Tango stories 4

There's good music on Monday night at Salon Canning. Sylvia often finds great versions of songs you know well, by orquestas you can't place. You think: ah! I know Troilo's version of this – but who is this playing it? She always plays a great tanda of Carabelli too, and tops it all off with an extraordinary range of cortinas. Inevitably Lady Day, but Amy Winehouse too, and the widest possible range of rock, and even flamenco, all wonderful and usually unknown stuff, unknown to me and probably to a great many other people too I'm sure, and carefully fitted into the flow of tango. Makes a change from the run-of-the-mill cortinas most DJs play. Interesting what can happen when someone gives the cortinas some attention, rather than treating them as a fill-in between tandas.

But recently Monday night at Salon Canning seems to have become a couples night, not entirely, but turning up looking for a dance or two isn't great. I'm more used to El Beso nights, where couples are few and almost everyone goes ready to dance with almost everyone else, and where the floorcraft is good and there's really a 'buena onda'. On the floor at Canning there are show dancers and beginners mixed in with good dancers and some excellent older guys: Canning can be like that. A local so-called teacher takes a big step backwards and onto my partner's foot, and just dances off as if nothing happened. Despite the music it's all a bit distant.

The taxi driver who drives me home is a relief. A rich, friendly voice with an impenetrably thick accent: he says he was from Uruguay. My ears struggle to get even the gist, but it doesn't worry him. I feel like Spanish visitor to the UK encountering a Highlander. Talking is an art form for some people, and he's certainly one; even his inevitable life story, and how 'la crisis' (2001) changed his life, sounds like a wonderful poetic saga, and has probably been retold and refined like a saga too. I can't make much more than the simplest observations, and find myself immediately understood as if I've been part of a dialogue all along. The will to communicate creates communication.

Canning once again

Ana Maria's class at Canning; I always enjoy these classes. Two hours with a break, it's relaxed, nothing difficult. There's a lot of initial emphasis on walking, and it's valuable practice, as it's easier to notice and correct bad habits in class than while dancing in a milonga. Part class, part practica. In particular, this evening I pick up on what Ana Maria says about flexing the knee before stepping, a slight lift of the flexed knee which results in the foot coming down firmly without the hardness of the heel hitting the floor as in normal walking. I think this is clearly visible in any clip of Ricardo Vidort's walk, and I think also in El Flaco's walk in the video of Muma above. Like stamping, but a lot more gentle; putting the foot down firmly perhaps. I think it's something all the older dancers do, and to some extent the younger ones too. I've been aware of it for a long time and I find that in walking it results in a clearer lead, but the problem is getting it to feed through into social dancing, making a new habit. It completely eradicates that old bad habit of stepping forward with a bent knee; something Cacho Dante pointed out to me last time I was here.

My last evening at Canning; and it's a really good evening when the castellano, the cabeceo and the tango all work well, good memories of meeting a succession of friendly local partners on the floor. There's no experience quite like this: the moment of agreement in a look at a distance, the embrace between strangers, the dance, the brief conversations. In general, I've never found the people of any city quite as welcoming as BsAs, and these brief encounters, and the embrace, and the dance make evenings that are worth coming back here for. But it's taken a few weeks to get this far.

I know Canning only from Mondays and Fridays and both evenings are a good mix of young and old, mainly local people and some visitors as well. It feels like a powerhouse of meeting. Unfortunately it's also turned into a bit of a photo opportunity, and on Fridays there's at least some poor dancing. But most evenings at El Beso can feel just a bit unforgiving by comparison.

Friday night at Canning

I always look forwards to walking into that huge room again. Anna Maria Schapira's class: she recognises me, even remembers my name. The usual, useful class: centering exercises, walking rhythms solo then in embrace. Walking develops into a 'figure', and when we're getting fluent at that she shows a kind of 'thinking out loud' of some of the ways we might try to extend or vary it. A few in the class are already into the variations, most are still working on the basic. A lot of dancing, not too much demo. It's very relaxed, a good class/practica environment, and there's help if you need it. I recognise a number of her class from previous visits, it's a friendly group. Previously I've been here in November, and there were more visitors then.

The milonga begins: the usual hiatus. I get up and walk around to find a dance. Surprising how partners can open up when they dance: I ask a woman whether she dances here much – do you come here often? would be just a joke in English – and I'm quite surprised, and pleased, too, to listen to a long sentence of regrets about how little time she can find to dance. & me, I fly 7,000 miles to do nothing else...

Canning very full of memories of Tete. On my last visit in December 2009 he'd arrive during the class and sit making audible comments, and get up to help the dancers; he practically had to be restrained from taking over the class. Alicia Pons was assisting Ana Maria, and it was her birthday. After class a tanda of vals was played for her birthday dance – and Tete, so eager, kept trying to dance the entire tanda with her; she had to keep turning away from him so she could dance with other men. The night before I left he danced a demo here with Sylvia, and he died a week later.