I love living here. 9 de julio is the widest road in the world, but there are islands of trees between the streams of traffic that soften the urban landscape. Here and there, you spot a mattress or perhaps even a chair belonging to someone for whom one of these green strips between the grey stripes is home. I wonder how they feel about living here. As I walk back from a Buddhist meeting, I feel the first hint of an autumn chill on the evening breeze and hope the mattress owners have a mean Plan B for when it rains.
I stop for a moment to take in the last purple flourishes of the jacaranda on 9 de julio and the pink blossom, which has survived through heat and thunderstorms on the green corner, where the Independencia subte has its entrance. The teenage couple I saw kissing under the trees on my way to the meeting are still exactly where they were. Small boys and a dad are playing football with a plastic Coke bottle in the playground by the subte entrance, against a backdrop of Palo Boracho, my favourite pot-bellied trees. There are numerous green islands in this city, many with spectacular trees. If the great parks are the lungs of the beast we know as London, these funsize parks must be the pores of the Buenos Aires.
Yesterday, Gesa and I went to the Glorieta to dance the evening away in one of these parklets. It was a punitively humid evening and the porteño mosquitoes just love their meat, especially mine, but still, we came away satisfied with the quantity and quality of the dancing. It is handy living with a tango dancer. We had a practica this evening at home.
I danced every night, this week – in addition to the daytime classes and places I’ve already mentioned, I went to Maipu 444 on Thursday to the Mano a Mano milonga and met up with Swedish Jens I met at the Maldita milonga on Wednesday and saw my first ever performance of malambo, which is a thrilling Argentinian gaucho dance, which requires extraordinary flexibility, strength, stamina and dexterity and recreates the sounds of horses riding. I also went to a milonga at Peru 571 with Jeff on Saturday, where I saw José Halfón and Virginia Cutillo perform. I am in awe of the way her legs float and fly, like ribbons wielded by oriental acrobats.
Monday 30 March 2009
Saturday 28 March 2009
Tango Queer, Centro Popular de la Boca Norberto y Arrigo Todesda and La Milonga del Gordo
Tuesday night, I went to Tango Queer for the second time. The first time, there didn’t appear to be any beginners at the start of the class and I felt somewhat intimidated by the fact that most of the women appeard to be confident leaders. This time, there was a beginners’ class, but I feared it might be too beginnerish for me, so I put myself in the other one. The teacher, believing she was acting in my best interests, partnered me with an English speaker, who was an adequate dancer and whose leading level was higher than mine, but who retracted her drawbridge, now she was safely over on the other side. After the first tango, she whispered in the assistant’s ear and I was carted off to a different dancer, an Argentinian woman who, thankfully, didn’t speak English and who was a much more stylish dancer. Whilst I can understand preferring to dance with people your own level at a milonga, I hope that I shall never forget what it’s like to be a beginner, in a tango class.
It was a useful lesson and I wish I had made notes, so I could practise what we learned in the days that followed, but I didn’t and it’s all gone. I stayed on for the milonga and later, my lovely flatmate Gesa turned up. She is divine to dance with and I shall forever be indebted to her for dancing with me again and again, during the milonga, and introducing me to Soledad, who is now my guru. I have discovered that dancing with women who can lead well feels every bit as wonderful as dancing with a good male lead, but there is an indescribable difference at a visceral level and I love them both in different ways.
Soledad teaches the beginners’ class at Tango Queer and also runs a Friday night class at the Centro Popular de la Boca Norberto y Arrigo Todesca, a cultural centre that was started by the Todesca brothers in the 1930’s, providing free or a la gorra workshops in a variety of arts to the people of La Boca, which it continues to do, to this day. She is a remarkably charismatic woman with an unconventional, yet unmistakeable beauty. She studied at the University of Tango and passionately enjoys teaching it. She encourages role switching in her classes, which suits me down to the ground. When I went, I had the opportunity to dance with complete beginners as well as some of her more experienced students and I learned a huge amount in a short space of time. These days, the learning curve is so steep, I feel like attending fewer lessons and spending more time at home, practising in front of the mirror with my notes.
After the lesson, we sat around at the centre, drinking beer and munching crisps and in my case, also drinking in my surroundings and stroking Felipe (Philip, the cat.) We were just around the corner from La Boca’s football grounds and we could hear them drumming in the distance. The centre is in a century old run-down building on Pinzón, on a stretch of the street with broken street lights, which made it really hard to find. I have heard it said that La Boca is best avoided at night, but on this occasion, I found the boys in the street charming and willing to go out of their way to help me find the place. Soledad’s students were all Argentinians, mostly young people from the barrio, and I felt privileged to be the only exception.
The big, old rooms where the lesson was held were irregular in shape and had high ceilings, hung with overhead fans and jute lampshades that looked as if they grew there. The furniture and fixtures were an eccentric mishmash of styles: bourgeois antique furniture (upholstered chairs and a vast, ornate dresser,) cheap formica topped tables and plastic chairs, prints of Picasso’s Guerníca and a hunting scene, a small exhibition in glass cases about the Todesca brothers and a Todesca painting or two. There was a papier maché clock that looked like an octopus and a mirror hung diagonally, possibly by accident. We cleared the floor before the class and restored it before leaving to head off for a milonga.
Although advertised in the Tangauta, I had never noticed La Milonga del Gordo, which I understand has only just relocated to a marvellous, new location on Defensa, very near Parque Lezama and just around the corner from Torcuato Tasso. It is a superb venue with two leafy, open spaces, one with tables for drinking at the outdoor bar and a softly lit, medium-sized club room where the milonga takes place, with tango art on every wall, a sunken dance floor, a stage area and tables and chairs around two sides of the room. I liked it a lot.
I danced with one of the beginners, to give him courage. It was quiet for the first hour after that, but as soon as Soledad danced with me, and she is a dream to dance with, I got to dance with the host and a number of other people. I had a great time. Rosa was there too and we had a little natter. We left around 05:30 and the others went on to have coffee at a street café, but I was ready for bed.
It was a useful lesson and I wish I had made notes, so I could practise what we learned in the days that followed, but I didn’t and it’s all gone. I stayed on for the milonga and later, my lovely flatmate Gesa turned up. She is divine to dance with and I shall forever be indebted to her for dancing with me again and again, during the milonga, and introducing me to Soledad, who is now my guru. I have discovered that dancing with women who can lead well feels every bit as wonderful as dancing with a good male lead, but there is an indescribable difference at a visceral level and I love them both in different ways.
Soledad teaches the beginners’ class at Tango Queer and also runs a Friday night class at the Centro Popular de la Boca Norberto y Arrigo Todesca, a cultural centre that was started by the Todesca brothers in the 1930’s, providing free or a la gorra workshops in a variety of arts to the people of La Boca, which it continues to do, to this day. She is a remarkably charismatic woman with an unconventional, yet unmistakeable beauty. She studied at the University of Tango and passionately enjoys teaching it. She encourages role switching in her classes, which suits me down to the ground. When I went, I had the opportunity to dance with complete beginners as well as some of her more experienced students and I learned a huge amount in a short space of time. These days, the learning curve is so steep, I feel like attending fewer lessons and spending more time at home, practising in front of the mirror with my notes.
After the lesson, we sat around at the centre, drinking beer and munching crisps and in my case, also drinking in my surroundings and stroking Felipe (Philip, the cat.) We were just around the corner from La Boca’s football grounds and we could hear them drumming in the distance. The centre is in a century old run-down building on Pinzón, on a stretch of the street with broken street lights, which made it really hard to find. I have heard it said that La Boca is best avoided at night, but on this occasion, I found the boys in the street charming and willing to go out of their way to help me find the place. Soledad’s students were all Argentinians, mostly young people from the barrio, and I felt privileged to be the only exception.
The big, old rooms where the lesson was held were irregular in shape and had high ceilings, hung with overhead fans and jute lampshades that looked as if they grew there. The furniture and fixtures were an eccentric mishmash of styles: bourgeois antique furniture (upholstered chairs and a vast, ornate dresser,) cheap formica topped tables and plastic chairs, prints of Picasso’s Guerníca and a hunting scene, a small exhibition in glass cases about the Todesca brothers and a Todesca painting or two. There was a papier maché clock that looked like an octopus and a mirror hung diagonally, possibly by accident. We cleared the floor before the class and restored it before leaving to head off for a milonga.
Although advertised in the Tangauta, I had never noticed La Milonga del Gordo, which I understand has only just relocated to a marvellous, new location on Defensa, very near Parque Lezama and just around the corner from Torcuato Tasso. It is a superb venue with two leafy, open spaces, one with tables for drinking at the outdoor bar and a softly lit, medium-sized club room where the milonga takes place, with tango art on every wall, a sunken dance floor, a stage area and tables and chairs around two sides of the room. I liked it a lot.
I danced with one of the beginners, to give him courage. It was quiet for the first hour after that, but as soon as Soledad danced with me, and she is a dream to dance with, I got to dance with the host and a number of other people. I had a great time. Rosa was there too and we had a little natter. We left around 05:30 and the others went on to have coffee at a street café, but I was ready for bed.
Friday 27 March 2009
La Maria - práctica de mujeres
When I was last in Canning, early on in the evening, a woman came around the tables with a little bag full of hair rollers. She put one on the table in front of me. I picked it up and found rolled up inside it a pink leaflet advertising a práctica just for women at Corrientes 4534 in Angel Gallardo, not far from where I used to live in Villa Crespo. I thought it sounded promising, somewhere I could develop my leading skills, whilst at the same time improving my overall technique and creativity.
I went. It surpassed my expectations. I was welcomed warmly by Karo, Majo and Cynthia, the organisers, who asked my name and even remembered it. Entry was a mere five pesos, which included a table laden with refreshments. There was a masseuse on hand, who was a student osteopath and turned out to be none other than the organiser of La Milonga de las Morochas in Riobamba, a really great Saturday night milonga at the same venue as El Beso. Incense, mate and biscochos, friendly management and good music madeLa Maria a very nurturing environment for a newbie to walk into. Even though the standard of dancing was considerably above mine, I was constantly partnered and Cynthia, Caro and Majo were on hand to give useful input. Then, the icing on the cake: in walked Analia Vega and Marcelo Varela, two of my favourite performers. They came in as guest teachers and showed us a useful little sequence for switching roles.
Towards the end of the workshop, I nourished myself with a massage, half an hour of tactile bliss on a mattress, covered in a pure white cotton sheet. (How I miss cotton sheets...) All in all, the practica was an entirely positive experience, which I intend to repeat with pious regularity.
I went. It surpassed my expectations. I was welcomed warmly by Karo, Majo and Cynthia, the organisers, who asked my name and even remembered it. Entry was a mere five pesos, which included a table laden with refreshments. There was a masseuse on hand, who was a student osteopath and turned out to be none other than the organiser of La Milonga de las Morochas in Riobamba, a really great Saturday night milonga at the same venue as El Beso. Incense, mate and biscochos, friendly management and good music madeLa Maria a very nurturing environment for a newbie to walk into. Even though the standard of dancing was considerably above mine, I was constantly partnered and Cynthia, Caro and Majo were on hand to give useful input. Then, the icing on the cake: in walked Analia Vega and Marcelo Varela, two of my favourite performers. They came in as guest teachers and showed us a useful little sequence for switching roles.
Towards the end of the workshop, I nourished myself with a massage, half an hour of tactile bliss on a mattress, covered in a pure white cotton sheet. (How I miss cotton sheets...) All in all, the practica was an entirely positive experience, which I intend to repeat with pious regularity.
