D'Agostino: film

I always enjoyed the clear, spare sound of the Angel D'Agostino orchestra without wondering how it was created. This clip shows how: it wasn't an 'orquesta'. It was a quartet, the leanest possible tango group; piano (D'Agostino), bandoneon, violin, bass. The individual lines sing and the singer, Angel Vargas, is the fifth line.

And this clip from a 40s film has subtitles, so the whole little story is clear, as is the sense of the song, Barrio de tres esquinas, one of the classics of tango. The local kid comes back from the big city, contemptuous of the barrios of Buenos Aires: his childhood friend, the singer Angel Vargas, reminds him that the barrio is a place of affection and friendship. & then there's a second song, a comic interlude, in which everyone moves back 50 years.

An 'orquesta tipica' would have at least two more bandoneons and violins. It would have a more dramatic impact, but I still value the intimacy of the D'Agostino sound. & I wonder how many other Argentine films there are (preferably subtitled) with the musicians and dancers of the period.

Histoire[s] du cinéma

M. Godard could never make anything simple because he's too aware of complexity. These six 1/2-hour videos are stories and history, but hardly a detailed chronological history. Cinema was born in the 19th century against a background of narrative painting and literature, and blossomed in the 20th. The films are a study of cinema, to be studied, but they are great to watch as montage of film, painting and photography. Visions, memories of stories, of films, flicker in front of our eyes in strange complex collages: glimpses of Renoir's French Cancan, Demy's Parapluies de Cherbourg, Eisensteins' Alexander Nevsky, the dialogue of Last Year at Marienbad... After all, Godard must have seen (and remembered) more films than anyone else alive.

Beyond that the films feature big characters from the world of film, Howard Hughes (sarcastically), Hitchcock (with great praise: 'Hitchcock succeeded where Alexander the Great, Napoleon and Hitler failed: he controlled the universe'.) & there's a long and very central discussion between Godard and his producer about the project.

Apart from that there are endless shots of Godard + cigar and typewriter, proclaiming things like 'Solitude de cinéma: cinéma de la solitude', all overlaid with the inevitable typographic word-plays. But on the whole, very fascinating. Similar in style to his episode, Dans le Noir du Temps in 10 Minutes Older: the Cello, which condenses the 20th century into 10 minutes of image, using newsreel and scenes from his own films.

At the Royal Ballet

The Seven Deadly Sins by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weil (1933) a ballet chanté from the start, first choreographed by Balanchine and sung by (who else?) Lotte Lenya. Good to see it onstage at Covent Garden. A new choreography by Will Tuckett, sung by Martha Wainwright and danced by Zenaida Yanowsky. The music stands out, great singing and dancing. The Wainwright voice is excellent, rich in the lower register, clear and bright higher up. She might not be used to singing the longer lines of Brecht/Weil, but it's a great performance. Carmen, Mats Ek choreography, great fun. Inventive with steps and moves as with whole scenes. Synchronised smoking to March of the Toreodores then, having amused and played around with illusion, he can suddenly produce real pathos. Tamara Rojo in red, you (I) watch every moment. In fact Ek makes colour sing too. DGV: Wheeldon choreography to Nyman music. Wheeldon makes great modern classical choreography, but this didn't show me much more than great modern classical choreography, fast, Danse à Grande Vitesse. Enjoyable, and a good evening out.

Eating and dancing: noches bravas en El Nino Bien

Checking out 'El Flaco' Dany clips I came across this one of a night out at El Nino Bien. Not much of El Flaco, but a good record of what a tango night at one of the main Buenos Aires milongas looks like. & if you like slow jive, and Fever, check out 'El Flaco Dany boogies with Silvina Valz' -- Munich again.

Nothing much to do with tango

Deadline met, by a few hours. The show is in Canary Wharf.

El Flaco Dany and Silvina Vals

I'm still not really at home in milonga so I love watching people who dance it easily. Here's a couple of them:



The video calls him 'El Falco', but he's El Flaco Dany. I recognise him from Porteno y Bailarin although I didn't notice him dance there, and in any case there's not room to dance like this. She was always there too, dancing. Great the way they go straight from some quick walking steps into a series of breathtaking turns. There are a few more videos of them on YouTube; one from Munich, just to remind us that top dancers do come to Europe but don't often get invited to the UK.

Strange days in Antigua

Working 12-hour days to meet a deadline means the radio tends to be on more than usual. & this time there was a test match in Antigua to help me through the hours. It began at the new Viv Richards stadium and ended after 11 balls, as the pitch was judged unusable and the match called a draw. With a huge effort the old Antigua stadium pitch was brought back into play, and a new match started.

With hindsight there were a number of odd circumstances. Commentators kept praising the effort involved in getting a pitch ready for a cricket test: it normally takes two weeks and the ground staff had succeeded in two days. So if it took two weeks to prepare the original pitch, how come it was unusable? The question wasn't really asked: after all, a match was ongoing, the main thing. Then, although they'd just decisively beaten England at Kingston, the West Indian team were said to be very reluctant to start another game in Antigua. & then very few local supporters turned up to the new match. Cricket legend Sir Viv Richards was asked about this by the commentator. “Oh, I guess they are in church” he replied easily. A slight pause. At 4pm? “Oh it goes on all day here.” With all due respect this sounded slightly more than absurd. Since when did Antiguans spend a whole day singing hymns when there was a test match on? Even if it was Sunday.

Monday morning, this morning, dawned brilliant and hot in Antigua – and still there were very few Antiguans on the ground. What was on their minds? The bombshell, the breaking news, came around 4pm. "Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford and three of his companies have been charged over a $8bn investment fraud, US financial regulators say. The Securities and Exchange Commission said the businessman had orchestrated 'a fraudulent, multi-billion dollar investment scheme'."

Stanford is huge in Antigua, one of the island's biggest employers, a massive investor in cricket. The Antiguans must have heard rumours, and were anticipating a terrible crash: Sir Viv must have been in the know. & according to a local commentator a number of players had invested their match earnings in Stanford's schemes: the money would now be frozen, probably lost, which makes it more dreadful. The players... and who else?

A Ponzi scheme is fraudulent because payments are financed by taking on new capital. I guess it differs slightly from standard capitalist practice where, at least in theory, the money is used to finance money-making business. But if the money-making business fails, doesn't standard capitalist practice become a Ponzi scheme? But for the world banking crash, would the Standfords, the Madoffs, the Cosmos, be normal successful investors? I'd really like to know.

Polka, candombe and milonga

One evening recently at 33 a friend alarmed a few people: a milonga was playing and she suddenly started to jump up and down, saying 'One two three hop... It's a polka! One two three hop!' Calm down dear, someone said. But she was insistent, and I was intrigued. The music was some kind of milonga, and the rhythm she was dancing fitted it well. & I believed she knew what a polka was.

So I was delighted to read that the polka was very popular in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th century, and that it may well have played a part in developing the slow habanera rhythm of the candombe, a dance with strong African roots, into... the milonga. Was milonga a cross between polka and a candombe on speed? & is the Brazilian samba an Africanised polka?

Somebody thinks so. Robert Farris Thompson, Professor of the History of Art at Yale wrote TANGO: the art history of love (Vintage Books, 2006) to demonstrate the profound, but now almost invisible, influence of Africa on the music and dance of Argentina.

Invisible if you don't know where to look. Old documents, artwork and photos, and people's memories, contradict the quite striking absence of Africans from the streets, public transport and milongas of Buenos Aires. I was stunned to read that the milonguero Facundo Posada recalls as a child being warned not to bother people who had fallen into a trance while dancing to the cadombe rhythm at the Shimmy Club in Buenos Aires around 1945. Upstairs at the Shimmy Club tango and jazz were danced: the basement was blacks-only, and at night the drums would start up and the spirits of Africa would manifest themselves.

In 1810 Buenos Aires was 34% black but by 1887, after years of immigration, it was 2%, around 8,000. By the mid-20th century the black community numbered about 2,000. Thompson charts the significance of African roots in tango. Black musicians were prominent, including several early bandoneon players who helped define the use of the instrument in tango. There were black lyricists: Gabino Ezeiza wrote over 500 songs. And the rich African tradition of dance fed into tango. A short film, Tango Argentino, featuring a dancer called El Negro Agapito was made around 1904, but sadly it no longer exists. Three great 20th century dancers, El Cachafez, Todaro and Petroleo acknowledged black teachers, partners, influences. Copes' first teacher was black.

Thompson writes to show black influence, but doesn't mention social tango. He calls dances 'choreographies', and the line of dance he follows to Copes leads rather to the stage, to tango fantasia, than to the milongas. & sometimes the comparisons are a bit forced: the distant facial expressions and lack of conversation in tango shows African origin. He clearly has no idea how much attention it takes for most of us to follow the music and navigate a crowded floor! & that we choose to enter a world of conversation without words. With music and without words we can fly; it's not a style copied from anywhere. But he has unearthed a rich background and a lot of detailed information about the music and dance: I just wished the book had at least a CD.

