Slow Dancing is extraordinary. Slow motion can be very beautiful anyway, but to get a cast of dancers and choreographers like this – they include Trisha Brown, Karole Armitage, Dana Casperson, William Forsythe, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Angelin Preljocaj – in front of a very slow motion HD camera is incredible. The list also includes dancers world-wide: American Indian, Flamenco, Samoan, Capoeira, Balinese, Indian...
Five seconds of dance results in ten minutes of incredibly smooth slow dancing. Expanding time like this removes any sense of narrative or sequence. It's more like a moving photograph than a film. In film or on stage we clearly see a dancer preparing to leap. But in hyper-slow motion this sequence is so attenuated that cause and effect aren't clear, and the dancer simply seems to rise up. & these leaps are extraordinary because we see the body change shape, as the ankles start to hang from the legs, the legs from the hips and the hips from the torso; and when the body lands it visibly crumples, like an inhalation and exhalation. There's no horizontal line, no horizon to suggest ground level, just brightly-lit dancers surrounded by darkness, and the only indication of leaping is this change of body shape. & some of the leaps just go up and up. There's a strange feeling of weightlessness, and of effortlessness. Perhaps this is what dancing feels like at its best.
The more traditional dances are quieter in gesture and movement, so ballet and contemporary come out well, as does flamenco, every moment of which looks amazing. But the faces of all the dancers took my attention. For a few there was an exalting joy in movement, but most faces were inward looking, mask-like, as if absorbed entirely in the dance. Photographer David Michalek, whose project this is, takes the concept of portraiture as a starting point.
Of many very beautiful performances one of the most extraordinary was dancer Alexandra Beller, who by most standards would be regarded as over-weight, but who makes an amazing turning leap that comes down to earth and then down to the floor, where her body subsides, her hair and clothing settling slowly around her. It's an astonishing image of aspiration and matter.
& unfortunately it finishes today, July 24, at 6pm. But if you're anywhere near east London, it's at the Village Underground in Holywell Lane, which is just up the road from Liverpool Street. (You might have passed by and seen underground carriages up on the roof.) It's free, just walk in, be given a programme, and settle down on cushions and beanbags on the floor, and be entranced. Many thanks to Sadler's Wells for giving it to us.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
RIP nuevo
There's a contagious idea going around: prophets of doom, Cherie, Irene and Man Yung, then London Tango, one after the other, all proclaim the imminent demise of 'tango nuevo'! (Sighs of relief all round!) I seem to be the last to catch it, but maybe someone will catch it from me. After all, it's such a good idea!
Some years ago it was pointed out that there's no room for it on most dance floors, and thus the End of Nuevo is nigh. Not always true, but tango actually feels best in big close groups, like our Tango al Fresco in London. If you dance at arm's length from the friend you're dancing with, and at leg's length from the nearest couple, you are very close to dancing completely on your own, and how long is that satisfying?
A few weeks back I visited the big Monday-night practica in North London: a friend I'd met in Buenos Aires was passing through London, and of course we wanted to resume our dancing. She'd learned in all the best places in Germany and has enjoyed tango wherever she's been which, since she's a non-tenured academic, is all over Europe. It was literally a heart-warming experience to renew our friendship over some good old tracks that were such a pleasure to dance to. But pause a moment, and look around. Milena Plebs had taught the class so there were a lot of people there, and it was mainly tango at arms' and legs' length. A strange disengaged, abstract, cold, detached (literally) sensation; there's something cerebral about it, as if the dancers are really wrapped up in some kind of puzzle, cleverly remembering fragments of choreographies, and assembling them, and remembering the appropriate responses to the lead. I cried for the cheerful ringing laughter of the late Ricardo Vidort. Or the passionate musicality of the late Tete Rusconi. Sin miedo! Sin pensamiento! Without fear! Without thinking!
Pablo Veron commented a year or two ago that 'tango nuevo' is doubly a misnomer: it's the name coined by Piazzolla to describe his kind of music, and moreover there's nothing new in the dance itself, which goes back to dance halls of the 1930s and 1940s. It's all old tango, its elements are tango history. In its city of origin the usual term for this kind of dance is 'tango fantasia': something that happens away from the crowded reality of the dance floor, tango for the stage. I can enjoy it if it's done with passion and musicality, and with a strong sense of the close-hold emotional commitment. Look at Javier and Geraldine when they were young and together: it's a wild and breathtaking dance, although I think they'd call it salon, but nothing like the fingertips-only-and-look-how-clever-we-are-dancing-tango dance that's the worst side of London tango.
Chicho Frumboli loudly proclaimed last winter that he had ruined tango with his experiments; that THE EMBRACE was what really mattered. I checked out some recent videos of him: well, poor guy if he thinks that's an embrace! And he even looks bored. Well, maybe he was; maybe he was thinking 'I'm Chicho so I've got to teach this stuff and dance it, but really, my dear, I just want to hold you close and dance properly!' I hope he'll shock everyone and do it soon!
So is 'tango nuevo' dead or dying? It's less popular on the continent than in London, and my guess is that its day here has passed. Europeans dance close, and do it well, and I think nuevo, or fantasia, will begin to feel to dancers how it looks to outsiders: arid, lacking emotional pleasure in its core. They don't really look as if they're enjoying it, so how can it survive? Dancers will split off into jive and salsa, which can be enjoyed very readily, and into salon/milonguero tango. Of course a few gifted dancers will continue to amaze us with 'extreme tango', and the 'n' word will be long forgotten. Eso espero!
Some years ago it was pointed out that there's no room for it on most dance floors, and thus the End of Nuevo is nigh. Not always true, but tango actually feels best in big close groups, like our Tango al Fresco in London. If you dance at arm's length from the friend you're dancing with, and at leg's length from the nearest couple, you are very close to dancing completely on your own, and how long is that satisfying?
A few weeks back I visited the big Monday-night practica in North London: a friend I'd met in Buenos Aires was passing through London, and of course we wanted to resume our dancing. She'd learned in all the best places in Germany and has enjoyed tango wherever she's been which, since she's a non-tenured academic, is all over Europe. It was literally a heart-warming experience to renew our friendship over some good old tracks that were such a pleasure to dance to. But pause a moment, and look around. Milena Plebs had taught the class so there were a lot of people there, and it was mainly tango at arms' and legs' length. A strange disengaged, abstract, cold, detached (literally) sensation; there's something cerebral about it, as if the dancers are really wrapped up in some kind of puzzle, cleverly remembering fragments of choreographies, and assembling them, and remembering the appropriate responses to the lead. I cried for the cheerful ringing laughter of the late Ricardo Vidort. Or the passionate musicality of the late Tete Rusconi. Sin miedo! Sin pensamiento! Without fear! Without thinking!
Pablo Veron commented a year or two ago that 'tango nuevo' is doubly a misnomer: it's the name coined by Piazzolla to describe his kind of music, and moreover there's nothing new in the dance itself, which goes back to dance halls of the 1930s and 1940s. It's all old tango, its elements are tango history. In its city of origin the usual term for this kind of dance is 'tango fantasia': something that happens away from the crowded reality of the dance floor, tango for the stage. I can enjoy it if it's done with passion and musicality, and with a strong sense of the close-hold emotional commitment. Look at Javier and Geraldine when they were young and together: it's a wild and breathtaking dance, although I think they'd call it salon, but nothing like the fingertips-only-and-look-how-clever-we-are-dancing-tango dance that's the worst side of London tango.
Chicho Frumboli loudly proclaimed last winter that he had ruined tango with his experiments; that THE EMBRACE was what really mattered. I checked out some recent videos of him: well, poor guy if he thinks that's an embrace! And he even looks bored. Well, maybe he was; maybe he was thinking 'I'm Chicho so I've got to teach this stuff and dance it, but really, my dear, I just want to hold you close and dance properly!' I hope he'll shock everyone and do it soon!
So is 'tango nuevo' dead or dying? It's less popular on the continent than in London, and my guess is that its day here has passed. Europeans dance close, and do it well, and I think nuevo, or fantasia, will begin to feel to dancers how it looks to outsiders: arid, lacking emotional pleasure in its core. They don't really look as if they're enjoying it, so how can it survive? Dancers will split off into jive and salsa, which can be enjoyed very readily, and into salon/milonguero tango. Of course a few gifted dancers will continue to amaze us with 'extreme tango', and the 'n' word will be long forgotten. Eso espero!
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Gardel and Goyeneche
NuclearGirl set me thinking a while back when she commented that Gardel was her late-night listening: mine is usually Pugliese, like a good many people I expect. But there is another name, Roberto Goyeneche, who I know primarily from the wonderful Sur album, which is the soundtrack to Solanas' film of that name. It's an album I often come back to, and usually late at night. I wrote about the film earlier.
Listening recently to Sur I was struck that Goyeneche speaks rather than sings, speaks in tune, but it's hardly singing. It's said his voice deteriorated as he aged, but it has such emotional depth I'd not call it deterioration. & I couldn't help thinking how strongly this contrasts with Gardel sixty years earlier, whose passion for bel canto gave tango a new direction. By the time Sur was made, the cultural background of opera and the ordered, prosperous world that supported it must have been a distant dream. The music is so full of anguish, tenderness and loss, and so beautiful, that I never tire of it. It's music that aches with nostalgia for the whole nostalgic tango tradition of the golden age, and speaking, rather than singing, seems appropriate to this new, brutal and impoverished world, 1988, the years after the dictatorship. Goyeneche's style was always a bit declamatory: his voice was rich, expressive and powerfully direct, and his diction wonderfully clear, helped no doubt by better recording technology.
The performers were mainly Nestor Marconi on bandoneon, and Roberto Goyeneche. Marconi plays three solo pieces. The voices of the bandoneon and of Goyeneche complement each other emotionally. Sur, 'South', a tango from the 1940s, is a highlight of the soundtrack and the film, the archetypal tango topic of lost love. It's a beautiful poem and the last line, 'y amargura del sueño que murio' – 'bitterness for the dream that died' – seems to have an added poignancy, given the date of this recording. It's a very potent poem: when talking about emotions in tango, Pedro Sanchez quoted the opening lines of Sur...
'On the corner of San Juan and old Boedo, and all the sky,
Pompeya, and in the distance, the flood,
memories of your loose bride's hair
and your name floating in farewells...'
… and said how he'd identified with this when he was young, and that he dances to it with all his own emotions. I felt he was suggesting that a non-porteno couldn't relate to it, but I'm not sure: we all share emotions of love and loss, and the more we understand the words, the more our own memories and emotions are involved too. (The castellano, and a translation, with a link to Troilo's recording with Edmundo Rivero, are here: I re-worded that verse above from it.)
The album is ascribed to Piazzolla, but it's not performed by him: at most there are a few tracks by him. Most of the songs, such as Sur and Naranjo en Flor, are standards that Troilo recorded much earlier with Goyeneche and others. The film came out in 1988, five years after the end of military rule, when the revival was only just beginning. Troilo and Piazzolla had both been affected by the decline in dancing from the 1950s onwards: in the mid-50s, Troilo started to record as a quartet, while Piazzolla, like Pugliese, began to concentrate on playing listening music rather than dance music. Musicians have to make a living, and perhaps there was no longer the money in dance music. Albums were still being made but the future of that amazing 20th century tradition of Argentine tango can't have looked good at that time.
Roberto Goyeneche, 1926 - 1994.
I checked out YouTube to find if there was a track there of Goyeneche singing Sur, and found that someone has uploaded the entire film, Sur, in 12 10-minute segments. & it's the Spanish version with English subtitles; the songs are partially subtitled. I've seen it only in a version dubbed into German, which regrettably I don't understand. This segment is the opening credits: the music itself, Goyeneche singing Sur, begins about 1:56. Sadly, the uploader has screwed up the aspect ratio, making Goyeneche unrecognisably overweight, and the visual quality is rather poor. The credits attribute the arrangements to Nestor Marconi, and the incidental music to Piazzolla.
I bought the album from Digital 7 (search under Piazzolla) as a download, but Sur is also available for listening on Spotify, which has expanded hugely since I last looked. It now has some 40-odd Troilo CDs you can listen to, ten of them released this year, about 20 Goyeneche albums, most of them released this year, and up to a dozen each of the Golden Age orquestas: some are compilations so they overlap a bit. i-Tunes has even more for purchase. Some of it isn't really music for dancing, but that's the era Goyeneche lived through: some of Goyeneche's albums seem over-generous with strings, and the crisp rhythms of tango aren't really there, unlike the albums he made with his close friend Anibal Troilo.
Listening recently to Sur I was struck that Goyeneche speaks rather than sings, speaks in tune, but it's hardly singing. It's said his voice deteriorated as he aged, but it has such emotional depth I'd not call it deterioration. & I couldn't help thinking how strongly this contrasts with Gardel sixty years earlier, whose passion for bel canto gave tango a new direction. By the time Sur was made, the cultural background of opera and the ordered, prosperous world that supported it must have been a distant dream. The music is so full of anguish, tenderness and loss, and so beautiful, that I never tire of it. It's music that aches with nostalgia for the whole nostalgic tango tradition of the golden age, and speaking, rather than singing, seems appropriate to this new, brutal and impoverished world, 1988, the years after the dictatorship. Goyeneche's style was always a bit declamatory: his voice was rich, expressive and powerfully direct, and his diction wonderfully clear, helped no doubt by better recording technology.
The performers were mainly Nestor Marconi on bandoneon, and Roberto Goyeneche. Marconi plays three solo pieces. The voices of the bandoneon and of Goyeneche complement each other emotionally. Sur, 'South', a tango from the 1940s, is a highlight of the soundtrack and the film, the archetypal tango topic of lost love. It's a beautiful poem and the last line, 'y amargura del sueño que murio' – 'bitterness for the dream that died' – seems to have an added poignancy, given the date of this recording. It's a very potent poem: when talking about emotions in tango, Pedro Sanchez quoted the opening lines of Sur...
'On the corner of San Juan and old Boedo, and all the sky,
Pompeya, and in the distance, the flood,
memories of your loose bride's hair
and your name floating in farewells...'
… and said how he'd identified with this when he was young, and that he dances to it with all his own emotions. I felt he was suggesting that a non-porteno couldn't relate to it, but I'm not sure: we all share emotions of love and loss, and the more we understand the words, the more our own memories and emotions are involved too. (The castellano, and a translation, with a link to Troilo's recording with Edmundo Rivero, are here: I re-worded that verse above from it.)
The album is ascribed to Piazzolla, but it's not performed by him: at most there are a few tracks by him. Most of the songs, such as Sur and Naranjo en Flor, are standards that Troilo recorded much earlier with Goyeneche and others. The film came out in 1988, five years after the end of military rule, when the revival was only just beginning. Troilo and Piazzolla had both been affected by the decline in dancing from the 1950s onwards: in the mid-50s, Troilo started to record as a quartet, while Piazzolla, like Pugliese, began to concentrate on playing listening music rather than dance music. Musicians have to make a living, and perhaps there was no longer the money in dance music. Albums were still being made but the future of that amazing 20th century tradition of Argentine tango can't have looked good at that time.
Roberto Goyeneche, 1926 - 1994.
I checked out YouTube to find if there was a track there of Goyeneche singing Sur, and found that someone has uploaded the entire film, Sur, in 12 10-minute segments. & it's the Spanish version with English subtitles; the songs are partially subtitled. I've seen it only in a version dubbed into German, which regrettably I don't understand. This segment is the opening credits: the music itself, Goyeneche singing Sur, begins about 1:56. Sadly, the uploader has screwed up the aspect ratio, making Goyeneche unrecognisably overweight, and the visual quality is rather poor. The credits attribute the arrangements to Nestor Marconi, and the incidental music to Piazzolla.