Thursday 26 March 2009
Sunday: San Telmo and La Boca
The morning after the night before: Jeff stayed over. This is Buenos Aires where lovers are two a penny, but friendship is a find. I enjoy, with childish glee, sharing a bed with a friend. Pillow talk into the early hours, swapping life stories, a spot of foot massage, endless tickly stroke, (I used to pay for this with my pocket money as a kid,) enjoying the charge, but resisting a change of gear.
Notwithstanding, I still managed to be ready for Caro by 10:00, as she was planning to look up a particular artist and also to browse the art stalls of San Telmo, on Humberto 1˚ around its junction with Defensa. Artists distil the essence of their subjects and if you want to take home a piece of the city, a painting or a photograph is as good a way as any. From the comfort of your home, you can experience Buenos Aires: Caminito, the obelisk, cafés, bandoneons, guitars, men in hats, prostitutes, beggars, romantic love, despair and of course, the tango.
We strolled through the antique market in Plaza Dorrego, pausing here and there to examine objects that caught our eye: artefacts, antiques, jewellery, crafted in metal, enamel, glass, perspex, wood, seeds. We tried on clothes in the trendy boutiques, bought some costume jewellery and sat in Parque Lezama, our ice-cream cones melting in the sunshine, before continuing on to La Boca, to pay homage to the place where tango was born.
This barrio, once the poorest in Buenos Aires, has now been given over almost entirely to tourism. We didn’t go into the conventillos to watch the artists at work – that will have to wait until the next time. We walked about to get a feel of the place, watch the performances of tango and folkloric dance in the streets put on to attract tourists to the numerous cafés and restaurants in the area. We walked down Caminito. We were being tourists and loving it.
We headed back into town on a colectivo and stopped to eat at the Bar Federal in San Telmo, one of the oldest and most famous bars in Buenos Aires, for lomo con papas fritas (filet mignon and chips.)
When I got home, there were emails from my girls wishing me a happy Mother’s Day. I hadn’t realised it was Mother’s Day, (over here, it’s celebrated in spring, which coincides with autumn in England,) but we have body clocks, so maybe we also have body calendars and maybe that is why my body knew to take me out for a most enjoyable, self indulgent day.
Notwithstanding, I still managed to be ready for Caro by 10:00, as she was planning to look up a particular artist and also to browse the art stalls of San Telmo, on Humberto 1˚ around its junction with Defensa. Artists distil the essence of their subjects and if you want to take home a piece of the city, a painting or a photograph is as good a way as any. From the comfort of your home, you can experience Buenos Aires: Caminito, the obelisk, cafés, bandoneons, guitars, men in hats, prostitutes, beggars, romantic love, despair and of course, the tango.
We strolled through the antique market in Plaza Dorrego, pausing here and there to examine objects that caught our eye: artefacts, antiques, jewellery, crafted in metal, enamel, glass, perspex, wood, seeds. We tried on clothes in the trendy boutiques, bought some costume jewellery and sat in Parque Lezama, our ice-cream cones melting in the sunshine, before continuing on to La Boca, to pay homage to the place where tango was born.
This barrio, once the poorest in Buenos Aires, has now been given over almost entirely to tourism. We didn’t go into the conventillos to watch the artists at work – that will have to wait until the next time. We walked about to get a feel of the place, watch the performances of tango and folkloric dance in the streets put on to attract tourists to the numerous cafés and restaurants in the area. We walked down Caminito. We were being tourists and loving it.
We headed back into town on a colectivo and stopped to eat at the Bar Federal in San Telmo, one of the oldest and most famous bars in Buenos Aires, for lomo con papas fritas (filet mignon and chips.)
When I got home, there were emails from my girls wishing me a happy Mother’s Day. I hadn’t realised it was Mother’s Day, (over here, it’s celebrated in spring, which coincides with autumn in England,) but we have body clocks, so maybe we also have body calendars and maybe that is why my body knew to take me out for a most enjoyable, self indulgent day.
Monday 23 March 2009
La Calesita
Jeff and I had planned to go to the Calesita a couple of weeks ago, but the event had been rained off. This outdoor milonga only runs through the summer: I had never been there and Caro was only in Buenos Aires for a few more days, so this moonlit, balmy Saturday evening we could not resist the chance to discover its charms.
It is all the way out in Nuñes, so I had to take a break from my beloved colectivos and taxis were the order of the day. I had seen pictures of it in a tango magazine, couples dancing in the midst of coloured lights under the night sky and had imagined something like an urban backyard with a dirt floor. Imagine my surprise and delight when we stepped out of the taxi and Jeff led us by the light of the moon, through elegantly landscaped grounds with flowering plants and mature trees towards a glow in the distance.
We arrived at a clearing in the trees, where there was a gatehouse manned by a ticket seller and there, beyond it, was the most captivating milonga I have ever seen, a cross between Christmas and camping. My inner child was in rapture. I felt as my daughter must have felt, when as a baby, she saw the Christmas tree in our living room lit up for the first time: ‘Take it home, Daddy!’
Under a canopy of coloured lights radiating from the centre, a great urn of exuberant foliage presides over a circular, stone dance floor. The milonga is named for its appearance: calesita means merry-go-round or carousel. All around the dance floor is a wide bank of tables and chairs. By the entrance, drinks are sold and tables groan with mouthwatering artesanal snacks, way more enticing than the bog standard sandwiches and empanadas normally available at milongas, but we had already eaten chez moi.
I tend not to eat when I’m dancing: on my previous visit I never did at all, for fear of feeling lumpen or smelling like an empanada, but realised when I got home that I had lost far too much weight. Now when I start feeling weak and empty, I don’t hesitate to hit the pies. Clean those teeth and wash those hands after and that’s the duty to be fragrant dealt with.
We did as much watching as we did dancing, but just being there was so pleasant, it didn’t matter at all. By the time we left, a couple of hours later, all the tables were full. We went on to Peru 571, where Tanghetto was performing.
It is all the way out in Nuñes, so I had to take a break from my beloved colectivos and taxis were the order of the day. I had seen pictures of it in a tango magazine, couples dancing in the midst of coloured lights under the night sky and had imagined something like an urban backyard with a dirt floor. Imagine my surprise and delight when we stepped out of the taxi and Jeff led us by the light of the moon, through elegantly landscaped grounds with flowering plants and mature trees towards a glow in the distance.
We arrived at a clearing in the trees, where there was a gatehouse manned by a ticket seller and there, beyond it, was the most captivating milonga I have ever seen, a cross between Christmas and camping. My inner child was in rapture. I felt as my daughter must have felt, when as a baby, she saw the Christmas tree in our living room lit up for the first time: ‘Take it home, Daddy!’
Under a canopy of coloured lights radiating from the centre, a great urn of exuberant foliage presides over a circular, stone dance floor. The milonga is named for its appearance: calesita means merry-go-round or carousel. All around the dance floor is a wide bank of tables and chairs. By the entrance, drinks are sold and tables groan with mouthwatering artesanal snacks, way more enticing than the bog standard sandwiches and empanadas normally available at milongas, but we had already eaten chez moi.
I tend not to eat when I’m dancing: on my previous visit I never did at all, for fear of feeling lumpen or smelling like an empanada, but realised when I got home that I had lost far too much weight. Now when I start feeling weak and empty, I don’t hesitate to hit the pies. Clean those teeth and wash those hands after and that’s the duty to be fragrant dealt with.
We did as much watching as we did dancing, but just being there was so pleasant, it didn’t matter at all. By the time we left, a couple of hours later, all the tables were full. We went on to Peru 571, where Tanghetto was performing.
Saturday 21 March 2009
El Gardel de Medellín
Tried to get various roomies, acquaintances and friends to come out with me to the milonga recommended to me by a man with a ponytail I met at DNI, last year. They were either unwilling to go out at all or had made other plans. Feeling in my bones that somewhere out there was an adventure waiting for me to happen, I decided to go it solo, or should that be sola.
As I stood at the 91 bus stop (a pavement like any other, with 91 scrawled on the wall,) poring over my Guía, a porteño stood watching, then asked the inevitable question: ‘¿De dónde sos?’ We got talking and the conversation ended, as always, with him giving me his phone number. He offered to accompany me to my milonga, although he didn’t dance tango, assuring me he had nothing better to do. I protested weakly, he insisted, I capitulated. He seemed nice enough.
The Gardel de Medellín, when we found it, had a band playing, Los Siniestras. There were many people sitting cross legged around the edge of the dance floor and all the tables were full. I stood at the front watching with Enzo for a bit, when an elderly gent got up and gave me his chair. As usual, I tried to decline, then accepted. Then, his wife asked me if I had come to dance and got a young fella (whom I had met before, somewhere in San Telmo) to dance with me. That got things started.
A singer came on stage, while I was dancing. He looked a bit like a porteño Pierce Brosnan. Later, he came over to me and asked me how I had enjoyed the show. I presumed he was coming round with the hat, as entrance to this milonga is free, but he said no, he’d just come over for a chat. Then Enrique, that piece of Buenos Aires milonga furniture, came up and asked me if I wanted to dance. Any time I go to a milonga, there is good old Enrique, dancing with all the prettiest girls.
I sat for a bit with a bottle of Quilmes for a spot of people watching. It’s a young crowd with a few notable exceptions. There are few good dancers here tonight, but it doesn’t matter because I am enjoying the laid-back vibe about the place. It’s a small milonga with a dance floor big enough to take twenty couples at a squeeze. Most of the tables are at one end of the room, near the bar, though there are a few around both sides of the dance floor. There is a small stage at the other end of the room. Entrance is free and drinks are reasonably priced. People clearly come here to socialise, not just to dance. Those big, baggy garments, which are a cross between pyjamas and a gathered skirt are very much in vogue. I suppose they keep you cool, but I’m not keen on clothes that obscure the lines and movements of the body beautiful.
Halfway through the evening, a juggler comes on with his entourage. Initially, I think, ‘Oh no! Don’t cut into my tango time,’ but he is accomplished, charismatic and funny and pretty soon, I’m cheering him along with the rest of them. When the juggling finished, the singer returned to my table and seeing me with the Quilmes in one hand and a pen in the other, said in Spanish, ‘Are you writing the New Testament? It’s already been done. Let’s dance.’
He asked me a lot of questions and he was an appalling dancer. I don’t know what he was on, but it was an antidote for embarrassment. He said, ‘Well, I sing, don’t I?’ Amazing, isn’t it, what the pretty and talented believe they can get away with? Slightly anxious I might not be able to extricate myself from continuing to make an ass of myself on the dance floor, I made a dash for the door, when he was busy talking to a friend.
I got the 91 back home, without any trouble at all.
As I stood at the 91 bus stop (a pavement like any other, with 91 scrawled on the wall,) poring over my Guía, a porteño stood watching, then asked the inevitable question: ‘¿De dónde sos?’ We got talking and the conversation ended, as always, with him giving me his phone number. He offered to accompany me to my milonga, although he didn’t dance tango, assuring me he had nothing better to do. I protested weakly, he insisted, I capitulated. He seemed nice enough.
The Gardel de Medellín, when we found it, had a band playing, Los Siniestras. There were many people sitting cross legged around the edge of the dance floor and all the tables were full. I stood at the front watching with Enzo for a bit, when an elderly gent got up and gave me his chair. As usual, I tried to decline, then accepted. Then, his wife asked me if I had come to dance and got a young fella (whom I had met before, somewhere in San Telmo) to dance with me. That got things started.
