Pensamientos del Tango
|
|
December 15, 2008. Dancing in a Cold Climate The temperature is minus 6 Centigrade, winds blow snowy dancing phantoms, and only the brave venture to milongas. The dance takes on a more existential character on the nearly empty floor, and the music competes with heating fans. It is on such nights that tango as a way of life is starkly rendered. For then come the souls who must dance and are carried by tango as by a parent through the months and years. The outside world convulses, grows cold, money loses value, old lives fade and disappear, new lives are born. Inside, the circle of dance describes its ageless journey. Warmth at the fire, the social side of tango is both comforting and in winter a redoubt, a tiny shelter on the prairie. It is tempting to bend the code and speak during the dance, out of a need for company in a cold climate. Who are we who dance? On nights like these, something other than we thought we were, and we return home wondering. November 13, 2008. Dancing in a Warm Climate Tango is alive and well on O'ahu, Hawai'i, as we've discovered in the last month we've been here happily dancing. As usual, we have to be near tango when we travel.  Maestro George Garcia is the long-time teacher, performer and DJ/host in Honolulu. For our stay in Hawai'i, we attended his regular Monday Milongas and Wednesday Practicas. He was a most gracious host and the tango community were friendly and very interesting people we will miss. Thanks to Daniel (below) for taking the photo above. George, in black, is on Hedy's right.  George and our new tango friends introduced us to such local highlights as the Zippy restaurants and the inimitable ice creamery, Bubbies, with its mochi treats: rice-cake skins over ice cream. We watched George teach and he is a supportive, clear, witty instructor. George has taught and performed around the world, including Japan, and has a regular gig in San Francisco every year in March. He seems to know everyone in the tango world. He is especially good at conveying the essentials for dancing close-embrace milonguero style tango, which prepares his students well for Buenos Aires. They learn the cabeceo and, like George, are commendable observers of the line of dance, and convey a real love of the music. 
Hawai'i's extraordinary climate is of course a phenomenon and so kind to the human body. Daily life for us simplified to playing in the warm surf at Waikiki and watching all ages from around the world on the beach.  Why is a three-year old's first impulse to throw sand with both hands back at the sea? I snorkeled at Hanauma Bay, and we marveled at the flora in the Foster Botanical Garden downtown.Warmth creates smiles and Hawai'i is friendly, and the aloha spirit is alive in the practicas and milongas. That friendliness is enhanced by the fact Hawai'i is a meeting place (O'ahu means gathering place). Its population - temporary and permanent - is as diverse as anywhere on earth. People here are used to difference and change. Heck, Barrack Obama spent most of his youth on O'ahu, and he visited his ailing grandmother while we were here. He stayed in a hotel a block from us. Because Hawai'i is such an attractive destination, many of the world's best tango dancers have performed and taught here. Forever Tango's been through. Gavito was a big influence. Similar sized tango communities would have trouble affording them, but the climate is the allure. Cirque de Soleil has been presenting its Saltimbanco show here during our stay. The show's Argentine folklorica performer Eduardo Rodriguez gave several popular chacarera lessons to George's tango community while we were there. He performed an eye-popping boleadoras routine, balls on the ends of ropes used by gauchos. He and Hedy also performed a hot tango demo at one of the milongas to the music of Juan Carlos Caceres. 
Hawai'i has its own dance, of course, the hula. Kahila, its pre-contact form (the centuries before Captain Cook arrived), is most intriguing. It was danced to chanting, mele. The dancers, including graceful strong men, seem to become one with nature right before one's eyes. As everyone knows, the dance tells a story. When the hula is done well, especially to chanting, the story is mythic and takes place in ritual space.Other interesting musical features of Hawai'i are slack-key guitar, a special tuning and style of acoustic playing that developed in 19th century Hawai'i from Mexican influences, and falsetto singing, which when done well by men and women is transporting. To learn more about tango on O'ahu and catch milongas and practicas when you travel to Hawai'i, maybe take a lesson or two from George, visit George's website: islatango. We highly recommend you meet this welcoming tango community when you visit here. September 28, 2008. DJ-ing, Part Two: Now some tips for building a successful evening. And they're only tips, not rules. The only thing that matters is that dancers love dancing and DJs love DJ-ing. You choose for yourself how you get there. 1. Do lots of dancing. Ask yourself, "Have I experienced the tango trance?" If your answer is yes, you're ready for Tip 2. If the answer is no, dance more and seek out as many different dance venues as possible, here, there and everywhere, until you experience the trance. Sometimes that means traveling to milongas or festivals with celebrated DJs. It's money well spent. How do you know whether you've experienced the trance? It's a high, which means that as the evening progresses you feel better and better, not worse, without drugs, alcohol or even sex, although that gets tangled up in it. For the trance to engage, the milonga will have good music in a well structured playlist, a critical mass of good dancers, and that intangible chemistry among the community in that place, at that time. The right lighting helps, as does a good sound system, and a congenial environment, friendly hosts, nice (or funky) decor. Good rule of thumb comes via Eliza Doolittle: I could have danced all night. In other words, if you're going home after an hour or two of dancing because you're tired, you probably aren't in the trance state. In the trance, it's 2 AM, you've been dancing for four hours straight after a day at work, and you're ready to head next to the all-night milonga. Not all that different from Sufi dancing. 2. Examine the musical structure of evenings where you entered the trance. Ask the DJs for their advice. Some may show you their playlists. Some may even provide CDs. Or not. Whether the DJ helps you much or not, by listening you'll probably make interesting discoveries: the use of tandas and cortinas, more tandas of tangos than tandas of waltzes and milongas but certainly the latter two are well-represented, mostly golden age music (alternative milongas are another subject - more on that another time), a variety of bands, eras, rhythms, orchestral complexity, sound qualities, i.e., a range of fidelity, instrumentals and pieces with voices, different types of voices, and so on. 3. Start to build some sample playlists. I suggest starting evenings with golden age tangos that have some spirit but are not too fast or too slow or too complex, containing strong danceable beats, relatively good fidelity. Mostly instrumental to start, but some male voice pieces are ok. Like love-making, it's (usually) better not to deliver too much intensity of romantic melody or complexity at this stage. You're inviting dancers to the floor and they are still in the grip of the outside world. They need gentle nurturing and probably about an hour before they can enter the trance, if all is going well. They can't be rushed or assaulted or too obviously seduced by the music. 