I bought the album from Digital 7 (search under Piazzolla) as a download, but Sur is also available for listening on Spotify, which has expanded hugely since I last looked. It now has some 40-odd Troilo CDs you can listen to, ten of them released this year, about 20 Goyeneche albums, most of them released this year, and up to a dozen each of the Golden Age orquestas: some are compilations so they overlap a bit. i-Tunes has even more for purchase. Some of it isn't really music for dancing, but that's the era Goyeneche lived through: some of Goyeneche's albums seem over-generous with strings, and the crisp rhythms of tango aren't really there, unlike the albums he made with his close friend Anibal Troilo.
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Tango al Fresco
The two Tango al Fresco events are always highlights of the London tango year for me. Interesting that for a day everyone seems close to being 'milonguero': the floor is so packed that there's no room to be extravagant, and everyone adjusts, more or less, to the crowd because everyone's happy to be there. & it feels really good. I hope the connection between dancing close and neat, dancing with a lot of people and feeling really good gets widely recognised! There were a few attempts at flying heels early on, but they either flew away in disgust or joined the crowd. & the weather was excellent. It always takes a tango or two to get used to the camber of the floor, but it's wonderful to be outside under the trees on a sunny July afternoon. There are picnics all around, milonga friends everywhere, and a warm and relaxed feeling. Devotees of the more serious Buenos Aires milongas might find it too relaxed and informal, but it's always a very enjoyable afternoon, and it always seems to show London tango at its best.
I made a discovery that really interested me. When you don't have space to do much you can playfully vary the rhythm, pause when you might be expected to step, step on the offbeats, create a sequence of rhythms that seems irregular and yet returns to the regular beat at the end of a phrase, which can make dancing with small steps in a tight space more interesting. It's never occurred to me to explore this before.
I watched The Limits of Control by Jim Jarmusch when I got back, an original and unexpected film, as ever. There's a 'making of' on the DVD; you can watch actors being ordinary humans one moment, and suddenly someone else the next. & how many people does it take to film one person walking down a street? & Jarmusch tells the old truth: there are just so many stories, but there are infinite ways of telling them.
& there are just so many steps, but there must be infinite ways of dancing them. Roll on 8 August for the second event. Here's 25 seconds of last Sunday.
I made a discovery that really interested me. When you don't have space to do much you can playfully vary the rhythm, pause when you might be expected to step, step on the offbeats, create a sequence of rhythms that seems irregular and yet returns to the regular beat at the end of a phrase, which can make dancing with small steps in a tight space more interesting. It's never occurred to me to explore this before.
I watched The Limits of Control by Jim Jarmusch when I got back, an original and unexpected film, as ever. There's a 'making of' on the DVD; you can watch actors being ordinary humans one moment, and suddenly someone else the next. & how many people does it take to film one person walking down a street? & Jarmusch tells the old truth: there are just so many stories, but there are infinite ways of telling them.
& there are just so many steps, but there must be infinite ways of dancing them. Roll on 8 August for the second event. Here's 25 seconds of last Sunday.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Slow Dancing
High-speed, high-definition cameras recording at 1,000 frames per second have been with us for a while, showing astoundingly beautiful details of sports events. Artist David Michalek uses this technology to make video portraits of dancers, and shows them in installations using a number of screens, one per dancer. A short movement phrase of perhaps 5 seconds, is played back in 10 minutes of extreme slow motion, enabling the viewer to see the complexity of the simplest gestures, catching details that would normally escape the naked eye.
London has been a bit slow to catch up with showings of dance video made with this technology, but Slow Dancing is now in London in Trafalgar Square, from Tue 6 - Fri 9 July, starting at 9pm, and it will move on to the Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, London EC2A 3PQ, from Tuesday 13 - Saturday 24 July. The list of participants in this unique installation reads like a who's who of dance talent, including Wendy Whelan, Shantala Shivalingappa, Judith Jamison, William Forsythe, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Alexei Ratmansky.
This is another free dance event.
What fascinates me is that this use of technology completely removes choreography from dance. Choreography is something that happens in time, whether in five minutes or in the hour or two that a 'show' takes. This technique strips away choreography and shows us dance simply in terms of body movement. & (to me, anyway) the body in movement is one of the most beautiful things there is. There are choreographers I admire, but to me they are best when they show the freedom and complexity of movement. &, of course, my favourite dance is choreography-free! But nevertheless I find Slow Dancing a very beautiful and fascinating project.
Here's the 2007 installation at the Lincoln Centre. The video is the Sadlers Wells presentation for the project in London.
London has been a bit slow to catch up with showings of dance video made with this technology, but Slow Dancing is now in London in Trafalgar Square, from Tue 6 - Fri 9 July, starting at 9pm, and it will move on to the Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, London EC2A 3PQ, from Tuesday 13 - Saturday 24 July. The list of participants in this unique installation reads like a who's who of dance talent, including Wendy Whelan, Shantala Shivalingappa, Judith Jamison, William Forsythe, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Alexei Ratmansky.
This is another free dance event.
What fascinates me is that this use of technology completely removes choreography from dance. Choreography is something that happens in time, whether in five minutes or in the hour or two that a 'show' takes. This technique strips away choreography and shows us dance simply in terms of body movement. & (to me, anyway) the body in movement is one of the most beautiful things there is. There are choreographers I admire, but to me they are best when they show the freedom and complexity of movement. &, of course, my favourite dance is choreography-free! But nevertheless I find Slow Dancing a very beautiful and fascinating project.
Here's the 2007 installation at the Lincoln Centre. The video is the Sadlers Wells presentation for the project in London.
Friday, 2 July 2010
Some tango music films
Tango Salon, the BBC film about La Confiteria Ideal in Buenos Aires, was released on DVD in January. I've just rented it from my usual DVD provider, LoveFilm. It was made for general viewing rather than for the tango community, so bits of dance by the likes of Gerardo Portalea are intercut with talking heads, some interesting, many not. It also explores the political and economic situation in 2002. There are long takes of a youthful and exuberant Javier and Geraldine. Cutting up wonderful tango with talking heads is irritating, but I first watched it when I was just starting out, and I got a great deal about tango and about Argentina from it.
Unfortunately the BBC hasn't been reading Tangocommuter, or it would know that 'Extras' in the form of their out-takes, the full versions of the dances in the film, would be a big hit. There's not a single 'Extra', so if you've already seen the film there's nothing new. Which is terribly sad!
Color Tango seems to be available on DVD at Color Tango gigs only. It's a series of mini-lectures by Color Tango members, charting the history of tango, with musical illustrations. It would be a useful introduction for someone who knows little about the music. Good that Julio de Caro was given prominent mention: he introduced a musical sophistication into the relatively basic tango of his time. But the presentation of Color Tango is clunky at best. The mini-lectures are translated by translators rather than in subtitles, which slows the film.
Rodolfo Mederos has provided music for a number of films, but El último bandoneón ('The Last Bandoneón'), directed by Alejandro Saderman (2005) seems to be his first acting role. Ostensibly, the story is of how a gifted bandoneón performer, Marina Gayotto, auditions for a place in Mederos' new orquesta, but her instrument is useless, and her search for one that is playable takes her through the world of the bandoneón in Buenos Aires, the collectors, the repairers, the musicians. The dance appears too, with Geraldine and Javier, and a few of the older dancers, including Pedro Sanchez, talking about the tango world. But the musical focus of the film is the encounter of Mederos with a group of old bandoneón performers who get together regularly to play the old music. The film culminates with a concert with the new Mederos orquesta, but highlighting the bandoneón orquesta. So the storyline is rather mixed: the story of Marina looking for an instrument is an interesting insight into the world of the instrument, but provides little music. Musically, the group of old bandoneón performers is the focus of the film, but we don't see or hear a lot of them.
I've heard it said that there's been a prejudice against women playing bandoneón: until recently women have been welcome on the violin or piano, but not on bandoneón.
Mederos played with Piazolla and Pugliese, but went off in the 1970s to found Generación Cero, aiming at a fusion of jazz, rock and the music of Buenos Aires. By 1990 he had returned to tango. He was invited by Buenos Aires-born Daniel Barenboim to play in a tango trio that briefly toured Europe. This appears as a TV-only film, Tangos among friends. The tango is OK, but would hardly make you want to dance.
El otro camino ('A Different Way: Tango with Rodolfo Mederos') written and directed by Gabriel Szollosy (2008): another made-for-TV film. I watched it on cable TV late one tired night, so my impressions of it aren't exactly clear, but there's plenty of music in it, including several magical solo improvisations by Mederos. Unlike El último bandoneón the focus is much more on the music.
By far the best tango music film is Si Sos Brujo ('If you are a magician'), made by American-born Caroline Neal, who met bassist Vaurchensky when his group, El Arranque, played at a well-known London milonga. She was just finishing film school, and left with him for Buenos Aires. Vauchensky was trying to get funding for his great project (one of his great projects), the Orquesta Escuela Tango, so she was there, filming, at all the meetings and early rehearsals, and the film is an effortless, marvelous, fly-on-the-wall documentary.
At its centre is the wonderful Emilio Balcarce, who played with, and arranged for, many of the great golden age orquestas including Troilo and Pugliese. At an age when he might have expected to live quietly with his family he found himself on stage again, in Buenos Aires and on European tours, directing an orquesta of young musicians. Other surviving maestros of his generation are brought in to instruct the young musicians and to play with them: the meetings of experience with the energy of youth are extraordinary, and the music is exciting throughout. Not only is there plenty of good music, but the film is beautifully shot and well thought-out. This is definitely not to be missed, and it's the only one I can still enjoy watching again.
I'd like to say that this is the one to rush out and buy, but currently Amazon UK has only one copy - at £76. (We're assured it's in good condition.) I got it from them a year or two ago, and I think it cost around £20. Music Argentina advertises it for 18 Euros, but it would be imported from Argentina.
Here's the closing sequence, in La Ideal (where else?)
Unfortunately the BBC hasn't been reading Tangocommuter, or it would know that 'Extras' in the form of their out-takes, the full versions of the dances in the film, would be a big hit. There's not a single 'Extra', so if you've already seen the film there's nothing new. Which is terribly sad!
Color Tango seems to be available on DVD at Color Tango gigs only. It's a series of mini-lectures by Color Tango members, charting the history of tango, with musical illustrations. It would be a useful introduction for someone who knows little about the music. Good that Julio de Caro was given prominent mention: he introduced a musical sophistication into the relatively basic tango of his time. But the presentation of Color Tango is clunky at best. The mini-lectures are translated by translators rather than in subtitles, which slows the film.
Rodolfo Mederos has provided music for a number of films, but El último bandoneón ('The Last Bandoneón'), directed by Alejandro Saderman (2005) seems to be his first acting role. Ostensibly, the story is of how a gifted bandoneón performer, Marina Gayotto, auditions for a place in Mederos' new orquesta, but her instrument is useless, and her search for one that is playable takes her through the world of the bandoneón in Buenos Aires, the collectors, the repairers, the musicians. The dance appears too, with Geraldine and Javier, and a few of the older dancers, including Pedro Sanchez, talking about the tango world. But the musical focus of the film is the encounter of Mederos with a group of old bandoneón performers who get together regularly to play the old music. The film culminates with a concert with the new Mederos orquesta, but highlighting the bandoneón orquesta. So the storyline is rather mixed: the story of Marina looking for an instrument is an interesting insight into the world of the instrument, but provides little music. Musically, the group of old bandoneón performers is the focus of the film, but we don't see or hear a lot of them.
I've heard it said that there's been a prejudice against women playing bandoneón: until recently women have been welcome on the violin or piano, but not on bandoneón.
Mederos played with Piazolla and Pugliese, but went off in the 1970s to found Generación Cero, aiming at a fusion of jazz, rock and the music of Buenos Aires. By 1990 he had returned to tango. He was invited by Buenos Aires-born Daniel Barenboim to play in a tango trio that briefly toured Europe. This appears as a TV-only film, Tangos among friends. The tango is OK, but would hardly make you want to dance.
El otro camino ('A Different Way: Tango with Rodolfo Mederos') written and directed by Gabriel Szollosy (2008): another made-for-TV film. I watched it on cable TV late one tired night, so my impressions of it aren't exactly clear, but there's plenty of music in it, including several magical solo improvisations by Mederos. Unlike El último bandoneón the focus is much more on the music.
By far the best tango music film is Si Sos Brujo ('If you are a magician'), made by American-born Caroline Neal, who met bassist Vaurchensky when his group, El Arranque, played at a well-known London milonga. She was just finishing film school, and left with him for Buenos Aires. Vauchensky was trying to get funding for his great project (one of his great projects), the Orquesta Escuela Tango, so she was there, filming, at all the meetings and early rehearsals, and the film is an effortless, marvelous, fly-on-the-wall documentary.
At its centre is the wonderful Emilio Balcarce, who played with, and arranged for, many of the great golden age orquestas including Troilo and Pugliese. At an age when he might have expected to live quietly with his family he found himself on stage again, in Buenos Aires and on European tours, directing an orquesta of young musicians. Other surviving maestros of his generation are brought in to instruct the young musicians and to play with them: the meetings of experience with the energy of youth are extraordinary, and the music is exciting throughout. Not only is there plenty of good music, but the film is beautifully shot and well thought-out. This is definitely not to be missed, and it's the only one I can still enjoy watching again.
I'd like to say that this is the one to rush out and buy, but currently Amazon UK has only one copy - at £76. (We're assured it's in good condition.) I got it from them a year or two ago, and I think it cost around £20. Music Argentina advertises it for 18 Euros, but it would be imported from Argentina.
Here's the closing sequence, in La Ideal (where else?)
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Sunday at Pavadita
Two good things: it was a hot day, and England won! The third ODI, that is, a bit of a nail-biting finish, but well done. Not the same Australian team that thrashed us for years, and a well-organised English team that even seems to have worked out how to deal with the few seasoned Aussie players. Two ODIs to go, we've won the series and we're beginning to wonder about a whitewash. Can this really be happening?
& on to Nikki's new Hammersmith milonga, La Pavadita, at the Hammersmith Club in Rutland Grove, five or 10 minutes walk from the underground. The most ideal place for a milonga I've seen in London. Beautiful, a tall, rather narrow building with a stage at one end, and a bar with a balcony over it at the other. It feels spacious, high-ceilinged, with windows close to the roof. Even on a hot evening it was bearable. (I was told that at the Crypt the previous night it had been 33 degrees inside: the place reminds me of an enormous brick bread-oven, and must have been close to turning out human pizzas.)
The dance floor at Pavadita is long and fairly narrow: you can see across it easily, which is great, but subtly confusing because it feels like a cabeceo situation, but it doesn't actually work because no one is expecting it. The opening night a few weeks ago was comfortably crowded, but last night it was a bit sparse: a hot, late-June evening. The building is well-maintained, and the lighting is quite good, a nice change. An excellent wood floor, and space to move in between the tables and the dance floor. Perfect.
Last winter, Cacho Dante insisted that I must not step forwards with a leg bent at the knee: I realised afterwards what this does to posture. In fact, straightening the knee produces that flick forwards, that little kick you notice in a good tango walk. When there are few dancers on the floor you tend to notice individuals, and individuals who lead without looking confident often step forwards with a bent knee. They may be confident and even have quite a range of steps, but someone who confidently leads a wide variety with bent knees simply looks weird. (& I wonder how my posture looks these days, after years of bad posture, some years of yoga and pilates, a few years of tango, and a few months since Cacho's intervention. These days it feels good walking down the street, but once you get on the floor things can change. Some months since I last dared film myself dancing.)