A singer came on stage, while I was dancing. He looked a bit like a porteño Pierce Brosnan. Later, he came over to me and asked me how I had enjoyed the show. I presumed he was coming round with the hat, as entrance to this milonga is free, but he said no, he’d just come over for a chat. Then Enrique, that piece of Buenos Aires milonga furniture, came up and asked me if I wanted to dance. Any time I go to a milonga, there is good old Enrique, dancing with all the prettiest girls.
I sat for a bit with a bottle of Quilmes for a spot of people watching. It’s a young crowd with a few notable exceptions. There are few good dancers here tonight, but it doesn’t matter because I am enjoying the laid-back vibe about the place. It’s a small milonga with a dance floor big enough to take twenty couples at a squeeze. Most of the tables are at one end of the room, near the bar, though there are a few around both sides of the dance floor. There is a small stage at the other end of the room. Entrance is free and drinks are reasonably priced. People clearly come here to socialise, not just to dance. Those big, baggy garments, which are a cross between pyjamas and a gathered skirt are very much in vogue. I suppose they keep you cool, but I’m not keen on clothes that obscure the lines and movements of the body beautiful.
Halfway through the evening, a juggler comes on with his entourage. Initially, I think, ‘Oh no! Don’t cut into my tango time,’ but he is accomplished, charismatic and funny and pretty soon, I’m cheering him along with the rest of them. When the juggling finished, the singer returned to my table and seeing me with the Quilmes in one hand and a pen in the other, said in Spanish, ‘Are you writing the New Testament? It’s already been done. Let’s dance.’
He asked me a lot of questions and he was an appalling dancer. I don’t know what he was on, but it was an antidote for embarrassment. He said, ‘Well, I sing, don’t I?’ Amazing, isn’t it, what the pretty and talented believe they can get away with? Slightly anxious I might not be able to extricate myself from continuing to make an ass of myself on the dance floor, I made a dash for the door, when he was busy talking to a friend.
I got the 91 back home, without any trouble at all.
Friday 20 March 2009
Tango Bax
The lovely Caro is in Buenos Aires. She is one of my tango teachers in London. I should be showing her around, as I have been here longer, yet she’s the one opening my eyes to who is performing where and suggesting places we could go.
Last night, we went to Canning to see a homage to el Troesma, Zotto. From the social dancing point of view, it was not the greatest of nights, but as for entertainment, we were spoiled rotten. We were treated to singing and dancing by some of the city’s great performers and it was not till the end, when they all gathered together on the dance floor, that we realised what a glut of performers there had been. They included El Chino Perico, Andrés Cejas and Genoveva Fernandez, Leandro Oliver and Laila Rezk, Milena Plebs, José Halfon and Virginia Cutillo and Roxana Fontan. The show had gone on for hours. It was after 04:00, when we left.
Earlier in the day, we went to a class at the Mariposita and this led to a conversation about the correct way for the follower to hold her back in the close embrace. I have had this explained to me in many different ways and I’m still not one hundred per cent sure I’ve got it right. I guess it’s the thing I’d ask for, if I got to see the Wizard of Oz.
Some people say there shouldn’t be a dip in the spine, some that there can be. Some advocate the ‘happy bottom,’ (tilted upwards) others say the pelvis should be perpendicular to the floor. Some say the back should expand into the leader’s hand, others that the torso should incline forwards to maintain contact with one side of the leader’s chest , others still say you need to do both at the same time. At DNI, they say the position of the back is as if you are about to sit down and no further inclined than that. I should be interested to hear any other views on the matter of Tango Bax.
Last night, we went to Canning to see a homage to el Troesma, Zotto. From the social dancing point of view, it was not the greatest of nights, but as for entertainment, we were spoiled rotten. We were treated to singing and dancing by some of the city’s great performers and it was not till the end, when they all gathered together on the dance floor, that we realised what a glut of performers there had been. They included El Chino Perico, Andrés Cejas and Genoveva Fernandez, Leandro Oliver and Laila Rezk, Milena Plebs, José Halfon and Virginia Cutillo and Roxana Fontan. The show had gone on for hours. It was after 04:00, when we left.
Earlier in the day, we went to a class at the Mariposita and this led to a conversation about the correct way for the follower to hold her back in the close embrace. I have had this explained to me in many different ways and I’m still not one hundred per cent sure I’ve got it right. I guess it’s the thing I’d ask for, if I got to see the Wizard of Oz.
Some people say there shouldn’t be a dip in the spine, some that there can be. Some advocate the ‘happy bottom,’ (tilted upwards) others say the pelvis should be perpendicular to the floor. Some say the back should expand into the leader’s hand, others that the torso should incline forwards to maintain contact with one side of the leader’s chest , others still say you need to do both at the same time. At DNI, they say the position of the back is as if you are about to sit down and no further inclined than that. I should be interested to hear any other views on the matter of Tango Bax.
Wednesday 18 March 2009
A feeling
The clocks went back over the weekend and I remembered to adjust my watch, but not my mobile, with the result that I arrived for class at DNI Corrientes an hour early. Not a problem, as there’s nowhere lovelier to sit than their leafy, outdoor café with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Sheltered from the afternoon sun by a breathable canopy, surrounded by potted climbers, creepers, shrubs, tango music spilling out of the adjacent studio (Musica – una fuerza de naturaleza is written on the wall and afileteado.) There is the option of watching a dancer being put through his paces in a private lesson, against the backdrop of a faux pergola overgrown with vine, painted on a tall green stained glass window, one of the most gorgeous features of the building.
It’s not called Buenos Aires for nothing. Being here does you good. I find that I wake up feeling repaired, refreshed. I get out of bed and stretch in front of the mirror and think, ‘Hello, you’ll do.’ I see longer lines and deeper dips in my body and don’t feel compelled to put on make-up when I go to milongas, whereas in London, I go out not so much made-up as embalmed.
I adore being here. DNI is more than just a school – it’s a community. DNI has an unusually high cuddly factor. Nowhere else do you find so many beautiful teachers, so likeable, funny and warm, so able to show you how to use your body to make beauty. Here, there are tango dogs that sometimes wander into the studios to watch. One of them barks to a waltz. Recently, there has been a new addition, a tango puppy. And there is a tango baby. On my last visit, she was a babe-in-arms. Now she toddles around placidly in her exerciser. These are important details. They give you the feeling.
I could just sit here and write poetry. All I have to write with is a blunt pencil and the paper my empanada was wrapped in, but needs must.
It’s not called Buenos Aires for nothing. Being here does you good. I find that I wake up feeling repaired, refreshed. I get out of bed and stretch in front of the mirror and think, ‘Hello, you’ll do.’ I see longer lines and deeper dips in my body and don’t feel compelled to put on make-up when I go to milongas, whereas in London, I go out not so much made-up as embalmed.
I adore being here. DNI is more than just a school – it’s a community. DNI has an unusually high cuddly factor. Nowhere else do you find so many beautiful teachers, so likeable, funny and warm, so able to show you how to use your body to make beauty. Here, there are tango dogs that sometimes wander into the studios to watch. One of them barks to a waltz. Recently, there has been a new addition, a tango puppy. And there is a tango baby. On my last visit, she was a babe-in-arms. Now she toddles around placidly in her exerciser. These are important details. They give you the feeling.
I could just sit here and write poetry. All I have to write with is a blunt pencil and the paper my empanada was wrapped in, but needs must.
More malingering than milongaring
Last week, I went to class every day, but in the evenings, I must confess there was more malingering than milongas. It’s a long journey home from evening classes at DNI Bulnes, added to which classes frequently start late and therefore finish late. Excuses, excuses. All the same, enormous though my affection is for DNI, I will carry on with lunchtime lessons there, but I intend to start going local in the evenings.
I had planned to go out every night this week and would have done so, but tonight, I felt obliged to stay in and get my computer to behave, as it hasn’t let me access the internet all day.
On Monday, I went to a practica at Villa Malcolm with Chris, a double bass player from Boston, who doesn’t mind being led. It was his idea. Yet, of all the places in Buenos Aires we could have gone to, we found ourselves at the same venue as Jeff and Ching. Fate just keeps throwing us together.
Last night, I went to Porteño y Bailarín with Kemal. The teachers were Ernesto Balmaceda, (brother of Julio,) and Stella Baez and we did a very elegant spiral choreography, which Kemal liked so much, he kept saying, ‘I’ll never forget this, I’ll never forget this.’ I found myself feeling rather envious. As a follower, you don’t have anything like the same degree of control over what gets danced. If you have enjoyed a choreography and want to dance it again, the only way to do that is to learn to lead it. I am not capable of inferring a lead, just yet. For me, every bit of leading is hard won. I have to watch it, copy it, repeat it and once I can do that mechanically, only then does the logic of it begin to dawn on me. I look forward to having a breakthrough in being able to work out on my own how to lead the moves I love.
I had planned to go out every night this week and would have done so, but tonight, I felt obliged to stay in and get my computer to behave, as it hasn’t let me access the internet all day.
On Monday, I went to a practica at Villa Malcolm with Chris, a double bass player from Boston, who doesn’t mind being led. It was his idea. Yet, of all the places in Buenos Aires we could have gone to, we found ourselves at the same venue as Jeff and Ching. Fate just keeps throwing us together.
Last night, I went to Porteño y Bailarín with Kemal. The teachers were Ernesto Balmaceda, (brother of Julio,) and Stella Baez and we did a very elegant spiral choreography, which Kemal liked so much, he kept saying, ‘I’ll never forget this, I’ll never forget this.’ I found myself feeling rather envious. As a follower, you don’t have anything like the same degree of control over what gets danced. If you have enjoyed a choreography and want to dance it again, the only way to do that is to learn to lead it. I am not capable of inferring a lead, just yet. For me, every bit of leading is hard won. I have to watch it, copy it, repeat it and once I can do that mechanically, only then does the logic of it begin to dawn on me. I look forward to having a breakthrough in being able to work out on my own how to lead the moves I love.
All for one, one for all or something completely different?
I haven’t seen much of my Turkish friend in the last few days and I was getting used to having him in class. I guess one man’s ad nauseum is another’s heart’s content.
There is a distinct advantage in working consistently with the same person in classes and practicas. For a start, when the class isn’t gender balanced, you have a guaranteed partner, so there’s no dead time. Secondly, once you have established a background of relatedness, giving and receiving feedback becomes a whole lot easier. Thirdly, once you have adjusted to each other, you can give fuller attention to what is new, as you no longer have to start from scratch, each time. Fourthly, you can have the best of both worlds, as you can still continue to enjoy and stay sensitized to different leads or styles, dancing at milongas.
Peaches are in season and I ask myself, as I sink my teeth into my third, this morning, whether I shall ever tire of them. Years ago, when I was piss poor and lived in France, I lived on peaches and popcorn. When the last market stall had sold the last peach, I switched to figs. I also like playing an album over and over, till I know each last note and lyric by heart.
Last night I went to Plaza Dorrego. The demon dancer was there, as always, making women swoon. I had a few dances with strangers, then hooked up with Jeff, who was there with his friend Art from Alaska and a Korean tango deb, Ching. Ching has only had three tango lessons and is already a good dancer. Having danced salsa for years, her mind and body are programmed to move with control and precision. When we moved on to Torquato Tasso, she didn’t hesitate to get up and ask some of the finest tangueros for a dance and they appeared delighted to be asked. Either times are changing or it depends on who’s asking.
Art mentioned he was looking for somewhere to stay and as Zack, our resident genius, is leaving for Mexico, I mentioned there could well be a room available at my digs and did they want to come and see.