He claims that the habanera was Afro-Cuban: others have traced it to the European contredanza which came to Cuba from French Haiti with refugees from the 1791 Haiti revolution. He himself talks about how rhythms and dance moves traveled up and down the South American coast. Realistically, where does any good tune or rhythm come from? Tunes and rhythms travel easier than viruses because people, musicians especially, seek them out, and they take no storage space. I can't help remembering the story about the record company in the late 50s/early 60s that sent a team of recording engineers far up the Amazon to record the purest, unadulterated tribal music. When they listened to it again in the studio they were horrified to realise they were listening to a version of... Jailhouse Rock. The missionaries must have given the tribals a transistor tuned to edifying matter and told them not to touch that dial... Music travels instantly now, but even two centuries ago it traveled fast. A mariner whistles a tune he heard in a port, a local boatman hears it and it's copied from him far up-country by a merchant who crosses the mountains to...

Being grounded

Dancing after visiting BsAs: a few recent comments from friends made me look back at the post I wrote after the first milonga back in London (Sunday 11 January). The entire post was about what I saw that evening compared with what I'd seen. Time to revisit the experience.

One comment: I was asked if I felt that my dancing had been deconstructed. That puzzled me a moment or two: it was the passive I found confusing. Nobody deconstructed my dancing. But I did spend the middle weeks of my stay being rather cautious. My first instinct was to get on the floor. Then I started to wonder if I was doing the right thing, doing it well enough. At least I was prepared for the style of dance there, but you become aware that there are people around you who have danced on and off for 60 years, whose experience of milongas goes back to the 40s and 50s. I thought I should regard dancing there as a privilege, not a right: to be on the floor at Canning certainly feels like a privilege! I started to tune in to the Spanish-language classes and to dance with local partners. I also started to sit and watch. You see amazing dance: not amazing in the 'tango fantasia' sense of high kicks and choreographed sizzling sensuality, just people moving beautifully, effortlessly, simply for their own pleasure. Watching became quite important for a few weeks. Some of those dancers, some of that experience, won't be around much longer.

My experience of dancing the first milonga after I got back was confusing because I was recovering from a serious cold, I was deaf in one ear, my own voice sounded strange. I couldn't dance easily because I felt my partners were expecting some amazing experience: how could I live up to it? Hard to explain that for five weeks I actually hadn't been dancing a lot. My feeling of that evening was that the lesson I'd brought back was to be very grounded. I was aware of the strength of gravity now, of weight, whereas before I'd danced around on tiptoe. This was what I learned (apart from actual steps) from Tete and Silvia. “Tango can be danced in a thousand different ways, but let’s step on the ground in the first place, because that is where we ought to dance to the music... Kids these days tend to dance in the air. You can do many nice things, but please do them on the floor.”

So it was strange and very helpful to be told that the impression from dancing with me that first night back was that my posture was a lot better. I wasn't in the least aware of posture that evening, but I'm wondering if the feeling of being grounded isn't related to a partner's perception of better posture.

Other than that: it's hard to change overnight. But, partly because of all this writing, I've still got a lot in mind, a lot of work still to do.

Facundo and Kely, Candombe and Humberto 1 1462

I just chanced upon this video in the hall of Humberto 1 1462. You get a glimpse of the entire hall after a marvellous candombe by Facundo and Kely Posadas: 50 years dancing together.



I took one class with Facundo, a great milonguero. He was incredibly courteous, and very helpful and attentive. When someone gives that much patience and attention their teaching becomes part of you. He's black, which I mention because that is strikingly unusual in Buenos Aires. He teaches throughout the USA, but hasn't been to London for many years.

Did tango die?

You hear lots of stories. TV and rock swept Argentina in the late 50s and 60s. The Argentine musician Joaquín Amenábar says that tango declined, then died, killed off by the later military rule, and there was a period when there was no tango dancing. Miguel Balbi, a singer and dancer who danced through the 70s, says that as few as 30 couples were still dancing when the military finally lost power in 1983. Well, all you need is a terrace or reasonably-sized room, 20 or so friends, some music, drink and food and you can have your own milonga and who would know about it? So tango may well have continued.

But research here suggests that quite a few milongas stayed open at least some of the time. They were cheap and some even had live music. A picture is worth many words, so here's the picture:



That's a familiar address. Humberto is the street, building no. 1462, first floor, and it's still a tango venue. I've been there. The Nino Bien milonga is held there every Thursday night. It's big enough for several hundred people to dance. 1976 was the grim year in which some 47% of all the “desaparecidos”, perhaps as many as 14,000 people, were seized and last seen.

& more: “...many old-timers credit Copes with keeping the Tango flame alive through the years of the cruel military rule in Argentina when the generals did their best to kill Tango as a popular expression. Many others quit; Copes kept going and mounted the highest of quality shows continually. Even though there was a curfew in Buenos Aires, there was a Copes show, often with Goyeneche, Troilo, even Pugliese making his music. Only the Best. He and his company were "untouchable" by those seeking to hold tango back in the wild Argentina political atmosphere... In the audience, the generals would be on one side of the room; the mafia on the other; the "people" in the middle. Everyone left their politics and rivalries at the door.”

The generals on one side, the mafia on the other, and the people in between: plausible enough. And I read that in 1977 Copes appeared with Nievas in Argentina es asi, a film shot in part on Corrientes Street, although there's no record of it on IMDb.

All of this may be true, or partially true. For what it matters, it seems tango never died out in Buenos Aires. But for sure it was the tours by Copes and his company that created and revived an interest in tango outside Argentina. Leandro Palou remarked to me, “Things become popular in Argentina because they are popular elsewhere. It's sad, but true”.

A postscript: I often wondered what Pugliese did during the 'dirty war': he was openly a communist, hardly the flavour of the decade. I found this in Tango: the art history of love: 'The management of the Michaelangelo, a San Telmo nightclub that staged big tango shows, loved him too: ignoring bomb threats they kept him employed during the grim days of the Proceso, 1976-1983. The junta did not dare "disappear" him: as Copes explains, "he was simply too popular".'

No, tango did not die.

Tango timeline

For a while I've been trying to find time to compile a chronological list of the great names of tango, of musicians and singers. Information from www.todotango.com, 'Sitio declarado de Interes Nacional'.

Roberto Firpo 1884 - 1969
Genaro Esposito 1886 – 1944
Francisco Canaro 1888 – 1964
Carlos Gardel 1890 – 1935
Osvaldo Fresedo 1897 – 1984
Rosita Melo 1897 - 1981
Pedro Maffia 1899 – 1967
Julio De Caro 1899 – 1980
Angel D'Agostino 1900 – 1991
Juan D'Arienzo 1900 – 1976
Pedro Laurenz 1902 – 1972
Carlos Di Sarli 1903 – 1960
Mercedes Simone 1904 – 1990
Angel Vargas 1904 - 1959
Osvaldo Pugliese 1905 – 1995
Francisco Fiorentino 1905 - 1955
Ricardo Tanturi 1905 – 1973
Rudolpho Biagi 1906 – 1969
Carlos Dante 1906 – 1985
Miguel Calo 1907 – 1972
Libertad Lamarque 1908 - 2000
Alfredo De Angelis 1910 – 1992
Nelly Omar 1911 -
Alfredo Gobbi 1912 – 1965
Florindo Sassone 1912 – 1982
Alberto Castillo 1914 – 2002
Anibal Troilo 1914 - 1975
Enrique Francini 1916 – 1978
Horacio Salgan 1916 -
Armando Pontier 1917 - 1983
Raul Beron 1920 - 1982
Astor Piazzolla 1921 – 1992
Roberto Rufino 1922 - 1999
Roberto Goyenche 1926 - 1994
Horacio Ferer 1933 -

Not many women in the list, although there were many cancionistas. A couple of interesting exceptions: Francisca “Paquita” Bernardo, a bandoneon player and band leader who took on a young pianist called Osvaldo Pugliese in the early 1920s, and Rosita Melo, whose vals, Desde el Alma, was recorded by the Firpo orchestra in 1911 when she was just 14. She went on to teach piano at the Conservatory, and was famous as a composer and as a performer of classical and popular music.


Rosita Melo

A man who's spent his life literally putting his life on the line, with an obsession with the Twin Towers since childhood, when they were just being built; wife and friends who've supported his playful obsession with balance, and filmed him and each other since they were young; a film-maker who saw and conveyed the beauty and awareness in all these faces, of Philippe Petit and his friends, and of their footage of each other, and who recreated the astonishing drama of a series of illegal high-wire acts culminating in rigging a cable between the Twin Towers and walking, sitting, lying, dancing on it for 40 minutes a quarter of a mile up... Breathtaking, beautiful, and thoughtful, too. Man on Wire.