As the evening progresses, you'll want to vary moods, tempos, bands, eras, fidelity (too much lower-quality fidelity will tire dancers even if they don't know why), and voices male, female and ensembles. Insertion of waltzes and milongas at the right times provides perfect mood variation - the melancholic floating charm of waltzes and the cheerful or even sarcastic grounded peasant wit of milongas opening up the full range of emotions when mingled with tangos of all sorts. Waltzes and milongas have varying tempos too, so it's valuable to build tandas of them of the same tempo, and not to overlook, for example, the deliciously slow milongas.Most DJs save the more complex, dramatic tangos - like later Pugliese and Piazzolla - until well on in the evening, when dancers are well in the trance and the good dancers have all arrived. Newer tango music (like Gotan, Bajofondo, Narocotango, Otros Aires, Melingo, Kevin Johansen, etc.), as beautiful as it sometimes is for dancing, has to be used carefully in traditional milongas. Even at the most popular young milongas like Practica X in Buenos Aires and other communities, new music comprises only a tiny fraction of an evening overall. My preference is to introduce it later in the evening once the trance is well established, to use it sparingly in the company of golden age, use only what has a real tango feel (see tango trance above), and use electronic drumbeat new music especially sparingly as too much can be numbing or herd the emotions into the non-tango realm, after which it could be impossible to rescue the evening. Jazz is tricky on that count too, tango jazz included - as exciting and interesting as it can be. Jazz, with its very complex rhythms and challenging chord changes, can induce dancers to retreat into their heads, into a cerebral state rather than an emotional state, and the trance is lost. World music can be fun. A few world music pieces later in the evening can work really well. Tango has a global history. Countries like Finland, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Holland, Russia, Uruguay, and of course France have produced interesting tangos with close linkage to Argentine tango. And some non-tango music inhabits the tango emotional and rhythmic universe. Where do you find the music? Tango collections on CDs in North American music stores are generally not useful - often the wrong kind of tangos for dancing, or not Argentine tango. In any case, a retail collection does not a milonga make, that is, retail collections are not tango-trance building playlists. Good source is Zivals, the Tango Store in Buenos Aires. If you're in BA, you can spend hours there listening to their big selection. You can also buy from them online, that is, order CDs to be sent to you. Some music stores in big cities, like Virgin in Paris, have lots of tango. I spent many happy years listening to the online Todo Tango site to educate myself. Infinite selection of tangos in streaming audio, and huge amount of biographical and other information. You can buy CDs from them but not download. I've bought many CDs at tango festivals. I expect the upcoming Portland Tangofest will have CDs for sale. And there's downloading from iTunes and other sites. In my early years I bought playlists directly from DJs, North American and Buenos Aires' DJs - a really useful way to see how songs are organized into tandas - the way the whole evening is orchestrated and the way individual tandas are built. As for what to buy, in addition to your own listening and examining other DJs playlists, I suggest going to Texan Stephen Brown's site for building a collection. Good level-headed advice. Originally I played CDs at milongas, scrambling to insert one, then another. Later I burned playlists onto CDs. Eventually I turned to using a laptop computer, which is what many DJs in the world now use. I plug mine into a professional sound system at the Cafe Casablanca. I play uncompressed, lossless music whenever I can, although some compressions are pretty good and getting better. I've taken my music mostly from CDs, but I download too, and the bit rates for downloading are improving, which produces a better output. I try to stay vigilant during an evening, working with my computer's equalizer and the Cafe's sound system to make the fidelity and volume as uniform as possible, and the base, midrange and treble well balanced. Because I'm also dancing a lot of the evening, I don't always manage to fix sound problems that pop up; often music will sound very different on one's headphones at home than over a sound system at a milonga. I invite comments about the sound quality from the dancers, whose comfort is my first concern. 4. Four is the best number of tangos in a tanda unless the tangos are unusually long - new tangos, for example. Sometimes one or two of them in a tanda are enough. The idea is to give a couple long enough time dancing together for their bodies to get well acquainted. I play two tandas of tangos, then a tanda of waltzes, then two tandas of tangos, then a tanda of milongas - that's my basic unit, 22 songs, at three minutes average per song adding up to 66 minutes of music plus cortinas. The waltzes come first because people need (or at least I do) time to warm up before tackling a milonga. Waltz and milonga tandas are three songs each. In BA, they're usually four, but for some reason that doesn't work as well in North America. I use cortinas of 30 seconds. I like them to surge up pretty fast, then near the end fade away for about five seconds. I use the same cortina the whole night until the late hours when I'm entering experimental territory, which depends on the dancers and their mood. Choosing cortinas is an art form in itself. Their purpose is to clear the dance floor and contribute to the arc of the evening you're trying to build, not destroy it. Some DJs can use high-energy latin cortinas, maybe cumbia, for example, to great effect. Sometimes too much energy blasts an evening to pieces. Some unusual sounds deepen the trance; sometimes unusual sounds shatter it. 5. Final note for this entry. DJs need to be aware of their dancers on the floor - who they are, their dance experience and styles, their moods individually and collectively, their music preferences (you can pick this up very fast, even if you've never met the dancers before), their level of fatigue, their romantic aspirations (yes, it's pretty obvious). With this information, DJs can innovate on the spot with their playlists where the dancers seem to require it. You can move around in the playlist, and search for other music in the computer/collection that will work better for that moment. In this respect, DJs are very much like the dancers, seeking to live in the now, except with the responsibility for helping not just one partner but all the evening's dancers live there too. September 13, 2008. DJ-ing, Part One: Learning to DJ Argentine tango dances - milongas - is as steep a challenge as learning to dance the tango. And like the mystery of entry to becoming a good dancer, one does not take DJ-ing up out of a sense of duty or in the spirit of signing on for a day job. One responds to a call, a numinous old tango owl calling one's name. In blogs now ancient, I've described some of the weird perches for DJs in Buenos Aires, sometimes cages above the dance floor, access to which is a narrow ladder fit only for owl flight or monkey shinnying. DJs in BA are revered, as are the best practitioners around the world, but they wisely remain invisible, as there are dangers in providing a fix like the tango high to addicts. DJs either don't earn money at all or laughably little, so their movitation is certainly not monetary. Because they are usually not seen and even when visible seem to be doing nothing much, just slouching around sound systems, their fame when they have it is the bargain basement variety and they rarely receive or expect public thanks in milongas; dancers' attentions are usually on their partners and the milonga's social hum. No, the motivation is the same as for dancing: to be near the astonishing music somehow and either allowing it to move through one's body and join with it to express one's emotions and soul in movement, or - in the case of the DJ - creating an environment where a community can do so. DJ-ing is its own reward, in other words, like the dancing.  