We sat in my tiny kitchen till 04:30 drinking coffee and discussing the nature of reality, life after death, the effects of assorted drugs, the relative merits of monogamy and polygamy and whether and to what extent men and women differ in their needs. I told them about my philosopher friend, Sarah Biggie’s solution: duogamy, a system permitting men and women to be in a committed relationship with two partners each. The virtue of such a versatile union is you get the nurture, stability and commitment of monogamy, but with a little more variety, (the chief advantage of polygamy,) as well as a built-in safety valve, should you find yourself at odds with one of your spouses.
Back on the subject of dance partners, wouldn’t two be twice as nice as one? Better still would be to be the variety: learn to switch roles and dance happily ever after.
There is a distinct advantage in working consistently with the same person in classes and practicas. For a start, when the class isn’t gender balanced, you have a guaranteed partner, so there’s no dead time. Secondly, once you have established a background of relatedness, giving and receiving feedback becomes a whole lot easier. Thirdly, once you have adjusted to each other, you can give fuller attention to what is new, as you no longer have to start from scratch, each time. Fourthly, you can have the best of both worlds, as you can still continue to enjoy and stay sensitized to different leads or styles, dancing at milongas.
Peaches are in season and I ask myself, as I sink my teeth into my third, this morning, whether I shall ever tire of them. Years ago, when I was piss poor and lived in France, I lived on peaches and popcorn. When the last market stall had sold the last peach, I switched to figs. I also like playing an album over and over, till I know each last note and lyric by heart.
Last night I went to Plaza Dorrego. The demon dancer was there, as always, making women swoon. I had a few dances with strangers, then hooked up with Jeff, who was there with his friend Art from Alaska and a Korean tango deb, Ching. Ching has only had three tango lessons and is already a good dancer. Having danced salsa for years, her mind and body are programmed to move with control and precision. When we moved on to Torquato Tasso, she didn’t hesitate to get up and ask some of the finest tangueros for a dance and they appeared delighted to be asked. Either times are changing or it depends on who’s asking.
Art mentioned he was looking for somewhere to stay and as Zack, our resident genius, is leaving for Mexico, I mentioned there could well be a room available at my digs and did they want to come and see.
We sat in my tiny kitchen till 04:30 drinking coffee and discussing the nature of reality, life after death, the effects of assorted drugs, the relative merits of monogamy and polygamy and whether and to what extent men and women differ in their needs. I told them about my philosopher friend, Sarah Biggie’s solution: duogamy, a system permitting men and women to be in a committed relationship with two partners each. The virtue of such a versatile union is you get the nurture, stability and commitment of monogamy, but with a little more variety, (the chief advantage of polygamy,) as well as a built-in safety valve, should you find yourself at odds with one of your spouses.
Back on the subject of dance partners, wouldn’t two be twice as nice as one? Better still would be to be the variety: learn to switch roles and dance happily ever after.
Saturday 14 March 2009
More tango schools: La Mariposita and Escuela Argentina de Tango
Friday 13 March 2009
Shamblin'
Friday night milonga? The computer says, ‘No.’ Overcome by the slings and arrows of public transport (colectivos and the subte), private transport (tired feet) and fifty odd mosquito bites, I’m settling for a solitary steak and salad, washed down with Quilmes (my favourite) and an early night, smeared in tea tree oil.
Transport is the bane of my existence in Buenos Aires.
The subte is the lesser of the two evils, but it ends around 22.15. There’s lots of ‘life’ on the subte. Invariably a hawker, frequently a child or someone with a disability, will be selling you wares in the carriage, typically hair clips, stickers, pens and tube maps. Or there might be a musician performing or someone trying to raise money for a personal cause. It brings you face to face with your humanity or lack of it. Then there are the silent reminders of people's struggles to survive: loads of personal advertisements with tear-off phone numbers, tucked into window frames or stuck on the walls.
Provided you don’t need to change lines away from the city centre, which is the only place they intersect, the subte is pretty good. The city is planned on a grid system, so it is easy to find your way as the streets between stops are indicated on the tube map. The stations can get horribly congested. Don’t expect to rush up escalators: here, they stand on both sides. However, the entrances and exits of the different lines are decorated in distinctively coloured, ceramic tiles, some of which are rather beautiful. I can handle the subte.
Both the subte and colectivos are extraordinarily overcrowded and not just at rush hour. The buses make a range of cruel and unusual noises. There seems to be a strictly no silencers policy. Then there’s the great centavo drama. People can’t wait to rid their purses of their five and ten centavo coins. They are as annoying as mosquitoes and it is equally impossible to be free of them. To make matters worse, the minimum bus fare, which was ninety centavos last year, has risen to one peso and ten centavos. So, either you have that ten centavo coin, or you risk getting a whole load in change, every time you take the bus. Just when you think you’ve seen the last of yours, you spot the gleam in your grocer’s eyes and you just know your bill is going to come to X pesos and the obligatory ten centavos, which means you might be lumbered with anything between nine to eighteen of the little bastards again. Five and ten centavo pieces are virtually indistinguishable and you don’t check your change - though you know you want to, because coins are like gold dust if you are in the habit of taking colectivos. Also, they are minuscule, so that they slip between your fingers as you count out your bus fare and it would be positively infra dig to chase a five centavo coin as it rolled away under a bus seat. But when it’s a toss-up between your dignity and getting there, you just might reconsider your position. Or you can’t get on the bus. Now multiply this drama by ten for the ten or so people that get on at each stop. It’s a farce. Just not that funny.
You could walk everywhere, but be prepared. Buenos Aires does not respect the white man. (The ‘Walk’ light at street crossings is generally a white man, and occasionally, a green one.) White, green or red, the average Buenos Aires driver’s reaction is, ‘Am I bovvered?’ Walking more than is strictly necessary is not an option for me at present. My toots are all tangoed out. They want to be plunged in ice water and then forgiven and put to bed.
Transport is the bane of my existence in Buenos Aires.
The subte is the lesser of the two evils, but it ends around 22.15. There’s lots of ‘life’ on the subte. Invariably a hawker, frequently a child or someone with a disability, will be selling you wares in the carriage, typically hair clips, stickers, pens and tube maps. Or there might be a musician performing or someone trying to raise money for a personal cause. It brings you face to face with your humanity or lack of it. Then there are the silent reminders of people's struggles to survive: loads of personal advertisements with tear-off phone numbers, tucked into window frames or stuck on the walls.
Provided you don’t need to change lines away from the city centre, which is the only place they intersect, the subte is pretty good. The city is planned on a grid system, so it is easy to find your way as the streets between stops are indicated on the tube map. The stations can get horribly congested. Don’t expect to rush up escalators: here, they stand on both sides. However, the entrances and exits of the different lines are decorated in distinctively coloured, ceramic tiles, some of which are rather beautiful. I can handle the subte.
Both the subte and colectivos are extraordinarily overcrowded and not just at rush hour. The buses make a range of cruel and unusual noises. There seems to be a strictly no silencers policy. Then there’s the great centavo drama. People can’t wait to rid their purses of their five and ten centavo coins. They are as annoying as mosquitoes and it is equally impossible to be free of them. To make matters worse, the minimum bus fare, which was ninety centavos last year, has risen to one peso and ten centavos. So, either you have that ten centavo coin, or you risk getting a whole load in change, every time you take the bus. Just when you think you’ve seen the last of yours, you spot the gleam in your grocer’s eyes and you just know your bill is going to come to X pesos and the obligatory ten centavos, which means you might be lumbered with anything between nine to eighteen of the little bastards again. Five and ten centavo pieces are virtually indistinguishable and you don’t check your change - though you know you want to, because coins are like gold dust if you are in the habit of taking colectivos. Also, they are minuscule, so that they slip between your fingers as you count out your bus fare and it would be positively infra dig to chase a five centavo coin as it rolled away under a bus seat. But when it’s a toss-up between your dignity and getting there, you just might reconsider your position. Or you can’t get on the bus. Now multiply this drama by ten for the ten or so people that get on at each stop. It’s a farce. Just not that funny.
You could walk everywhere, but be prepared. Buenos Aires does not respect the white man. (The ‘Walk’ light at street crossings is generally a white man, and occasionally, a green one.) White, green or red, the average Buenos Aires driver’s reaction is, ‘Am I bovvered?’ Walking more than is strictly necessary is not an option for me at present. My toots are all tangoed out. They want to be plunged in ice water and then forgiven and put to bed.
Wednesday 11 March 2009
Chacarera
Who did I have this conversation with?
‘Does it rain much in autumn in BsAs?’
‘Sure, but not as much as in London.’
‘So I won’t need wellies, then?’
‘No’.
You were mistaken. Crossing Independencia this evening, on my way home from a chacarera lesson at DNI, there were rivers about one foot deep gushing alongside the pavements. I was out in my walking sandals (I hear my daughters groan) and anxiously peering into the waters as I waded through, ready to jump out of my skin if some object, such as the contents of a bin, a rat or floating dog turd touched my feet.
I had my dad’s trusty brolly with me, though. It’s one that deploys at the touch of a button, but requires you to strain as if constipated, to close up again. Normally, I shun the attentions of the subte guard at 9 de Julio, who propositions me and makes kissing noises as I pass, but on this occasion, I was glad to see him as he rushed forward to help me close my umbrella, opened the barrier so that I didn’t even need to get a ticket out and carried my shopping through for me.
I will never be able to stop giggling about the way the men look at one in Argentina: the drawing up of the chest, the lowered head, the narrowed eyes, the flared nostrils, the pursed lips. This overt male posturing is an old school thing the under-thirties would probably be ashamed of.
Which brings me to the topic of chacarera, one of the Argentine folkloric dances, which is frequently danced at milongas and which I am determined to learn, because I love it. At Rosa’s pancake lunch, I met Scott, who writes a blog, who told me he had expressed his views on chacarera in his blog and caused quite a furore. Scott does not care for chacarera for three reasons, which as far as I recall are as follows:
1. It cuts into his tango time.
2. There is a choreographed and limited range of steps, so it becomes boring to watch, after the first few times.
3. He dislikes the male posturing and female wiles, which the zapateo and zarandeo parts of the dance express. It is now a more egalitarian society and these stereotypes are no longer apt.
This is my understanding of what he said. I have yet to read his blog, but I would like to express my own views in response.
1. If you liked doing it, this would not be an issue.
2. It’s not the steps but the unique way in which they are expressed by each individual that gives chacarera its appeal.
3. Zapateo and zarandeo are metaphors for the attention seeking part of the mating ritual, which is a timeless fact of life, however much the way in which it is done has changed over the ages. Now for zapateo, read fast cars, cool clothes, gym membership. On the other side, there’s make-up, sexy clothes, pretty underwear, no underwear. That’s the overt stuff. And then, there’s undercover posturing: researched conversation, popular or controversial website, proven skill of some kind, becoming a tango instructor... Then there’s piercings, tattoos and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t even begin to understand. Whatever! We do stuff to pull and chacarera is a celebration of that game. Let’s celebrate!
‘Does it rain much in autumn in BsAs?’
‘Sure, but not as much as in London.’
‘So I won’t need wellies, then?’
‘No’.
You were mistaken. Crossing Independencia this evening, on my way home from a chacarera lesson at DNI, there were rivers about one foot deep gushing alongside the pavements. I was out in my walking sandals (I hear my daughters groan) and anxiously peering into the waters as I waded through, ready to jump out of my skin if some object, such as the contents of a bin, a rat or floating dog turd touched my feet.
I had my dad’s trusty brolly with me, though. It’s one that deploys at the touch of a button, but requires you to strain as if constipated, to close up again. Normally, I shun the attentions of the subte guard at 9 de Julio, who propositions me and makes kissing noises as I pass, but on this occasion, I was glad to see him as he rushed forward to help me close my umbrella, opened the barrier so that I didn’t even need to get a ticket out and carried my shopping through for me.
