Stuck in Bariloche

Well, I realize that it's not about tango, but right now I have no readers (thanks to Google Analytics, we can find out everything!) so what's the difference?

I'm stuck in Bariloche with a pretty good wifi connection and I'm at the Grand Hotel Bariloche waiting for information about my delayed flight to Buenos Aires. To the right is the view from my hotel room when I had a hotel room here. But now that I was travelling to Villa L'Angostura and San Martín de los Andes, I'm well checked out.

In fact, I got to the airport (I'm travelling with my parents, in fact) and the flight was delayed from 22.00 to 3.00 in the morning on LAN (codeshare with Aerolíneas Argentinas). So now we're doing time at the hotel, but we still have the car. ABA Car Rental in Bariloche was great, 225 pesos for 3 days and 600 kilometers.

The trip was really cool with a lot of beautiful stuff. After deciding to rent a car the morning of our first full day (our flight in got very delayed too), we saw Cerro Catedral which is one of the most important ski areas around. Cute stuff. Then on day two we headed to Villa L'Angostura (very green lake, but if you don't rent a boat what's the point?), and then headed on to San Martín (nice pretty town, merits a morning unless you have the entire day to do a boat trip... hey if we had known how delayed the flight was, we could've taken the all-day boat trip).

I'll try to put up an album of photos later today.

On Tango
This last weekend was great, including a visit from Kathalina on Sunday who brought me to a cool class that I had never seen before (with a práctica afterwards, really cool). The class is Tango Discovery with Carla Marano and Ana Carla Romera, from 21 to 22 hours at Malabia 1738 1ºPiso. It was great, because we did front sacadas, then we did back sacadas, and then we even did a figure with those. Hard going but fun stuff. If I hadn't gone travelling I would've gotten to practice some of that stuff... still looking forward to it.

Argentinians Have No Groove

Yesterday I went to Tango 2 in Copello with Jose and Virginia. We worked on another sacada with a voleo after it, but the important focus being on the traspié contratiempo for the guy. Nice figure.

At the beginning of the class we were working on walking, just simple 1, 2, 1 y 2, and I suddenly realized that Argentinians' horrible sense of rhythm can even be seen in tango. I knew, from salsa, that they have no sense of rhythm, but salsa is more difficult in some sense because every man (and woman) is a drummer (at least in Cuban Salsa, but in on-2 mambo it's worse because you have to be able to locate the rhythm). Anyway, in salsa I've seen some incredible barbaridades, but in tango I just figured that it can't possibly be that bad. But after watching my compañeros walk around, I realize that this may be general problem. I'll be observing on the dance floor, especially los viejos milongueros. Although the music is so obvious that they must be able to follow it, right?

New camera, so more photos to come.

Toward a Taxonomy of Tango

Blogging every single day isn't easy business, especially with all this tango and other stuff happening.

The last 48 hours have been hectic. The events have been:

• class at DNI with Cristian y Carolina on Thursday evening. We did a not-so-hard figure that started with the man stepping out to the woman's right (or the woman takes her step on two to her right and the man stays put). All of that with the usual rebounds and DNI stuff.
  
• class at Copello on Friday evening with Jose and Virginia. We did a simple figure (well, not for me much) with contra-tiempo traspies. They're not easy much.
• práctica Tango Cool at Villa Malcom after Copello

And then after the práctica at Tango Cool headed to a dancer party which was ok until I somehow redirected a big part of the party into a big tango lesson. It was pretty cool because these were heavy classical dancers talking about tango. There was a couple who teach classical dance in Palermo, Italy (in Sicily) and I ended up asking them about my main debate these days, "to DNI or not to DNI?" More on this later, but the lesson was quite cool. The main guy, Roberto, really feels that you can make a taxonomy of "parole basiche" like sacadas or voleos.

He shows me four types of sacadas which are basically all the types. The man can do them to the woman or the man can have the woman do them to him (es siempre él quien las marca, claro). The four types of forward, side, backward, and then a fourth weird type which is kind of double and comes from reversing the giro. I understood most of it.

Oh yeah, then we had an interesting conversation about the crossing on 5. He thinks that you have to mark if you don't cross, because otherwise it just follows el código del giro. I'm still trying desperately to understand that point.