Every DJ brings his or her unique sensibility and creativity to the table. Nonetheless, like the dance, how to create an evening of music that opens the portals to the tango high for dancers has it own codes. Simply playing music one likes has surprisingly little to do with it - at least in the apprenticeship stages. What does an apprenticeship entail? First, there is becoming intimate with the music of the tradition and the dance's movements. When I say intimate, I mean to have felt the music so viscerally (and ideally felt by dancing to it) and lived so deeply inside its rhythms and melodies for long enough to have experienced the tango high oneself to a degree amounting to an addiction. And when I say tradition, I mean music mostly from the eras when dance was king, i.e., the vieja guardia and golden age in Buenos Aires and to some extent in Paris - the 20s, 30s, and 40s. For the fact is that by some miracle at a certain time and place, forces came together to create a unique body of music made by wonderful musicians for passionate dancers, and this body of music is so infinitely rich for tango dancers then and now and forever that it is rather flimsy speculation to imagine that it could ever be better, just as Strauss' waltzes and the best classical music and best music of other traditions and indeed all great art transcends time and has an eternal life. Another miracle, one not available for Strauss, is that the actual sound of those musicians was recorded, preserved for subsequent generations. Strangely, it is difficult for bands after the golden age to reproduce that magical repertoire or advance upon it, hence we have DJs anchoring our dance experience for the most part, creating playlists of old recordings. Is this cherishing the past really so odd? If one were discussing yoga and the martial arts or any number of other long living human activities, reverence for the tradition would seem perfectly normal, innovating something to done only carefully. Our anti-historical era tends to disparage learning from the past, even has trouble believing there was a past. Apprentice DJs can study the structure of Buenos Aires traditional milongas. Lawyers and doctors, carpenters and plumbers, poets and violinists begin their journey towards mastery and their own potential new and innovative contribution with careful examination of the past. A reverence for what has gone before need not be blind, but neither is a student likely to accomplish much without respect for tradition. More than a hundred years of tango has transmitted a very rich tradition, including how a dance evening can be constructed for success. Fortunately, the apprentice does not need to journey far to witness this tradition. Going to Buenos Aires is a good idea, but modern disciples the world over practice it and share it at milongas. The proof is in the pudding, and being present at successful milongas, whether at festivals or regular events, is to experience a power that points the way forward for student even as it displays the wisdom of the past. More on this subject in future blogs, including other aspects of apprenticeship and a few suggestions for building a successful evening. August 10, 2008. Good Neighbours: Our neighbours in Vancouver have a lively tango scene. Last week we danced at Claude and Hazel's regular Tuesday milonga in the Polish Community Centre on Fraser Street. Claude and Hazel have hosted the milonga for ten years and celebrated that anniversary with a special milonga a couple of weeks ago. Claude's tango heritage is fascinating. His father was Tano Genaro Eposito, one of the early great band leaders (also a prolific composer, bandoneon player and guitarist) who took tango from BA to Paris in the twenties. From Paris, tango spread to the world for the first time. The photo below was taken when the band played at La Coupole in Montparnasse in 1931. Claude's father is the bandoneon player on the right. Parisian licensing rules in those days required members to wear costumes.  The Vancouver Polish Community centre has two good dance floors, one up and one down. This last time, the one up was occupied by a video gamers convention: row upon row of tables with computer terminals and big screens exploding with game action, and before each screen a young man in a black T-shirt. I counted two women among the hundred or more young men. Another group of happy fanatics, like the tango dancers downstairs who normally dance upstairs. Downstairs the room was more intimate, a lower ceiling, a nice little bar and some tables, and Hazel's usual grapes and hospitality while Claude delivered excellent music in BA style - tandas and cortinas. Local Claude and Hazel associate, tango teacher and powerhouse tango impresario Gabriela was there, advertising her upcoming weekend with Oscar and Georgina, two outstanding BA teachers and Forever Tango performers. Gabriela knows everyone in the BA tango scene and on tour and brings in first-class talent for the benefit of her Vancouver community and our region. Probably about 100 dancers were moving in the space, which with its low ceiling and pillars reminded me of El Beso in BA. The skill level and energy were high, and there was a good mix of ages. We cherish our dancing in Vancouver: we are always warmly welcomed. We are delighted when Vancouver dancers visit us or we get together in other cities. We've been visiting Vancouver milongas for many years, including Semiral's, Nadia's and Claudio's, Wendy's practica, all pioneers of tango in Vancouver with a long record of community service, like Claude and Hazel. Recently new milongas have started, Clarry's Arrabal on Fridays, the Libertango on Saturdays, the milonga just launched at El Centro, the outdoor event on Granville Island. John Sanders has for years maintained his website, All Vancouver Tango, listing everything that's going on. Visiting milongas in other cities is a wonderful way to enrich one's dance experience. To begin with, the organizing and supporting one does at home or witnesses close up, not to mention local politics, are less visible at milongas one visits. It seems like a spectacle arrived at without effort - a nice vacation illusion. And one is simply less visible oneself, especially in big centres. Visitors can disappear into the crowd, be freer from scrutiny and can therefore focus exclusively on the internal experience of dancing, with some very pleasant socializing thrown in. Also, good dancers - those with whom we dance and those we watch - are inspiring, as are DJs demonstrating their art using the timeless methods of Buenos Aires and new experimentation. Certainly, the strong energy of a big dancing community at a milonga is invigorating and the royal road to the tango trance. We like to travel to Salt Spring Island near us, Port Townsend too, and of course Seattle, where a couple of weekends ago we attended the annual Tango Magic festival, ably organized by Arturo, with about 600 people on the dancefloor at the same time in the first big milongas of the weekend. Our friends Tony and Ilana, beautiful dancers and performers and long-time teachers, host a regular milonga in Seattle we love attending. Michelle Badion's 15th annual Tango Cabaret has just wrapped up. As with Clay Nelson's two tangofests in Portland, another terrific city for tango, local volunteers are the fuel for these events and we salute them all. Clay's new little Ashland, Oregon, wine and tango fest, is taking place this weekend. San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Montreal, Toronto, Denver, Sante Fe, communities big and small throughout North America, Hawaii, Central America, of course South America, Europe, Asia, festivals and regular milongas