Ms H asked me about the step I was trying to describe on 17 January. The video I was watching is an old teaching video which isn't on YouTube, and is no longer commercially available. But the step goes on, and it occurred to me that I've linked only one video of Tete and Silvia, and it isn't a particularly clear one. So here are two of the best. If these don't convince you that this is how tango should be danced, then... well go and try to dance like Pablo Veron. Have fun!

First, Gallo Ciego. Tete grew up listening to Pugliese live, knows every note of the music, and loves dancing to it. This actually begins with the step I was trying to describe but it has been cut clumsily. But look at 0.30 to 0.32, and at 1.09 to 1.11. Although it is part of a sequence of moves, you can see he leads a step with his chest, without taking a step himself.



& because vals is what they love best of all, I've got to include a vals. At 0.35 to 0.37 he leads a backstep with his chest, and follows through with his right foot, bringing Silvia to the cross. That's what I was trying to describe. There's also a wonderful moment where you see their affection for each other. It's great to see people enjoying dancing together!



Tete can seem quite forceful as a dancer: this is Tete at his lightest, and it also shows how light he can be on his feet. I love their interaction with the music in these two clips. I can watch them over and over.

F for Fake: Orson Welles enjoying himself on Ibiza in the company of two fakers, Emyl de Hory the great art faker, and Clifford Irvine who faked the autobiography of Howard Hughes, just at the time the scandals surrounding them were beginning to unfold. De Hory could make the most beautiful drawings and paintings in any modernist style, Picasso, Matisse, Van Dongen, Modigliani, and fool any expert eye, and yet could never make his own work. Because of him 'experts' have been discredited, and what matters now is provenance. Orson Welles performing magic tricks, not least with the editing table, faking reality by making films, who long ago crossed swords, to his disadvantage, with Howard Hughes. F for Fake, made in between The Deep, unfinished due to the death of Lawrence Harvey, although it is said to be complete except for one scene, and The Other Side of the Wind, with John Huston and Jeanne Moreau, which should have been released last year, 2008, after decades of legal wrangling about ownership. Something to look forward to.

Welles as a guerilla film-maker, operating with minimal resources and able to produce extraordinary results because he understood what is needed to create an illusion.

In case Valentino seemed in poor taste, here's how it should have been done.



El Gallego and Marta dancing Canyengue.

Many years ago, El Gallego's father taught him how to dance tango. "Stand up straight, learn how to step, and listen to the music." There may be several dancers called El Gallego and I don't know if it was this one. But it's still good advice, even if your name isn't El Gallego!

I skipped over this clip a few days ago because the beginning is useless, and the dancing starts with milonga... But it's worth watching. The milonga is interesting. Maipu 444 is a venue some of the best dancers come to -- and their milonga is largely 'lisse', without the quick, 'traspie' steps. Then the leaders show their partners back to their seats, women to the left, men to the right. (The two ends of the room are women and couples.) Then there are two tangos. The next tanda doesn't start until the floor is cleared. This is a fairly clear, well-lit picture of what a moderately-busy milonga is like.

Makes me nostalgic looking at all these milonga clips. At the time I was a bit overcome by social awkwardness at the formality of it, and by my uncertain castellano and tango, but looking back I'm struck by how at home I felt, what a pleasure it was to be there.

According to YouTube this is Maipu 444 on a Wednesday night, but that night is the gay milonga LA Marshall, so there must be some mistake, or the programme's changed... It's definitely Maipu 444. I was living just up the road.



Antonioni's L'Eclisse came and went... It just didn't enter and occupy my head, as did La Notte. Same theme, tho', personal dissatisfaction against a background of Italy's 60s plenty. Vitti and Delon just didn't make it real, as Moreau and (to a lesser extent Mastroianni) made La Notte real.

Tango with spurs.

There was an interesting discussion here a few weeks back about the meaning of 'milonguero/a', which focussed on posture. The close hold, 'apilado', certainly helps define it. But, watching again closely the teaching videos Tete and Silvia made with Daniel Trenner in the mid-90s, I'm struck that walking forwards defines the type of moves. We're always taught that tango is a walking dance, but we're also taught to start everything by stepping sideways, to the left for leaders, hardly a conventional walk. Much of Tete's dance starts in 'parallel' – he's walking with his partner. Then as he steps forward with his left foot (his partner back with her right) he turns her so her left foot is behind her, continuing to lead forwards with his chest. As her left foot touches down he steps forward with his right, which brings her to the cross. This is the 'milonguero' lead to the cross: no side step is involved. Tango evolved on crowded floors, and this is certainly economical with the space. On a crowded floor there's no room for a side step preceded by lots of baroque flourishes.

And a bit of fun, and maybe more. I came across this ages ago, laughed, and forgot about it. Recently, thinking about the lack of film of early tango, I took a second look.



1921, so this is one of the first pieces of dance on film. Sadly the music has been added: of course, 1921 was pre-talkie. Valentino was well known as a taxi dancer in New York around 1916, and could dance any current dance, including tango. His tango looks like a cross between canyengue (the bent knees) and later tango (the arm positions). There are also recognisable steps although her giro doesn't use the back step. Whether he'd want to dance for long with a partner who hangs on his neck, or whether she'd want to dance for long with her head thrown back... well, this was Hollywood. & dig the spurs. The film starts in Buenos Aires, then young Julio signs up to fight in World War 1, reforms and dies in a war which is shown as devastating. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1921.

Byzantium at the RA. Having exhausted myself on Friday evening I could have been in a more receptive state. Low lighting levels: necessary of course for works on paper but surely not for stone carving or metal work? As for the mdf arches... Was all this someone's idea of making an RA exhibition into a Byzantine experience? I was immediately attracted to a big mosaic, a pastoral view of the seasons, and to small sculptures of shepherds carrying sheep. The Antioch Chalice, aka. the Holy Grail seemed badly displayed at a low level since you had to kneel down to see the beautiful metalwork of grape vines and people. Or was it the aim to make people kneel down in front of it?!

I must admit I didn't read the explanations in each room, so I was left wondering why one of the oldest icons was in the last room: extraordinary because it seemed to follow artistically from those amazing late-Egyptian tomb paintings in encaustic which seem to prefigure 19th century portraits. There was one, probably from the British Museum, at the other end of the show in room three. The icon, as I remember, was 6th century, and looked quite portrait-like, even having directional lighting (from the left) and was also painted in encaustic. It seemed to have so much more life than the later, grander icons, which looked more like corporate advertising: the corporation in question being the Church. Micro-mosaic was new to me, the tesserae being smaller than 1mm in size; so small you hardly even notice them. Some great books, serious physical things that put paperbacks to shame, and some marvellous free painting in them. Some lovely unpretentious everyday pottery with strange paintings of birds and fish. The crowning weirdness of the show: the very last piece you see is a breathtaking painting of people being attacked by a posse of black demons with lassos as they climb the ladder to heaven; you can almost see them sweating, heart in mouth, as they see a demon out of the corner of the eye and remember being angry with someone years ago... and then you walk straight out into the bright lights of the RA shop. Still wondering what that was intended to mean.

& Sunday morning, a quick look around Tate Modern. Rothko never greatly appealed to me, but the big room of big Rothkos was interesting because there were a lot of people in it, and most of them didn't seem interested in the paintings: it was a congenial place to sit and chat. So Rothko as a background to Sunday-morning conversation? Somehow the paintings made the people look more interesting than usual. But as for paintings, I'd just walked through the 80s and 90s of Paludino, Clemente, Cucchi, Schnabel, Basquiat and a few others and really enjoyed all that painterly excitement and weirdness. Rather that than Rothko any day. Then on into the Cildo Meireles show, which was excitement on a non-painterly level. The amazing huge maze, walking on cracked uneven glass around barriers, including barbed wire and shower curtains, barriers you can see but not walk through, to get to a huge ball of clear plastic in the centre... Dangerous and wonderful. & wonderful that kids were exploring it without nanny worrying that they might fall on the uneven glass floor and impale themselves on the barbed wire. And next to it the huge pit of shiny copper coins, and you look up at the strange curves of the roof above it and discover the curves are bones. Bones, and money. Looking through the exhibition booklet I now discover that I only saw half of the exhibition, and thought I'd seen it all, so I have to go back.

Back in London

Your first milonga in London after you get back from BsAs is going to be a busy one. Word gets around. Everyone wants to ask about it, to dance with you. It was great to see lots of familiar faces, dance with friends for a change. & it's fun to be a bit of a celebrity for an evening.

But you can't dance all the time, so you sit down and watch the dancing. & if, like me, you watched a lot of dancing in Buenos Aires, you suddenly start to wonder about this strange activity you are looking at. It has characteristics in common with the tango you're used to, but in many ways it is quite different. For a start, most of it isn't close-hold, and then it concentrates on decoration and elaboration, it's jumpy, with a lot of stiff left-arm movement from the leaders, it's a bit crab-like, and there's little obvious connection to the music. You suspect they'd dance the same dance whatever the music.