Unfortunately, I have to get to class at Copello, but I hope to write on my favorite subject (DNI or not? aka To Tango Nuevo o no?) soon.

Wednesday in La Nacional (And What Is The Difference Between a Practica and a Milonga?)

Yesterday was a busy day, but I took a quick lunch break with a Sicilian friend and after we toured the shoe stores on Suipacha and then stopped by Tango Brujo where she had a private lesson. Tango Brujo is absolutely beautiful and in general for the private lessons you get the entire place. So that might be part of why they charge 150 pesos for private lessons! They might be good, but if I decide to take private lessons I'd head someplace which charges way less like Mora Godoy or DNI. I'm still getting to know the various places in the City. For instance, Mora's studio is just a few blocks from my house but I've never taken any classes there. Could be interesting.

I picked up the latest La Milonga magazine at Brujo (although at all the shoe stores and many different milongas and practicas you can get your magazines on). Why are those stupid magazines so devoid of intellectual content? Is it an argentinian problem, a dancer problem, or just a stupid free magazine problem? I imagine it's the latter of the three choices.

11.30pm La Nacional
Made it to the Nacional pretty early because I got out of acting class at 11pm or so. I was pretty excited because I had understood from I-don't-know-which website that it was a really cool práctica. Nada que ver! I could tell by the 12 peso entrance fee (prácticas are usually like 4 or 5) that it was kind of milongaish, and in fact, it was a milonga.

What is the difference between a práctica and a milonga? If you ask any argentinian who has been dancing for a while, they'll tell you that there is no difference. Which is why once again asking Argentinians questions is sort of like smacking your head against the wall, except that there's no blood.

Prácticas

• No tandas. The music comes on in big sets and they basically never put in a cortina unless they're switching music.
• Tendency: More space - since prácticas are generally for tango nuevo which is generally though not always characterized by the abrazo abierto and cool ganchos and stuff, you need more space. It can get a bit crowded, but it never gets to be like a night in Pacha. At certain points in a Milonga you're literally holding your partner doing tiny little movements as if you were trapped in a phone booth.
• Tendency: Younger people and foreigners. Milongas are also full or foreigners, but since milongas are considered the real deal for the old folks and so forth, they tend to avoid practicas.
• Prácticas start earlier and generally finish earlier, although they do have schedules that you can check.
• Some people think that in prácticas there will be a teacher or two there helping out and making interesting commentaries. Although this was the original idea with the practicas in Copello, I've never seen it in practice.
• Tendency: Less expectation - This also comes from the lack of tandas. Since the woman knows that you're only going to "force" her to last 2 or 3 songs unless there's good vibe, there's less pressure in prácticas. Also, people are not trying as hard to look like they know how to dance, but are rather focusing on figuring out what you're doing. In general, of course...
• In prácticas like in milongas you have to rotate counter-clockwise, but sometimes people just start screwing around in place. So there's less necessity to rotate, and there's a tiny bit more backwards movement too (but not much).

Milongas - oh forget it for now, I'll break this out and do the comparison in another post sometime soon.
Notes From the Road
Well I'm not really on the road but rather in Buenos Aires still, and not far from home. I'm at the Victoria Cream on Agüero y Las Heras, where they give you three little espresso-sized pourers filled with whipped cream, chocolate and cinnamin for your coffee. Also, they give you a scoop of ice cream. Now, I would never eat ice cream, but helado regalado es otro tema (claro que sí!).

So I was up at Plaza Mitre again working on caminata and enrosques. These enroques are basically the same as all other enrosques, except that I know exactly how they fit into the woman's giro. Therefore they're different, because I can practice them as much as I want and then try them out in the real world. These are from the intermediate class at Tango Motivo a few weeks ago. I think that's one of the best classes of the week, really: I'm going to head back there even if it conflicts with the first two hours of Practica X. The three female professors are great, though a bit butch.

Enrosques are enrosques, but if you're retarded like me, you'll never figure out how to have the woman do a turn at the same time as you turn. Because at some point you have to have your lower body catch up. And this seems natural, but in fact, the question of "when?" is hard to handle. Anyone who doesn't know how to handle the two issues simultaneously needs to be taught the idea as a "figure" with precise touch-down points.