and practicas - the original Argentine tango is now everywhere - thanks in no small part to Tano Genaro. Google tango before you go on your next trip, and take your dance shoes. July 6, 2008: Summer Pleasures:  Our community had the good fortune of a visit by Eduardo Saucedo and Marisa Quiroga and their manager kikki last weekend as they rested on their way to Nora's Tango Week in San Francisco and points beyond.Eduardo and Marisa were in top form. They did not teach but they generously performed at two milongas, including at our home base of the Cafe Casablanca, and demonstrated why they are so popular in Buenos Aires and major festivals there and around the world. Eduardo's big-hearted energy gave us all a lift, and it was a joy to see his performing partner Marisa for the first time in our community - and in North America. Her professional ballet career with Argentina's Colon company was very evident in her grace and precision. Eduardo's technique was more impressive than ever, and his dancing displayed the perfect balance of technique and passion. Friends from Port Townsend and other locations in our region visited for the weekend, another pleasure of those early summer days, and an example of how the tango, with its shared emotional language, brings people together. Learning tango involves learning to open the heart and express emotion cathartically, fulfillingly and respectfully. No activity with such emotional power is without its dangers, but this aspect of the tango is perhaps its greatest reward. May 20, 2008: Tango in Vienna:  After an initial busy week post-Paris of dancing in Vienna with the local cherubs, sightseeing and relative-visiting, and a week's retreat in Bad Schoenau in Niederoesterreiche, we're back in tango action in Vienna.European spas provide exceptionally good value and variety in spa services, food and amenities. Competition is heavy, and staff have been highly trained to do all things well. It is true some spa offerings border on alchemy. A new treatment here exposes patients to minus 110 degrees Centigrade briefly to numb nerve endings for treating some conditions. There is much wrapping of bodies in sacks containing substances like hay, mud and even carbon dioxide as well as other joinings of humans with the elements. Nonetheless, the spa principle is a good one. Spa-visiting is integral to Austria's culture, at least urban culture. People are entitled to regular visits (three weeks every three years) for preventive health care paid for by the government, and many with chronic conditions are sent to spas for treatment. I'm a particular fan of the smorgasbord of saunas of astonishing variety, steam baths, hot tubs of every temperature, swimming pools, mulitple fragrances, therapeutic colours, etc. Even better, one is able to enjoy first-class food and drink about every thirty minutes, which is probably more than a little at odds with growing healthier. Our spa town this time features some of Austria's most beautiful scenery with long walks through authentic farm country of rolling hills - a green, tidy and productive landscape of fields, meadows and sustainable forests. We walked at least six hours a day.  It is not the Alpine vistas of stereotypical Austria, as beautiful as they are; rather, it is the less well-known but exceptionally well-preserved middle-altitude farm country seldom seen by foreign tourists. We were the only visitors from outside Austria at Bad Schoenau, for example, and saw farms little changed since the 19th century, although farmers have grown much wealthier and have the modern conveniences inside their ancient farmhouses. The tango scene in Vienna has ramped up since our last visit a couple of years ago. Lots of practicas and milongas, an army of local teachers, including several skilled nuevo tango ones, and it seems an endless stream of Argentinian and other teachers passing through. Good websites are the Tango Austria site and Ernesto's. They show regular tango events every night of the week and a supermarket of special ones. "Why not go to Bratislava?!" in Slovakia, is one entry. Why not, indeed. What the heck. We'll go there. Our first milonga this time in Vienna was at the Deutschmeistersaal on the Albertgasse, another reprise for us. Very nice big space, great floor, good sound system, friendly people, including host/DJ Rafael, with whom we've chatted during each of several previous visits. We'll be able to go there once more before we leave. Our first inkling of the ramping-up factor came upon our arrival near the start of the milonga when the music was almost entirely new electronic drumbeat tango without cortinas, for perhaps an hour and a half. Many young people on the floor dancing open, Practica X style tango, innovative and having fun. Probably more than a hundred dancers. Later came golden age, and we danced to old and new music non-stop until about 2 am. The next night was to be an even bigger milonga at the Galerie Ideal, off the Mariahilfer Strasse, where we'd been in past years. A big space with art on the walls. This year Sergei Tumas from Los Angeles, late of the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, four years of intensive tango in Buenos Aires and a tour with Julio Iglesias, was performing and teaching. Cheerful guy and he's certainly channelled the Argentinian masters with whom he studied, like Gavito, in his look and dance. 
We couldn't attend, but will be there soon, probably more than once, as there are several milongas and other events every week there. The next night we danced at El Firulete, a traditional milonga inside the Ring on the funky Backerstrasse at the Tourist Club facility. The photo illustrates the fate of those at this milonga who disobey the line of dance code.El Firulete is on the same street as the two Figlmuller schnitzel houses of justifiable fame. We'd been to this milonga on several previous visits (not to mention gaped in awe at the gargantuan schnitzels hanging over our plates at both the aforementioned Figlmullers), and it is still hosted by Nico from Buenos Aires (eight years in Vienna now, he declares), a stalwart and perhaps the first to host a milonga in the city, certainly a pioneer here. Not all tango events here are optimum, which is true anywhere. As an aid to potential visitors, we are happy to provide information about our experiences. In the meantime, we'll be dancing most of our remaining days in Europe, and are beginning to think about the pleasures of home. May 6, 2008: More Tango in Paris, Never the Last: I've listened to the new Melingo CD now and can report it carries much of the fun and interest of the April 29th concert. Melingo's agenda is to evoke and show respect for tango's poets, particularly those who "identify with the suffering and the cunning of the people," as poet Luis Alposta writes in the album notes, hence the "maldito" title, an evocation also of the French tradition of Villon, Rimbaud and Baudelaire. Melingo sets Argentinian poets' words to his music or writes his own words and music in their tradition. In this respect, his tangos are a departure from the tango of nostalgia, at least where recollection is maudlin rather than maldito, and perhaps more in line with what Borges had in mind when he scorned the tango's becoming less muscular, less raw. If there ever was a voice that expresses maldito, it is Melingo's. I love his articulation, word by word, of Argentinian castillano and lunfardo. One song that very tenderly expresses a maldito recollection in a slow milonga is "Montmartre de Hoy" (the Paris district of Montmartre of today) in which an old Argentinian tanguero remembers his times there during the earlier hayday of the tango in Paris - "plaza Pigalle . . . rue Fontaine." "La bruma avanza del bulevar/sobre mis suenos de juventud." (Words by poet Enrique Cadicamo) The melody ran through my head as we made our own way up and down les rues de Montmartre and eventually paid homage to another dancer forever still now in Montmartre's cemetary, the great ballet genius Nijinsky. 
