Crazed Smoke in Buenos Aires and Classes

Buenos Aires has been slightly crazy recently: there's been this cloud of smoking hanging over... well, IN the City. It's been amazing disgusting. Last night I thought I smoked like 10 cigarettes in my apartment without opening the windows (and I don't smoke cigarettes ever) but in fact my windows were wide open and the smoke was... well who knows? Here's a non-permalink http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aBR_Bu_i.Edw&refer=latin_america but it was gross. http://www.misionesonline.net/paginas/detalle2.php?db=noticias2007&id=110886  Not to mention the toxins one ingests. My chica said, "imagine the tourists who come here just once and have this impression of Buenos Aires." It is what it is, isn't it?

Thanks to Cecilia Gonzalez, my private teacher, my tango is finally moving forward. She's is not fucking around: we work on really simple things like torso and connection and caminata and giros. I go to classes and do weird voleos and ganchos and even soltadas and all that crap, but I really need work in these basic things. Today I realized that the difference between dancing from your "center" (you power center, in Aikido, I imagine) and dancing from your arms is, man times, just a few centimeters of difference in your chest angle. So that's why it's hard to detect and hard to get right. And we say disociación so much that it comes to mean "when the torso and the hips go in different directions." This is wrong. So I have to think about desconexión or something like that: the torso is leading the woman, the hips are leading me. I beginning to get this idea, and I think that just beginning to ask, "where is my torso, where are my hips" would be a big move forward.

I've happily resumed classes with Jose and Viky, and I think that as group classes go, they're quite good. The level of the poeple is very uneven (heterogeneous?), but when you're working on leading from torso, what's the difference? Jose and Viky are technically correct in every way, and buena onda and in fact I really enjoy them and their classes. Check out Jose's blog at www.nuevottangosalon.blogspot.com, where he talks about Dániel Pregunta. That's me, hombre de palo (straw man)....

Another option -- though  I don't have the flyer with me so drop me a comment if you need to know (I won't publish it, don't worry) -- are the classes with Alejandro y Marisol (check 'em out in YouTube). They are definitely proponents (is that English?) of the Tango Nuevo but with good technique and good "salón" behind them. I enjoy their classes too, but you should definitely go with a partner. In fact, one of the best ideas is to go to DNI and do a class at midday, pick up a partner, and go with them to the class with Alejandro and Marisol. That's what those números de teléfono are for.

The classes with Fabián and Virginia were definitely boring and depressing. I don't think that classes in Tango Salón actually get you any closer to Tango Salón. In the Monday class we did 3 hours, 1.5 of which were male technique (and female technique in the other room). Fabian's idea of male technique is to do a bit of walking and stuff and then start working on a figure using the guys as women. This is about as fun as... well, it's pretty depressing. Worse, he never corrects you and has absolutely in interest in following your development. Basically, some are born to teach and others are totally uninterested and therefore unable. I think that if you're a DANCER (and I do NOT mean that you've danced tango for a long time, but rather if you're a dancer for real) then you might get some benefit out of Fabian's and V's classes.

I'll respond to Jose's blog entry soon, but until then... man, I just wanna sleep. But no! Now on to acting class... Buenos Aires is killing me.




--
Daniel Rosenstark
www.DVDs4theSAT.com
SAT tutoring you can rewind

Picture of Me With Unknown Young Tango Talent

10 points if you can name that couple!

Casa de Tango (Tango Show?): El Metro (it's the same people as La Esquina de Carlos Gardel)

So I went to a tango show on an artist invite the other night. It's the newest show in town and probably one of the most expensive (not sure) and it's by the same people who run La esquina de Carlos Gardel. Anyway, as far as Tango shows go here in Buenos Aires, it's definitely the best I've seen and probably the best I will see. It had an amazing variety of registers and flavors and even the music... well, it made me appreciate Tango singing in a totally new way. They even did funny (pícaro), extravagant, and this amazing theater tricks that have been around for a while like redoing the entire stage with what is basically a completely different structure every few songs.

The place is beautiful, the service was great, there were hot women welcoming you in the lobby and hot empanadas as part of the deal. Good empanadas, too.

Our friend from Forever Tango says that "no tiene una línea [conductora]" (it doesn't have a unifying thread), which is probably true. So it's artistically void, but compared to TV it's pretty nice. Anyway, most of the tourists who come in those white vans will not be disappointed (and most of them would be dazzled with less). I highly recommend it, I just wish that I knew its name. Something like Porteño something or other. It's in the theater called Metro on 9 de julio (Cerrito, I think), but when I figure out the name I'll put it here [name here]. Check it out if you're just visiting and want to see some amazing tango.

Having some amazing breakthroughs in my Tango, more to come... thanks for reading!