And a couple who dance and teach 'fantasia' tango in London was there. It surprised me how irritating it can look. It kept catching the corner of my eye, and seemed to go against the grain of dancing there, which was otherwise pretty much salon, some of it very practised and good. It was certainly going against the music: it was with the beat of course, but seemed to ignore completely the emotional charge of the music. I like Golondrina's comment about following this kind of dance: '...it can feel like a cryptic word puzzle – elusive and just out of reach'. It's meant to look good, but by comparison it actually looks rather trivial.
Anyway, welcome Pavadita, and best wishes!
& on to Nikki's new Hammersmith milonga, La Pavadita, at the Hammersmith Club in Rutland Grove, five or 10 minutes walk from the underground. The most ideal place for a milonga I've seen in London. Beautiful, a tall, rather narrow building with a stage at one end, and a bar with a balcony over it at the other. It feels spacious, high-ceilinged, with windows close to the roof. Even on a hot evening it was bearable. (I was told that at the Crypt the previous night it had been 33 degrees inside: the place reminds me of an enormous brick bread-oven, and must have been close to turning out human pizzas.)
The dance floor at Pavadita is long and fairly narrow: you can see across it easily, which is great, but subtly confusing because it feels like a cabeceo situation, but it doesn't actually work because no one is expecting it. The opening night a few weeks ago was comfortably crowded, but last night it was a bit sparse: a hot, late-June evening. The building is well-maintained, and the lighting is quite good, a nice change. An excellent wood floor, and space to move in between the tables and the dance floor. Perfect.
Last winter, Cacho Dante insisted that I must not step forwards with a leg bent at the knee: I realised afterwards what this does to posture. In fact, straightening the knee produces that flick forwards, that little kick you notice in a good tango walk. When there are few dancers on the floor you tend to notice individuals, and individuals who lead without looking confident often step forwards with a bent knee. They may be confident and even have quite a range of steps, but someone who confidently leads a wide variety with bent knees simply looks weird. (& I wonder how my posture looks these days, after years of bad posture, some years of yoga and pilates, a few years of tango, and a few months since Cacho's intervention. These days it feels good walking down the street, but once you get on the floor things can change. Some months since I last dared film myself dancing.)
And a couple who dance and teach 'fantasia' tango in London was there. It surprised me how irritating it can look. It kept catching the corner of my eye, and seemed to go against the grain of dancing there, which was otherwise pretty much salon, some of it very practised and good. It was certainly going against the music: it was with the beat of course, but seemed to ignore completely the emotional charge of the music. I like Golondrina's comment about following this kind of dance: '...it can feel like a cryptic word puzzle – elusive and just out of reach'. It's meant to look good, but by comparison it actually looks rather trivial.
Anyway, welcome Pavadita, and best wishes!
Monday, 28 June 2010
Cool!
Free Open Air Performance
1-4 July
Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court
Somerset House
Strand
London
'Come and watch a powerful all-women cast, made up of five extraordinary professional dancers and fifteen of the UK’s exciting emerging talents brought together especially for this unmissable event. Shobana Jeyasingh's dramatic choreography, together with the unique talents of designer Ursula Bombshell and sound artist Cassiel, promise an intense and water-inspired dance performance for visitors to Somerset House.'
Thurs & Fri at 18.00 & 19.00
Sat & Sun at 12.00, 13.00, 15.00 & 16.00
1-4 July
Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court
Somerset House
Strand
London
'Come and watch a powerful all-women cast, made up of five extraordinary professional dancers and fifteen of the UK’s exciting emerging talents brought together especially for this unmissable event. Shobana Jeyasingh's dramatic choreography, together with the unique talents of designer Ursula Bombshell and sound artist Cassiel, promise an intense and water-inspired dance performance for visitors to Somerset House.'
Thurs & Fri at 18.00 & 19.00
Sat & Sun at 12.00, 13.00, 15.00 & 16.00
Friday, 25 June 2010
The beautiful game...
The footwork! The precision! The timing! The control! The fluency! &... the musicality! No apology, we're still in the land of the midnight milonga. In Maipu 444 to be precise. Just take a look at this! Please! (I can't embed it.)
Too bad so many videos of milongas show the ceiling, and the torsos of dancers. There are many reasons why it's not easy to film in a real milonga. (I suggested that someone should try to find funding to set up a temporary milonga in the city, where the best old dancers could, if they chose, come and be filmed: I hope someone's working on that right now!) This brief clip has got it absolutely right: it shows where it all comes from, where the energy starts, the floor. Just watch these magic feet dance together! & for a brief moment, their faces. & see how much music you can make stuck in a small corner of the floor while the other dancers are still chatting.
One great thing of the last year has been finding out just how many wonderful older dancers there still are. Irene and Man Yung revealed a number of them earlier in the year, and Jantango's project is ongoing. It's wonderful that good quality, inexpensive video, and YouTube, have arrived just in time for us to follow some of these people from afar, for dancers in the future to look at stuff like this and say, 'Is that what it was like? Amazing!'
Too bad so many videos of milongas show the ceiling, and the torsos of dancers. There are many reasons why it's not easy to film in a real milonga. (I suggested that someone should try to find funding to set up a temporary milonga in the city, where the best old dancers could, if they chose, come and be filmed: I hope someone's working on that right now!) This brief clip has got it absolutely right: it shows where it all comes from, where the energy starts, the floor. Just watch these magic feet dance together! & for a brief moment, their faces. & see how much music you can make stuck in a small corner of the floor while the other dancers are still chatting.
One great thing of the last year has been finding out just how many wonderful older dancers there still are. Irene and Man Yung revealed a number of them earlier in the year, and Jantango's project is ongoing. It's wonderful that good quality, inexpensive video, and YouTube, have arrived just in time for us to follow some of these people from afar, for dancers in the future to look at stuff like this and say, 'Is that what it was like? Amazing!'
Monday, 21 June 2010
Here and there
I sometimes think it can surprise people in London to realise how much Argentines can bring to tango. That's not really intended to sound sarcastic, but I sometimes get the impression that even London dancers in a traditional tango style aren't that interested in Argentine dancers whose tango is traditional, that there's a feeling that we should sort out our own tango for ourselves, even that we might know a bit better than them. Maybe we should, maybe we do, but it's still wonderful when Argentines like Mimi, like Marcelo Rojas, turn up and really excite people with their passionate enthusiasm which, along with a sense of elegance, is really characteristic of traditional Argentine tango.
I heard a lot of very positive comments about the music the Buenos Aires DJ Marcelo Rojas played at Carablanca last Friday. People really liked it. In Buenos Aires I'd been struck how strong, proud, alive, the music often sounds, and how dull it sometimes sounds here. Tangoenelcielo pointed out that Buenos Aires DJs will typically play tanda after tanda of that strong proud music, a limited, often repeated selection of D'Arienzo, Biagi, Troilo, Tanturi, at the beginning of the evening. It's a good way to get a party going, but gets a bit repetitive. Later, Fresedo, D'Agostino, Pugliese maybe. I couldn't stay to the end, but that's the way the evening seemed to be shaping up. 'The music is so good this evening' was what I kept hearing. It certainly made me feel good, and quite a few other people too. Many thanks, Marcelo, it was great.
And I wonder how this couple, Argentine dancers whose tango is traditional, would be received if they visited London. 'Traditional' suggests a single style, whereas traditional tango is really individual: Osvaldo and Coca's tango, like the tango of everyone else of their generation, is unique. No two couples are alike. No other dancers move from humour to intense seriousness like Osvaldo and Coca, and always with impeccable musicality. They teach all over Europe in our summer months, but I wonder if many dancers would manage to to turn up if they gave workshops here. I've never seen tango as a competitive sport, so the idea of tango 'World Champions' always seems more than a bit off to me, but that's what they were, Campeones Mundial de Tango Salon, 2004. Even so, would many dancers go to their workshops in London?
& have I said all this before? & am I repeating myself? Sad, isn't it?
Video thanks to 2xtango (but it would have looked better without the logo), and thanks to tangocelebration for pointing it out.
I heard a lot of very positive comments about the music the Buenos Aires DJ Marcelo Rojas played at Carablanca last Friday. People really liked it. In Buenos Aires I'd been struck how strong, proud, alive, the music often sounds, and how dull it sometimes sounds here. Tangoenelcielo pointed out that Buenos Aires DJs will typically play tanda after tanda of that strong proud music, a limited, often repeated selection of D'Arienzo, Biagi, Troilo, Tanturi, at the beginning of the evening. It's a good way to get a party going, but gets a bit repetitive. Later, Fresedo, D'Agostino, Pugliese maybe. I couldn't stay to the end, but that's the way the evening seemed to be shaping up. 'The music is so good this evening' was what I kept hearing. It certainly made me feel good, and quite a few other people too. Many thanks, Marcelo, it was great.
And I wonder how this couple, Argentine dancers whose tango is traditional, would be received if they visited London. 'Traditional' suggests a single style, whereas traditional tango is really individual: Osvaldo and Coca's tango, like the tango of everyone else of their generation, is unique. No two couples are alike. No other dancers move from humour to intense seriousness like Osvaldo and Coca, and always with impeccable musicality. They teach all over Europe in our summer months, but I wonder if many dancers would manage to to turn up if they gave workshops here. I've never seen tango as a competitive sport, so the idea of tango 'World Champions' always seems more than a bit off to me, but that's what they were, Campeones Mundial de Tango Salon, 2004. Even so, would many dancers go to their workshops in London?
& have I said all this before? & am I repeating myself? Sad, isn't it?
Video thanks to 2xtango (but it would have looked better without the logo), and thanks to tangocelebration for pointing it out.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
The Craneway Event 2
An astonishing feature-length film in which little seems to happen, and yet one watches in a kind of relaxed attention, oblivious to the passage of time. It just looks beautiful.
The 'event' isn't really a rehearsal: the dancers have already rehearsed, and choreographer Merce Cunningham is spending three days prior to performance locating the dance in the former Ford assembly plant, an enormous hall, glazed on three sides, right on the quay-side, separated from the sea only by the craneway, the iron tracks once used by the cranes. To the sides, the hills of San Fransisco, and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. Ships; a container vessel inches past, yachts breeze by. The floor of the hall is huge, probably three or four times bigger than any stage, and covered with a semi-reflective surface of dance mat. The folding doors at one corner of the hall must be 20 feet high.
Three days, the fresh clear light of morning giving way to the diffused warm glow of late afternoon sunshine. The dancers work through their sequences; their pacing and angle to the audience are changed a little by Merce Cunningham, wheel-chair bound after, he has said, too many years dancing on concrete. But he was 90 when the film was made and sadly he passed away during the editing. The film does have an elegaic quality. There's no music, just the sounds of the dancers on the floor, occasionally of boats and the sea. It's very quiet. The cameras never move; no pans, no zooms, just cuts from angle to angle, long takes, the visual style of film-maker Tacita Dean, who was invited by Cunningham to film the event, although she chose rather to film these final rehearsals since Cunningham himself was present.
In a way it's unfocussed, or rather the focus is on everything. It's certainly not a film about a dance performance as it doesn't show us clearly all the dancers' moves. It's not a film about Merce Cunningham, who is present throughout but not as a character in a film or documentary. Or rather it is all these, and more too: it's a film about the building, about the birds, the sea and the ships, the bridge, the city and above all the wonderful light. It's a wonderfully calm film. At the end of the third day, there's a long take, looking from end to end of the hall, against the warm blaze of the setting sun, the dancers little more than silhouettes, the vast building full of movement from end to end, the floor reflecting the light and the dancers. The final rehearsal finishes, there's a little laughter, voices and relaxed movement, and with that the film ends.
Details of the screenings are here. Three screenings a day Tuesday to Friday, and two on Saturday, until June 26. & it's free. (& if you click on that link, have a look at the line of dancers in profile. Que postura!)
The 'event' isn't really a rehearsal: the dancers have already rehearsed, and choreographer Merce Cunningham is spending three days prior to performance locating the dance in the former Ford assembly plant, an enormous hall, glazed on three sides, right on the quay-side, separated from the sea only by the craneway, the iron tracks once used by the cranes. To the sides, the hills of San Fransisco, and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. Ships; a container vessel inches past, yachts breeze by. The floor of the hall is huge, probably three or four times bigger than any stage, and covered with a semi-reflective surface of dance mat. The folding doors at one corner of the hall must be 20 feet high.
Three days, the fresh clear light of morning giving way to the diffused warm glow of late afternoon sunshine. The dancers work through their sequences; their pacing and angle to the audience are changed a little by Merce Cunningham, wheel-chair bound after, he has said, too many years dancing on concrete. But he was 90 when the film was made and sadly he passed away during the editing. The film does have an elegaic quality. There's no music, just the sounds of the dancers on the floor, occasionally of boats and the sea. It's very quiet. The cameras never move; no pans, no zooms, just cuts from angle to angle, long takes, the visual style of film-maker Tacita Dean, who was invited by Cunningham to film the event, although she chose rather to film these final rehearsals since Cunningham himself was present.
In a way it's unfocussed, or rather the focus is on everything. It's certainly not a film about a dance performance as it doesn't show us clearly all the dancers' moves. It's not a film about Merce Cunningham, who is present throughout but not as a character in a film or documentary. Or rather it is all these, and more too: it's a film about the building, about the birds, the sea and the ships, the bridge, the city and above all the wonderful light. It's a wonderfully calm film. At the end of the third day, there's a long take, looking from end to end of the hall, against the warm blaze of the setting sun, the dancers little more than silhouettes, the vast building full of movement from end to end, the floor reflecting the light and the dancers. The final rehearsal finishes, there's a little laughter, voices and relaxed movement, and with that the film ends.
Details of the screenings are here. Three screenings a day Tuesday to Friday, and two on Saturday, until June 26. & it's free. (& if you click on that link, have a look at the line of dancers in profile. Que postura!)
Thursday, 17 June 2010
Bridge to the Tango 2
At the beginning of April I posted about Daniel Trenner's blog and new website, and about his great series of videos, which he is currently re-releasing online. Later in April he uploaded some samples on YouTube. All go back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, and there are some well-known names among them. His videos are now the only record of some of the dancers who learned in the Golden Age.
The one-hour sessions seem expensive at $65 as downloads. I bought the two VHS cassettes of Tete and Sylvia a few years ago, and they were cheaper, even with postage and packing. However, Trenner says he also has hours of interview material as well, which is of little or no commercial value, and that the sale of downloads of the class material will go towards the free release of the less commercial material on YouTube and on the itangocafe website. If this includes translation and sub-titling, it's excellent value. & he points out that these prices are in line with the cost of private lessons.
If you search YouTube for itangocafe you'll find a number of recently uploaded extracts from Tete and Sylvia, Tomi O'Connel, Rodolfo and Maria Cieri, Juan Bruno, Pupi Castello, Victor Romero and Norma Galli, and Omar Vega, all well worth watching. The format isn't ideal: translation, rather than subtitles, adds to the length, but there's some inspiring material there.
I'll embed just one, the late Tete. It's said that he was dissatisfied with the two one-hour sessions. The setting is certainly strange: the potted plants and pseudo-Greek columns, a Buenos Aires studio, no doubt, an atmosphere miles away from the comfortable relaxation of a milonga. & there's a telling moment when Trenner asks him to demonstrate a step without music. 'Sin musica?' asks Tete, looking really puzzled: to make up for the lack of that essential ingredient he sings to himself as he dances. But if he felt that his 'performance' is lacking, at least the video is extremely clear, and the tangos danced in between the teaching demonstrations show something of the energy and musicality he is remembered for. This is one of them.