Our experience of tango dancing in Paris in the milongas was limited to three by the rigours of sightseeing. Brochures printed regularly list five to ten tango events - practicas or milongas - every night of the week. Sorry to have missed the Saturday night all nighter, for example. We attended Les Ailes du Tango on Monday, the Vice-Versa on Wednesday, and the Red Velvet on Friday. At all three, people were passionate about tango and friendly (as were people everywhere, pretty well unfailingly, including waiters, notwithstanding the myth of Parisians being unwelcoming of strangers), the music good. The milongas were crowded for their available space, like the Red Velvet with its two dance floors, one stone, one wood, the red-velvet, high-ceiling ambience of the old cinema it once was. I haven't seen that many disco balls hanging from the ceiling since my last nightmare of old Las Vegas. People just didn't go home. When the younger set started dancing their more open tango after about 1:30 am, the traditionals were still hanging on, creating new navigational challenges, particularly since in my view the line of dance is less observed in Paris than Buenos Aires, to the detriment of all - just one small quibble. Apr. 30, 2008: Tango in Paris: To hear and see Daniel Melingo last night at the Cafe de la Danse in the Bastille district of Paris is to be reminded powerfully (if we need reminding after the French/Argentinian collaboration that is Gotan Project) that Paris is tango's second home and still a driving force in tango's evolution. Tango came to Paris from Buenos Aires in the early years of the last century, and from Paris electrified the world, not for the last time. Melingo, 51, delivered one of the most astounding performances I've ever witnessed. The capacity audience of perhaps a thousand people in the small theatre for the second of two shows here was ecstatic, and spent most of the last third of the concert on their feet transported and shouting with happiness, I among them, and could not bear to see him go. 
Classically trained (like Astor Piazzolla), Melingo and his band - bandoneon, acoustic double base, guitar and a hugely talented guy on mandolyn, banjo, trombone and musical saw - provided first-class musicianship, breathtaking really, including a duet at one point by the guitar and bandoneon that was so intricate and perfect that I could have listened to them alone for hours. As Melingo has reminded us, tango is as complex as classical music and jazz. It is a completely fulfilling musical experience. He played two of tango's first instruments last night: clarinet, which he'd studied as a young man, and guitar. His clarinet was serious improvisational tango in his hands. He also played kazoo and did things with his feet and mouth and the microphone that had to be seen and heard to be believed. (Not to mention his shoes and socks, one of the latter of which was sniffed repeatedly like an intoxicant then thrown to the crowd, Elvis style, at evening's end.) But Melingo is a true creator, a composer, poet and philosopher, someone who has created more than 100 new tangos, has extensively studied lunfardo, the underworld argot of Buenos Aires and language of the tango, and written in it, and has explored widely and incisively the culture of tango and of his time. Even that doesn't capture all that he is. From his first appearance on stage, in a slightly deconstructed version of the traditional tango costume of black suit and a fedora as mobile as a rabbit, he signals the entry of a theatrical genius. His body is a living instrument, he is a great actor and mime. He began the evening in what seemed to be an ironic representation of the traditional Argentine tango cantor, with that persona's repertoire of melodramatic gestures and vocal punches. But before long he'd taken us to a deeper place. There was no part of the stage he did not visit, there was no posture conceivably human and beyond he did not display. Every syllable of every lyric he gave facial and full bodily expression to, until by half way through the performance what initially seemed like playful quirks became a theatrical language so powerful and universal that I believe we all felt we had broken free of our individuality through him and become common humanity completely alive together. As Hedy said, she thought the gods had descended onto that stage from some mythical realm. Melingo is tango's Charlie Chaplin. He has the emotional power of Edif Piaf, the sparrow in black. Nor could I help recalling the great French director, actor and mime, Jacques Tati, and the incomparable mime, Marcel Marceau. It is undoubtedly true that Melingo is "the man who is making tango seriously cool," as British journalist Tim Cumming put it after hearing Melingo performing in London as part of the launch of his new album, "Maldito Tango." (Maldito means damned or cursed.) He is not doing it alone, of course, but it is hard to imagine more of a renaissance tango giant than this small thin dynamo from Argentina and now certainly from and of the world. For more information, see Tim Cumming's article and a recent interview in French with Jorge Ruiz. (Hedy and I have our great friend Roland Grittani to thank for arranging our attendance at and accompanying us to the concert last night. Roland is an accordianist and performer of renown, and a tanguero, and lives in Paris half of each year and Victoria the other half, which sounds pretty good to us. Roland also rushed us to our first milonga (Les Ailes du Tango, hosted by Portena Jessyca) here in Paris within hours of our arrival, where we not only enjoyed hours of friendly social dancing, we were also inveighled into performing while Roland played one of his beautiful waltzes. No better cure for jet lag exists than three or four happy hours of tango.) Mar. 23, 2008: The Tao of Tango: People have written about the Tao of Tango, the Zen of Tango, and other expressions of tango as meditation and a spiritual path. This aspect of tango tends to appear later in one's experience of the dance. 
Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching is very fine, and sets the stage for considering the tango in a Taoist light:"Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone." This fits into the unconscious competence stage of tango development, where the conceptual brain and the ego play a smaller role - eventually no role - in movement on the dance floor. The dancer has become the dance. Like meditation, tango should not be thought about and talked about too much. The emphasis should be on the doing, not the thinking about doing. Replace tao with tango in these lines: "The tao that can be told/is not the eternal Tao" and "Free from desire, you realize the mystery" and you're on your way to the infinite in the tango. The tango requires hard work. The Tao is not about being lazy. The Music Man's Think System - just think about the movement and it will happen - will not suffice. Much has been said about connection in tango and the feelings. Yes, the tango cannot be danced without feeling. Yes, learning to open the heart is essential. And yes, the dance at its core is not about steps and figures; it is about an experience, ultimately an experience of the mystery of life that cannot be put into words. But like any craft and art form and indeed any form of meditation, we still have to learn the mechanics. The steps and figures of tango must be explored and mastered. They are the unique particulars of this unique dance movement. Passion is not enough. Connection is not enough. One can feel great wet pails of emotion on the dance floor and be no more than a water hazard for others and not have had a tango experience oneself, only a shower experience. There must be an equal devotion to technique. Although the years of careful work on technique cannot be avoided, either for leaders or followers, yet it is wise to govern the effort of mastering technique. Technique can become all-consuming, an end in itself, and again the tango path is lost. Only taking lessons and practising without dancing in milongas where the learning brain is turned off and one is open to the moment and the mystery is not tango or the tao. As the Tao Te Ching puts it: "Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt." Leaders in their often obsessive learning and their desperation to apply it on the dance floor will benefit from the Tao Te Ching's advice for them on control, and followers will thank them for becoming followers of the Tao of Tango. : Giving birth and nourishing, To sum up, leaders and followers alike will discover joy when they are both "present and can welcome all things." Feb. 24, 2008: Tango Festivals: Seven hundred souls attended the annual Portland Valentango the week before last. Kudos to Clay Nelson and his team and the Portland tango community for continuing the tradition of these festivals: the Valentango and the October festival.  The rather dark photo above is of Alex Krebs' 11-member Orquesta Tipica with four bandoneons on the stage of the Tiffany Centre ballroom at the Valentango Gala Saturday night expertly playing arrangements of golden age tangos specially prepared by Alex. The live music experience was transporting! Festivals are an invaluable component of a dancer's experience because when so many good dancers, DJs, and musicians come together, the dancers all rise to a higher level of our social art form and have a deeper emotional journey. Beginners can learn from fine teachers and see what the dance really is at milongas, and experienced dancers can enjoy non-stop dancing. Performances and great social dancing are inspiring. And everyone can have fun socializing with old and new friends from all over the world. In smaller communities, it can be harder to attain the elusive tango trance in the course of the year simply because fewer people have the deep commitment to the music and dance that is so evident at festivals and of course places like Buenos Aires. Smaller communities acquire a better tango experience the more that their dancers attend such festivals, see the wider world of tango, continue to learn at home, including inviting visiting teachers to share their knowledge, and above all, value the vast musical tradition of the tango and how it is presented most successfully today for dancers. Navigation on the crowded dance floors of festivals is a challenge, but an important and enriching one. It's daunting for all dancers, including very experienced ones. For beginners, it's hard to move at all within the two-foot circle allotted by the crowd. For experienced dancers following the codes of keeping the line of dance moving forward, not passing in your lane, no high-figures, no back steps against the line of dance, no crazy zig-zags, it's frustrating when others don't obey the code. But that's life. Not everyone obeys the codes of life right across the board. The skill is finding one's equilibrium under all circumstances. Notwithstanding a few code-breakers (and we all are at times for both the best and worst of reasons), the intimate and subtle rewards of close-embrace tango with wonderful music and a majority of fine dancers are immeasurably rich. The milongas at this year's Valentango were all enjoyable. I salute the DJs! The traditional milongas of golden age music demonstrated again why traditional music is the foundation of the tango - its bounty for dancing is incomparable. Without that tradition solidly represented, a community is missing the essence of Argentine tango. The alternative milongas were excellent also, especially Homer Ladas'. Alternative milongas demonstrate the extraordinary evolutionary power of our dance. DJs require a special skill to pull them off - keeping within the emotional, esthetic and rhythmic realm of the tango while presenting music from the tradition and other traditions that magically becomes tango (that's the skill). It was so impressive to see all the sexy young people (teenagers and up) dancing with enormous competence and confidence at both the traditional and alternative milongas. It is so in Buenos Aires, it is so in festivals, it is so in many big communities around the world. One prays for that presence in one's own community. Clay Nelson's website has lots of useful information on the festivals, including a page on how to self-assess your level of dance when you're thinking of taking classes. There are many other festivals around the world throughout the year, and I recommend that everyone try to attend at least one per year and seek out the tango communities wherever you travel. You'll find the experience a highlight of your trip. Jan. 20, 2008: The Incredible Lightness of Being (a Tango Dancer): Dancing answers so many longings. One we all have is to throw off the bondage of gravity and soar free. In the tango, we sense as we watch great dancers that even as they engage in their stylized aggression/attraction for each other, their erotic battle, they have made a deal with gravity for the duration of their dance and are not bound by the usual physical laws that hold the rest of us close to the ground and limit our movement. Inside the embrace, we need to feel that lightness of being as well. It is a misunderstanding to equate passion with weight, to think that our partner will feel our passion according to how much force and pressure we place upon his or her body. Equating passion with weight is one of those interesting illusions tango movement is replete with. For example, the sacada or displacement. To observers it appears the leader kicks the follower's foot away in a sacada. In reality, that illusion is the product of the follower being led to step away just as the leader's foot approaches the follower's departing foot. In that manner throughout the dance skillful leaders seek the sweet spot of energy, the path of least resistance guided by an intuitive understanding of the physics of movement, to create the beautiful blooms of tango figures. Leaders do not lead boleos, levadas, lifts, etc., through sheer muscular force, just as the tail end of a whip is not made to crack through brute strength, but rather by nuance, by timing and finesse. 