Well, it's easy to look back and think that what you saw on your holidays was so much better... So I spent a hard hour working my way through YouTube videos of BsAs milongas. Someone has to do it. Most are badly filmed, the camera hiding behind the bottles on a table, but three are OK. So this is the social dance called tango you see in Buenos Aires.

First, and why not, Porteno y Bailarin. I gather there are a few visitors in this one, but there are also a number of locals I recognise. Anyway, this is what it looks like.



I've just spotted something. Watch out for the guy with long hair, white shirt, white pants in the first dance, the vals: that's José Garofalo minus heels.

& now Cachirula, a popular Saturday night milonga at Maipu 444. It looks quite empty, so I'd imagine this is around 3am, but at least you can see how they dance. &, yes, that's Tete at the beginning: watch his muscular turns.



Come to think of it, the dancing looks a bit 3am-ish. That rather unsympathetic lighting isn't unusual. & how many Ocho Cortados did you spot?

Finally, a short expressionistic clip of El Beso. Note the guy in front of you delighted to get the dance he's wanted all evening. Or maybe it's a football score, but I think not. He goes off towards the women's tables.



Have a good look, and compare what you see with... Well, any milonga you care to name in London. What are the essential differences? Which do you prefer? &, if you prefer the BsAs dancing, either to look at or as a way of dancing, is there anything we can do to change things in London? Answers in no more than 100 pages please. Or has London gone too far down the wrong path?

I felt that London dancing looks like clever and capable kids imitating stage tango, and the BsAs dance looks like adults dancing together. No hate mail, please. By and large, we're taught by show dancers here, so we ape them, it's all we know. There aren't that many Buenos Aires dancers who teach their own dance even in Buenos Aires, and they rarely come to London. They tour the US and they visit Italy, but not London.

I must make an honourable exception: Paul and Michiko were dancing on Friday night, and their dance was instantly familiar: upright, musical, tender. Technically the BsAs dance isn't difficult, but it means connecting with a partner and the music. Which can be more of a challenge than linear boleos combined with back ganchos.

La Notte

I knew I'd once seen an Antonioni film that convinced me he was a great director: I just couldn't find what it was. L'Aventura was lethargic and poorly shot, Blowup a right pain, and some late soft-core porn tedious. Then I rented La Notte. Definitely the one.

Of course, that extraordinary performance from Jeanne Moreau. Beyond that, the film itself looks amazing. A master cinematographer's work in black and white, the darks rich, the lights textured, and still room for wonderful greys. (Gianni di Venanzo, who shot Fellinis's 8 ½, but died young a year or so later.) No soundtrack, just the sound of what is happening: revolutionary for 1961, and it gives a great sense of space. You listen. And an adult script in the right sense, in story and dialogue. A couple visit a friend dying of cancer. They go home. She goes out walking round the city, calls him to pick her up from a location where they first lived together. They go out to eat. They go on to a party. Mastroianni gets attracted by a younger girl, Moreau tries to have an affair and fails. She calls the hospital: their friend has died. They walk into the gardens. She tells him the friend has died, and that she no longer loves him: so this is what was going on behind the Moreau face all through the film. The camera pulls back from a couple rolling in their best clothes in a sandpit. Extraordinary.

L'Eclisse, the third in the trilogy, is yet to come.

Keeping the beat

I always considered that I kept to the beat until dancing with a portena who insisted I should be more careful: I made a note of this earlier. Today I found this quote from Kathryn Stott, pianist, who was introduced to Piazolla's music by Yoyo Ma, and who subsequently performed with members of Piazolla's quintet, including Pablo Aslan:

"After the release of the album, we toured the US and far east and my real tango lessons began. Our bass player, Pablo Aslan, was tough in insisting on my left hand playing in time with the notes of his bass ... if that four-note upbeat was not in sync, it simply sounded weak. I thought I knew how to play in time, but this was metronomic on a scale I had not encountered."

"...metronomic on a scale I had not encountered." That's from a trained classical musician, and my experience exactly. Keep the beat with the feet, and let the upper body be moved by the melody.

Something for a cold dark evening

I just found this on YouTube; birthday celebrations of Porteno y Bailarin 2006, with Carlos Stasi (who runs the milonga) as The Leader, and Jose Garofalo (who assists him) as The Follower. Something for a dark cold evening...

The last evening

A friend emailed that she returned from BsAs with five pairs of shoes. I'm returning with one – and 20 CDs, but that's 20 CD boxes, and a lot of the boxes contain double CDs, perhaps 12 pairs of CDs. &, well I did buy a pair of sneakers, as well as the shoes... Thanks to Darcos and Artesanal I have footwear that has been comfortable since day one.

I watched Dido and Aeneas from Les Arts Florissants on cable TV before I went to La Calesita last night, which was kind of amazing. Is cable TV that good in the UK? Probably, but here it's included in the rent. & the main theatre where contemporary dance is performed, Teatro San Martin, put on two evenings of mixed contemporary dance, including work by Merce Cunningham, just before Christmas, for free. Anyone could go along. Amazing.

Thinking back, what a long time it seems since I came here. Also a long time since I first went out to Nunez to visit ESMA. Passing by on the way in to La Calesita last night, it seems fanciful to say that even the trees there look tortured, the beautiful natural park of the campus looks dark and terrifying. Places where there have been horrific events regularly get demolished, and there was a plan in the 90s to flatten the whole campus. No doubt property developers would have been delighted, but the plan was opposed by human rights groups, and the site, or at least some buildings on the site, was turned over to the “nunca mas” organisation as a site of memory, including the building I visited, which was the officer's quarters. The officers inhabited three floors: the extensive loft was where they kept the prisoners. It is said that one of the prisoners' strategies for survival (though I guess it was more of a basic reaction) was laughter, laughter and kindness to each other. Few of them survived.

My last night at Porteno y Bailarin: I talk to Carlos Stasi who has invited Alberto Podesta to sing on Tuesday. "You must change your flight" he says. "People cry to hear him sing. He's the only one still alive from the old generation." I explain that I know him from Pedro Laurenz recordings, my favourite tangos, Recien and Paisaje -- and that I can't change my ticket. I'd have to buy another one...

Portenas seem in a minority as, quite by chance, I dance with French, Italian, and German partners. Sometimes there's a wonderful spontaneous connection, sometimes it just doesn't quite work, like this evening. I'm tired, I've had a cold all week. So why do I ask a tall woman sitting nearby, although the floor is crowded? Tall and strongly built, which I know isn't easy on a crowded floor. I have to stand very upright and lead strongly and positively. & it worked really well. She turns out to be portena (at last, a local partner!) and speaks only castellano. I sense that portena dancers (the few I've danced with) have a slightly challenging air: you ask me to dance, so make me dance, as it should be, no anticipation, no helpful moving around. Except that it wasn't quite like that: what evolved during the tanda was that I started everything, and perhaps suggested when a phrase should end, and she would take over the ending of the phrase and resolve it, with a step or steps that were never less than precisely on the beat. There was a playful element to it: sometimes, if it was in the music, she would prolong the phrase with foot movements that couldn't be called 'decorations', any more than the steps of a giro are decorations, they were part of the dance. Sometimes she'd cut short a phrase and leave me to find a continuation in the music. It was really a dialogue, wonderful. A different kind of tango.

It was the only dialogue we could have. I can usually get a rough idea of the sense of castellano, but not this evening. & if I can't get the gist I've been known to fake it and say 'Si, si' as if I understood, but I actually wanted to understand what she said and kept asking her to repeat, so it got a bit wearisome and I felt foolish. I just couldn't focus on the words. Without exception I've liked the sound of women's voices here: a rich flow of sound with a slight edge to it, even if I can hardly understand a word of it. A good reason to do some work on language.

When I leave there's a steady cold wind blowing. The weather is surprisingly changeable here: this afternoon it was very hot, heavy and windless. I have a cold, I'm sneezing and coughing and could do without a cold gale at 2pm after dancing indoors. I walk fast to try and keep warm.

I leave tomorrow, and here are two tangos from a band I love. They look young, and play a kind of Pugliese tango with wonderful intensity: not an easy kind of music to play. I admire them for playing out of doors without amplification: they are forced to work harder to make a noise, and I'm sure it will make them stronger players. They play every Sunday on the street in San Telmo (unless it's raining) and perform on Buenos Aires tango radio (La 2x4, available online) too. I've been very happy to sit and listen to them. Here's Ciudad Baigon Orquesta Tipica.

La Calesita

La Calesita at dusk.

40% probability is less than 50%: despite dark skies and heavy humidity no rain fell, not even a rumble of thunder in the distance, so La Calesita was on. Silvia started the class on her own: Tete turned up later, Tete in serious mode. Silvia is a complete and experienced teacher on her own, leading and following. The only new thing is a lead to the cross in two steps (for me), but it was useful to go over what I've learned with them and have a dance or two with her, although I'm still very tentative when I lead her: without heels (which she seems to wear only for performance) she's quite a bit shorter than me, and that seems to make me tentative in stepping.