So back to last night at La Nacional. It was a milonga, y por lo tanto, agobiante. Plus, since only the principiantes dance in the middle of the circle, La nacional really just has one ring of dancers on the floor. And shit gets tight out there.

Not a lot of young women dancers, and not a lot of young men dancers, either :).

So anyway, we were sitting with Jose, Virginia and Daniel and Carla (?) from Copello and some other people and then there were two shows, one of which being Jose and Virginia. I'll try to get the videos up but I really have to start using my camcorder. The video quality from my ultra-compact camera is just not enough.

The first couple was a Japanese couple. They danced well, sort of staid salón stuff, and then the CD started skipping so they ended gracefully (which is admirable. I thought the correct reaction would be "fuck fuck fuck fuck").

Then Jose and Viky performed and they were absolutely great. Really nice stuff, good choreography and great musicality, and of course brilliant technical stuff.

At the end of the night, though, I was left feeling like going to all these milongas is really not the point of my stay in Buenos Aires. I'm trying to learn tango, and a lot of that is basic work alone or with a partner delante del espejo. Going to milongas is fun, dancing can be cool soimetimes, but the endgame is not the milonga. Actually, what is the endgame? One thing I don't need is mucha soltura con mi nivel actual? I'd rather get better.

Tomorrow, my notes on why I'm moving DNI and tango nuevo to the back burner though it is my true passion.

2007.Mar.20 Tuesday - DNI and Practica X

1pm DNI
Barely arrived at DNI after my hectic night at Canning and then a trip to Belgrano. The class with Sebastián y Eugenia was incredible, and the figure was really cool. The problem is that it didn't "work" in the Practica, so I still have to figure out what I need to do to get it to work. They're trying a new teacher, Pablo, out, but he's really okay but not the kind of fantastic dancer that DNI is famous for. He taught/confused the figure they were teaching.

The original figure, which was kind of nice, involved several rebotes to change weight while the woman simply does a front ocho with a rebound to the man's right, and then a front ocho to front ocho on the man's left. The only interesting stuff is how the man rebounds. I don't know when I'll get to work on this stuff. That's what home practices are for, I guess.

9.30pm Práctica X
Práctica X was absolutely amazing and two couples danced (in a desafío or battle) and it was absolutely brilliant. All the information on the desafío is here and you can find more information on Practica X here. The dancers last night were:

Pablo Inza y Moira Castellano VS Horacio Godoy y Cecilia Garcia

both of which were amazing, but I have to say that Horacio and Cecilia BLEW ME AWAY. Beautiful movement, very nuevo but very obviously tango, and amazing understanding of the music they were dancing too (which was picked at the last minute: maybe they got lucky? Nah, it was obviously improvised).

Práctica X has the best dance floor I've seen ever, and they don't even sell drinks, and it only costs 4 pesos. Brilliant that things like this exist.

Checking out the site for Práctica X made me realize that I should stop by the class beforehand.

Almost forgot, aside from chatting with all kind of beautiful and ugly people, I also talked to the bass player for Trío Garufa. Gente copada. We talked about how funky (or not) Milonga music is, and how to find the groove in that.

It's one of those nights that makes you realize how many great people are dedicated to tango, how friendly and open people are, and how wonderful it is to be participating in such a big thing in the most important place for it. Learning to dance tango in Buenos Aires is like learning to blow up stuff in Bagdad, I guess. I mean, imagine all the bonding that goes on during those all night explosive-recipe sessions.

Teachers From Copello Tango 2 Bailan en Marzo

These events are for this week from the teachers from Tango 2 at Copello. They're really cool. If Práctica X ends at 1am, maybe I'll head from there to Angel de Metal. Otherwise at La Nacional seguro.

Martes 20
El Ángel de Metal
Fiesta inauguración.
Av. Independencia 572
22:00 hs.

Miércoles 21
La Nacional

Jueves 22
La Viruta
Presentación de Otros Aires 2

Monday Night in Tango Motivo and Canning

I never made it to the 7pm class at Canning, though I like Alberto's classes. He makes the students do individual technique for the first part of the class (ochos and pivots and dissociation).