I will never be able to stop giggling about the way the men look at one in Argentina: the drawing up of the chest, the lowered head, the narrowed eyes, the flared nostrils, the pursed lips. This overt male posturing is an old school thing the under-thirties would probably be ashamed of.
Which brings me to the topic of chacarera, one of the Argentine folkloric dances, which is frequently danced at milongas and which I am determined to learn, because I love it. At Rosa’s pancake lunch, I met Scott, who writes a blog, who told me he had expressed his views on chacarera in his blog and caused quite a furore. Scott does not care for chacarera for three reasons, which as far as I recall are as follows:
1. It cuts into his tango time.
2. There is a choreographed and limited range of steps, so it becomes boring to watch, after the first few times.
3. He dislikes the male posturing and female wiles, which the zapateo and zarandeo parts of the dance express. It is now a more egalitarian society and these stereotypes are no longer apt.
This is my understanding of what he said. I have yet to read his blog, but I would like to express my own views in response.
1. If you liked doing it, this would not be an issue.
2. It’s not the steps but the unique way in which they are expressed by each individual that gives chacarera its appeal.
3. Zapateo and zarandeo are metaphors for the attention seeking part of the mating ritual, which is a timeless fact of life, however much the way in which it is done has changed over the ages. Now for zapateo, read fast cars, cool clothes, gym membership. On the other side, there’s make-up, sexy clothes, pretty underwear, no underwear. That’s the overt stuff. And then, there’s undercover posturing: researched conversation, popular or controversial website, proven skill of some kind, becoming a tango instructor... Then there’s piercings, tattoos and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t even begin to understand. Whatever! We do stuff to pull and chacarera is a celebration of that game. Let’s celebrate!
Practica X
I went back home to eat before going out again. My German flatmate, Guisa and I had just defrosted the fridge which had developed a wall of ice within, thick enough to build an igloo. I was dutifully working my way through the chicken breasts which had been left in the freezer. They weren’t mine, but they were only a month old with no claimant and I couldn’t bring myself to chuck them away, not when I see whole families rummaging through the bins of Buenos Aires every night, looking for something in edible condition.
Then I dressed up to go to Practica X with Kemal, a Turkish farmer I met at DNI. I had been to Practica X before with Iancito and knew not to go there without a partner. He, in turn, could speak no Spanish and wanted the moral support.
Practica X has moved from Medrano to a venue in Palermo on Humboldt 1464, between Niceto Vega and Jose Cabrera, which makes it almost impossible for me to get to from my home in San Telmo. Still, plucky bird that I am, I did it. It took two subtes, a colectivo and a walk. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I got there, in time for the lesson. The new venue is a humungous hall with stage lighting apparatus hanging off a high ceiling and wall lights that keep changing colour, the sort of venue one associates with wedding receptions, not dancing tango. There were many women at a loose end, even with a number of women leading other women, so I was ultra relieved to have a partner. Although Kemal has only been dancing two months, he is incredibly keen and a fast learner.
The class was interesting in that it was tightly produced and stage managed. In other words, there was a man with a stopwatch holding up fingers and whispering in the teachers’ ears. It was still far too heavy on teacher talk for my taste. I really didn’t like that they wouldn’t answer questions as they arose, telling students instead that there would be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the lesson. Learning is not achieved by listening passively. Learning involves teaching yourself and this means getting things clear as you go. I like dance lessons to be heavy on demonstration, practice, monitoring and instant feedback and light on theory and explanation. Learning by watching and doing. That would be my way. We shared a table with Claudio, who teaches pedagogy to teachers and he totally agreed with me.
Whilst there is some merit in doing things the way they have always been done, there is also merit in going with the flow and making the most of opportunities. I don’t know why tango teachers don’t avail themselves of modern classroom technology to enhance their teaching. If I were a tango teacher, I would have a video camera to film my demonstration of the information I was trying to convey. I would then project that film onto an electronic whiteboard and have my students attempt to produce the movement themselves, with a model onscreen to follow and check themselves against, playing repeatedly, whilst I wondered around the classroom monitoring and giving feedback. I might even film students to show them what they were doing, so they could judge for themselves what they needed to work on. Whilst tango teachers may be unable to afford the technology, I would have thought that the milonga and practica venues and better established tango schools, would.
I have to say, however, that I really liked Gaston Torelli and Moira Castellano’s take on the giro. They had the man move around the woman and they said something along these lines:
‘Don’t think of the woman as being passively led. Don’t try and get her to do something. Dance and she will naturally respond to your dance.’
Then I dressed up to go to Practica X with Kemal, a Turkish farmer I met at DNI. I had been to Practica X before with Iancito and knew not to go there without a partner. He, in turn, could speak no Spanish and wanted the moral support.
Practica X has moved from Medrano to a venue in Palermo on Humboldt 1464, between Niceto Vega and Jose Cabrera, which makes it almost impossible for me to get to from my home in San Telmo. Still, plucky bird that I am, I did it. It took two subtes, a colectivo and a walk. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I got there, in time for the lesson. The new venue is a humungous hall with stage lighting apparatus hanging off a high ceiling and wall lights that keep changing colour, the sort of venue one associates with wedding receptions, not dancing tango. There were many women at a loose end, even with a number of women leading other women, so I was ultra relieved to have a partner. Although Kemal has only been dancing two months, he is incredibly keen and a fast learner.
The class was interesting in that it was tightly produced and stage managed. In other words, there was a man with a stopwatch holding up fingers and whispering in the teachers’ ears. It was still far too heavy on teacher talk for my taste. I really didn’t like that they wouldn’t answer questions as they arose, telling students instead that there would be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the lesson. Learning is not achieved by listening passively. Learning involves teaching yourself and this means getting things clear as you go. I like dance lessons to be heavy on demonstration, practice, monitoring and instant feedback and light on theory and explanation. Learning by watching and doing. That would be my way. We shared a table with Claudio, who teaches pedagogy to teachers and he totally agreed with me.
Whilst there is some merit in doing things the way they have always been done, there is also merit in going with the flow and making the most of opportunities. I don’t know why tango teachers don’t avail themselves of modern classroom technology to enhance their teaching. If I were a tango teacher, I would have a video camera to film my demonstration of the information I was trying to convey. I would then project that film onto an electronic whiteboard and have my students attempt to produce the movement themselves, with a model onscreen to follow and check themselves against, playing repeatedly, whilst I wondered around the classroom monitoring and giving feedback. I might even film students to show them what they were doing, so they could judge for themselves what they needed to work on. Whilst tango teachers may be unable to afford the technology, I would have thought that the milonga and practica venues and better established tango schools, would.
I have to say, however, that I really liked Gaston Torelli and Moira Castellano’s take on the giro. They had the man move around the woman and they said something along these lines:
‘Don’t think of the woman as being passively led. Don’t try and get her to do something. Dance and she will naturally respond to your dance.’
Confitería Ideal
In the subte at Independencia, I bumped into Julio, a dancer from Chicago I met at DNI last time round. He told me about some classes (Tuesday at 15:30) at the Confitería Ideal, where the focus was on subtle moves for tiny spaces. As a prospective leader, I thought that sounded like exactly what I needed to know, so I went along.
The Ideal, if you’ve yet to go there, is a building in sumptuous art deco reminiscent of Paris, with a marble staircase leading up to a ballroom on the first floor. It has a splendid stained glass ceiling, doors and windows of bevilled glass, wood paneling, decorative mirrors, chandeliers, marble pillars, a pergola and a substantial dance floor.
The class was three hours long and the teachers were Eduardo Saucedo and Ivana Smolianovich, beautiful people endowed with an infectious sense of humour, blessings common to the tango teachers of Buenos Aires. The focus of the first half of the lesson was a choreography including barridas and sandwichitos. The second half was milonga : one – two – kiss – four – five. ‘Kiss’ represents the brushing of the man’s calf against the woman’s as he switches tracks in the box step.
The Ideal, if you’ve yet to go there, is a building in sumptuous art deco reminiscent of Paris, with a marble staircase leading up to a ballroom on the first floor. It has a splendid stained glass ceiling, doors and windows of bevilled glass, wood paneling, decorative mirrors, chandeliers, marble pillars, a pergola and a substantial dance floor.
The class was three hours long and the teachers were Eduardo Saucedo and Ivana Smolianovich, beautiful people endowed with an infectious sense of humour, blessings common to the tango teachers of Buenos Aires. The focus of the first half of the lesson was a choreography including barridas and sandwichitos. The second half was milonga : one – two – kiss – four – five. ‘Kiss’ represents the brushing of the man’s calf against the woman’s as he switches tracks in the box step.
Changes at Estudio DNI
After a whole week in Buenos Aires, I decided it was time to start taking lessons again: lessons to improve my dancing as well as lessons to learn to lead. I dream of being able to dance with a partner and being able to switch roles - just like that - as and when we feel like.
There have been a fair few changes at DNI in my absence. They have now got a second site in Bulnes and are putting on additional classes including ballet and folklore. They have, at last, installed an overhead fan in the main studio in Corrientes – hooray! (My main reason for leaving Buenos Aires in November, instead of staying for six months, was how hot I used to get in their dance classes.) Classes have gone up in price by a third, like so many other tango places, but they are still excellent value for money at 130 pesos for 10 classes, each an hour and a half long and packed with tuition on technique. When I left in November, Jonny and Johanna were students at DNI. Now they are teachers, and very fine too, of Tango Level 1. I shall be attending at least once a week, to learn to lead. I have two members of the band Sexteto Milonguero, one of the most famous tango bands, in my dance class. That is so cool.
There have been a fair few changes at DNI in my absence. They have now got a second site in Bulnes and are putting on additional classes including ballet and folklore. They have, at last, installed an overhead fan in the main studio in Corrientes – hooray! (My main reason for leaving Buenos Aires in November, instead of staying for six months, was how hot I used to get in their dance classes.) Classes have gone up in price by a third, like so many other tango places, but they are still excellent value for money at 130 pesos for 10 classes, each an hour and a half long and packed with tuition on technique. When I left in November, Jonny and Johanna were students at DNI. Now they are teachers, and very fine too, of Tango Level 1. I shall be attending at least once a week, to learn to lead. I have two members of the band Sexteto Milonguero, one of the most famous tango bands, in my dance class. That is so cool.
CC Torquato Tasso
After pancakes at Rosa’s, I went over to Lili’s for tea and rock. I had been foolhardy enough to brag to her I was beginning to be able to lead salsa and rock and she pinned me down for a practica. I was reminded of my second driving lesson, all those years ago: getting in the car and going quite blank. I just haven’t been doing it long enough to be able to do it outside of a classroom context, so I left her with a chuckle at my expense, apologies and a tutorial DVD and it being Sunday, headed off to Plaza Dorrego.
I arrived around 21:30 and boogied down Defensa to the pounding and the throbbing of the batería, which is apparently a permanent feature of Sunday night in this area. When I arrived there, there was not much dancing before one of those government subsidised bands started up, the kind that play ballads that sound just like the one before, showing a scornful disregard for melody and rhythm, focusing rather on lyrics, which I could barely follow, in any case. I sat sleeping on a wall, wondering when it was going to end, then gave a little yelp of joy when I noticed Jeff standing in front of me with a leggy porteña and Mario mark 2. Jeff said they were off to the Torquato Tasso, which is where everybody pootles off to after Dorrego, to carry on dancing and did I want to come.