However, the floor is a lot better: it has rained a few times since last Saturday night, and the dust and grit have been washed away. It's still not a good floor, pivots aren't easy, but it is danceable. La Calesita isn't a great venue for dance; it's a picnic place with dancing, a lovely place to relax on a hot Saturday night, to eat barbecued meat (if you do, there's not much else), drink and have a bit of a dance too. Good dancers go there, but it's not Canning or Sin Rumbo. The dancing I saw in the transition between class and milonga was very light-weight: intended to look elegant but actually rather feeble and uninteresting. One couple were dancing some nuevo-ish saccadas, and Tete stepped in and said: “Do them like this”... and showed how much intensity and energy a tango dancer in his 70s can put into stepping and turning. Once you get used to his way of dancing, intense, powerful, grounded, overall with a hint of danger in it, and completely part of the music, nothing less really makes much sense. Moving without hesitation, 'sin mierdo'.

The cold I got last Sunday has dragged on all week, no worse, no better. A bit of a cough, nothing bad. I hope the journey tomorrow doesn't make it worse.

A dance at Canning

In the milongas there are usually a few more women than men so it stands to reason that the women are going to be more assertive in getting the men's attention, and that it should be easier for the men to get a lot of dances. (In her interview with Tete, Silvia says that men used to fight over women, and now it's the other way round.) I don't put myself out to get a lot of dances when it's crowded because I don't really enjoy crowded floors. But last night I was sharing a table with a guy who danced every tanda: the moment the music started he was off, so some people are used to it.

There were also several tables of women around, and it was clear that some of the women danced most tandas and some of them hardly ever got a dance. Either they weren't trying, or they weren't confident of their dancing, or everyone knew they weren't that good. They weren't drinking so I presume they were there to dance, and I suspect that when a leader looked at them they hesitated: well, if you want to but I'm really not that good. So the guy walked on. A lot takes place in a brief glance.

The woman I danced with was among them, but despite not looking particularly striking – she wasn't wearing a red dress, like the woman she shared a table with, or striking Comme Il Fauts, like one of the others – she danced almost every tanda. & she got me to dance with her. Her eye caught mine as I was looking around a bit wearily, I looked away involuntarily (it's not done to stare at strange women) and then straight back, and we went off to dance. She told me what she wanted, as she told many leaders that evening, and somehow told me that she knew what she was doing. & I think it was a good dance; it was musical, it felt personal, we kept moving and we neither kicked nor were kicked, although we were jostled. “There's a dangerous man” she said, looking over my shoulder: meaning, I assume, a clumsy dancer. At least, I hope he's not following me around with a knife...

I thought a bit later of dancing with her companion in the red dress, who did get a few dances, but she was tall, at least my height, a bit on the heavy side, and I hadn't danced with her before, all of which isn't good on a crowded floor. & I'd just had a great dance with an interesting dancer and I was happy to leave it there. Unfortunately, I'm not likely to run into her again, at least for a while, so I'm glad to make a note of what happened.

Doesn't look good for the outdoor milonga this evening. It rained this morning, then the sun came out, but now the clouds are gathering and the air is heavy. "Probabilidad de precip. 40%" says the forecast for this evening.

Dancing at Canning

Christmas doesn't last long here. The party starts at midnight on the 24th, you sleep it off the night of the 25th and go back to work on the 26th. It's hard work getting by here, but there's a level of friendliness, openness and cheerfulness.

Oscar's last class, my last class with Oscar, that is. It's been useful, but I won't make a bee-line for them when I come back. I'll probably go, but I've learned of other possibilities that seem more useful. Oscar's created a tango world that appeals to visitors: he teaches in English and most of his students are English speakers, but I don't see many of them dancing in milongas. & I've realised there are good classes before milongas at El Beso, that Ricardo Vidort's ex-partner Myriam Pincen teaches at Canning on Wednesday afternoon, and of course Ana Maria Schapira is always great. What is taught in these is more likely to be useful in milongas than much of Oscar's teaching. Still, his insistence on basic things like the lifting and lowering of the follower, differing the length of steps, and different styles for different orchestras, has been useful. These other classes aren't in English, but I can get by.



Something that works against dancing all night: your partner is almost certainly for the tanda only, which means that every ten minutes or so you have to find a new partner if you want to continue dancing, unlike in London where you might dance a whole evening with 4 or 5 partners. But at least you're never going to bore anyone by repeating the same steps.

Canning, Friday night, Ana Maria's class. I enjoy these more and more, in particular the dances I get with Argentinian women, some beginners, some very practiced. Predictably, it's a version of ocho cortado. One partner tells me I'm not exactly on the beat, and to my surprise I notice she's right: her idea of 'on the beat' is incredibly precise. Another that she can't quite get my lead. All this in castellano, so I assume this is what they say to each other. Tete turns up, as usual, halfway through the class, makes a few joking comments from his table, tries to help a struggling couple, grabs a woman standing without a partner and leads her through a powerful performance in the middle of the class. 'Muscular' is the word that comes to mind when thinking of his leading: it would be forceful if it wasn't so clear. This is another side of Tete: rather different from the total involvement with the music you see when dancing with Silvia. Tango and the milonga seem to be his whole world. Sylvie isn't there: she has a life outside the milonga.

Some excellent dances after the class and before the floor got crowded, and then one when it was busy, which feels good when you manage to make good use of the available space and the music. I tell my partner I can't speak much castellano, but she's lived in London, tells me she's danced tango for six years, and danced flamenco for ten years before that. The problem with 'the system' is that that's all there's time for on the floor, and it's not the done thing to sit down together and continue talking. "The done thing", defined by the codigo is protective.

I'll really miss Canning, and Porteno y Bailarin also. Canning gets crowded and too busy, and there's some clumsy dancing there, but I always liked the room, and feel very at home there. It's also big enough to wander round in (unlike El Beso and Maipu 444), which is how you go looking for dances, and meeting partners with whole stories to tell. This is the real thing and it could easily become a way of life, if I spoke castellano with any fluency.

Christmas

Christmas in Buenos Aires starts lunchtime on xmas eve, as in Europe, but the similarities probably end there. I planned to walk with a hot late-afternoon sun on my back round the perimeter of the Parque Natural y Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur, having walked the length of it a few weeks back. The perimeter is the banks of the Rio Plate but I never got that far as the park is closed for the holidays. It's not open like Hampstead Heath: if the staff are on holiday it closes. But I took a good walk along the edge of the city and back through Defensa. Found this brilliant weird stencil in a doorway:



As in Europe Christmas is a friends and family affair, and not having either here I kept a low profile. From TV I get the impression that the main church services are early evening on the 24th. Then midnight fireworks celebrate the beginning of an all-night party which lasts into the next morning. At least that's what it sounded like. I got engrossed in a film of Barenboim (again) and his East West Divan Orchestra, climaxing with the concert in Ramallah, the Israeli contingent of the orchestra being driven in in a bullet-proof fleet. After rehearsing all day and a major concert in the evening, there's Barenboim in the car park, seeing all the Israeli contingent back into their vehicles, hugging them all, closing the car doors for them. As a performer he would be memorable, but he's a conductor and music director, and has also done more to bring peace to the mideast than anyone alive. The great human being of the late 20th century. 'Barenboim again'? Well he was born here, and in fact in this area I'm staying in. And tango was his parent's pop music when they weren't teaching classical music, the songs they sang, the music they danced to.

Late morning 25th, a walk planned through Recoleta, Barrio Norte and Once, then back via Corrientes. Soon after I arrived here I took a Sunday walk and found old cobbled streets with trees and vegetation, and smaller houses, but the walk today was dreary city blocks. The shops are bigger or smaller, otherwise it was all the same. I look up at the sky and wish I was out of here in the open.

There are a couple of milongas tonight, and I'd like to go back to El Beso again. But I've had a bit of a cold since last Sunday, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights will be busy. & I leave Monday morning.

Christmas Eve

Tuesday night is Porteno y Bailarin. Ana Maria Schapira's class has been taught by Silvia, a friend of hers, while she was teaching in Italy. Ana Maria also teaches at Canning on Friday night. I find her an excellent teacher of the best basic tango, someone I'll go straight back to next time I'm here. She speaks enough English, and she's friendly, welcoming, observant and very helpful. I think she's taught all over the continent, but sadly not yet in England. The class was yet another variant on the ocho cortado... But I find all this useful. It's technically not so demanding, and leaves space for good, simple dances where I can think of things like posture and axis. An added bonus was that several of her Italian students had arrived with her, so for a change there were plenty of women at the class who also stayed on for the milonga, and who were great to dance with.

You can tell it's nearly Christmas: the milongas are noisy. More alcohol than usual, people turn up just to eat and drink, lots of hugging and kissing and laughter. You could hardly hear the music.