PS. 1.21 to 1.30: just what does he do there? But it's a totally unhurried lead, virtuoso without the slightest sense of a display, and Sylvia just continues with a couple of untroubled ochos.
The one-hour sessions seem expensive at $65 as downloads. I bought the two VHS cassettes of Tete and Sylvia a few years ago, and they were cheaper, even with postage and packing. However, Trenner says he also has hours of interview material as well, which is of little or no commercial value, and that the sale of downloads of the class material will go towards the free release of the less commercial material on YouTube and on the itangocafe website. If this includes translation and sub-titling, it's excellent value. & he points out that these prices are in line with the cost of private lessons.
If you search YouTube for itangocafe you'll find a number of recently uploaded extracts from Tete and Sylvia, Tomi O'Connel, Rodolfo and Maria Cieri, Juan Bruno, Pupi Castello, Victor Romero and Norma Galli, and Omar Vega, all well worth watching. The format isn't ideal: translation, rather than subtitles, adds to the length, but there's some inspiring material there.
I'll embed just one, the late Tete. It's said that he was dissatisfied with the two one-hour sessions. The setting is certainly strange: the potted plants and pseudo-Greek columns, a Buenos Aires studio, no doubt, an atmosphere miles away from the comfortable relaxation of a milonga. & there's a telling moment when Trenner asks him to demonstrate a step without music. 'Sin musica?' asks Tete, looking really puzzled: to make up for the lack of that essential ingredient he sings to himself as he dances. But if he felt that his 'performance' is lacking, at least the video is extremely clear, and the tangos danced in between the teaching demonstrations show something of the energy and musicality he is remembered for. This is one of them.
PS. 1.21 to 1.30: just what does he do there? But it's a totally unhurried lead, virtuoso without the slightest sense of a display, and Sylvia just continues with a couple of untroubled ochos.
Friday, 11 June 2010
Tango and Argentine football
BBC Radio Three has an excellent evening programme called Night Waves which manages to be interesting about a very wide range of material, from Paul Davies on the possibility of extra-terrestrial life to the latest opera productions, from IVF and the definition of a family to... tango and Argentine football. Here's a quick summary: you can listen online until 15 June here, but it might not be possible outside the UK.
As the city grew, the huge immigrant influx resulted in densely crowded barrios, where the national hero, once the solitary gaucho out in the pampas or the literary hero Martin Fierro, no longer made sense. Football started as the past-time of the large British expat community, but was taken up everywhere across the rapidly expanding city. Huge crowds turned up to watch, and English professionals visited on lucrative tours with their focused, disciplined, unemotional, organised and forceful play, the football of an industrialised nation. But Argentina wasn't an industrialised nation, and its football favoured virtuoso footwork, individuality, the turn, the dribble, the feint, over the mechanistic style of the English teams.
& where had the Argentine footballers learned their more emotional style and moves? It was the time of the emergence of tango, which had been banned from the centre of the city, but thrived in the outlying barrios, where the footballers developed their skills. The sharp turns of tango, the rhythm of movement, were part of the same culture as football; footballers danced tango. Racing Club was written in the 1920s, and we still dance to it: I assumed it was about horse racing, but apparently it was about a football club. (Huracán, another well-known tango, I believe still is a team.) The 1924 Olympics in Paris and 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, where the Argentine football team took the silver, showed off the new skills. Football heroes took over from the gaucho as the new masculine icons of the nation, icons that could dance.
As the city grew, the huge immigrant influx resulted in densely crowded barrios, where the national hero, once the solitary gaucho out in the pampas or the literary hero Martin Fierro, no longer made sense. Football started as the past-time of the large British expat community, but was taken up everywhere across the rapidly expanding city. Huge crowds turned up to watch, and English professionals visited on lucrative tours with their focused, disciplined, unemotional, organised and forceful play, the football of an industrialised nation. But Argentina wasn't an industrialised nation, and its football favoured virtuoso footwork, individuality, the turn, the dribble, the feint, over the mechanistic style of the English teams.
& where had the Argentine footballers learned their more emotional style and moves? It was the time of the emergence of tango, which had been banned from the centre of the city, but thrived in the outlying barrios, where the footballers developed their skills. The sharp turns of tango, the rhythm of movement, were part of the same culture as football; footballers danced tango. Racing Club was written in the 1920s, and we still dance to it: I assumed it was about horse racing, but apparently it was about a football club. (Huracán, another well-known tango, I believe still is a team.) The 1924 Olympics in Paris and 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, where the Argentine football team took the silver, showed off the new skills. Football heroes took over from the gaucho as the new masculine icons of the nation, icons that could dance.
Thursday, 10 June 2010
The window of opportunity
If this blog has one theme, it's how frustrating it is to be stuck in London in a sea of publicity for visits by young, mainly show-tango teachers, while some of the best of the older generation from Buenos Aires, with a life-time of experience, teach all over Europe yet never visit the UK. When I hear of such visitors to Europe I always draw attention to them – Osvaldo and Coca are in Europe now, and will be at Tango Retiro 2010 in Sweden in the last week of July, and Alberto Dassieu will be in Switzerland, also in July – in the desperate hope that someone can get them into the UK for a few days. Alberto I know for sure really hopes to be able to visit London this July. At one time I even fantasised about a London Milonguero Festival to which they'd all be invited – all together! – but I just happened to lack the funding... (I pushed out the idea in case someone thought, 'Hey, what a good idea. I'll do it!' – but I didn't think it was advisable to hold my breath.)
There are legal problems, yes, there are in most countries, but there must be ways for visitors to teach here temporarily: Los Ocampo and the Disparis manage to visit regularly for extended, well-publicised tours, as do bucket-loads of almost-identical teachers of showy tango. Surely by now there are enough of us to make a visit by some of those other wonderful dancers worthwhile? Because time isn't on our side. The window of opportunity may be just a year or two, if that. Not that their teaching will disappear when they go, but I happen to think that contact with all that experience is really important. Learning tango isn't just learning where to put your feet.
It was wonderful to have Mimi in London last weekend: the class was well-attended and, with a better understanding of what was possible with publicity we could have had better-attended workshops too. There was certainly no shortage of enthusiasm for her teaching. & that's just London. I think (hope) there's the realisation that 'milonguero' isn't just a style of tango, one among many, but that in its native form it has a big heart, and a life of its own, that it's a very profound communion between people.
In the meantime, if the prophets don't come to the UK, the only thing to do, it seems, is to go to them while they are still able to visit Europe. Italy is their no. 1 destiny, partly because of the language affinity, and several excellent dancer/teachers have settled there. You can make several trips to Italy for the cost of one visit to Buenos Aires: worth thinking about. See you in Milano/Venezia/Ferrara/Roma/Lecce/Bari next summer? Or do you think we could manage to get some good visitors to London by then?
There are legal problems, yes, there are in most countries, but there must be ways for visitors to teach here temporarily: Los Ocampo and the Disparis manage to visit regularly for extended, well-publicised tours, as do bucket-loads of almost-identical teachers of showy tango. Surely by now there are enough of us to make a visit by some of those other wonderful dancers worthwhile? Because time isn't on our side. The window of opportunity may be just a year or two, if that. Not that their teaching will disappear when they go, but I happen to think that contact with all that experience is really important. Learning tango isn't just learning where to put your feet.
It was wonderful to have Mimi in London last weekend: the class was well-attended and, with a better understanding of what was possible with publicity we could have had better-attended workshops too. There was certainly no shortage of enthusiasm for her teaching. & that's just London. I think (hope) there's the realisation that 'milonguero' isn't just a style of tango, one among many, but that in its native form it has a big heart, and a life of its own, that it's a very profound communion between people.
In the meantime, if the prophets don't come to the UK, the only thing to do, it seems, is to go to them while they are still able to visit Europe. Italy is their no. 1 destiny, partly because of the language affinity, and several excellent dancer/teachers have settled there. You can make several trips to Italy for the cost of one visit to Buenos Aires: worth thinking about. See you in Milano/Venezia/Ferrara/Roma/Lecce/Bari next summer? Or do you think we could manage to get some good visitors to London by then?
Monday, 7 June 2010
Mimi in London
I really don't know where to begin this one. The Friday night workshop at Carablanca was big and a bit chaotic. Mimi, by no means young, nevertheless has unstoppable energy for teaching tango, and it wasn't easy to halt her voluble flow: moreover, Carole who was translating for her, only just had the voice (unlike Mimi) to fill Conway Hall, which is big and high. But someone with energy like that carries a whole crowd along with her. Soon we were dancing with coats draped over our arms (guys' left, girls' right) to remind us of the need to keep that side of the embrace open. It all seemed a bit basic and pedantic, until suddenly we were trying to lead a walk in parallel to the girls' left side, with a saccada.
And unlike some other teachers Mimi stayed to the end, and enjoyed herself on the floor, leading and following. She led a milonga tanda with Christine Denniston, which I'll remember for a while. & I know that she went on to another milonga when Carablanca closed, because I showed her where it is.
I think this is an aspect of tango we rarely see in London: this wholehearted, good-natured passion for the dance. I think Ricardo Vidort was quoted as saying that you should only dance if you're going to give it everything you've got, and not dance otherwise, and I think most of us were impressed by that spirit in Mimi. If it's worth doing, it's worth giving it everything.
So she left the milonga at 01.30 and was ready for workshops at 11am next morning. The workshops were a lot easier. For a start there were two excellent Spanish speakers in addition to Carole, and they all made a point of reining her in - 'Espero, Mimi, uno momento!' – so we could get the full translation. And stopping her so we could get a short break was really an effort! We're all more than grateful to those Spanish speakers for their help.
There was plenty of opportunity to work with a partner, and also to ask Mimi for particular advice and clarification. I wish I could remember more of the clarification, but a few points stick in mind. Firstly, stepping out of the cruzada: for a lady, make sure that the weight is fully transferred to the front foot by lifting the toes of the back foot, before stepping back with it. It looks good, and it ensures that the weight has been fully transferred before stepping. Guys are probably going to step forwards from a cross, so the toes of their front foot should be lifted by pushing up from the ball of the back foot. Then, when leading a saccada, try to lead it from the hip. It certainly works better, and it certainly feels better, more a nudge of the leg than a kick to your partner's foot, as the leg swings out from the hip, rather than kicking. Then just in walking, girls step back with a straight leg, guys step forwards with a straight leg, and onto the ball of the foot as much as possible. Try to think of the instep as you walk, and try to walk like a tightrope walker. & the contact of guy's left to lady's right hand should mainly be with the lower part of the palm: the fingers don't give a firm enough contact. (Although of course you don't lead with the left.) And she noticed too much 'clutching': with the guys' right hands in particular; and also the guys' left and the girls' right arms get pulled in towards the body. Practice with a coat draped over your forearm! And... And... (If anyone can remember more or correct me, please post a comment.)
There was a lot more, a huge amount more: about which muscles need to be used to make walking better and so on. My first impression of her teaching in Buenos Aires was amazement that dancing had been analysed in such detail. Normally, I'm opposed to classes with a lot of talking, and to classes with a lot of technical detail, but this was on another level. In fact, one participant told me she wanted to go to all the tango teachers she'd ever studied with to ask them for her money back: she'd been misled and misinformed so often.
We started with the parallel walk from Friday night, then a basic walk in cross system with two saccadas, and a way of linking the two. Then in the final session she said she'd been watching us dance and had seen plenty of walking but not much turning, so she taught us a very quick tight turn, a 'giro milonguero', a 'quatro baldosa' (four-tile) turn, since it can be done in very little space (a good many Buenos Aires dance floors are tiled). It actually feels more like a one-tile turn, it is so tight, the kind of thing you can do even when you are squeezed in between four other couples.
Mimi didn't really stop for a break, just slowed down a bit. & she was still teaching on the pavement outside as we left. & I know she was going on to another milonga that evening. This really is the spirit of tango. Come back soon!
And unlike some other teachers Mimi stayed to the end, and enjoyed herself on the floor, leading and following. She led a milonga tanda with Christine Denniston, which I'll remember for a while. & I know that she went on to another milonga when Carablanca closed, because I showed her where it is.
I think this is an aspect of tango we rarely see in London: this wholehearted, good-natured passion for the dance. I think Ricardo Vidort was quoted as saying that you should only dance if you're going to give it everything you've got, and not dance otherwise, and I think most of us were impressed by that spirit in Mimi. If it's worth doing, it's worth giving it everything.
So she left the milonga at 01.30 and was ready for workshops at 11am next morning. The workshops were a lot easier. For a start there were two excellent Spanish speakers in addition to Carole, and they all made a point of reining her in - 'Espero, Mimi, uno momento!' – so we could get the full translation. And stopping her so we could get a short break was really an effort! We're all more than grateful to those Spanish speakers for their help.
There was plenty of opportunity to work with a partner, and also to ask Mimi for particular advice and clarification. I wish I could remember more of the clarification, but a few points stick in mind. Firstly, stepping out of the cruzada: for a lady, make sure that the weight is fully transferred to the front foot by lifting the toes of the back foot, before stepping back with it. It looks good, and it ensures that the weight has been fully transferred before stepping. Guys are probably going to step forwards from a cross, so the toes of their front foot should be lifted by pushing up from the ball of the back foot. Then, when leading a saccada, try to lead it from the hip. It certainly works better, and it certainly feels better, more a nudge of the leg than a kick to your partner's foot, as the leg swings out from the hip, rather than kicking. Then just in walking, girls step back with a straight leg, guys step forwards with a straight leg, and onto the ball of the foot as much as possible. Try to think of the instep as you walk, and try to walk like a tightrope walker. & the contact of guy's left to lady's right hand should mainly be with the lower part of the palm: the fingers don't give a firm enough contact. (Although of course you don't lead with the left.) And she noticed too much 'clutching': with the guys' right hands in particular; and also the guys' left and the girls' right arms get pulled in towards the body. Practice with a coat draped over your forearm! And... And... (If anyone can remember more or correct me, please post a comment.)
There was a lot more, a huge amount more: about which muscles need to be used to make walking better and so on. My first impression of her teaching in Buenos Aires was amazement that dancing had been analysed in such detail. Normally, I'm opposed to classes with a lot of talking, and to classes with a lot of technical detail, but this was on another level. In fact, one participant told me she wanted to go to all the tango teachers she'd ever studied with to ask them for her money back: she'd been misled and misinformed so often.
We started with the parallel walk from Friday night, then a basic walk in cross system with two saccadas, and a way of linking the two. Then in the final session she said she'd been watching us dance and had seen plenty of walking but not much turning, so she taught us a very quick tight turn, a 'giro milonguero', a 'quatro baldosa' (four-tile) turn, since it can be done in very little space (a good many Buenos Aires dance floors are tiled). It actually feels more like a one-tile turn, it is so tight, the kind of thing you can do even when you are squeezed in between four other couples.
Mimi didn't really stop for a break, just slowed down a bit. & she was still teaching on the pavement outside as we left. & I know she was going on to another milonga that evening. This really is the spirit of tango. Come back soon!
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Hats off...
...to tango organisers! As in so many things, if their work is well done, you don't see it. If you see all the hard work, then the result can look laboured. The same is true in dancing!
This occurs to me as I'm involved in getting together some workshops this weekend. Emails have gone out, and Tango-uk alerted. So if you are in London, I hope you can come along to Carablanca on Friday night, and on Saturday June 5 to The Room, 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17 where there will be two workshops, between 11 and 1 and between 1.45 and 3.45. A single workshop will be £20, and the price for both is £30. If you are interested, please email me (address on the right side of the page) as we need to keep numbers about the same.