Passion in tango, like the connection itself, does not depend on weight in terms of pounds applied per square inch or even physical contact. Just as lovers can be conquered by a glance and composers can express intense feeling through silence, so in tango, passion is expressed by the quality of movement, not quantity.Leaders and followers over time are delighted to discover that the lighter their respective beings are for their partners, the more powerful the passion and the greater freedom from gravity. For leaders, the challenge is to reduce one's lead to a hint, a delicate invitation, all delivered on axis and with no interference with the follower's capacity to remain on her axis. For followers, the challenge is to move by intuition, not as a result of force, to take complete responsiblity for one's axis, to not burden the leader with one's weight, only offer the gift of spirit as expressed through presence, as if the two bodies were floating in water. When the leader does exert greater or lesser pressure (for this is a dance after all; we are connected physically most of the time in tango), the follower must respond with exactly equal pressure. By her doing so, there is initiated an alchemy that transforms the pressure of the two into the pure movement of the two bodies as one, rather than a sensation of weight for either partner. I should state that actual body weight has no meaning in the dance in this context. I am not talking about heavy people and thin people. Large people can be light and thin people astonishingly and deadingly heavy. The lightness of being is achieved through posture and awareness, not by losing body weight. I have had rapturous dances with heavier people than I who move almost mystically through space while being sensuous and passionate and connected - to me and to the music. We have all watched heavier people dance gloriously (the average body weight at traditional Buenos Aires milongas is more than elsewhere, I'm sure, and yet most of those dancers have a dreamlike smoothness that expresses ease and passion). Nor is this commentary to gainsay the importance in tango of the walk and tangueros' relationship with the floor. Tango is a dance that paradoxically pushes into the floor and requires a torso lifted as by a string pulling the top of the head. Just as cats romance the floor as they glide lightly across it, so tangueros and tangueras. The golden key to achieving this state of lightness of being a tango dancer is relaxation. Beginning dancers often forget to breathe. Intermediate dancers learn to remember more frequently to start breathing again. Experienced dancers breathe naturally and interpretively with the pulse of the music, of their beating hearts and emotions, and with the whole being of their partners. Dancing is entry into the eternal. If we make our pact with gravity beforehand, it cannot pursue us there. Jan. 14, 2008: Navigation: It's one thing to learn moves in tango lessons and practice them in practicas; it's a very different thing to navigate around a social dance floor. Navigation is the final frontier for tangueros and tangueras, especially the former. So many tango figures imagined and practised in advance have floundered on the rocks in the storm of a milonga. Many a dancer has been washed ashore. Much fear and anxiety among survivors. Many a leader dreading the next milonga even as to the outside eye all is sunshine and calm over the face of the deep. Why should navigation be so hard? Why are stout hearts brought low and strong minds emptied of intention? It helps a little to remember that the anxiety of actual performance is well known to athletes, including the pros. All the practising in the world can at best reduce it, not eliminate it. Sometimes too much practice even increases the likelihood of meltdowns in competition. It is no different for dancers. Whereas in classes and practicas, one can stop, let go of the partner, talk, regroup, rest, laugh, leave without censure, take what just went wrong and do it over, and then do it over again and again, in milongas these options are not available. One can pause in the line of dance but not really stop: the line of dance moves relentlessly forward for three or more minutes, the pressure of those behind, the expanses opening ahead that must be conquered, the music saying something but as the blood pressure rises that message more and more obscured. The partner in milongas must be held or hung on to, there is no option of just letting go until the music stops, and the code is that partners dance not just one song together, not two, but three or four, depending on the tanda! It's considered rude to not dance a whole tanda with your partner. Talking to your partner during the song in Argentine tango is frowned upon, and prevents the going inward, the sliding into the tango trance that is the wonderful deepness of the tango. But in that silence devoid of the comfort of talk there can also live horrors. Rest at a milonga is for between songs or for after, home in bed. Laughing the same; milongas at times can become not even remotely funny. Repeating a figure over and over again, so pro forma in a practica, is felt to be a sign of a lack of imagination in a milonga, of a grinding, mechanical cast of mind, or the hallmark of the obsessive, rather than the lyrical dance of the soul. The seven or eight step basic, for example, is not for milongas - if it must be employed (and it can become a prison), it is an exercise only, and only for lessons and practicas. Leaving a milonga too early is hard, slipping away under the cover of darkness like a thief in the night, if the challenge has not been fully met, if something has been left undone. In short, in milongas there is the inescapable reality of expectations - the partner's expectations of you, the community's expectations of you, your expectations of yourself - all hammered home by music whose complex beat is not always accessible to even quite experienced dancers. It's not much solace uttering undeniable truths, such as partners are generally worried about their own performance more than yours, are much kinder than you imagine, that the community isn't watching you anywhere near as much as you think they are, that your own expectations of yourself are unrealistic or simply self-subverting scripted hold-overs from childhood that have no meaning now. No, the demands of self, partner and community are undeniably huge and cannot be talked away. Real or imagined, or as is usually the case, some mixture of both, they exist, they are real psychologically. Well, then, how to deal with them? In practical terms and the point of this blog, how to navigate out there in that alien world? In my experience, the first step is to allow oneself to acknowledge the truth: navigation is a different animal from just learning steps, it is very hard, it takes a lot of practice in and of itself, a lot of time to learn, and there are multiple barriers, as outlined above. Second thing to remember is that milongas are not performances. They are not stage shows designed for outsiders to view. They are opportunities for the dancers themselves to have a rich inner experience, to feel and express emotion, with their partners and with the whole community during a song. Therefore, if something goes "wrong" during a song, it's not a flaw that spoils a choreography, it's just part of the whole experience, there to be accepted, and ultimately appreciated and enjoyed for what it is. And what it is can often be an opportunity to learn, some interesting new path the partners can explore together. As in life, something going wrong is inevitable. Reality never fully matches our expectations. Life - being truly alive - is living with that outside our comfort zone. Third, after acknowledgement must come action. Only action produces results. It helps to have a sympathetic partner with whom one can relax on the dance floor. But with someone known or not, there is only getting out there, jumping into the water and starting to paddle. Because the beauty and the terror of navigation is that only by navigating can navigating be learned. You should first seek out sparsely attended milongas with