Returning at 2am, it's a football night outside. Lots of flag waving, yoofs waving their shirts around, dancing in the late-night eateries. A huge noisy party around the Obelisk, flag-waving, fire crackers, chanting. But there doesn't seem to be crazy drinking going on. Lots of police dozing off in cars, chatting on their radios.

Life in BsAs

Before I left a friend told me someone she knew had moved to BsAs 'because the girls there are more beautiful'. I've been wondering about that, looking around in the streets, shopping malls, milongas. Yes, there are stunning teenagers as there always are. Women in their 20s can look great too, but on the whole I think the pressures of time and money don't always mean that nurture is added to nature: the swimming, gym, pilates, massage, the concern with health and weight, the leisure and the work that help keep European women looking great, may not be as common here. & after 30, this becomes more obvious. I don't notice women in their 30s and 40s looking stunning to the same extent. I suspect the national diet doesn't help, and slimness may not be pursued as aggressively here. Food tends to be solid and in big portions, and I suspect a lot of meat fat, probably lard, goes into pastries and cakes. Getting by looks like hard work. I remember being uncomfortable at first, walking into a tango lesson at 1pm, past a queue of tired-looking people at a bus stop. (But I soon got over that.)

So I hope my friend's friend hasn't been disappointed.

Tete and Silvia again

Watch Tete turn: like all the good local dancers he turns as smoothly as a figure hanging on a string, but with an energy, an impulse, often an acceleration, derived from the music. The music comes first: this is emphasised in their classes. Their classes are costly but the attention and affection they give is worth it. The Monday class wasn't great, a bit of an anticlimax as I was tired and a bit tense. The “bounce” from Saturday is taken further with a saccada on the right, and then repeated on the left. Emphasis on axis. There's a tendency, often noticeable in visiting dancers, to 'wobble' the vertical axis, to bend sideways at the waist so one or other shoulder rises. Maybe it's accidental or intended to look dramatic or full of feeling or something. Oscar condemns it in his usual dramatic style: “You kill your partner if you do that!” It pulls the follower out of axis.

Tete says to be very careful to maintain the upright axis, which also means being upright and leading chest first. There's a lot of twist at the waist, but the axis stays upright. This really stood out, for me, the moment I walked into the first milonga I went to, at El Beso, the sight of couples rotating as smoothly as whirling Sufi dancers. & walking. “Come on, just walk!” says Sylvie. Walk with energy and purpose, take bigger steps.

I get to lead Tete, as Silvia is tired. "You need to work much harder around your axis when you lead him" she warns. It's true: leading a man means moving more strongly. & Tete relaxes right into being a follower and following exactly what I lead, which is unintentionally hilarious as he's very supple and his legs fly out in unexpected directions as he follows my rather imprecise lead.

Tete and Silvia's classes are as much about musicality as about 'steps' and 'moves'; when to use double time, when to pause, how to finish, the feel of the music. I've got to be more careful to maintain the completely frontal contact, and to turn from the waist without trying to use the left hand to lead. One more class with them at La Calesita on Saturday. I'm confident I'll get a lot more then. A valuable trip.

Tete and Silvia are performing at Canning. I get there at 11, too tired to want to dance, and of course an hour later, want to jump up and start cruising the aisles to see who catches my eye, but by then the floor is densely packed, and dancing with someone you've never danced with before on a floor that busy isn't very enjoyable. But Tete's out there, rotating smoothly through the crowd with one partner after another. Their performance later has everyone on their feet to watch.

Two more common misapprehensions about tango dancers in Buenos Aires:
Tango dancers in Buenos Aires never change their shoes in the milonga – nor their socks, neither.
Tango dancers in Buenos Aires have the most amazing upright, chest-out posture. (I was watching a good dancer dancing really well with poor posture the other evening. It's possible, but it's not a great idea. & if you aren't a good dancer it doesn't look good.)

Called by La Ideal in the hopes of being able to photograph the cupola/dome in the roof. Unfortunately they don't allow photography, maybe because a class was on, as cameras are out in force at the milongas in the evening. Too bad. What I took to be ceramic is stained, or more probably painted glass, and there's a clear glass roof above. I still couldn't look more closely because the class was using the floor. The upstairs now seems to be regularly open for classes and milongas, and the rather dingy downstairs is back to being a cafe.

Argentina, a society as up-to-date as it can be. Ads urging the recycling of batteries, the use of energy-efficient light bulbs, saving water. Brown bread in all the little local supermarkets, and most restaurants offer brown and white bread. Shopping: an excellent health food shop, Suipacha and Viamonte. However, if you like dark chocolate, bring it with you. And a strange arcade off Esmeralda, like the Parisian one Aragon wrote about: odd little shops full of paintings and antiques, of toy cars, old jewellery and watches, of bizarre cigarette lighters and hip flasks. Nobody ever seems to go down there, although there's a cafe at the end. There's an astonishing quantity of late 19 to early 20th century antiques in town, shipped over in the pre-Great Depression boom days.

The Centro Cultural Borges has new exhibitions: more painting. Art here and now seems to mean painting. But the centre hosts theatre, music and cinema. A huge space is given to visual arts on the top floor of one of the main shopping malls in BsAs, and people wander up there after browsing their Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana. I photograph xmas shopping from on high.

Porteno y Bailarin again

Milonga class at Porteno y Bailarin: in the month I've been here I can remember just one class with more women than men and a few with equal numbers. These are very clear milonga classes, Gabriela Elias is a methodic teacher, and Eduardo Perez partners her and speaks some English, but if you miss out a dance or two because there's no partner you fall behind, and my milonga skills were never great. Anyway, the class was mainly couples who wanted to stay together, plus a few extra men so I gave up after getting an idea of most of the material.

Sat and watched the dancing but left early: tired after getting cold this morning, I guess. Sort of depressing, but I know that, from a leader's point of view, it's not a problem to get dances here. You just ask, particularly at small, friendly venues like this one, where 'the look' isn't always used. Nobody's likely to refuse you part of a tanda, and anyway, so what? When I first arrived I had a bit of luck and some energy to make use of it, then I started to question my own dancing, and started to watch how it's done here. It takes attention to lead someone you've never danced with before, especially when your partner is from Buenos Aires! You've got to get it right. All the partners I've danced with have been friendly, but they do comment: 'I don't quite get your lead ('marca')' being a common one. It's not good enough to give vague indications of what you are leading, and expect your partner to fill in for you: you are expected to be precise, which has meant some re-learning. I've watched other Europeans/Americans lead, and seen a kind of floppy, enthusiastic but rather careless leading, which doesn't look good alongside the fluent and precise local dancing. Attention to detail is important. It's important to keep going to the local milonguero classes to build up experience in the dance that is taught here, even if it means 20 ocho cortado classes, as that is where and how your partner will have learned. In effect you have to start again. Of course, if you want to learn a more complex stage tango that's a different matter, but it won't help you much to dance in local milongas.

Rain, and a dance in the street

Last night it was warm and humid, Sunday morning there's a bit of rain. I walk over to San Telmo as planned, but it's cold, and the rain is getting heavier with a bit of thunder. The orquesta tipica is there, the young musicians sheltering with their instruments, a sheet of plastic over the piano. I go into the square to look through the tango lithos, original sheet music piano scores from the 20s and 30s, with artwork covers of the time. The vendor looks approvingly at what I buy: it's a score by Firpo, with a dedication to Pedro Maffia. He's interested I know something about the music, and friendly. With a bit more Castellano I could have some interesting conversations here. I understand, but too slowly

I'm cold and it's pouring down. The nearby restaurants are all packed. Searching wider I come across the San Telmo market, a covered marketplace with fruit and veg stalls. At last! The local mini-supermarkets don't have much. Good peaches and cherries. The vendors are short, round, dark, S. American Indian, friendly: I haven't met anyone here who isn't. Next door is a restaurant without aircon, and even the fans are turned off so I warm up and eat heavy ravioli. The alternative, BsAs style, is heavy meat. Outside the rain has eased off, but the orquesta typica has disappeared, along with their precious piano. But further down the road is this lively group dance. I'm fascinated by the speed and energy of it, and wonder what its origin could be. Is it Andean? European? The music sounds early European, but European music was probably absorbed into local traditions. In a dark moment I thought it looked a lot more fun than tango. Circular dances seem to be world-wide; people everywhere join hands and dance around in circles but this one is really elaborate, with changes between facing inwards and outwards, quick hopping, and backsteps. If anyone watching this knows anything I'd love to know more.

It was live, in the street. I couldn't shout: "Clear the set! Silence please!"