Mimi Santapá grew up observing her father, Mariano Leotera, teaching the tango dancers of his generation. He developed a methodical way of teaching tango, and Mimi witnessed many great dancers pass through his workshops, including the late Carlos Gavito, and Juan Carlos Copes. When Mimi teaches she reminds us often: “These are the things my father taught me, with a few things I added through my own understanding of the body.”
She teaches dancers of all levels in Buenos Aires, and emphasizes walk and body position to result in a dance that looks and feels effortless. Too often tango is taught merely in terms of foot positions, but the position of the whole body in the lead up to a position of the foot can be really important. I've written about her a couple of times before: the entries are here, here and here
Mimi doesn't dance so much these days, but there is a video of her with one of her students at El Arranque in Buenos Aires. I've embedded it before, but I think it's well worth watching again.
Video thanks to Tangoyte.
This occurs to me as I'm involved in getting together some workshops this weekend. Emails have gone out, and Tango-uk alerted. So if you are in London, I hope you can come along to Carablanca on Friday night, and on Saturday June 5 to The Room, 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17 where there will be two workshops, between 11 and 1 and between 1.45 and 3.45. A single workshop will be £20, and the price for both is £30. If you are interested, please email me (address on the right side of the page) as we need to keep numbers about the same.
Mimi Santapá grew up observing her father, Mariano Leotera, teaching the tango dancers of his generation. He developed a methodical way of teaching tango, and Mimi witnessed many great dancers pass through his workshops, including the late Carlos Gavito, and Juan Carlos Copes. When Mimi teaches she reminds us often: “These are the things my father taught me, with a few things I added through my own understanding of the body.”
She teaches dancers of all levels in Buenos Aires, and emphasizes walk and body position to result in a dance that looks and feels effortless. Too often tango is taught merely in terms of foot positions, but the position of the whole body in the lead up to a position of the foot can be really important. I've written about her a couple of times before: the entries are here, here and here
Mimi doesn't dance so much these days, but there is a video of her with one of her students at El Arranque in Buenos Aires. I've embedded it before, but I think it's well worth watching again.
Video thanks to Tangoyte.
Friday, 28 May 2010
Happy birthday, Argentina!
...and just look at this! One of the greatest opera houses in the world, re-opened after refurbishment, to coincide with the birthday celebrations.
Video thanks to Malenatango.
Video thanks to Malenatango.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Breathtaking!
This has just surfaced: Ricardo Vidort in the UK in 2004, and it's one of the best I've seen. Dazzling, to be honest. His posture was so amazing, effortlessly upright, and the weight forwards, so he really led from the chest. Then the style of stepping, very emphatic, almost declamatory (if you can have a declamatory way of walking.) He gives the impression of endless invention, with constant changes of directions. And his partner is well able to fly with him: my impression is that she complements his way of dancing very well. It looks great. Much to be learned for us all.
Amidst all the dazzling corridas and turns I couldn't help noticing 2:05 – 2:13: another corrida but to his partner's left side, in double time and in parallel. It looks so easy, doesn't it? & excellent film quality too: a wonderfully clear video. Many thanks, Tangocelebration.
Amidst all the dazzling corridas and turns I couldn't help noticing 2:05 – 2:13: another corrida but to his partner's left side, in double time and in parallel. It looks so easy, doesn't it? & excellent film quality too: a wonderfully clear video. Many thanks, Tangocelebration.
Monday, 24 May 2010
Tango in Europe
Watching some Europe-wide tango last weekend, I suddenly realised that all the Italian partners I've ever danced with have been wonderful to dance with. Perhaps not that many, but I can't remember an exception. It never occurred to me to wonder why, but there might be a few good reasons.
Tango began (probably) with Gardel's recording of Mi Noche Triste in 1917, which combined a mixed music, with emotionally resonant poetry, with everything Gardel had managed to learn from trained Italian opera singers about phrasing, breath control, singing and musicality. (Plus, of course, his amazing voice.) This combination of a Spanish literary tradition with an Italian musical tradition was an instant and huge success. José María Kokubu thinks that the phrasing of this music suggested a new way of putting body movement to music – dancing – which was tango.
That musical tradition might not be as pervasive in Italy now as it was a century ago, but it's still there. Moreover, singing, speaking and breathing are related. It's easy to assume that breathing is identical everywhere, but I've read that breathing in Italy and Spain tends to be deeper, and sentences longer, than in the north. (Yes, someone did some research...) So when it comes to tango the Italians should have a head start. In effect, tango music is very much an Italian tradition; it just developed outside of mainland Italy.
Italians also are lucky that their language is so close to Spanish, Argentine Spanish in particular. Many excellent teachers visit Italy very regularly: Ana Maria Schapira spends quite a bit of time there, and I've enjoyed tango with her students. (I'd not like to speculate on whether they enjoyed my leading.) A number of other Argentine teachers have actually settled in Italy, Luisito Ferraris, for instance, and Mirtya Tisera, here dancing together, although they usually teach separately. Rosana Remon also now lives and teaches in Italy: here she is dancing with the late Tete, who visited Italy regularly. Mingo and Esther Pugliese now live in Italy, too. Italy's a lot easier to get to than Buenos Aires, and the food is so good...
I can't help seeing a bit of a north-south divide in European tango, with the south perhaps closer to the feel of the tango of Buenos Aires, and the north being more preoccupied, even in a close-hold dance, with technical correctness, perhaps as a substitute. I tend to look on technique as a bit like salt: you need it in small quantities, but you can't make a meal of it. The great survivors of the 1940s and 1950s Buenos Aires tango must have learned technique when they were young, and practised to get it right, but my hunch is that the milongas were where they really learned to dance, night after night, getting it wrong and getting it right, or rather, finding how it worked best for them, with a partner and the music. & tango music and dance are emotional, and we tend to be less comfortable with emotional display in the north. Tango actually gives us the opportunity to be emotional, which some of us do welcome!
YouTube gives us a seat at the best milongas to watch the best dancers. Jantango's video of Ismael is one I watch again and again. How much advanced technique does he show in his dance, and how much feeling for the music? And how satisfying is that dance to him and his partner? Despite the measured, calm appearance, I'm sure it's a deeply emotional dance.
Tango began (probably) with Gardel's recording of Mi Noche Triste in 1917, which combined a mixed music, with emotionally resonant poetry, with everything Gardel had managed to learn from trained Italian opera singers about phrasing, breath control, singing and musicality. (Plus, of course, his amazing voice.) This combination of a Spanish literary tradition with an Italian musical tradition was an instant and huge success. José María Kokubu thinks that the phrasing of this music suggested a new way of putting body movement to music – dancing – which was tango.
That musical tradition might not be as pervasive in Italy now as it was a century ago, but it's still there. Moreover, singing, speaking and breathing are related. It's easy to assume that breathing is identical everywhere, but I've read that breathing in Italy and Spain tends to be deeper, and sentences longer, than in the north. (Yes, someone did some research...) So when it comes to tango the Italians should have a head start. In effect, tango music is very much an Italian tradition; it just developed outside of mainland Italy.
Italians also are lucky that their language is so close to Spanish, Argentine Spanish in particular. Many excellent teachers visit Italy very regularly: Ana Maria Schapira spends quite a bit of time there, and I've enjoyed tango with her students. (I'd not like to speculate on whether they enjoyed my leading.) A number of other Argentine teachers have actually settled in Italy, Luisito Ferraris, for instance, and Mirtya Tisera, here dancing together, although they usually teach separately. Rosana Remon also now lives and teaches in Italy: here she is dancing with the late Tete, who visited Italy regularly. Mingo and Esther Pugliese now live in Italy, too. Italy's a lot easier to get to than Buenos Aires, and the food is so good...
I can't help seeing a bit of a north-south divide in European tango, with the south perhaps closer to the feel of the tango of Buenos Aires, and the north being more preoccupied, even in a close-hold dance, with technical correctness, perhaps as a substitute. I tend to look on technique as a bit like salt: you need it in small quantities, but you can't make a meal of it. The great survivors of the 1940s and 1950s Buenos Aires tango must have learned technique when they were young, and practised to get it right, but my hunch is that the milongas were where they really learned to dance, night after night, getting it wrong and getting it right, or rather, finding how it worked best for them, with a partner and the music. & tango music and dance are emotional, and we tend to be less comfortable with emotional display in the north. Tango actually gives us the opportunity to be emotional, which some of us do welcome!
YouTube gives us a seat at the best milongas to watch the best dancers. Jantango's video of Ismael is one I watch again and again. How much advanced technique does he show in his dance, and how much feeling for the music? And how satisfying is that dance to him and his partner? Despite the measured, calm appearance, I'm sure it's a deeply emotional dance.
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Why Buenos Aires?
Well, why not?
I think my first visit was driven by curiosity: I'd seen the Confiteria Ideal in film, I loved the music and the dance, and I just wondered how a visit would work out. I'd also watched Tete and Sylvia on YouTube, and since they never came to London and it seemed impossible to find their travel plans, I hoped it would be possible to meet them there and take classes. (It was.) I rented a flat, so I knew that if the tango didn't work out I could just sit and read for a few weeks. I expected it would be excruciatingly embarrassing at times, and very rewarding at others, and it was. I imagined I'd dance all night every night: it never occurred to me to wonder, before I arrived, with whom? I found it a difficult, vast city (a lot bigger than London), functional but somewhat run down on the surface, with a lot of joy and misery in it, and with many extraordinary buildings. And everywhere I went, incredibly welcoming people, and not just in the tango community. I guess tourism is a new phenomenon there: during the lifetime of almost everyone you meet no one, or very few tourists, ever visited Argentina. Meeting visitors may be an affirmation that the country is a normal part of the world, and no longer isolated. Anyway, it's a remarkably hospitable place.
As for tango, I think the experience is different for visiting guys and girls; strange! In any case, every individual's experience is going to be different. With one exception my experience was of the milongas in my vicinity, which are well-known and where there are usually a few visitors. My impression is that a visiting guy has to be an excellent leader to get much dancing in that gentle, undemonstrative, highly musical dance of the downtown milongas. Whereas if his partner can follow a lead comfortably, she's likely to find she'll be kept quite busy. 'Milongueros' are humans, and curious about visiting women who look as if they dance well. I think the women are curious about visiting guys, too, but their situation is different, and understandably they are less eager to put themselves in the arms of someone they don't know and haven't danced with before, on a crowded floor. Or else, they can find better partners than me.
I first went to explore, and it was useful, so a return visit seemed inevitable. I had contacts, I knew my way round a bit, I felt I could build on the first visit. & I got what I needed: some very experienced eyes on my way of walking, of stepping, of standing. Argentine teachers in London seem eager to thrust amazing, inventive steps at you, but the teachers I looked for were more likely to watch quietly, and their brief comments were very helpful and illuminating. Or, like Pedro Sanchez, they'd go over something absolutely basic again and again if they weren't satisfied: they know from very long experience how it ought to look. Exactly what I wanted and needed, and something not so easy to come by in London. More than that, when someone like Alberto Dassieu encourages you, you really feel you have a contact you have to live up to. & there's an enjoyment of tango that gives it value. Does tango matter that much to me? Like most of us, I guess, yes and no. I love it, it's given me a lot, but it's not part of my life to the extent that it is for Pedro or Alberto, and I can enjoy other lives too. However, it's usually true that the more you put into something the more you get out of it. & the music sounds better there: a truly proud, strong music. I don't know why it just doesn't quite ring out like that in London. Nothing to do with the volume.
So do I want to go back? I guess the answer's obvious. There are teachers there who told me 'Remember, you have friends here!' My first real encouragement in tango was Ricardo Vidort whose wholehearted, good-natured enthusiasm for that close embrace and musical dance, encouraged me: sadly he's no longer around, but his lifelong friend Osvaldo Cartery still is, and I've yet to meet him. & I was introduced to Muma, who gave me her card at a milonga one evening and said to call her, and I just didn't have time. & I've never been to Lo de Celia, or Gricel or... There's much to go back for. Only... I was welcomed so warmly that I'd be ashamed to go back and still not be able to talk much, so I'm having to work on that. Lenguajero might prove very useful.
So my conclusion, for what it's worth, is that for a guy who likes the older tradition it's worth visiting for the teaching, and for a girl it's worth visiting for the dancing. Of course I'd be interested in other views on that. This posting was prompted by Ms Hedgehog, and by Tangocherie's reply.
Incidentally, those tango-enthusiast taxi drivers everyone talks about. Why did they never pick me up? Well, once or twice. Mostly I got Cumbia and Latin rock. Which was what I heard on the streets too. & I was told that while very few people have an active interest in tango, the tango songs are a part of everyone's cultural heritage. Those complex, beautiful poems are widely remembered, just as we all remember songs like... 'She loves you, yeah, yeah yeah'.
Ah, the buildings... Palacio Barolo has to be the ultimate. It was designed in the early 1920s by an Italian-born architect obsessed with the Divine Comedy, and the entire building is designed as a model of Dante's triple world. 100 metres high, and crowned with a lighthouse (God). I still haven't visited it, so there's definitely something to go back for!
Video thanks to Malenatango.
I think my first visit was driven by curiosity: I'd seen the Confiteria Ideal in film, I loved the music and the dance, and I just wondered how a visit would work out. I'd also watched Tete and Sylvia on YouTube, and since they never came to London and it seemed impossible to find their travel plans, I hoped it would be possible to meet them there and take classes. (It was.) I rented a flat, so I knew that if the tango didn't work out I could just sit and read for a few weeks. I expected it would be excruciatingly embarrassing at times, and very rewarding at others, and it was. I imagined I'd dance all night every night: it never occurred to me to wonder, before I arrived, with whom? I found it a difficult, vast city (a lot bigger than London), functional but somewhat run down on the surface, with a lot of joy and misery in it, and with many extraordinary buildings. And everywhere I went, incredibly welcoming people, and not just in the tango community. I guess tourism is a new phenomenon there: during the lifetime of almost everyone you meet no one, or very few tourists, ever visited Argentina. Meeting visitors may be an affirmation that the country is a normal part of the world, and no longer isolated. Anyway, it's a remarkably hospitable place.
As for tango, I think the experience is different for visiting guys and girls; strange! In any case, every individual's experience is going to be different. With one exception my experience was of the milongas in my vicinity, which are well-known and where there are usually a few visitors. My impression is that a visiting guy has to be an excellent leader to get much dancing in that gentle, undemonstrative, highly musical dance of the downtown milongas. Whereas if his partner can follow a lead comfortably, she's likely to find she'll be kept quite busy. 'Milongueros' are humans, and curious about visiting women who look as if they dance well. I think the women are curious about visiting guys, too, but their situation is different, and understandably they are less eager to put themselves in the arms of someone they don't know and haven't danced with before, on a crowded floor. Or else, they can find better partners than me.
I first went to explore, and it was useful, so a return visit seemed inevitable. I had contacts, I knew my way round a bit, I felt I could build on the first visit. & I got what I needed: some very experienced eyes on my way of walking, of stepping, of standing. Argentine teachers in London seem eager to thrust amazing, inventive steps at you, but the teachers I looked for were more likely to watch quietly, and their brief comments were very helpful and illuminating. Or, like Pedro Sanchez, they'd go over something absolutely basic again and again if they weren't satisfied: they know from very long experience how it ought to look. Exactly what I wanted and needed, and something not so easy to come by in London. More than that, when someone like Alberto Dassieu encourages you, you really feel you have a contact you have to live up to. & there's an enjoyment of tango that gives it value. Does tango matter that much to me? Like most of us, I guess, yes and no. I love it, it's given me a lot, but it's not part of my life to the extent that it is for Pedro or Alberto, and I can enjoy other lives too. However, it's usually true that the more you put into something the more you get out of it. & the music sounds better there: a truly proud, strong music. I don't know why it just doesn't quite ring out like that in London. Nothing to do with the volume.