The Centro Cultural Torquato Tasso is named after an Italian poet. I liked it a lot. It’s the kind of alternative, informal night spot I would choose, to hang out, eat, socialize, take classes and to dance, with its dimly lit interior, blue, red and purple, and its moody vibe. Apparently it is well-known as a live music venue, but not that night. The piped music good, though. I danced with Jeff and Mario and sat down for a beer, when who should come up to me but CFBS: aka Daniel.
‘Why aren’t you in Washington, Daniel?’
‘Because I’m still here.’
It is always delightful to see anyone with a lithe body and a beautiful face. Even when they urged you to return to Buenos Aires before they had to leave for Washington, phoned you, skyped you and mailed you through November and December, and then, when you bought your ticket, suddenly stopped. So yes, I danced with him, of course I did.
‘Can I come and live with you?’ he said.
‘No.’
Because there’s a limit, isn’t there?
I arrived around 21:30 and boogied down Defensa to the pounding and the throbbing of the batería, which is apparently a permanent feature of Sunday night in this area. When I arrived there, there was not much dancing before one of those government subsidised bands started up, the kind that play ballads that sound just like the one before, showing a scornful disregard for melody and rhythm, focusing rather on lyrics, which I could barely follow, in any case. I sat sleeping on a wall, wondering when it was going to end, then gave a little yelp of joy when I noticed Jeff standing in front of me with a leggy porteña and Mario mark 2. Jeff said they were off to the Torquato Tasso, which is where everybody pootles off to after Dorrego, to carry on dancing and did I want to come.
The Centro Cultural Torquato Tasso is named after an Italian poet. I liked it a lot. It’s the kind of alternative, informal night spot I would choose, to hang out, eat, socialize, take classes and to dance, with its dimly lit interior, blue, red and purple, and its moody vibe. Apparently it is well-known as a live music venue, but not that night. The piped music good, though. I danced with Jeff and Mario and sat down for a beer, when who should come up to me but CFBS: aka Daniel.
‘Why aren’t you in Washington, Daniel?’
‘Because I’m still here.’
It is always delightful to see anyone with a lithe body and a beautiful face. Even when they urged you to return to Buenos Aires before they had to leave for Washington, phoned you, skyped you and mailed you through November and December, and then, when you bought your ticket, suddenly stopped. So yes, I danced with him, of course I did.
‘Can I come and live with you?’ he said.
‘No.’
Because there’s a limit, isn’t there?
Tuesday 10 March 2009
Pancakes on Sunday
I was delighted to receive a text message from Rosa, inviting me to a pancakes on Sunday, a very Rosa-ish sort of thing to do. Why, what’s she like? Benevolent sunshine comes to mind. Warm smile, gentle voice, tanned skin, golden hair, an entourage.
I met her at Tango Brujo on my last trip, when a bunch of us trotted down Esmeralda to have coffee together. After that, we made efforts to meet, but only ever managed to meet by chance at milongas. Yet, she felt like an old friend.
An Australian, she now lives here and her home is in a typically moorish, old San Telmo building in the road called Venezuela, just blocks away from mine. The reception room, an enormous high ceilinged cavern, minimally furnished, boho chic, walls of exposed stone, with glassed in alcoves housing artwork, windows high up in the walls filtering sunlight through colourful liqueur bottles embedded in the glass, a wooden floor with a solitary rug and floor cushions in the middle, a table laden with mouthwatering aperitifs at one end and a settee full of interesting people beckoning at the other. Thoughtful touches and lovely colours, everywhere.
Rosa was in her element feeding the five hundred, tossing pancakes for what seemed like hours, while her guests mingled, nattered and munched. As far as I was aware, they were all tango dancers, a large proportion of them, enchanted (had come here for a shufti and found themselves compelled to stay.) This city is full of fascinating people, who have had interesting lives and meeting them is just one of its sublime pleasures. I met a couple of men I’d danced with and two other bloggers, Sally and Scott and I’ve been meaning to read them ever since. But when? Time is even shorter here than in London. In Buenos Aires, time not spent dancing feels like time misspent. Should I even be sitting here now?
I met her at Tango Brujo on my last trip, when a bunch of us trotted down Esmeralda to have coffee together. After that, we made efforts to meet, but only ever managed to meet by chance at milongas. Yet, she felt like an old friend.
An Australian, she now lives here and her home is in a typically moorish, old San Telmo building in the road called Venezuela, just blocks away from mine. The reception room, an enormous high ceilinged cavern, minimally furnished, boho chic, walls of exposed stone, with glassed in alcoves housing artwork, windows high up in the walls filtering sunlight through colourful liqueur bottles embedded in the glass, a wooden floor with a solitary rug and floor cushions in the middle, a table laden with mouthwatering aperitifs at one end and a settee full of interesting people beckoning at the other. Thoughtful touches and lovely colours, everywhere.
Rosa was in her element feeding the five hundred, tossing pancakes for what seemed like hours, while her guests mingled, nattered and munched. As far as I was aware, they were all tango dancers, a large proportion of them, enchanted (had come here for a shufti and found themselves compelled to stay.) This city is full of fascinating people, who have had interesting lives and meeting them is just one of its sublime pleasures. I met a couple of men I’d danced with and two other bloggers, Sally and Scott and I’ve been meaning to read them ever since. But when? Time is even shorter here than in London. In Buenos Aires, time not spent dancing feels like time misspent. Should I even be sitting here now?
Saturday 7 March 2009
Canning
Got up at 09:30 to have coffee downtown with the muchachas, having gone to bed at 04:30. In order to make it in time, I would have to forego the daily routines to which I had become unusually attached, I suppose because they are grounding and familiar markers in an otherwise strange, new world. Making café con leche and toasting bread in a kitchen with no electric appliances other than a fridge, where only one flame on the hob can be bothered to light, I get off on finding ways to become ever more efficient and the strict order in which I like to do things borders on the autistic: ablutions, chanting, breakfast, emails, facebook, shower, tidy room, pack, out.
It took ages to get to the assigned meeting place on the colectivo, because the traffic was horrendous and just as I got off the bus at Callao, I got a text message saying they were unable to come because the builders had shown up and did I want to meet later in the day. I headed back, feeling sorry for myself, until I went down the subte and walked past a mother and baby and two adolescent boys asleep (shouldn’t they be at school?) on the ground in the underpass, their cheeks directly in contact with the dirt. I saw people, one after the other, touching a pillar in the subte and crossing themselves as they walked past and realised that embedded in its surface was a tiled picture of Nuestra Señora de Luján, with a prayer to the virgencita beneath. I touched it too on behalf of the family in the underpass.
Then, in the afternoon, Lucy, my dueña and I were supposed to go to a singing lesson (to sing tangos) in the same part of town and I suggested we either walked or took the subte. Lucy insisted it was easiest by colectivo, so we spent half an hour trying to locate the bus stop to catch the right one and then an hour on the bus, as here, the buses really go round the houses. What can be walked in half an hour can just as easily be bussed in half an hour. I know which I’d rather do. So we arrived at the Institute an hour late for the lesson, which turned out not to exist in any case. Still, that gave us plenty of time to discuss the cost of public transport, which has risen by nearly twenty per cent and to admire the personalised interior of the cab of the colectivo with it’s bevilled mirrors, tassels and inscriptions.
Two aborted efforts in one day. These things have a habit of coming in threes, don’t they? I should have known better than to presume to reserve a table for José and myself at Canning. The evening was barely passable, bordering on disappointing, not least because CFBS wasn’t there. Coming to think of it, the highlight of the evening was seeing that magnificent mural again and noticing how many of the people in it I already knew. José said I had sounded so enthusiastic, he didn’t like to spoil my fun, but that if I hadn’t been bent on coming to Canning, we could have gone to the Baldosa, a milonga I’ve never even heard of, where there was an amazing programme including a canyengue lesson, something I’m very interested in learning. Ironic, really. José is for ever saying to me, ‘You know everything about Buenos Aire. Is there anything you don’t know?’ Well, there you go.
I keep meaning to take pictures of the pink blossom which is still on the trees, though only just, what with the battering they keep getting from the frequent rain. There are aspects of the rainy weather that suck – like stepping on a loose paving stone and having slimy, black water spurt up your legs from underneath and Linea B of the maldito subte getting flooded, so the sweaty tube stops are some twenty minutes long at each and every station. Nevertheless, I love this weather. I can’t believe my luck. It has been mild and fresh most days, since I got here. Not a week before my departure, I got an alarming email from Lili saying Buenos Aires is very, very hot.
It took ages to get to the assigned meeting place on the colectivo, because the traffic was horrendous and just as I got off the bus at Callao, I got a text message saying they were unable to come because the builders had shown up and did I want to meet later in the day. I headed back, feeling sorry for myself, until I went down the subte and walked past a mother and baby and two adolescent boys asleep (shouldn’t they be at school?) on the ground in the underpass, their cheeks directly in contact with the dirt. I saw people, one after the other, touching a pillar in the subte and crossing themselves as they walked past and realised that embedded in its surface was a tiled picture of Nuestra Señora de Luján, with a prayer to the virgencita beneath. I touched it too on behalf of the family in the underpass.
Then, in the afternoon, Lucy, my dueña and I were supposed to go to a singing lesson (to sing tangos) in the same part of town and I suggested we either walked or took the subte. Lucy insisted it was easiest by colectivo, so we spent half an hour trying to locate the bus stop to catch the right one and then an hour on the bus, as here, the buses really go round the houses. What can be walked in half an hour can just as easily be bussed in half an hour. I know which I’d rather do. So we arrived at the Institute an hour late for the lesson, which turned out not to exist in any case. Still, that gave us plenty of time to discuss the cost of public transport, which has risen by nearly twenty per cent and to admire the personalised interior of the cab of the colectivo with it’s bevilled mirrors, tassels and inscriptions.
Two aborted efforts in one day. These things have a habit of coming in threes, don’t they? I should have known better than to presume to reserve a table for José and myself at Canning. The evening was barely passable, bordering on disappointing, not least because CFBS wasn’t there. Coming to think of it, the highlight of the evening was seeing that magnificent mural again and noticing how many of the people in it I already knew. José said I had sounded so enthusiastic, he didn’t like to spoil my fun, but that if I hadn’t been bent on coming to Canning, we could have gone to the Baldosa, a milonga I’ve never even heard of, where there was an amazing programme including a canyengue lesson, something I’m very interested in learning. Ironic, really. José is for ever saying to me, ‘You know everything about Buenos Aire. Is there anything you don’t know?’ Well, there you go.
I keep meaning to take pictures of the pink blossom which is still on the trees, though only just, what with the battering they keep getting from the frequent rain. There are aspects of the rainy weather that suck – like stepping on a loose paving stone and having slimy, black water spurt up your legs from underneath and Linea B of the maldito subte getting flooded, so the sweaty tube stops are some twenty minutes long at each and every station. Nevertheless, I love this weather. I can’t believe my luck. It has been mild and fresh most days, since I got here. Not a week before my departure, I got an alarming email from Lili saying Buenos Aires is very, very hot.
Thursday 5 March 2009
Niño Bien
03:00. I fancied an early night. Waitresses Sandra and Paula at Niño Bien made my day by looking delighted to see me and coming over to my table to say hello. I’m famous for forgetting to pay my bill, (it happened twice,) but coming back the next day with a with a pleading smile, a sheepish apology and a tip.
This evening, I hooked up with a girlfriend I met last visit. I was really pleased to have re-established contact, but lost her, I fear, almost as easily as I found her. We were both on the overcrowded dance floor, when I made a small, low back voleo, (my toes stroking the floor) and accidentally spiked her ankle with my heel. I got a ticking off, I can tell you.
‘This is Buenos Aires,’ she said. ‘You keep your heels down.’