Tete and Silvia at La Calesita

Out to Nunez again for La Calesita, an outdoor milonga. 'Nunez again' because La Calesita is held in a municipal park right next door to the notorious ESMA. Tete and Silvia teach beforehand, and seem to organise the evening: he gives a speech to welcome everyone, as it's the first Saturday evening of the milonga this summer. It's a magic venue and attracts good dancers, as it's a great evening out, with food and drink, and space to dance, but a bit of a shock to be dancing on stone slabs, which takes a bit of getting used to after the polished hardwood floors in town. I meet a woman from London whose new tango shoes need repair after just two weeks of Buenos Aires, and the floor here doesn't help. She's having problems with the turn, so Tete simply holds her and dances it, and she follows perfectly. "You didn't have much option there, did you!" I comment. She agrees. "& I've never been led by the stomach before." Which is probably a good place to lead/be led by, as it's a much lower centre of gravity than the shoulders.

The class adds a 'bounce' movement to the turn I've already learned with them, and Tete confuses me by calling out instructions, as he hears the music: 'Pausa!', then 'Tata TA' when he hears a double time. It's warm and humid, and a few dances leave you sweating, although it cools down later. I leave around 1.30 and get a taxi back into town. I've not taken a lot of taxis here but I'm impressed how unfailingly courteous and straightforward the drivers have been. It's trip half-way across town and the driver rounds down the cost from A$25.75 to A$25, which is about £5. The streets in town are still busy, alive with late diners sitting outside, parties of kids simply hanging out or going to clubs. It's a relaxed, happy way of life that seems very natural. Nobody seems drunk in public: Saturday nights in London are never this relaxed.

Galleries

I decide Saturday is gallery day. I head for Malba, as it's recommended by the guide book; a fine modern building with a well-displayed private collection of 20th century South American art. The prize piece is a Frida Kahlo self-portrait with monkey, but more recent work stood out too, particularly several by Helio Oiticica. Looking around reminds me a bit of visiting the Museum of Contemporary Art in New Delhi: the influences of European modernism are strong. Some small watercolours by Alejandro Xul Solar caught my eye, suggesting a language of dreams, preceding rational structures, and he turns out to have spent some years in Europe in the early 20th century and to have been a friend of Borges. His house in Buenos Aires is now a museum.

I discover that the Museo de Arte Decorativo, the V&A of BsAs, is a short walk away, an extraordinary mansion of huge decorated rooms housing a collection that varies from Louis XV inlaid cabinets to a stunning Manet and a Rodin maquette in bronze.

While there I overhear a conversation and realise that the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is another short walk away. The ground floor is Argentina's National Gallery, with at least one piece by more or less everyone. A wonderful El Greco, and a surprising room of Goya paintings, with a small collection of the etchings too. The modern collection is eclectic; Van Gogh, Gaugin, a Cezanne watercolour, Klee, Kandinsky, Picasso, even a Dor Maar, who of course grew up here. Always good to see Picasso's 1937 etching Sueño y mentira de Franco, a corrosively funny and bitter take on military dictatorships everywhere. The collection is mainly interesting but not well-known pieces. Didn't notice a Matisse. Upstairs is the BsAs Tate: a big collection of 20th century Latin American art, including, side-by-side, Dora Carrington, Leonora Fini and Remedios Vara. & Diego Revera, of course. So I found a big smile on my face as I left.

All this in the open park where Palermo heads towards the river, big trees, public sculpture, football being played in the noon sun, while I calculate the shortest distance from one patch of shade to the next.

Class at Canning

This too should follow on from the previous posting: the release of the 14 officers has been overturned after a public outcry on the grounds that they might flee. The events of 20 - 30 years ago are still very much alive here.

I made a joke on a friend's blog the other day about getting a grant to spend time dancing tango in Buenos Aires: a while back I'd found a book by an American who had got a six-month research grant to write a thesis on The Sociology of The Milonga, something like that. Then at Oscar's class yesterday I found myself dancing with a very attractive Asian woman who spoke with the melodious and (to me, very familiar) accent of educated north India, who told me she was Nepalese. (You dance with all the world in tango.) We chatted for a while, and slowly the truth came out: after finishing her Masters in the US she'd applied to the Rockefeller Foundation for a grant to spend a year dancing tango in Buenos Aires. Yes, you heard right. She doesn't even have to write a thesis, just give a presentation, a few photos, some video, a short talk, at the end of it. I was so happy for her I just didn't know what to say. How wonderful! Nice people, those Rockefellers.

Oscar's class: a mild colgada. He points out that spins have always been with tango, and that the colgada as we know it is an exaggerated form. So we go back to the roots. It's simple, fits the music well, and takes very little room.





On to Canning for what would have been the class of Alicia Pons, and she was there but didn't teach. Ana Maria Schapira taught. The best-advertised milonguero classes here are taught by six or seven women. According to some, the word 'milonguero' started to be used quite recently to mean basic, old-style tango in close hold. Maria Schapira taught, and Alicia Pons followed, and it was fascinating to watch how her classical training resulted in the swiftest ankles in the business. Her feet are constantly active, reaching, turning, moving, a redefinition of “womens' technique” but I suspect not something to copy wholesale, even if you come from the same dance background. She teaches in the US, and I wish she and Ana Maria, as well as Tete and Silvia, could visit the UK. It just might give us a whole new perspective on tango.

It was a good class: yet another ocho cortado class, but the second half to vals. Ana Maria watched me and commented that the dancing was fine, but a bit hurried. Bearing in mind my reputation of dancing like 'a hant' I found I could slow it right down and still keep the beat, which resulted in a vals that seemed to be both energetic and smooth. I was dancing with an older woman who clearly knew her dance, and she seemed to approve. My Nepalese friend of the morning was there and we danced a good vals in the class, but she was kept very busy in the milonga. She's very attractive.

Tete arrived at the end of the class, and it was a good chance to watch him dance socially, first with Alicia. I get the impression of two people from very different dance, and probably social and educational backgrounds moving very easily together. His style of movement seems to change from dance to dance: like an actor he can seem jaunty, lyrical, even heavy, depending on the music. & he changes constantly the degree of lift, being low or high depending on what he's leading.

The idea that people dance strictly in highways around the floor here is rubbish. They dance like we dance in London, around the perimeter and making use of whatever space is available. Available space varies from venue to venue, but often there isn't much. Canning from midnight onwards is as crowded as London's tango al fresco: you rarely have room for walking steps, and you need to work on your gyros on the spot, as that's all you're likely to have room for. Tete always seems to have room, but I guess that if you see him bearing down on you you get out of the way. It doesn't work for me, though.

Tigre

“Dance to express, not to impress.” I guess that sums it up. (This should follow on from the end of the previous posting. The blog order isn't properly sequential.)

I planned an out-of-city day yesterday: either to Colonia or Tigre. Colonia is a colonial-style town in Uruguay, a 50-minute trip across the estuary; Tigre is a 50-minute rail trip on the Argentinian side, the point at which the many islets and waterways of the delta end, and the river estuary begins. There were no boats to Colonia until the evening, and Tigre costs .48p for the return journey. Anyway, the delta sounded fascinating, and very South American.

I'd hoped to see countryside from the train but it's all built up, although the city high-rises give way to suburbs, little houses with courtyards. From Tigre you can take the local boat into the delta. Most of the islets are inhabited, small bungalows with neat gardens, trees and lawns, classical statuary, inevitably flowers everywhere. The boat is the local bus, stopping off at jetties along the way to pick up and drop off people. The locals travel out from Tigre with 10-litre plastic containers of water: the river is clean enough for washing, and people swim on the banks, but there must be a lack of drinking water, although there's electricity. You can stop off at, and walk round, one of the larger islets, most of which seems inhabited, and canoe the preferred mode of transport. Not sure what people here do: in any case you don't feel like doing a great deal in this heat and humidity. Could well be weekend homes for the wealthier city dwellers. It's quiet, with a lot of birdsong. Back in Tigre I walk to the Fruit Port, disappointed to find no fruit, fruit and wood being the main produce of the area. Plenty of wood, tho', and small stores selling things made of wood. Too much sunshine and humidity and I decide to curtail my sight-seeing. In the city the buildings are tall and there's usually shadow: here there's less protection at midday in midsummer. Enough is enough, I take the train back to the activity of the city. The estuary landscape is flat and you don't see beyond the trees, but huge clouds are building up far in the distance.






When I arrived in Buenos Aires I wondered why there was no fruit in this mediterranean climate, except for manky oranges, supermarket apples and hard pears. Then the strawberries arrived, then some nectarines, then apricots and finally grapes. Then it dawned: there isn't any fruit in early summer unless you import it. The nectarines, apricots and grapes are barely ripe but still fruit.

Late evening a long programme about ESMA and human rights on TV. I can't work out what it's about. This morning the BBC website informs me that the courts have just released on bail 14 officers accused of torture and murder in ESMA, as they've been in jail for two years without trial. "Today is a day of shame for Argentines, humanity and our justice system," said President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in a speech at ESMA. The pardons handed out in the 1990s have been ruled unconstitutional over the past few years but there have still been few trials. The accused are protected by democracy, but some of their victims were held for years without trial. True, Argentina was a mess mid-20th century, and cold war era politics played havoc with Latin America in general. & Che Guevara was Argentinian. Perhaps the military can be excused for attempting to bring order, but brutal sadism and murder are another matter.