So do I want to go back? I guess the answer's obvious. There are teachers there who told me 'Remember, you have friends here!' My first real encouragement in tango was Ricardo Vidort whose wholehearted, good-natured enthusiasm for that close embrace and musical dance, encouraged me: sadly he's no longer around, but his lifelong friend Osvaldo Cartery still is, and I've yet to meet him. & I was introduced to Muma, who gave me her card at a milonga one evening and said to call her, and I just didn't have time. & I've never been to Lo de Celia, or Gricel or... There's much to go back for. Only... I was welcomed so warmly that I'd be ashamed to go back and still not be able to talk much, so I'm having to work on that. Lenguajero might prove very useful.
So my conclusion, for what it's worth, is that for a guy who likes the older tradition it's worth visiting for the teaching, and for a girl it's worth visiting for the dancing. Of course I'd be interested in other views on that. This posting was prompted by Ms Hedgehog, and by Tangocherie's reply.
Incidentally, those tango-enthusiast taxi drivers everyone talks about. Why did they never pick me up? Well, once or twice. Mostly I got Cumbia and Latin rock. Which was what I heard on the streets too. & I was told that while very few people have an active interest in tango, the tango songs are a part of everyone's cultural heritage. Those complex, beautiful poems are widely remembered, just as we all remember songs like... 'She loves you, yeah, yeah yeah'.
Ah, the buildings... Palacio Barolo has to be the ultimate. It was designed in the early 1920s by an Italian-born architect obsessed with the Divine Comedy, and the entire building is designed as a model of Dante's triple world. 100 metres high, and crowned with a lighthouse (God). I still haven't visited it, so there's definitely something to go back for!
Video thanks to Malenatango.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
The weather in Toulon this coming weekend.
To anyone it may concern: the weather in Toulon this coming weekend will be warm, min. 17, max. 22, but there will be showers on Friday and Saturday. ('Showers' on that coast are usually what we'd call downpours.) Sunday and Monday should be warm and fine. Not a grain of volcanic ash in sight, and the BA strike is off. Bon voyage!
Saturday, 15 May 2010
Amazing!
Wonderful! Amazing! Almost too good to be true! Slowly, all too slowly, videos of Ricardo Vidort are appearing on YouTube. This one is particularly amazing: Ricardo Vidort leading Osvaldo Cartery. There's the story in Tangoandchaos that Ricardo taught Osvaldo on the streets when they were both kids, and there's a brief clip of them dancing together, but this one is new. It looks like a class in a dance workshop: some very fortunate students had Ricardo and Osvaldo there at the same time.
Video thanks to Tangotradicional.
Video thanks to Tangotradicional.
Monday, 10 May 2010
Tangos in Buenos Aires
I was wondering how some record could be made of some of the wonderful improvised dance of the older generation in Buenos Aires, and the only way I could think of was for someone to get a bit of money together and set up a milonga there where the older dancers could be filmed – and be paid for being there, instead of having to pay to get in.
So it's wonderful that Irene and Manyung managed to film some of the older dancers on their recent visit to the city. Of course! I missed the obvious. These are people who will dance in front of your camera if they like you and trust you! Not that money's a bad idea, but it creates its own problems. A dance you do for enjoyment suddenly becomes a paid performance, and there's going to be the suspicion that the film-maker is making money out of it, and we're all inclined to believe that films make lots of money! So there can be mistrust, too. But Irene and Man Yung dance themselves, and love the dance, and that's reason enough for them to want to film it. There are three or four recent posts on their blog, which are great to read, and full of the most wonderful videos. There must be around three dozen videos altogether. Some of the dancers are really well-known: some probably aren't names even in Buenos Aires. But how good they are! I really enjoyed Oscar Omar Denico, and there's also a Cumparsita that is just amazing (it even has Elba Biscay leading Adela Galeazzi in the background). I hope you've already found all this but, if not, you might be missing an insight into how much fun a night out in Buenos Aires can be, and how much wonderful tango there is there.
I can't resist embedding one of their videos of Alberto Dassieu and Paulina. This just has to be the best video of them ever, better than the others because it's in a social dance, and it's not a display. So it's the real thing, and moreover the camera can follow them closely along the line of dance. The floor isn't crowded - and it's really well lit! Amazing that those folk in Buenos Aires can have so much fun without disco lighting! (Anyway, bright light helps prevent you from getting sleepy.)
I love that. Thanks so much! & please go back there again soon!
PS. Alberto should be on a teaching tour of Europe this summer. I'll post any dates and places I hear of. And Osvalo and Coca Cartery will teach at Tango Retiro in Sweden between July 26 and 30, and probably elsewhere: that's the only booking I've heard of so far.
So it's wonderful that Irene and Manyung managed to film some of the older dancers on their recent visit to the city. Of course! I missed the obvious. These are people who will dance in front of your camera if they like you and trust you! Not that money's a bad idea, but it creates its own problems. A dance you do for enjoyment suddenly becomes a paid performance, and there's going to be the suspicion that the film-maker is making money out of it, and we're all inclined to believe that films make lots of money! So there can be mistrust, too. But Irene and Man Yung dance themselves, and love the dance, and that's reason enough for them to want to film it. There are three or four recent posts on their blog, which are great to read, and full of the most wonderful videos. There must be around three dozen videos altogether. Some of the dancers are really well-known: some probably aren't names even in Buenos Aires. But how good they are! I really enjoyed Oscar Omar Denico, and there's also a Cumparsita that is just amazing (it even has Elba Biscay leading Adela Galeazzi in the background). I hope you've already found all this but, if not, you might be missing an insight into how much fun a night out in Buenos Aires can be, and how much wonderful tango there is there.
I can't resist embedding one of their videos of Alberto Dassieu and Paulina. This just has to be the best video of them ever, better than the others because it's in a social dance, and it's not a display. So it's the real thing, and moreover the camera can follow them closely along the line of dance. The floor isn't crowded - and it's really well lit! Amazing that those folk in Buenos Aires can have so much fun without disco lighting! (Anyway, bright light helps prevent you from getting sleepy.)
I love that. Thanks so much! & please go back there again soon!
PS. Alberto should be on a teaching tour of Europe this summer. I'll post any dates and places I hear of. And Osvalo and Coca Cartery will teach at Tango Retiro in Sweden between July 26 and 30, and probably elsewhere: that's the only booking I've heard of so far.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Craneway Event
I just found this: a film by British artist and film-maker Tacita Dean, of Merce Cunningham, the extraordinary old man of American contemporary dance, rehearsing his company over three afternoons in a former Ford assembly plant overlooking the San Francisco Bay. I love watching contemporary dance on stage, and the opportunity to watch the less formal process of the choreographer in person creating a performance, in a film made by a very creative film-maker at Cunningham's invitation, is almost too good to be true. Cunningham died, aged 90, soon after the filming was completed.
It's being shown at the Frith Street Gallery, 17 – 18 Golden Square, Central London, between 13 May and 23 June. There are three screenings a day during the week, and two on Saturday. Details are here. No entry charge is mentioned, and the gallery is normally free.
It's being shown at the Frith Street Gallery, 17 – 18 Golden Square, Central London, between 13 May and 23 June. There are three screenings a day during the week, and two on Saturday. Details are here. No entry charge is mentioned, and the gallery is normally free.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Learning leading
Someone asked me recently where I learned to dance. I mentally scratched my head and replied, only half facetiously, 'YouTube'. I should have suggested a rephrasing of the question, because 'Who did you learn from?' is much easier to answer. Actually, I often wonder how I ever learned at all. Watching struggling beginners I wonder how I managed to get from there to having any confidence at all on the floor.
I was thinking about this after reading Golondrina's post An aspiring leader, about learning in general, and in particular about women learning to lead in order to improve their following, which put many thoughts into my head. I thought of posting a comment, but comments shouldn't go on for a whole page, so I thought it would be better as a post instead. Thanks, Golondrina!
For a start, leading and following don't seem to be just physical mirror images: they seem to be different states of mind. The lead role is intentional: although passive to the extent that it's controlled by the music, and also dependent on the spaces in the floor, it is intentional in choosing direction, following the music, using the available space, and using momentum to keep the partner in enjoyable movement. (& yet these still seem like reflex actions!) I can't really say what the woman's role is, and obviously there's the intention to follow the music and often to help the lead to keep out of harm's way, but in general it seems to depend on intentionality being held voluntarily in abeyance.
When I started to learn, a teacher forcibly led male students, in order to show them how to lead. It was not only uncomfortable but, I felt, completely useless. Leaders need to know what movements they are leading in their partners, but actually taking, or being forced to take, the partner's role doesn't make that clear, certainly not at a beginner's level, certainly not with fairly complex choreographies. It takes time. So I left that class... and stumbled into YouTube.
I was lucky. YouTube was just beginning to accumulate enough tango for it to be possible to watch various kinds of Argentine (and other) tango, so it enabled me to see, and to decide, fairly quickly, the kind of tango I wanted to learn, even the kind of tango I felt I'd be able to learn! I'd already had one precious group class with Ricardo Vidort, the first Argentine teacher I met, who made it clear that tango was danced in close hold, that it was musical and that it was very enjoyable. I was glad to find a few examples of that kind of tango on YouTube, among quite a few that were neither in close hold nor musical, and didn't look particularly enjoyable...
YouTube also makes it possible to watch the tango you like over and over. I find I have problems in group classes: I never seem to be able to watch the tutors' demo enough. I thought I was just slow, and I probably am: one London teacher told me that if he sees a movement once, he can recall it and copy it immediately, and I'm nowhere near that level. But I think my 'slowness' is also a response to the complexity of what is going on. In a class I can pick up what my feet do, and my partner will do much the same, and we can put them together in some kind of imitation of our teachers. But it doesn't feel like dancing. When I watch a video I first work out my own steps, then start to work out how my movements are going to move my partner. I try to lead this with an unsuspecting partner, and it's probably a total flop. I watch the video again: ah! In addition to the left and the right, and the forwards and backwards of it, there's also that turn of the foot, that lift of the shoulders, that twist of the waist at the same time as... Suddenly the point of these details becomes clear, and the next time I try it, it'll be more successful. Soon it becomes second nature and I can start actually dancing it, seeing how it can be used to express phrases in the music. Here too, the video is invaluable: I can go back and watch how Alberto Dassieu, or Ricardo Vidort, or Tete, move with the music.
Not to say that interaction with teachers isn't useful, but I find it's generally more useful on a one-to-one level when observations on the basics of walking, standing and turning can be very helpful and illuminating. An experienced eye can look beyond a problem with, say, a turn, and see the defects of walking and posture at the root of the problem. In Buenos Aires I found Cacho Dante and Mimi Santapa, even in group classes, particularly helpful in this way.
That generation, of course, or at least the men of that generation, learned by dancing with each other until they were basically competent, and probably continued to work over things amongst themselves. I remember that scene in The Tango Lesson where Pablo Veron shows Gustavo and Fabián a new move, and they promptly lead and follow it with each other. I guess it's always been more usual for men to take the follow role in practice than for women to take the lead role, but I'd hope it is equally useful.
PS. To avoid confusion, I should point out that, in addition to my YouTube addiction, I went to a lot of classes too, particularly those offering good basic teaching, while avoiding those specialising in tango acrobatics. But watching a lot remains fundamental. & we're lucky to have the possibility to watch, too.
I was thinking about this after reading Golondrina's post An aspiring leader, about learning in general, and in particular about women learning to lead in order to improve their following, which put many thoughts into my head. I thought of posting a comment, but comments shouldn't go on for a whole page, so I thought it would be better as a post instead. Thanks, Golondrina!
For a start, leading and following don't seem to be just physical mirror images: they seem to be different states of mind. The lead role is intentional: although passive to the extent that it's controlled by the music, and also dependent on the spaces in the floor, it is intentional in choosing direction, following the music, using the available space, and using momentum to keep the partner in enjoyable movement. (& yet these still seem like reflex actions!) I can't really say what the woman's role is, and obviously there's the intention to follow the music and often to help the lead to keep out of harm's way, but in general it seems to depend on intentionality being held voluntarily in abeyance.
When I started to learn, a teacher forcibly led male students, in order to show them how to lead. It was not only uncomfortable but, I felt, completely useless. Leaders need to know what movements they are leading in their partners, but actually taking, or being forced to take, the partner's role doesn't make that clear, certainly not at a beginner's level, certainly not with fairly complex choreographies. It takes time. So I left that class... and stumbled into YouTube.
I was lucky. YouTube was just beginning to accumulate enough tango for it to be possible to watch various kinds of Argentine (and other) tango, so it enabled me to see, and to decide, fairly quickly, the kind of tango I wanted to learn, even the kind of tango I felt I'd be able to learn! I'd already had one precious group class with Ricardo Vidort, the first Argentine teacher I met, who made it clear that tango was danced in close hold, that it was musical and that it was very enjoyable. I was glad to find a few examples of that kind of tango on YouTube, among quite a few that were neither in close hold nor musical, and didn't look particularly enjoyable...
YouTube also makes it possible to watch the tango you like over and over. I find I have problems in group classes: I never seem to be able to watch the tutors' demo enough. I thought I was just slow, and I probably am: one London teacher told me that if he sees a movement once, he can recall it and copy it immediately, and I'm nowhere near that level. But I think my 'slowness' is also a response to the complexity of what is going on. In a class I can pick up what my feet do, and my partner will do much the same, and we can put them together in some kind of imitation of our teachers. But it doesn't feel like dancing. When I watch a video I first work out my own steps, then start to work out how my movements are going to move my partner. I try to lead this with an unsuspecting partner, and it's probably a total flop. I watch the video again: ah! In addition to the left and the right, and the forwards and backwards of it, there's also that turn of the foot, that lift of the shoulders, that twist of the waist at the same time as... Suddenly the point of these details becomes clear, and the next time I try it, it'll be more successful. Soon it becomes second nature and I can start actually dancing it, seeing how it can be used to express phrases in the music. Here too, the video is invaluable: I can go back and watch how Alberto Dassieu, or Ricardo Vidort, or Tete, move with the music.
Not to say that interaction with teachers isn't useful, but I find it's generally more useful on a one-to-one level when observations on the basics of walking, standing and turning can be very helpful and illuminating. An experienced eye can look beyond a problem with, say, a turn, and see the defects of walking and posture at the root of the problem. In Buenos Aires I found Cacho Dante and Mimi Santapa, even in group classes, particularly helpful in this way.
That generation, of course, or at least the men of that generation, learned by dancing with each other until they were basically competent, and probably continued to work over things amongst themselves. I remember that scene in The Tango Lesson where Pablo Veron shows Gustavo and Fabián a new move, and they promptly lead and follow it with each other. I guess it's always been more usual for men to take the follow role in practice than for women to take the lead role, but I'd hope it is equally useful.
PS. To avoid confusion, I should point out that, in addition to my YouTube addiction, I went to a lot of classes too, particularly those offering good basic teaching, while avoiding those specialising in tango acrobatics. But watching a lot remains fundamental. & we're lucky to have the possibility to watch, too.
Thursday, 29 April 2010
The project
First off, I don't regard this as 'my' project. It would need funding, which I'm unlikely to be able to get. It might need someone looking for a research project, and with access to an academic grant, or a media company. So if you know anyone who dances tango and happens to be looking for a research project, or who has access to funding... Just so long as the resulting footage can be available on DVD, with some of it posted on YouTube for everyone to watch.
The project is to set up a series of small, informal milongas in Buenos Aires where the very best social dancers of the older-generation tango dancers can be filmed dancing in a setting that is familiar to them. Something like this was done for tango music with Cafe de los Maestros, and I think it should also be an urgent priority with dance.