9.30pm Tango Motivo
At about 9.30pm I got to Tango Motivo at Villa Malcom. I had some friends there (95% foreign) and met some new people dancing, most notably Karla and Alejandra from Mexico and Vanina, their Argentinian friend. Also Florence from Switzerland came to hang out with us and watch "see some tango." Good vibe all around.

Anyway, Tango Motivo was really nice. Lots of space and good vibe. There weren't as many intermediate dancers as I would've liked, and there was a shortage of men all around (for me that's okay!). As a male I always think that I should "dance with the figures I know" instead of playing around with weight and rebotes and that kind of stuff. And of course I always think that stopping to try something or trying something a million times will annoy a woman. Instead, at least with people who are learning (which is mostly everybody except la gente más creída) it's not like that. Women love that you're trying stuff out, that you're playing with feeling her weight, etc.

1am at Canning
Tango Motivo ended at 12.30 (midnight y media) and we headed in a big group to Canning. Canning was absurdly crowded but Elsa (from Holland) asked me to dance. I said okay for the first song in the tanda, just until the floor filled up. But we stayed out there for the whole tanda. Once you start playing with the movement and feeling the woman's weight and really using the three or five figures that you know, you can stay out there for hours.

The vibe was great despite how crowded the place was, with one show of two songs and a tango trio that played several sets. They're Trío Garufa: one American (sorry! he's from the United States of America, perhaps I should've said United Statesian to avoid confusion), one Swiss, and one from Bahía Blanca. Incredible stuff. I think it's the first time I ever appreciated milonga (not tango) music before.

Today I already went to class at DNI and tonight I'll definitely be at Práctica X.

Videos of Bien Pulenta From 2007-03-17

I put the videos up from the other night of Cristian Bravo and whats-her-name and Roxana Suarez and Sebastián Achaval. The quality is not really too nice because I didn't process them at all. However, aside from the intractable white-balance problems in the first one, the other ones just have brightness problems, which can be handled.

Still changing the names on them.

2007-03-19 Sunday

A foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but it sure beats rethinking everything every day. Isn't that what Sartre calls dizziness (or nausea, or something?)


Tango Walking in Plaza Mitre
Did some tango walking during the day in Plaza Mitre at about 1pm. It was a beautiful day and the Sun was shining, and I guess my walk is getting better because people have started to ignore me completely. The surface of the big monument... hey, wait, I have a picture though it's not from yesterday. There it is! So the surface of the big monument is really smooth and
you can choose to be in the Sun or not. It's actually not bad.

My walk is getting much better, and I can hang out with my weight on one or the other ball-of-foot for a long time. The problem is that on the dance floor one forgets all of that easily. But I would say that that is what you should be thinking about: your posture, your weight, her weight, the music. Maybe I'll ramble more about this later.

9pm Copello Tango 2 with Jose and Vicky
Class with Jose and Vicky was great: few people, good ratio of women who can dance to men (I don't worry about how my compañeros dance, of course). Jose gave the guys some technical exercises at the beginning for changing weight and spinning. Really nice.

Then we did the figure du jour which was really cool for three reasons:

1. it was easy to do, and most of it was easy to do backwards too
2. there was a new barrida for me, in which you trap your foot between the woman's and bring her back to a side opening
3. we did one of those funky twists where the woman has her weight evenly distributed with right foot forward, and then you rotate her so that her right foot forward but now she's faced the same direction as you (you being the man, that is)

It was cool and it worked and the pointers that Jose and Vicky give are right on.

I have to ask Jose less questions. He gets a bit annoyed. Which is a general lesson: Be careful with questions in Argentina: people often feel that you are challenging their authority. Blind trust and professed loyalty are the mainstays of Argentinian society.

1am - Niño Bien
I never made it there, because I went to see Stranger Than Fiction in Abasto instead (cute flick!). But there was some huge International Tango Festival thing happening at Niño Bien. La Viruta would've been good too, being Sunday night and all.

Today
Today I should've gone to class at DNI at 1pm, but I never made it. But that's cool because tonight I'll be at Canning from 7pm on (two classes [or some part of the second one] and then the milonga).

