More from another world

I've been writing some notes for a friend who's visiting Buenos Aires soon. I've done this a few times and I always want to add, email and ask to be included in a tour of ESMA. It seems a cruel suggestion to someone going to enjoy a few weeks in tango paradise. & yet...

The Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada, the naval engineering school, or rather the large mansion that was the officers' quarters, was one of the most notorious of the places where detainees were taken during the 1970s into the 80s. Not that there's anything at all frightening to see there: parts of it were even rebuilt so that it wouldn't agree with any accounts of the few survivors. The ESMA campus has now been taken over as a 'Space of Remembering' and they arrange tours which recount what is known about what happened there.

I remember clearly the morning I visited. It was cold and overcast, and I was tired: I'd been late at a milonga the previous night. It was a cold morning, but I came away feeling colder than I've ever felt in my life. It's my impression that we can accept the coldness of the weather but it's nothing compared to a cold human heart, which chills you mind and body, the numbing cold-heartedness of people who can decide that other people are not worthy of being treated as humans and can be played with, tortured, almost as a game. It seems that there was hardly even the excuse that they were trying to get information. The prisoners were kept in the loft in the roof of the officer's quarters, and dragged down into the basement every now and again. Then a van would come by, on Tuesday mornings if I remember right, to take the living remains of humans for a flight out over the ocean. To be close to this, close geographically but mercifully not close in time, can only make you feel colder than you've ever felt.

All of which suddenly helps to make real sense of the embrace of tango in Buenos Aires. Maybe the embrace is as it was in the golden age, but we shouldn't ignore what has happened since. Sure there's nostalgia for the golden age, and quite right too, but I don't think one can ignore a decade or more when it was risky for young people, young men in particular, men who are now in their 50s and 60s to be out in the streets, and when everyone lived through a time when it was known that people were 'disappearing', when the authorities weren't protecting but often persecuting the people, when the 5am knock on the door was always possible, and when the country was very isolated. There's one sure way of feeling warm again and that's holding someone else very, very close. It makes sense that tango became popular once democracy of some kind was restored.

So don't take the embrace lightly, it really matters. Sure, tango is fun, but if you dance there and are taken aback by the immediacy and warmth of the embrace, it's serious too; think of the background. Visit ESMA if you're there, support the Space of Remembering: if we ignore history we don't like it can creep back and take hold of us again.

It's taken me a while to make this connection, and I hope it's not fanciful, but I can't help thinking that what happened then is part of tango there now.

Cacho Dante and the embrace

I hadn't intended to write any more about the tango of Buenos Aires and the tango of Europe, and then I remembered a basic exercise. But it was when I discovered a video as well that the keyboard started to rattle. & anyway, I think it's important. When it comes down to it, the outstanding differences between those two tangos seem to be in the embrace and in the way the music is followed with the body.

The exercise is occasionally (too rarely) used in classes here: the leader leads without using the right arm and hand. Holding the right arm behind the back forces the leader to rely exclusively on using the sternum-to-sternum contact to lead. (It might require the 'follower' to use the left arm a bit more firmly.) It always surprises me how sensitive this is: the slightest move from the lead is picked up and responded to immediately. This exercise is great for practicas, and really encourages a clear, firm lead from the chest.

& the video? Sadly, Cacho Dante has injured his right hand. Does this stop him dancing? No way! Here he is giving what appears to be a class demo. I don't remember him giving formal demos in classes but he would dance a bit, aware that we need to watch a lot in order to learn. The video shows clearly the embrace and how it is used. Of course, Cacho is a different shape to many of us, but I assume he was slimmer when he danced as a young man and could still lead well. With regard to body shape, a friend who has danced with him and many others tells me: 'They just lift you onto those big bellies and dance away with you!' & I wonder about that lifting: thinking about the embrace, I've recently noticed that dances where I have the feeling of lifting from the core are successful: those where I can't get that feeling, less so. Entirely subjective. & pushing up from the core means pushing down onto the floor, being grounded.

With thanks to Lonesol.

Posture is central to the embrace. As a young man and as an older man Cacho was unlikely to have spent days hunched over a terminal, and being upright was probably much more part of his culture than it is ours. Myriam Pincen said leaders should stand up straight and breathe in fully as they embrace: '...you are then in the right position'. That's easy to do as a drill: the problem is staying in that position throughout a tango. The moment a leader's posture slumps, the embrace loses its firmness and clarity.

Cacho is dancing to Pugliese, and I take this video as a masterclass in dancing Pugliese too. It's a different kind of music, and we're likely to get one or at most two tandas a night, so we don't dance much to it. The abrupt energy as well the lyrical side of the music are there effortlessly in his lead. I'm not sure how he does it, but I'd guess he's so precisely on the beat he doesn't need to exaggerate his movements. That final step is an example; it's firm but not at all demonstrative, and yet it has great energy.

There are two other recent clips of him dancing Pugliese at the Lujos milonga in Plaza Bohemia. His right hand is bandaged, and although it is behind his partner's back you can see he doesn't hold her with it. It's a great lesson, but I hope the hand has healed. 

The two other clips are Lujos 1 and Lujos 2. & two tangueros in each: I'm sure the guy in the white shirt with the elegant lady in pink is Eduardo 'El Nene' Masci. I note he's relatively slim and can still lead effortlessly; encouragement to many of us. & sorry, I don't know who the lady in pink is.

PS. Ah, Lujos milonga! Just look at that big floor, perfectly normal lighting, people turning up to eat and drink and dance for hours! Isn't that civilized?