Almost everything danced by the generation that learned social tango in the late 1940s and 1950s has been watched and copied, and is currently taught. What cannot be preserved, except by video, is the way that generation dances, with its roots 50 years ago, before the tango hiatus, and with a lifetime of experience. That's an inspiration, a source that can be preserved for the future with video, and which will, very sadly, soon vanish. It's not what they do so much as the way that they do it, that tenuous link with the past that needs to be preserved.
The only way I can think of filming this clearly would be by setting up a short series of small-scale milongas in Buenos Aires, perhaps late afternoon or early evening when a familiar venue might be available. Of course, the venue would need to be reasonably well-lit. The participants should be paid to attend, on the agreement that they will be filmed. Filming should be discrete and shouldn't intrude on the social dance: no one wants camera operators waving cameras around the dance floor. The set and setting need to be conducive both to filming and to normal social dancing.
It's wonderful that videos of social dance are now being made, but in a social milonga it's not always possible to give a clear idea of what is happening. Of course the cameras are never going to capture everything but they can show a lot. Moreover, as David Bailey commented recently, it would do a lot to raise the profile of social dancing outside Buenos Aires, where few people have had much chance to see what the best social tango looks like. It's never intended as a show, but it can still look marvelous, and continue to be an inspiration.
The project is to set up a series of small, informal milongas in Buenos Aires where the very best social dancers of the older-generation tango dancers can be filmed dancing in a setting that is familiar to them. Something like this was done for tango music with Cafe de los Maestros, and I think it should also be an urgent priority with dance.
Almost everything danced by the generation that learned social tango in the late 1940s and 1950s has been watched and copied, and is currently taught. What cannot be preserved, except by video, is the way that generation dances, with its roots 50 years ago, before the tango hiatus, and with a lifetime of experience. That's an inspiration, a source that can be preserved for the future with video, and which will, very sadly, soon vanish. It's not what they do so much as the way that they do it, that tenuous link with the past that needs to be preserved.
The only way I can think of filming this clearly would be by setting up a short series of small-scale milongas in Buenos Aires, perhaps late afternoon or early evening when a familiar venue might be available. Of course, the venue would need to be reasonably well-lit. The participants should be paid to attend, on the agreement that they will be filmed. Filming should be discrete and shouldn't intrude on the social dance: no one wants camera operators waving cameras around the dance floor. The set and setting need to be conducive both to filming and to normal social dancing.
It's wonderful that videos of social dance are now being made, but in a social milonga it's not always possible to give a clear idea of what is happening. Of course the cameras are never going to capture everything but they can show a lot. Moreover, as David Bailey commented recently, it would do a lot to raise the profile of social dancing outside Buenos Aires, where few people have had much chance to see what the best social tango looks like. It's never intended as a show, but it can still look marvelous, and continue to be an inspiration.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Abrazos
Sallycat posted recently about something she calls 'the gift', and the '6 classic bliss-seeking behaviours' of all the men she enjoys dancing with. I think it's a very inspiring analysis of the embrace that goes (literally) to the heart of it.
In the UK the embrace is hardly taught at all, and it's largely ignored in tango here. But then I've never found it taught anywhere, even in my brief visits to Buenos Aires. That is to say, the mechanics are discussed; this hand should be a bit higher or lower, firmer or a bit more relaxed, the contact and centre of gravity should be lower, the weight further forwards... But I've not heard anything until now about how the embrace functions between two nervous systems, what they might individually expect or need of it, what it might feel like, how we should approach it, all the things Sallycat draws attention to, which seem so basic that they are crying out to be discussed!
Sallycat talks of the embrace as if it IS tango, almost to the exclusion of music, the floor, the steps... That's very interesting, the thought of tango as AN EMBRACE, between partners who may or may not know each other, who hold each other close for a dance, enjoy the warmth and movement of each other's bodies, and then step away from each other with courtesy and humour. It seems to be such an ultimately civilised and civilising thing to do. I'd prefer to think of a trinity, of dance, embrace and music, but it's so good to focus on the experience of the embrace for a change.
Sallycat asks about our experience of the embrace, so if you haven't already found her post, follow the link. I think it's very illuminating, and it's well worth helping to define the human experience of dancing in embrace.
In the UK the embrace is hardly taught at all, and it's largely ignored in tango here. But then I've never found it taught anywhere, even in my brief visits to Buenos Aires. That is to say, the mechanics are discussed; this hand should be a bit higher or lower, firmer or a bit more relaxed, the contact and centre of gravity should be lower, the weight further forwards... But I've not heard anything until now about how the embrace functions between two nervous systems, what they might individually expect or need of it, what it might feel like, how we should approach it, all the things Sallycat draws attention to, which seem so basic that they are crying out to be discussed!
Sallycat talks of the embrace as if it IS tango, almost to the exclusion of music, the floor, the steps... That's very interesting, the thought of tango as AN EMBRACE, between partners who may or may not know each other, who hold each other close for a dance, enjoy the warmth and movement of each other's bodies, and then step away from each other with courtesy and humour. It seems to be such an ultimately civilised and civilising thing to do. I'd prefer to think of a trinity, of dance, embrace and music, but it's so good to focus on the experience of the embrace for a change.
Sallycat asks about our experience of the embrace, so if you haven't already found her post, follow the link. I think it's very illuminating, and it's well worth helping to define the human experience of dancing in embrace.
Sunday, 25 April 2010
Tango con dos
It can be done: whether it's worth it, or even worth watching, is another story. It was always possible in jive: there's the famous Willy Ronis photo (Willy Ronis, whose images of post-WW2 southern France capture warmth and well-being, who died last year, aged 99). & I've seen some of the older dancers at the 100 Club manage it well.
But in tango? & in milonga... Here's the milonga: Rubén Terbalca dancing with 2 women a month ago, on his current European visit.
And for tango, Adela Galeazzi, Elba Biscay and Santiago Cantenys in Salon Canning a few years ago.
How can I put it? Perhaps Adela Galeazzi, Elba Biscay and Santiago Cantenys all at once might be too much of a good thing. I'd much rather see 'tango por dos', Santiago dancing with them individually!
Videos thanks to Benomano and ruse08
But in tango? & in milonga... Here's the milonga: Rubén Terbalca dancing with 2 women a month ago, on his current European visit.
And for tango, Adela Galeazzi, Elba Biscay and Santiago Cantenys in Salon Canning a few years ago.
How can I put it? Perhaps Adela Galeazzi, Elba Biscay and Santiago Cantenys all at once might be too much of a good thing. I'd much rather see 'tango por dos', Santiago dancing with them individually!
Videos thanks to Benomano and ruse08
Friday, 23 April 2010
The legacy
While thinking about the legacy of the older dancers a few weeks back I commented that it would be great if someone could get a research grant to put on small milongas in Buenos Aires, perhaps in the afternoons, and pay older couples generously to come and dance – and be filmed.
By the usual process of coincidence, a few days later I discovered that something like this was made about five years ago. It seems to be available on DVD, and it's called Susana Tango Pial. It's a 40-minute documentary by Sandro Nunziata and Carlos Pico about La Milonga de Susana at the El Pial salon in Flores, Buenos Aires, and run by Susana Minana, who is now in her 70s. A crowd mainly of senior citizens gathers there every week to dance. The film shows the dancing and talks to some of the dancers. An old man who has returned to dancing tango after years says: “Tango enters you through your eyes and goes through your heart. But once it reaches your feet, it stays with you for ever”. Be warned! Or reassured!
Wonderful, but perhaps not quite what I'd envisaged. Susana Tango Pial shows ordinary people, occasional dancers perhaps. I'm thinking about the surviving superlative dancers of that generation. There are very few good videos of Pocho and Neli publicly available. There's half a tango of Osvaldo Buglione, and one-and-a-bit of Miguel Balbi, both on Tango and Chaos, and a couple of Osvaldo Centano in the dark at El Beso, on YouTube... and so the list goes on, and it's not a long one. Thanks to Jantango there are two good clips of Ismael Heljalil and Graciela Blaisten on a fairly empty and well-lit floor at Maipu 444, but often the quality is dark and mobile-phone-ish. Of course it's great that we have these few, but... more! More! It would be wonderful to get these dancers (and others like them) together to make a record, in good quality, to celebrate the best dancing of that generation. Because their roots go way back, and they've had a whole lifetime to work on it and to put into it. They really are an inspiration, and through video they can continue to inspire.
Video thanks to Amsterdamtangoclub.
By the usual process of coincidence, a few days later I discovered that something like this was made about five years ago. It seems to be available on DVD, and it's called Susana Tango Pial. It's a 40-minute documentary by Sandro Nunziata and Carlos Pico about La Milonga de Susana at the El Pial salon in Flores, Buenos Aires, and run by Susana Minana, who is now in her 70s. A crowd mainly of senior citizens gathers there every week to dance. The film shows the dancing and talks to some of the dancers. An old man who has returned to dancing tango after years says: “Tango enters you through your eyes and goes through your heart. But once it reaches your feet, it stays with you for ever”. Be warned! Or reassured!
Wonderful, but perhaps not quite what I'd envisaged. Susana Tango Pial shows ordinary people, occasional dancers perhaps. I'm thinking about the surviving superlative dancers of that generation. There are very few good videos of Pocho and Neli publicly available. There's half a tango of Osvaldo Buglione, and one-and-a-bit of Miguel Balbi, both on Tango and Chaos, and a couple of Osvaldo Centano in the dark at El Beso, on YouTube... and so the list goes on, and it's not a long one. Thanks to Jantango there are two good clips of Ismael Heljalil and Graciela Blaisten on a fairly empty and well-lit floor at Maipu 444, but often the quality is dark and mobile-phone-ish. Of course it's great that we have these few, but... more! More! It would be wonderful to get these dancers (and others like them) together to make a record, in good quality, to celebrate the best dancing of that generation. Because their roots go way back, and they've had a whole lifetime to work on it and to put into it. They really are an inspiration, and through video they can continue to inspire.
Video thanks to Amsterdamtangoclub.
Thursday, 22 April 2010
301 posts!
My 301st posting! How extraordinary. It's been an invaluable way of keeping track of myself, of articulating thoughts, of learning and communicating. &, amazingly, of meeting people, too. It's been wonderful. Thanks for reading this, thanks for all your comments.
The community of 'apilado' bloggers is wonderful: we communicate, share our discoveries, support each other, learn from each others' experience. There are friends out there I know well, and there are also friends out there I'll never meet. I sometimes wonder if 'new' dancers communicate like this... but I don't think they do. I think I would have come across their tango blogs, but I've seen nothing, no complaints about boring, old-fashioned would-be milongueros hugging each other on the floor and getting in the way of some really good voleos... & somehow it seems appropriate. We like to dance together, and we like to communicate and understand each other a bit, too. Un abrazo fuerte! Bailamos!
PS. The numbers seem to have gone awry. Google tells me this is #302.
The community of 'apilado' bloggers is wonderful: we communicate, share our discoveries, support each other, learn from each others' experience. There are friends out there I know well, and there are also friends out there I'll never meet. I sometimes wonder if 'new' dancers communicate like this... but I don't think they do. I think I would have come across their tango blogs, but I've seen nothing, no complaints about boring, old-fashioned would-be milongueros hugging each other on the floor and getting in the way of some really good voleos... & somehow it seems appropriate. We like to dance together, and we like to communicate and understand each other a bit, too. Un abrazo fuerte! Bailamos!
PS. The numbers seem to have gone awry. Google tells me this is #302.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
To each his tango
Sadly, 'Que descanse en paz' is a Spanish phrase I've learned recently, although 'resting in peace' is perhaps the last thing you'd wish a deceased 'milonguero'. According to a friend who emailed me about him today, Eduardo Aguirre, although not young, could nevertheless outlast many younger people on the floor. I'd never heard of him, although he seems to have lived and taught all over Europe, and in Turkey too, over the last ten years. But not London, I assume, and never will now.
I'm really struck by how varied tango can be. Thinking of Ricardo Vidort, Pedro Sanchez, Luisito Ferraris, Tete Rusconi... Watching the videos, it seems that Eduardo moved strongly, even abruptly. I don't see the smoothness of, say, Osvaldo and Coca, Pocho and Nelly, but his walk and posture look solid and assured: maybe his personality had forceful and direct side that was reflected in his tango. I assume his dancing in milongas, where abrupt movement can be unsettling, was quieter; like Tete, he could probably adjust immediately to the available space. There are a few videos, including teaching videos, with Yvonne Meissner.
Video thanks to Muller Patricia
I'm really struck by how varied tango can be. Thinking of Ricardo Vidort, Pedro Sanchez, Luisito Ferraris, Tete Rusconi... Watching the videos, it seems that Eduardo moved strongly, even abruptly. I don't see the smoothness of, say, Osvaldo and Coca, Pocho and Nelly, but his walk and posture look solid and assured: maybe his personality had forceful and direct side that was reflected in his tango. I assume his dancing in milongas, where abrupt movement can be unsettling, was quieter; like Tete, he could probably adjust immediately to the available space. There are a few videos, including teaching videos, with Yvonne Meissner.
Video thanks to Muller Patricia
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Old masters
I keep emphasising the old, and that's not some personal oddity. The historical fact is that between 1960 and 1985 the whole tradition of the milongas, where people had learned to dance for generations, faltered. For 25 years very few people learned to dance, and many dancers who'd learned earlier gave it up. Most current teachers learned after 1990 from that older generation. There's not really a generation of younger teachers who've learned through the milongas. But don't the younger dancers give us a more contemporary tango, more suited to us? Maybe, but they might not have much background in social dancing, which is what we go to classes to learn! & any learning is an interpretation, and any teacher is likely to present or distort material in such a way as to attract students. Of course, there is a way of recording the old tradition clearly so that it's available for future reference: it's called video.
& what's wrong with going back to the source, the older tradition, while it's still available? Learn from your teachers' teachers if you can! They tend to be dancers pure and simple, rather than trained teachers on an international circuit. Yes, some do teach, perhaps as much by example as by explanation. But how else do you learn dance than by watching dance and by being watched while you dance? (& by talking to your partners!) Martha and Manolo teach canyengue week in and week out in Buenos Aires with hardly a word of English between them, but you know immediately how friendly and encouraging they are, so it's easy to learn from them.
& when it comes down to it, we can get a lot from their generation that simply isn't available from the younger generation: we can get a sense of what the milongas were like, the feel of tango. & it's very evident when we watch the older dancers how much they enjoy dancing together. They don't perform for us with that vaguely disdainful expression, looking, as Tete put it, as if they have a lemon in their mouths!
I see that Irene and Man Yung's tango blog have anticipated me in this: their posts on their recent visit to Buenos Aires show the warmth and happiness and good-heartedness there is in the tango world there these days. It's a really wonderful time for the older generation! They were right all along! The dance and music they loved so much in their youth – and through which many of them met their partners – and which they lost for most of their lives, has come back for them to enjoy again late in their lives, along with reasonable political stability and material prosperity. Irene and Man Yung have posted a number of photos and videos. The videos of Alberto Dassieu are of course wonderful, and Coca and Osvaldo Cartery's dance to 'Poema' at Ideal is simply sublime: tango is the dance of love, and love, as we know, means tenderness, intimacy, warmth, as well as passion. & don't miss the link to Adela Galeazzi and Jorge Garcia's jive. Jorge is 'El Flaco' Danny's elder brother, and I watched his jive with an open mouth last December: I'd never seen anything like it, and most definitely not in a septuagenarian!