Having sustained an injury for months from a heedless tango teacher’s high voleo at a milonga at the Negracha, I sympathised. So when she left early, I felt terrible, but it had been an accident, a mistake. I had presumed low voleos were acceptable at a milonga. I hope I manage to wake up in time tomorrow, to meet up with the girls for coffee as arranged or I shall end up losing the lot of them. Friendship matters.
This evening, I danced mainly with an Italian called Mario – not the one I met at the Milonguita. No, this is Italian Mario, mark 2, who is only in Buenos Aires for two weeks. Another good dancer. As I left, he asked me where I’d be dancing tomorrow night and I said Canning, hoping for a final glimpse of CFBS, my irresistible, if faithless crush from the first visit.
I walked home. Scrawny alley cats gambolled and frisked between parked cars. Sleek, black rats, disappeared under front doors. Cartoneros sorted through the garbage or trailed flapping bundles of cardboard that looked like urban sculptures. There was a half-naked man, stretched out as if sunbathing, asleep on a discarded sofa on Humberto Primo. I got offered lifts by the cab-drivers queuing up for diesel at the gas station on Avenida 9 de Julio and even solicited for business a couple of times, as I walked home in my slashed trousers and décolleté. I sailed past with an understanding smile and arrived home to find a message from Jose asking whether I’d like to go out again tomorrow.
This evening, I hooked up with a girlfriend I met last visit. I was really pleased to have re-established contact, but lost her, I fear, almost as easily as I found her. We were both on the overcrowded dance floor, when I made a small, low back voleo, (my toes stroking the floor) and accidentally spiked her ankle with my heel. I got a ticking off, I can tell you.
‘This is Buenos Aires,’ she said. ‘You keep your heels down.’
Having sustained an injury for months from a heedless tango teacher’s high voleo at a milonga at the Negracha, I sympathised. So when she left early, I felt terrible, but it had been an accident, a mistake. I had presumed low voleos were acceptable at a milonga. I hope I manage to wake up in time tomorrow, to meet up with the girls for coffee as arranged or I shall end up losing the lot of them. Friendship matters.
This evening, I danced mainly with an Italian called Mario – not the one I met at the Milonguita. No, this is Italian Mario, mark 2, who is only in Buenos Aires for two weeks. Another good dancer. As I left, he asked me where I’d be dancing tomorrow night and I said Canning, hoping for a final glimpse of CFBS, my irresistible, if faithless crush from the first visit.
I walked home. Scrawny alley cats gambolled and frisked between parked cars. Sleek, black rats, disappeared under front doors. Cartoneros sorted through the garbage or trailed flapping bundles of cardboard that looked like urban sculptures. There was a half-naked man, stretched out as if sunbathing, asleep on a discarded sofa on Humberto Primo. I got offered lifts by the cab-drivers queuing up for diesel at the gas station on Avenida 9 de Julio and even solicited for business a couple of times, as I walked home in my slashed trousers and décolleté. I sailed past with an understanding smile and arrived home to find a message from Jose asking whether I’d like to go out again tomorrow.
Peru 571
Ah, my favourite! I was there both yesterday and the day before. Yesterday it was the Maldita Milonga with the rumbustious El Afronte band and the day before, it was Tango Queer.
The Maldita rocks. I raved about it on my previous trip and now, it is better than ever. The band was full on and the place was heaving, when I arrived at 23:00 to join a tanguero I met at Gricel. It wasn’t easy to spot José. The dance floor was chocker with slick movers, yet there didn’t appear to be a spare chair in sight. Within minutes of my arrival, the floor cleared and we were treated to an aesthetically thrilling performance. José showed up and we managed to find a chair to share. He is a swordsman and martial artist (taekwondo), who has been dancing for two years. Predictably, his lead was confident, smooth and elegant. He paused. And not just to Pugliese. I like. So many invitations to play…
Tango Queer is not such a different kettle of fish other than that gender is irrelevant in terms of who leads. However, as a matter of interest, there were loads of women and about two men there to start with and fifteen men by the end of the pre-milonga lesson. In spite of the large number of participants, the class was excellent and many of the women were sublime leaders. My first partner was Rosaline from Lancaster, who had something of the air of a headteacher about her, but turned out to be an earthy sort of woman with a deliciously mischievous sense of humour. An experienced ballroom dancer, herself, she was kind enough to let me lead her and I have to confess I made a pig’s ear of it. When she tried to lead me, I was reminded of a limerick about a young lady from Frome, which I can't quite recall other than the last line, which ran 'As to which would do what and to whom.'
Jeff showed up a little bit later and each of us led and followed the other. I felt very lucky to have him. He has a beautiful embrace: tender, yet firm, sensuous, yet not intrusive. I just love the feeling of having my hair touched and he unclipped and loosened my hair about my shoulders every time we danced. It was a very satisfying evening for me, not least because he was able to correct me and teach me, being an ace dancer himself.
So many good nights…
The Maldita rocks. I raved about it on my previous trip and now, it is better than ever. The band was full on and the place was heaving, when I arrived at 23:00 to join a tanguero I met at Gricel. It wasn’t easy to spot José. The dance floor was chocker with slick movers, yet there didn’t appear to be a spare chair in sight. Within minutes of my arrival, the floor cleared and we were treated to an aesthetically thrilling performance. José showed up and we managed to find a chair to share. He is a swordsman and martial artist (taekwondo), who has been dancing for two years. Predictably, his lead was confident, smooth and elegant. He paused. And not just to Pugliese. I like. So many invitations to play…
Tango Queer is not such a different kettle of fish other than that gender is irrelevant in terms of who leads. However, as a matter of interest, there were loads of women and about two men there to start with and fifteen men by the end of the pre-milonga lesson. In spite of the large number of participants, the class was excellent and many of the women were sublime leaders. My first partner was Rosaline from Lancaster, who had something of the air of a headteacher about her, but turned out to be an earthy sort of woman with a deliciously mischievous sense of humour. An experienced ballroom dancer, herself, she was kind enough to let me lead her and I have to confess I made a pig’s ear of it. When she tried to lead me, I was reminded of a limerick about a young lady from Frome, which I can't quite recall other than the last line, which ran 'As to which would do what and to whom.'
Jeff showed up a little bit later and each of us led and followed the other. I felt very lucky to have him. He has a beautiful embrace: tender, yet firm, sensuous, yet not intrusive. I just love the feeling of having my hair touched and he unclipped and loosened my hair about my shoulders every time we danced. It was a very satisfying evening for me, not least because he was able to correct me and teach me, being an ace dancer himself.
So many good nights…
Tuesday 3 March 2009
Gricel - if you're glad to be gray
The people who gave me a lift home from Gricel asked me how I liked it.
‘A lot. It’s a nice-looking venue, it’s always buzzing and there are quite a few good dancers, there.’
‘Yes,’ she said, in her forties, ‘but it’s an old crowd, don’t you think?’
‘It’s not a young crowd, but there is a mix. I had three guys your age this evening I’ll be dancing with again and again.’
I get bored with people whingeing on about age. It’s a denial of possibility. It writes off a large proportion of the human race. Like it or not, the average age of the population is on the rise. Get over it! My grown-up daughter has got the hang of my thinking. When I challenge her about some things, she says, ‘Come on, Mummy, not everyone’s twenty-five, like you!’ But I have a friend, Christine, who assures me I’m ten. And we’ve all met middle-aged twenty-somethings. Age is clearly a matter of interpretation. It’s not about how many years there are in you, but how much life there is in you. Put that in the next dictionary of modern quotations. You saw it here first.
‘A lot. It’s a nice-looking venue, it’s always buzzing and there are quite a few good dancers, there.’
‘Yes,’ she said, in her forties, ‘but it’s an old crowd, don’t you think?’
‘It’s not a young crowd, but there is a mix. I had three guys your age this evening I’ll be dancing with again and again.’
I get bored with people whingeing on about age. It’s a denial of possibility. It writes off a large proportion of the human race. Like it or not, the average age of the population is on the rise. Get over it! My grown-up daughter has got the hang of my thinking. When I challenge her about some things, she says, ‘Come on, Mummy, not everyone’s twenty-five, like you!’ But I have a friend, Christine, who assures me I’m ten. And we’ve all met middle-aged twenty-somethings. Age is clearly a matter of interpretation. It’s not about how many years there are in you, but how much life there is in you. Put that in the next dictionary of modern quotations. You saw it here first.
Monday 2 March 2009
The Milonguita
Thunder reverberated, lightning flashed and rain lashed Buenos Aires, yesterday. I spent the wettest part of the day indoors, as you do, prodding at the housework, worrying the computer, eating steak and looking longingly at my bed. How cosy it is to experience a storm from under the duvet, but I resisted the urge because lots to do. Just got on with my day, remaining ecstatically tuned in to nature’s son et lumière outside. Typically, Buenos Aires has a fairly open style of architecture. Passages between street door and accommodation are frequently open to the sky, so when it rains, it can be like fording a small river. Here, the same is true of the passage between my room and the kitchen.
This building is built like a doughnut, around an empty space and each floor has internal balconies as well as external ones. I like that. Music and the aromas of cooking drift up and down the building and it can feel as if we’re all part of the same community, all together at the same party. Sunday is particularly good.
It was weathery intermittently throughout the day and night. I finally went out around 18:00, to meet my beloved Lili, the friend of a friend of a friend, who first helped me settle into life here and who has come to be a much loved fixture in my porteño life. Lili had recently returned from Chile and she showed me her holiday pics, which included shots of the three homes of Pablo Neruda. Now there’s a guy who knew how to live.
Then, we had home-made pizza and some rather fine wine. Lili said she was going out later to meet Bety at the Milonguita and would I like to come. There is only one right answer. I was, however, dressed in jeans and flipflops. I remembered I had a battered pair of Comme il faut in the suitcase Lili had been minding for me, but I didn’t have the key. Lili got out her toolbox.
The Milonguita is located in a large hall at the Centro Montañes in Jorge Newbery. The style is elegant simplicity : high ceilings, white walls, a few coloured spotlights, tables framing a slippery, stone dance floor with a broader bank of tables, interspersed with widow chairs, by the entrance. It was the eve of Bety’s birthday, so at midnight, we had champagne and then, I had a lucky ticket and won another bottle of champage. We’ll be having that tonight at another milonga, to toast Bety on her birthday.
One of my first dances, I made the mistake of being Mother Theresa to a certain gentleman I had already looked away from twice. Ladies, be warned! Follow your instincts. I had misgivings about responding the third time, but I thought I’d give him one tanda. After all, one of my New Year's resolutions was to be kind. It was torture. When I failed to respond to the non-existent lead, he’d say ‘No importa, no importa’ as if he was the one being magnanimous. Not only was he an appalling dancer, he neither looked nor smelled right. One good thing came out of it, though. Dancing with him enhanced my appreciation of all my other partners.
Two of the men I danced with last night recognised me from my previous visit: Alberto and someone else, whose name I have already forgotten. I’m beginning to feel like I belong here, already. An Italian I danced with last night was a fragrant, skilful bailarín. Mario. He is going to be at Gricel this evening and I look forward to dancing with him again.
We tore ourselves away from the Milonguita with reluctance for beauty sleep – Lili and Bety have to work on Monday. I took a cab home, exceptionally, because lumbered with a bulky suitcase. When I got in, the street door slammed behind me, with my keys still hanging in the lock, outside. I raced upstairs. It was 02.30, but still I pounded repeatedly on the doors of three of the flats owned by my landlady, praying that no passer-by would make off with my keys in the meantime. Eventually, Sergio got up and came to the rescue. He was very kind. And the keys were still swinging in the door, glinting in the moonlight. They looked like treasure and I kissed my keyfob, a lucky shamrock sealed into a heart, given to me with plenty of glove by my machalach.