lots of space on the floor, just as swimmers learn in calm uncrowded water. Even here, however, you should dance in the line of dance and not act as if it's a practica. It is important to ingrain proper navigation fundamentals, learn and follow the code of Argentine tango navigation, right from the start, so you can get used to it under these easier circumstances. Better now than relearning the code under crowded conditions where bad habits not only spoil your experience, they spoil everyone else's and can make enemies and, fortunately very rarely, can result in violence. The code evolved in Buenos Aires over a century to prevent violence and enhance pleasure. It is logical, it is a product of long practice, it is pretty rigid, but it is easy to understand, it builds community and allows for the eventual opening of the portal to the tango trance. It's a case of rules resulting in freedom. If the code is not obeyed, the result is chaos, a milonga disintegrates or never takes hold, and all the glorious tradition of music and dance and culture is wasted. Milongas can be failed events even while appearing fine to outsiders. Some simple rules form the code: - never pass the couple in front of you (unless you're in a crowded milonga with several "lanes" in which case you still should not pass the couple ahead of you in your lane); - don't bump into other couples or cause your partner to bump into others, i.e., don't propel followers (who usually dance with their eyes closed and are blind on the floor) into other dancers, or cause their heels to hit other dancers (heel wounds can be very painful); - if you do bump someone accidentally, be polite and respectful, apologize and be concerned for the followers, to ensure they are not injured - move into the space ahead when it opens up; - don't linger doing complicated figures when the space ahead is available; - don't go backwards, i.e., no back steps (the eight-step basic is a particular offender in this regard - it should not be used in a milonga) - don't cross in crazy diagonals in front of other couples or cross the centre of the floor and barge in front of couples there; - don't do high figures in crowded conditions; - don't talk at all, ideally, or at least don't talk loudly during a song. So if the code says you cannot pass the couple ahead and you must move into vacant space ahead and not obstruct the couple behind, what do you do with your partner to follow these precepts and navigate successfully? In the early stages of learning to navigate, the answer is you focus all your attention on . . . yes, navigating. Leave aside for now complicated figures, forget style questions, forget soulful interpretations of the music. Just try to move more or less in time, and when obstructed, pause, or turn in little circles in the simplest of steps. Breathe easily. Enjoy just holding your partner. Appreciate the pure pleasure of his or her company, another human body, and of walking, without figures. Walking is the essence of tango. The figures are nothing in comparison. Figures without a mastery of walking are not pretty or satisfying. Get into the habit of sensing everyone around you through peripheral vision and the other senses, and responding to the gradual movement of the community during a song. I've mentioned before that leaders dance with all the other leaders on the dance floor as well as their follower. The opposite of this is leaders who dance alone, with themselves only, not even with their partners. That is an abomination in tango, because the dance is all about connection. The culture and code of Argentine tango is to dance with many different partners. It is not good form to dance only with one partner all the time, even if he or she is your spouse. Dancing with only one person is not the best way to improve - sometimes quite the contrary. If you're a leader, ask followers of all experience levels to dance. Asking experienced followers to dance can be intimidating, but it is essential for leaders, and good followers love helping conscientious new leaders develop, because they want to nurture better leaders. Dancing with beginning followers allows leaders to simplify their leader messaging, hone it, make it as clear as possible. Also they are giving new followers a chance to develop. Dancing with experienced followers allows leaders to hone their messaging ever further, reducing it to a lightest possible touch of nuance, rather than a muscular mechanical domineering crude kind of lead that robs followers of their autonomy. If you're a follower, seek out various leaders to dance with. Good followers are not only dancers with excellent technique and musicality, but also marvels of intuition, able to interpret a leader's signals, and as experience increases, interpret ever more subtle signals and be ever more creative with what leaders suggest and inspire leaders with their movements. To achieve this, followers need experience with many different leaders. Long repetition of the navigation-only approach (no complex figures, just a focus on navigation) will educate your body and senses deeply over time, and eventually more complexity of movement and deeper interpretation of the music will enter your dance, only now it will arrive respectful of the whole community. Try more crowded milongas after a while. When you feel your stress level rising, take a break. Breaks are good. Breaks are necessary. Maybe you'll dance just two or three tandas in an evening and do a lot of watching otherwise. Taking breaks allows you to keep connected with the music, the indispensible precursor to connection with partners and connections with community. It's good to chat with other leaders and followers between songs and share experiences. Collective knowledge is a wonderful thing. The comfort offered by other leaders and other followers is healing. I'll conclude by saying your contribution to the community through collective consolation and encouragement and through a dedication to navigation in particular will be repaid immeasurably, because the ultimate dancing experience in Argentine tango is when the connection between the leader and follower is matched by the connection with the community on the dance floor. Then the scene is set for the perfect milonga and for emotional rewards to the individual he or she never dreamed of. Jan. 5, 2008: Happy New Year, Dear Readers! As we mark the Earth's mysterious voyage through the cosmos, closing out the old year and entering the new, at least in our sublunary arbitrary system for measuring time, it is good to reflect on the importance of community and those who foster it. Hedy and I joined about 70 friends at the Cafe Casablanca on Sunday, Dec. 30th for an Eve of New Year's Eve milonga with the very danceable live band Quintetto de Barrio, excellent food by Chef Hakim, fine DJ music from James, efficient service by Chuck and Eve, and champagne at midnight. The perfect party. Many thanks to David and Diane and other Tango Pacifico members who helped bring it off. The next morning Hedy and I drove via the Olympic Pennisula to Seattle for Tony and Ilana's 10th Anniversary New Year's Eve Tango Ball, where about 250 friendly folks gathered to dance until the wee hours. 
Always a joy to be in the company of our American friends, whose welcoming warmth and creative energy are a such a tonic. Tony and Ilana have made a huge contribution to dance in the Pacific Northwest, maintaining their Tango Underground milonga and tango school in Seattle for many years, performing and teaching, always sharing generously their time and knowledge, travelling to other communities like Victoria, which they first visited more than ten years ago, to help establish tango in new frontiers. We are immensely grateful to them. And we are grateful to all, in our own community and everywhere, who with their passion and hard work, year in and year out, make the opportunities for us to come together as communities to enjoy what we love, like tango, and have the pleasure of each other's company. We're group animals and we need company, and how lucky we are to have congenial locations and tireless organizers to make it happen for us. |
Home Contact Us Links |