A Tango Saturday Bien Pulento

7pm
Last night I headed out for a huge tango night, starting withTango 3 in DNI with Cristian and Carolina (who are the "short" instructors I mentioned in another post). The class was quite cool, and good ratio of men to women (one or two extra women). DNI just has a great vibe coming from the teachers and the students as well. They taught one of the funky DNI figures in which there are a bunch of rebotes (they make a lot of use of el medio which would be where your weight is between feet) in pretty interesting rhythms (1,2,3 5 6 y 7) and one weird voleo that may work, but you'd have to convince the woman that you're a tango master before she'll even try it. But let's face it: the classes are not enough to practice the figures that they teach. You need to either have a steady partner to practice with, or break the figures up into pieces and try them out at the practicas and milongas.

I should mention that both Cristian and Carolina are amazing, but Carolina is brilliant and understands all of my absurd questions. Incredible, incredible dancers, which is one of the things that Tango Nuevo has going for it.

Even in this class, which is pretty high level, they do teach in bilingual mode (Spanish-English). In Copello, in Tango 1 they rarely teach bilingually, and in Tango 2 they just do everything in Spanish. La idea es que el castellano y el tango van de la mano. Which is a pretty stupid idea. No wonder so many people end up taking classes at the Ideal (La Confitería Ideal), which generally suck and really are for tourists. Though I really do like Saucedo at la Ideal.

9pm
Copello has reopened! This just makes it a lot more normal because now you can walk in through the front door. Class with Jose and Virginia was cool, starting with some nice turning exercises (well, that's what the men worked on, the women were in another room). That's when you see how basically traditional they are, since we worked on disociación (torso from cadera, of course). Which is basically explained in DNI as just "relaxing your hips," I think.

Then class was quite cool, really nice level, lots of space. We worked on two barridas, a giro to the right with a sacada. I think these will be nice in the milonga, but a barrida is a lot to think about for very little. It's like learning big words in a foreign language. What do you say before and after you drop the big word? And you can't just keep doing barridas. I guess they're just a nice thing to have in your vocabulary, to use sparingly.

1am
Ended up at Bien Pulenta since that's where everybody goes anyway. But it wasn't that crowded and though it's old and stogy, in some sense, there were a lot of young people. Including a bunch of people that I recognize from DNI and Practica X. I managed to dance a whole bunch of tandas, but only with Eugenia, my dance partner from Copello.

The two shows were great, and they were all Copello dancers. Cristian and [name on video] were first, and they were great and quite traditional. Then later Roxana Suárez y Sebastián Achával danced, and they were amazing too. I didn't have my real video camera with me, but I taped the stuff on my baby camera (Optio 5sn in Mpeg-4). I'll put that stuff on Esnips later today, I hope.

It was amazing because I invited an Australian couple from my tango class (Edward and Annie) and they loved the night. It's just so much cooler than going to a tango "show."

They put on one tanda of salsa, and I danced with a Tara from England or wherever who doesn't know much about salsa but is a good dancer and figured most of it out quickly. It must've looked okay, because one woman who is a great tango dancer that I've talked to a bunch asked to do a tang0-salsa exchange with me. And another woman came up to me later and said, "I live in the US and dance salsa, can we dance the next time they put salsa on?" Of course, they only put salsa on once a night, so you're kind of out of luck there.

Not sure where I'm heading to today. Copello at 9pm definitely, and maybe a practica or a milonga or salsa or nothing.

Never Made It: On Dating Dancers

Well, last night I ended up watching dance, and then at a dinner with all dancers talking about dance. Then I came home and slept with a dancer (my girlfriend, to be honest). But I did not go dancing at all. Which just demonstrates what I've been figuring out at least since 2003: if you want to date bailarinas de tango (it was with salsa before, in Madrid), that's your problem. But (at least as a male "lead") it will distract you from dancing as much or more as dating non-dancers. This is true unless the woman is learning just like you are.

The Ballet Folklórico Nacional Argentino was great last night, and I did video a lot of the thing (with all of the LEDs on the videocam turned off :]). Hopefully today or tomorrow I'll post some of that stuff to my Esnips account and I'll put a link here. Al mismo tiempo, I hope to start including photos here. First I'll have to start shooting more photos, but God knows I have the tecnhnology.

