get people to dance, and to enjoy doing it. The text says, roughly, 'Luisito Ferraris is greatly appreciated for his dancing and teaching ability, and for being such a friendly guy'.

It brightened up a cold, dark late November afternoon.

P.S.  The original version of the second half of this is here, Adios Arrabal danced by Ricardo Vidort and Alejandra. It's better quality than the version above. I suspect the version above might have been made with a camcorder off a TV screen somewhere.