This building is built like a doughnut, around an empty space and each floor has internal balconies as well as external ones. I like that. Music and the aromas of cooking drift up and down the building and it can feel as if we’re all part of the same community, all together at the same party. Sunday is particularly good.
It was weathery intermittently throughout the day and night. I finally went out around 18:00, to meet my beloved Lili, the friend of a friend of a friend, who first helped me settle into life here and who has come to be a much loved fixture in my porteño life. Lili had recently returned from Chile and she showed me her holiday pics, which included shots of the three homes of Pablo Neruda. Now there’s a guy who knew how to live.
Then, we had home-made pizza and some rather fine wine. Lili said she was going out later to meet Bety at the Milonguita and would I like to come. There is only one right answer. I was, however, dressed in jeans and flipflops. I remembered I had a battered pair of Comme il faut in the suitcase Lili had been minding for me, but I didn’t have the key. Lili got out her toolbox.
The Milonguita is located in a large hall at the Centro Montañes in Jorge Newbery. The style is elegant simplicity : high ceilings, white walls, a few coloured spotlights, tables framing a slippery, stone dance floor with a broader bank of tables, interspersed with widow chairs, by the entrance. It was the eve of Bety’s birthday, so at midnight, we had champagne and then, I had a lucky ticket and won another bottle of champage. We’ll be having that tonight at another milonga, to toast Bety on her birthday.
One of my first dances, I made the mistake of being Mother Theresa to a certain gentleman I had already looked away from twice. Ladies, be warned! Follow your instincts. I had misgivings about responding the third time, but I thought I’d give him one tanda. After all, one of my New Year's resolutions was to be kind. It was torture. When I failed to respond to the non-existent lead, he’d say ‘No importa, no importa’ as if he was the one being magnanimous. Not only was he an appalling dancer, he neither looked nor smelled right. One good thing came out of it, though. Dancing with him enhanced my appreciation of all my other partners.
Two of the men I danced with last night recognised me from my previous visit: Alberto and someone else, whose name I have already forgotten. I’m beginning to feel like I belong here, already. An Italian I danced with last night was a fragrant, skilful bailarín. Mario. He is going to be at Gricel this evening and I look forward to dancing with him again.
We tore ourselves away from the Milonguita with reluctance for beauty sleep – Lili and Bety have to work on Monday. I took a cab home, exceptionally, because lumbered with a bulky suitcase. When I got in, the street door slammed behind me, with my keys still hanging in the lock, outside. I raced upstairs. It was 02.30, but still I pounded repeatedly on the doors of three of the flats owned by my landlady, praying that no passer-by would make off with my keys in the meantime. Eventually, Sergio got up and came to the rescue. He was very kind. And the keys were still swinging in the door, glinting in the moonlight. They looked like treasure and I kissed my keyfob, a lucky shamrock sealed into a heart, given to me with plenty of glove by my machalach.
Sunday 1 March 2009
The Independencia
Went to bed at 04:30 and woke up for no reason at all around 09:00. My eyes opened to the pretty vulva facing me. The one on the wall, reader, the one on the wall. So that’s where I was. Apart from the scratchy sheets and the aggressive pillow, it had been a good night.
I had ventured out around 23.00. Couldn’t get over the excitement of living within the reward, in the area that had been my El Dorado in the past, to be reached only after a sweaty, hard won bus journey. As I headed for Plaza Dorrego, how it warmed my heart to see my old, familiar friends, the 10, the 24, the 29, trundle past. I had expected to find a milonga in the plaza, but must have got the wrong day because a different world appeared to have landed there, the land of outdoor restaurants. So I sauntered back, past the Aladdin’s caves of the antique shops on Defensa, past the café where last year, Milwaukee Lauren and I were inducted by an elderly Argentino, into the special treat known as “the Jump of the Tiger.”
‘Ladies, do you know about the jump of the tiger? No? In Argentina, we love it. No one should die without experiencing this thing… The man stands on top of a wardrobe and the lady lies waiting on the bed and he jumps on top of her to begin… No, it is not funny. It is wonderful! Wonderful! Let me explain again…’
Bless him. We didn’t like to say, but only a man of unusually restricted growth could ever fit on top of our wardrobes. So small in fact, in order to have any effect at all, he’d need to dive straight in, lock, stock and itsy, bitsy barrel.
No Plaza Dorrego then, but there would be a milonga at the Independencia, situated just four blocks away from my flat. I would go there.
The Independencia is a hall on the first floor of an old building. It is a medium-sized, informal venue with tables scattered all around the dance floor. Apparently, it was started by Che Guevara’s family, of which the current dueña is a direct descendant. I walked into my first milonga at about 12:30 am and experienced a quiet despair. No one was dancing. There were a handful of couples dotted around the room and at four of the tables sat women, by themselves, smiling wanly into their mineral water.
At a table nearby, sat an ectomorph filming his head off. He wasn’t there to dance. He was just doing,“Egbert woz ere.” A Lenin-like character walked in and took a seat at the table next to mine. I glanced in his direction from time to time, with the faintest hint of exhasparation, to see him scribbling away for what seemed like hours, while us long-suffering women sat alone at our tables, clearly waiting for our cabeceo. After an hour of forever, an Indio gentleman recognised me from a previous assault on the Independencia and danced with me. Meanwhile, Lenin got up and asked a woman to dance and when I sat back down, he held a hand out towards me. Then he and I carried on dancing till 04:00.
When we started dancing I assumed he was one of those germanic Argentinos. We conversed in Spanish and I apologised for being less agile than usual, because out of practice, having fallen off my sledge in the early February snow and damaged a knee as well as having “callos” on both feet. He had trouble receiving me, then revealed he was in fact Jeff, a New Yorker. He loved his milonga . For the uninitiated, that’s a type of dance derived from tango. I love milonga too, so much so, I’m going to have it danced at my funeral. But it’s not my forte, so it was a great opportunity for practice. I mentioned I wanted to learn to lead and he let me lead him. All enthusiasm and no talent, I was, but that’s why I’m here. We’re going to Tango Queer together, next Tuesday and he’s going to introduce me to lots of gay women and I shall get a whole lot of leading in. Wa-hey!
When the salsa music came on, we did that as well. I showed him a move that turns me on and what do you know, he had to stand. If you’ll pardon the expression. We did a lot of laughing. We had a lot of fun. We did a lot of talking, too. Now, that’s not tango, but who cares? Actually, I do. What is tango? Now that’s a question that fascinates me.
‘How important do you think high heels are?’ I asked him.
‘I can tell you two or three places in Buenos Aires, where its commonplace to find women dancing in flat shoes. Having said that, all those things that women do? Eye-liner, mascara, stockings, high heels… They work.’
It was Jeff who told me about the Independencia’s history. Then we drifted into Argentina’s dark and dirty secrets and the miracles of technology and the sinister uses to which they are put by intelligence agencies. We talked about the antique shops of San Telmo, where Nazi memorabilia is sold. He told me about a very neat cane he found, which converted into a shot gun.
‘You wanted it, didn’t you?
‘You bet.’
‘Why do you think weapons are sexy?’
He thought about that for a moment.
‘They are sexy because they are about power.’
‘And power is sexy because it derives from the genetic imperative to survive,’ I concluded.
As I drifted off to sleep, I thought some more about the allure of tango. Is it just another expression of the genetic drive, an artistic take on insurance?
I had ventured out around 23.00. Couldn’t get over the excitement of living within the reward, in the area that had been my El Dorado in the past, to be reached only after a sweaty, hard won bus journey. As I headed for Plaza Dorrego, how it warmed my heart to see my old, familiar friends, the 10, the 24, the 29, trundle past. I had expected to find a milonga in the plaza, but must have got the wrong day because a different world appeared to have landed there, the land of outdoor restaurants. So I sauntered back, past the Aladdin’s caves of the antique shops on Defensa, past the café where last year, Milwaukee Lauren and I were inducted by an elderly Argentino, into the special treat known as “the Jump of the Tiger.”
‘Ladies, do you know about the jump of the tiger? No? In Argentina, we love it. No one should die without experiencing this thing… The man stands on top of a wardrobe and the lady lies waiting on the bed and he jumps on top of her to begin… No, it is not funny. It is wonderful! Wonderful! Let me explain again…’
Bless him. We didn’t like to say, but only a man of unusually restricted growth could ever fit on top of our wardrobes. So small in fact, in order to have any effect at all, he’d need to dive straight in, lock, stock and itsy, bitsy barrel.
No Plaza Dorrego then, but there would be a milonga at the Independencia, situated just four blocks away from my flat. I would go there.
The Independencia is a hall on the first floor of an old building. It is a medium-sized, informal venue with tables scattered all around the dance floor. Apparently, it was started by Che Guevara’s family, of which the current dueña is a direct descendant. I walked into my first milonga at about 12:30 am and experienced a quiet despair. No one was dancing. There were a handful of couples dotted around the room and at four of the tables sat women, by themselves, smiling wanly into their mineral water.
At a table nearby, sat an ectomorph filming his head off. He wasn’t there to dance. He was just doing,“Egbert woz ere.” A Lenin-like character walked in and took a seat at the table next to mine. I glanced in his direction from time to time, with the faintest hint of exhasparation, to see him scribbling away for what seemed like hours, while us long-suffering women sat alone at our tables, clearly waiting for our cabeceo. After an hour of forever, an Indio gentleman recognised me from a previous assault on the Independencia and danced with me. Meanwhile, Lenin got up and asked a woman to dance and when I sat back down, he held a hand out towards me. Then he and I carried on dancing till 04:00.
When we started dancing I assumed he was one of those germanic Argentinos. We conversed in Spanish and I apologised for being less agile than usual, because out of practice, having fallen off my sledge in the early February snow and damaged a knee as well as having “callos” on both feet. He had trouble receiving me, then revealed he was in fact Jeff, a New Yorker. He loved his milonga . For the uninitiated, that’s a type of dance derived from tango. I love milonga too, so much so, I’m going to have it danced at my funeral. But it’s not my forte, so it was a great opportunity for practice. I mentioned I wanted to learn to lead and he let me lead him. All enthusiasm and no talent, I was, but that’s why I’m here. We’re going to Tango Queer together, next Tuesday and he’s going to introduce me to lots of gay women and I shall get a whole lot of leading in. Wa-hey!
When the salsa music came on, we did that as well. I showed him a move that turns me on and what do you know, he had to stand. If you’ll pardon the expression. We did a lot of laughing. We had a lot of fun. We did a lot of talking, too. Now, that’s not tango, but who cares? Actually, I do. What is tango? Now that’s a question that fascinates me.
‘How important do you think high heels are?’ I asked him.
‘I can tell you two or three places in Buenos Aires, where its commonplace to find women dancing in flat shoes. Having said that, all those things that women do? Eye-liner, mascara, stockings, high heels… They work.’
It was Jeff who told me about the Independencia’s history. Then we drifted into Argentina’s dark and dirty secrets and the miracles of technology and the sinister uses to which they are put by intelligence agencies. We talked about the antique shops of San Telmo, where Nazi memorabilia is sold. He told me about a very neat cane he found, which converted into a shot gun.
‘You wanted it, didn’t you?
‘You bet.’
‘Why do you think weapons are sexy?’
He thought about that for a moment.
‘They are sexy because they are about power.’
‘And power is sexy because it derives from the genetic imperative to survive,’ I concluded.
As I drifted off to sleep, I thought some more about the allure of tango. Is it just another expression of the genetic drive, an artistic take on insurance?
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