So what's up for tonight. I will not fail. 100% for sure I will be in Copello for Tango 2. And now that I looked at it, DNI has Tango 3 at 7pm. And if you think about it, walking from DNI to Copello is about a 15-20 minute affair (which could be bused on a 151 or 168, perhaps). So I'll start with those two classes today, and then I'll see if I can go someplace that I like better than Bien pulenta in Sabor a tango (supposedly "the place to be" on Saturday nights). Bien pulenta is really cool to see the show on Saturdays, but for dancing unless you're pretty good it's un embole. There's something about the space, the dancers... I don't know, maybe I'll check it out again. I've only been asking random women to dance for about a week now.

Some Comments on Tango 2 in Copello

It turns out that tonight I'm going to see the Ballet Folklórico Nacional in the Teatro Empire (Hipólito Yrigoyen 1934, I would put a link here if Argentina cared in the slightest about its most prestigious state-run ballet, but its website hasn't been updated since 2004) so I'll skip class with Jose and Virginia at Copello and head straight to Tango Cool at 11 or so.

While I'm here, though, some notes about the teachers of Tango 2 in Copello, Virginia and Jose. Their classes are very cool because they split the groups up into men and women and work on the figure they are going to teach separately. They are technically excellent and aware of everything that is going on with tango nuevo and all that stuff.

Their interaction with tango nuevo affects how they teach giros for instance, because in a left turn they say that the man's ("leader!" -- we're in Argentina, so if you're a woman doing the man's part we assume you're smart enough to translate) left hand has to "pull" the woman forward (as opposed to the right hand pushing the woman's back). Obviously it's not "pulling" so much as "inviting," but the point is that the right hand just has to stay out of the way unless you want the woman to not follow el código del giro (for instance, to do all forward ochos).

This jives with what the teachers at DNI said the other day about right turns, which is that the right hand leads the woman and the left hand just follows so as not to "modify" her movement (so that she follows el código del giro).

My personal problem is that at my level, even if it comes from torso you want to move the woman around, when in fact the idea is to open so that she moves into the space. But sucking in tango isn't bad! Most women will even dance the entire tanda with you, especially if you give them the option not to after every song.

One other comment: Elsa from Holland sms'ed me today that la Confitería Ideal was pretty cool last night. Didn't see it so I can't comment, but it might be a Thursday bet. I'm going to try to find out if La Catedral is happening or not.

Thursday at Canning Definitely Sucks

I'll write this quickly because I just thought of the idea of this blog yet I'm leaving the house. Hopefully the quality will improve over time.

Went to DNI Tango 2/3 yesterday (7pm) with, er, the short teachers. They're cool (incredible dancers) and the students are generally quite good, and I think the DNI "technique" is generally good (more on this later). However, the class was too crowded and they're working on the roof in the hallway, so you have to dance in the main sala. It's really too crowded to work.

At DNI we did right turns, and then right turns with a barrida (I call that a contra-barrida, where the woman sweeps the man's foot), and then right turns with a sacada and a sandwichito and a cool DNI type thinger (with rebotes). As always, to be clear, the man marks the contra-barrida as well, it is not the woman's decision. So how do you make sure the woman does the sweep instead of just stepping over the foot? By keeping her well planted downwards.

Then caí in Canning at 1am with Ornella and Aldea (my tango tourist friends from Catania, Sicily) and there were like 15 people, median age of 50+. If you're into the "older milongueros are the best" type of thinking, Canning wasn't the place to be anyway. Go to El Beso on Thursdays for sure.

A woman that I asked to dance was annoyed with my dancing but she did insist on lasting the whole tanda with me. Nice! She dances tango milonguero which is to say apilado. She did instruct me that 99% of people in Buenos Aires dance milonguero. Which is obviously false, and demonstrates how Buenos Aires works: everyone knows what's in front of them, and those are general truths that they never check.

That's it for the first post! I'm off. Tonight I'll be at Tango 2 in Carlos Copello (shhhh, don't tell anyone, they're still closed) and then at the práctica in Tango Cool (Villa Malcom).