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.