In the UK we have a particular problem: recent legislation makes it terribly difficult and expensive to bring visitors to teach here, even for a short period, so it's worth considering a visit to Buenos Aires to enjoy tango, and the best of teachers, there. I've already linked many of the older teachers like Luisito Ferraris, who now lives and teaches in North Italy (easy to visit for a vacation). Here's a video of Ruben Aybar and Cherie Magnus, whose website is here. Ruben's tango goes way back. Like Luisito, he dances with enjoyment and generous good-hearted warmth, as well as an easy facility. It would be wonderful to see dancers like this on our floors in London!
Video thanks to Macfroggy.
& what's wrong with going back to the source, the older tradition, while it's still available? Learn from your teachers' teachers if you can! They tend to be dancers pure and simple, rather than trained teachers on an international circuit. Yes, some do teach, perhaps as much by example as by explanation. But how else do you learn dance than by watching dance and by being watched while you dance? (& by talking to your partners!) Martha and Manolo teach canyengue week in and week out in Buenos Aires with hardly a word of English between them, but you know immediately how friendly and encouraging they are, so it's easy to learn from them.
& when it comes down to it, we can get a lot from their generation that simply isn't available from the younger generation: we can get a sense of what the milongas were like, the feel of tango. & it's very evident when we watch the older dancers how much they enjoy dancing together. They don't perform for us with that vaguely disdainful expression, looking, as Tete put it, as if they have a lemon in their mouths!
I see that Irene and Man Yung's tango blog have anticipated me in this: their posts on their recent visit to Buenos Aires show the warmth and happiness and good-heartedness there is in the tango world there these days. It's a really wonderful time for the older generation! They were right all along! The dance and music they loved so much in their youth – and through which many of them met their partners – and which they lost for most of their lives, has come back for them to enjoy again late in their lives, along with reasonable political stability and material prosperity. Irene and Man Yung have posted a number of photos and videos. The videos of Alberto Dassieu are of course wonderful, and Coca and Osvaldo Cartery's dance to 'Poema' at Ideal is simply sublime: tango is the dance of love, and love, as we know, means tenderness, intimacy, warmth, as well as passion. & don't miss the link to Adela Galeazzi and Jorge Garcia's jive. Jorge is 'El Flaco' Danny's elder brother, and I watched his jive with an open mouth last December: I'd never seen anything like it, and most definitely not in a septuagenarian!
In the UK we have a particular problem: recent legislation makes it terribly difficult and expensive to bring visitors to teach here, even for a short period, so it's worth considering a visit to Buenos Aires to enjoy tango, and the best of teachers, there. I've already linked many of the older teachers like Luisito Ferraris, who now lives and teaches in North Italy (easy to visit for a vacation). Here's a video of Ruben Aybar and Cherie Magnus, whose website is here. Ruben's tango goes way back. Like Luisito, he dances with enjoyment and generous good-hearted warmth, as well as an easy facility. It would be wonderful to see dancers like this on our floors in London!
Video thanks to Macfroggy.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Cherry blossom and milestones
My first blog was on LiveJournal, and my first post read:
April 11th, 2007 01:39 pm Cherry blossom fully out. Beautiful. & I planted the trees in a sleet storm ten weeks ago...
April 11 2010, and there's no sign of cherry blossom: it'll be another two weeks. & a milestone, nearly: this is my 298th posting as Tangocommuter.
April 11th, 2007 01:39 pm Cherry blossom fully out. Beautiful. & I planted the trees in a sleet storm ten weeks ago...
April 11 2010, and there's no sign of cherry blossom: it'll be another two weeks. & a milestone, nearly: this is my 298th posting as Tangocommuter.
Bridge to the Tango
Daniel Trenner is a granddaddy to us all. His first visit to Buenos Aires to learn tango was in 1987, after ten years in various forms of jazz dance. By the early 1990s he was there with a video camera, recording a wide range of the tango dancers he had met, recordings that were edited into a ground-breaking series called Bridge to the Tango. They included teaching videos by Mingo and Esther Pugliese, Rodolfo and Maria Cieri, Miguel Balmaceda and Nelly Argaraz, Tete and Silvia, Puppy Castello, workshops with Gustavo Naveira and his then partner Olga Besio... (But sadly, it seems, nothing of Ricardo Vidort.) A few years ago it was announced that Bridge to the Tango was closing down, and I rushed to buy a few more of their VHS cassettes. The visual quality isn't great, and the verbal translation (rather than subtitles) slows everything down, but you get teaching material from some of the greats. Before YouTube, it was all there was, and it's still wonderful material.
I've just noticed that Daniel Trenner has added a blog to his new website, with several very thoughtful entries from last autumn called 'Homage to the Followers'. There's also a wonderful piece on Jean Bruno, who Trenner also filmed in Buenos Aires. Bruno was born in 1925 and started dancing in 1941, truly 'Golden Age'.
There's also a link to the store: 'Bridge' is no longer running off VHS cassettes (for obvious reasons) but a number of the cassettes are still in stock and still available. & it seems that Trenner is going ahead with digitising his archives with a view to re-releasing them. Wonderful!
I've just noticed that Daniel Trenner has added a blog to his new website, with several very thoughtful entries from last autumn called 'Homage to the Followers'. There's also a wonderful piece on Jean Bruno, who Trenner also filmed in Buenos Aires. Bruno was born in 1925 and started dancing in 1941, truly 'Golden Age'.
There's also a link to the store: 'Bridge' is no longer running off VHS cassettes (for obvious reasons) but a number of the cassettes are still in stock and still available. & it seems that Trenner is going ahead with digitising his archives with a view to re-releasing them. Wonderful!
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Days of Being Wild
The first film Wong Kar Wei directed and wrote. Audacious for any film, let alone a first film, to be so visually restrained: no costumes, no vivid landscapes, in fact hardly any landscape at all, since the horizon is hardly ever more than ten feet away. Hardly any colour either, and very little light. How is it that he can make a shot of a girl in a car on a rainy night so powerful, so desperate? He doesn't seem to write characters in the usual sense: his 'characters' are needs, attempts to satisfy and control needs. He seems to write about despair, anxiety, dissatisfaction, things we identify with very directly. The power of understatement, of things that aren't said: we know his characters from inside, elaboration isn't needed.
Made with the Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who also worked with him on his next four films, Ashes of Time, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046. (& filmed Rabbit-Proof Fence in between.) I've managed to watch them all, in reverse order.
It's this kind of desperate intensity and visual power you remember him for, and I hope he goes back to it. My Blueberry Nights was disappointing, and the most recent completed film is on YouTube, a nine-minute short called There's only One Sun which I found so uninteresting I can't be bothered to link it.
Jean-Luc Godard's most recent film is also on YouTube. It's called Une Catastrophe (this is a link), it was finished in 2008, and it's just 1 minute 10 seconds long.
Made with the Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who also worked with him on his next four films, Ashes of Time, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046. (& filmed Rabbit-Proof Fence in between.) I've managed to watch them all, in reverse order.
It's this kind of desperate intensity and visual power you remember him for, and I hope he goes back to it. My Blueberry Nights was disappointing, and the most recent completed film is on YouTube, a nine-minute short called There's only One Sun which I found so uninteresting I can't be bothered to link it.
Jean-Luc Godard's most recent film is also on YouTube. It's called Une Catastrophe (this is a link), it was finished in 2008, and it's just 1 minute 10 seconds long.
Monday, 5 April 2010
Kontakthof, Van Gogh... and tango
(The connection is linear: they came one after the other.)
Kontakthof ('courtyard for meeting') is the first Pina Bausch piece I've seen on stage. The setting is a bare dance hall. Originally (1978) it was created for 27 untrained performers aged 65 and over, just local people. Untrained but not unrehearsed: the piece, which is 'dance theatre', is long and complex. The gestures and acts we perform in dance halls, the preening, clothing adjustments, plays for attention, rejections, even our unexpressed thoughts and desires, which would normally remain unnoticed, are the substance of the piece. [PS. There's little actual dancing.] It wasn't made clear at booking that two groups were performing at separate performances, and I found I'd booked for a group of teenagers, 14+, a later idea, it seems. I'm not sure the bare dance hall and the music, German 1930s dance music, sounding (except for the vocals) rather like tango vals, really suited them, and they have much less 'history' to bring to the performance. Pina Bausch grew through the harsh post-war years, and her vision of human nature is unsentimental and unsettling.
Van Gogh I could hardly see, they've packed the show with so many 'customers'. You see the backs of heads of people trying to see beyond the backs of the heads of people crammed together looking at a Van Gogh. The drawings were easier to see, and I liked them. There's a kind of compulsiveness in them, skies filled with thousands of tiny dots, but I suspect that these textures are an attempt to suggest colour in monochrome drawing. The energy in the drawings is magnificent. The drawing of a cypress seemed much more direct and forceful than the modelling (literally) of it in paint. I was surprised to be less impressed by the paintings. I can't help thinking of Cezanne, who also looked at southern landscapes and people. But Van Gogh died at 37, at which age Cezanne was still a relatively clumsy painter. Only in his 50s did Cezanne start to make those astonishing constructions of line and colour, which seem both solid and insubstantial, and which take my breath away.
& tango (at the Crypt) confirmed my observation a while back that dark and unevenly lit dance floors host the most careless dancing. I was told there was a lot of bumping and a lot of complaining about bumping, and I was hit by people taking long steps backwards. I'm all for the socialising area being dark, but the floor needs adequate lighting. It's so obvious! It's not rock'n'roll, where people dance on the spot! Leaders need to be able to register clearly and in brief glimpses, and often out of the corner of an eye, where all the nearby dancers are, what they are doing, and even their skill levels. In the dark, with a partner, people can ignore the possibility of other people being around, but that adds to no-one's comfort. & the (recent) addition of a glitter ball is truly depressing...
Kontakthof ('courtyard for meeting') is the first Pina Bausch piece I've seen on stage. The setting is a bare dance hall. Originally (1978) it was created for 27 untrained performers aged 65 and over, just local people. Untrained but not unrehearsed: the piece, which is 'dance theatre', is long and complex. The gestures and acts we perform in dance halls, the preening, clothing adjustments, plays for attention, rejections, even our unexpressed thoughts and desires, which would normally remain unnoticed, are the substance of the piece. [PS. There's little actual dancing.] It wasn't made clear at booking that two groups were performing at separate performances, and I found I'd booked for a group of teenagers, 14+, a later idea, it seems. I'm not sure the bare dance hall and the music, German 1930s dance music, sounding (except for the vocals) rather like tango vals, really suited them, and they have much less 'history' to bring to the performance. Pina Bausch grew through the harsh post-war years, and her vision of human nature is unsentimental and unsettling.
Van Gogh I could hardly see, they've packed the show with so many 'customers'. You see the backs of heads of people trying to see beyond the backs of the heads of people crammed together looking at a Van Gogh. The drawings were easier to see, and I liked them. There's a kind of compulsiveness in them, skies filled with thousands of tiny dots, but I suspect that these textures are an attempt to suggest colour in monochrome drawing. The energy in the drawings is magnificent. The drawing of a cypress seemed much more direct and forceful than the modelling (literally) of it in paint. I was surprised to be less impressed by the paintings. I can't help thinking of Cezanne, who also looked at southern landscapes and people. But Van Gogh died at 37, at which age Cezanne was still a relatively clumsy painter. Only in his 50s did Cezanne start to make those astonishing constructions of line and colour, which seem both solid and insubstantial, and which take my breath away.
& tango (at the Crypt) confirmed my observation a while back that dark and unevenly lit dance floors host the most careless dancing. I was told there was a lot of bumping and a lot of complaining about bumping, and I was hit by people taking long steps backwards. I'm all for the socialising area being dark, but the floor needs adequate lighting. It's so obvious! It's not rock'n'roll, where people dance on the spot! Leaders need to be able to register clearly and in brief glimpses, and often out of the corner of an eye, where all the nearby dancers are, what they are doing, and even their skill levels. In the dark, with a partner, people can ignore the possibility of other people being around, but that adds to no-one's comfort. & the (recent) addition of a glitter ball is truly depressing...
Friday, 2 April 2010
Milonga
I have the reputation of being a milongaphobe, but I don't dislike milonga at all although I dance it reluctantly and (I think) unconvincingly. I like the music, but not as much as tango or vals. A partner once told me she often finds it difficult to get a leader for milonga so I wonder if milongaphobia is a common affliction. Is there an element of wit or light-heartedness in milonga that's somehow a problem? I don't think it has much to do with the speed of the music since I dance vals in double time without hesitation. Teachers convinced me early on that milonga is a separate, different dance, with different 'steps', and I felt I had enough to do with learning tango 'steps', so I didn't bother. & now it suits me to take a break. No, no, it's milonga! But watching some of the older Buenos Aires dancers has been very reassuring. For instance, isn't this wonderful? (A pity the picture gives away the age of the dancers: just watching the first twenty seconds of their feet you'd never guess.)
When it comes down to it, milonga isn't a separate dance, or tango danced fast, but tango danced to a milonga beat. Some figures work better in tango or milonga, but it's hardly a separate dance. It wasn't until I took a workshop with Adrian and Amanda Costa that I realised that most milonga isn't necessarily relentless and fast but, like tango, can have its pauses and musicality: thanks! & I've watched older dancers in Buenos Aires whose milonga seems very slow, but is full of feints and pretences. Once you catch on to what they are doing, it's actually quite funny to watch.
Pocho and Nelly's dancing is beautiful, no other word for it. It's breathtakingly musical, unhurried, passionate, assured. Seguro, seguro! & for once the film is well made, technically good quality, with a clear whole-body view. It's sad that there are relatively few videos of this couple on YouTube. I don't know how old they are, but they must be among the last survivors of the generation that learned tango around the 1950s. There was a tango hiatus until the late 1980s: they may have continued dancing, but not many people did, so they are one of the last direct links to the dance of the golden age, and good video of them should be really important. They've done a few teaching tours of the US, so maybe there's more out there. A pity someone can't get funding to rent a venue, perhaps in the afternoon, and pay dancers of that generation generously to attend a few milongas, where they could be filmed well, dancing socially and solo. Sadly, there's not much time left.
Here's another older couple dancing a fast milonga in El Beso.Once again, there's nothing technically difficult (except that calesita at 00:58): it's just incredibly well done.
Videos thanks to Grznik and Tangaso.
When it comes down to it, milonga isn't a separate dance, or tango danced fast, but tango danced to a milonga beat. Some figures work better in tango or milonga, but it's hardly a separate dance. It wasn't until I took a workshop with Adrian and Amanda Costa that I realised that most milonga isn't necessarily relentless and fast but, like tango, can have its pauses and musicality: thanks! & I've watched older dancers in Buenos Aires whose milonga seems very slow, but is full of feints and pretences. Once you catch on to what they are doing, it's actually quite funny to watch.
Pocho and Nelly's dancing is beautiful, no other word for it. It's breathtakingly musical, unhurried, passionate, assured. Seguro, seguro! & for once the film is well made, technically good quality, with a clear whole-body view. It's sad that there are relatively few videos of this couple on YouTube. I don't know how old they are, but they must be among the last survivors of the generation that learned tango around the 1950s. There was a tango hiatus until the late 1980s: they may have continued dancing, but not many people did, so they are one of the last direct links to the dance of the golden age, and good video of them should be really important. They've done a few teaching tours of the US, so maybe there's more out there. A pity someone can't get funding to rent a venue, perhaps in the afternoon, and pay dancers of that generation generously to attend a few milongas, where they could be filmed well, dancing socially and solo. Sadly, there's not much time left.
Here's another older couple dancing a fast milonga in El Beso.Once again, there's nothing technically difficult (except that calesita at 00:58): it's just incredibly well done.
Videos thanks to Grznik and Tangaso.
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