Quatro causas: Tete

No Oscar class today. I get to El Beso and find Mary Ann outside. We have no electricity. An enthusiastic Danish woman asks if we have Oscar. “Oscar's the class, the music, the coffee bar...' 'Yes,' observes Mary Ann drily, 'but he's not the air conditioning'.

'Quatro causas' says Tete of what he's taught me. Four patterns of movement. A long turn that develops out of a walk, a back-and-side step by both dancers that leads to a cruz, a step on from the cruz that becomes an anti-clockwise turn with an enrosque, which leads into a circular walk on the follower's left. All of which fit together or can be used separately. Two fairly intense sessions. On film he looks as if he must be unhealthy, and true he has a paunch, but in person he gives the impression of being tough and muscular. There's nothing loose and floppy about his weight, he's incredibly quick on his feet. He's a dancer.

& he really is an extraordinary teacher. I think he's great teacher because he believes, with a lifetime of experience, in what he teaches. He believes dance is important and his concentration on teaching is total. There's something of a professor in his manner, but the seriousness breaks easily into laughter. There are the quick jokes in castellano; they laugh, she laughs easily. He says I should think of dancing more like a tortoise. As it is I'm dancing like 'un hormiga'. They laugh. 'A hant?' she asks me. 'An ant!' We all laugh. They are patient and good-humoured; if I'm a bit slow to pick up something they help me get it at my own speed, if I get something right they are really pleased and encouraging.

When they demonstrate a step, they dance it with the same intensity it would receive if they were dancing together in a milonga. The music and the dance require and receive whole-hearted attention. There's never anything in the least casual or inattentive about their dancing, and that's a whole lesson in itself, how seriously they take what they do, and also I see real tango, rather than a display of tango or tango steps, and that's just beautiful to watch.

One more class with them on Monday, and two public classes the next two Saturdays at La Calesita. I've learned a lot; I certainly couldn't have learned more in a couple of hours. He sees me out at the end. 'Suerte.'

I've never taken private classes before. You are very exposed, but it forces me to concentrate, and I'm really learning. There was a group class at Porteno y Bailarin last night: too many men, again. So I didn't get as much practice as I needed, and the partners weren't too sure of what they were doing. It was a beautiful little step, but I didn't get it right, and still can't work it out. Such a shame. But that can happen too easily in public lessons. Later in the evening I was in a good position to watch guys getting dances, and I got one tanda before I left. The floor was very crowded. I've talked over this problem of getting dances with an American woman who is a good dancer and we agreed that being at the same place at the same time week after week is the best strategy. If you are persistent you aren't a passing stranger or a tourist. If you're there a lot you're interested in dancing. My problem is that I can't catch a waiter's eye in an empty restaurant, let alone the eye of an attractive young tango dancer. I've always liked a bit of invisibility.

TV (cable, 70 channels): on the Argentine cultural channel I come across a programme about the Mexican photographer Carlos Jurado who has worked with pinhole cameras all his life, and with gum bichromate colour prints on paper.

“Carlos Jurado considera la fotografía como el producto de un acto mágico. Trabaja principalmente con cámaras estenopeicas (pinhole). Con este sistema trata de obtener anbientes y atmósferas sugerentes poco comunes.
a realizado también obras utilizando sistemas antiguos como la goma bicromatada, la cianotipia, papel sepia ,etc. Carlos Jurado construye sus propias cámaras, así como algunos equipos necesarios para su producción.”

Gustavo and Giselle were performing at Ideal tonight... and I didn't go. I didn't go to watch the great superstars of tango. There are actually a few dimensions to this. Without doubt it was going to be a big tourist event, an event put on for tourists. Ecstatic applause for the great dancing skills of this couple, and why not? That put me off, but actually I just didn't want to go. I'd had such a good hour this afternoon, strongly rooted in the directness and intimacy of tango, that a public display just didn't appeal, however skillful. But even the skills don't really appeal. Pina Bausch invited Tete to appear with her in public performances, and I'd go a long way to see that! A whole different sense of emotional directness and honesty. So instead I watched Carlos Jurado, the end of Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid, the end of Coppola's The Conversation and the beginning of a Barenboim masterclass. TV is pretty good here.

Tete and Silvia.

Strange how much people can differ from their photo or video images. Oscar, for example turns out to be almost a head taller than me. & 'Tete' Rusconi, who looks outsized in video, turns out to be surprisingly trim and not particularly tall.

Tete and Silvia. One of my reasons for being here is to meet them. My first tango classes nearly four years ago were a revelation; that music made me move. Then I found myself in classes in an industrially-named tango school in north London, forced into ever increasing contortions and told that the music really didn't matter. “In tango we walk right through the beat” -- as if the music was incidental. A single class with Ricardo Vidort at the Dome reminded me that tango was enjoyable – very sadly he died the following spring – but it wasn't until almost a year later that I found three videos of Tete and Silvia on YouTube, filmed dancing in Porteno y Bailarin. These were a revelation. It was the first real Buenos Aires tango I'd seen. I could recognise bits, 'steps', in what they did, but the bits were all run together, and the whole dance was inseparably part of the music. It wasn't a smooth choreographed performance, and it had the fierce energy, enthusiasm and musicality of people to whom it really mattered. I watched those videos over and over again. To me that was tango, it was the way I'd felt about the music from the start.

So I found myself outside an unremarkable door in tree-lined Avenida Belgrano yesterday afternoon, wondering what was behind it. Tete and Silvia have toured and been filmed a lot over the last two years, but have no website and don't seem to advertise any grand teaching schedule. I tracked them down through Sylvia's website (don't jump, it plays music): she's an artist, and the website is part of her work. She emailed that they teach mainly privately, and offered to partner me if I couldn't find a partner. I didn't try to.

There's an interview with them online, and the 'prensa' link on her website leads to a .pdf of the interview. Online there's an interview with them with basic information, and an interview/statement of her work. There's also an article by a trained classical/contemporary dancer about the experience of a class with them.

The class was an intense hour, with a lot of laughter too, but serious and clear teaching. There's a turn they dance frequently which I've never been able to lead, which is what I learn, plus some alternative endings. I'd asked for vals classes. Vals is different from tango, explains Tete; tango stays low, vals wants to fly. I must lead more directly with my chest, and the contact with the partner must be very frontal: it shouldn't be shoulder to shoulder. I must take longer steps. Silvia astonishes me by leading me: when they dance they switch roles, and everyone laughs, but it's for real. I've hardly ever been led and don't find it easy to follow, but when Silvia picks you up and moves you around it's totally natural; she seems to have such a clear intuitive sense of axis and balance. We dance: “You're starting to think!” he says. “Don't think: dance! Con musica! Sin miedo (fear)! Otra vez (again)!” They seem to be naturally very gentle in their teaching, it doesn't feel like a teaching strategy they've learnt: if something's wrong they stop and start again, if something's good they say so, they are very encouraging. (I remember Ricardo Sarandi's class in London: “NON NON NON NON NON NON NON!”, very loud.) It's clear from some of the videos that Tete loves to fool around, and can be very funny, and they laugh a lot, but he's very serious and intense in teaching. “Sin miedo! Con musica! Bueno!”

Watching them dance together was totally magical. Their connection is extraordinary: their capacity, instantly, to become one single entity with the music. The gentleness, precision, energy, vitality of their dance is very far from anything I've seen before. It's such a good model: they don't give 'a demonstration' of 'a move' in 'a class', they just dance together, perfectly. & their affection for each other is always apparent. It was a wonderful hour.

It was their last lesson of the day and as we walk out into the street, Silvia says: “Come to Canning tonight. It's a good evening, lots of nice people. & I'm deejay.” Her English is excellent.

I've got another class with them tomorrow, and they are teaching at the outdoor milonga, La Calesita, in Nunez on Saturdays. I'll be here for two of those evenings.

I went out to Canning, but didn't dance. I'd had a good afternoon, and it's not always easy to lead someone you don't know and have never danced with before, in public. It was good just to sit and enjoy the music, particularly the cortinas. Silvia not only played a lot of really good tandas but also found interesting music to go between them, everything from flamenco song to some unusual rock and salsa: sort of tango meets Late Junction. & above it all there's always the great photo collage to look at: despite the shiny plastic surface it has the colour and scale of a huge Venetian painting by Tintoretto. Right in the centre is Ricardo Vidort in a shaft of light, talking to a pretty girl, while in the foreground a hand reaches out with a plate of empanadas. A wonderful piece of work.




A rough idea of what Canning looks like during class.

I'm just going to have to apologise to Carlos Stasi for missing his class again.





This is one of the three Portenyo y Bailarin dances from three years ago: the turn is between .21 .25.