Inflation In Buenos Aires

Well, here are the numbers. The rotisiería china called Mandarin in Barrio Norte will be the arbitrarily selected sample (my apartment rent went up about 18% in a year, just in case you need to make sure that an arbitrarily selected sample works as a hypothesis). I have the menus from 4-2006 and 3-2007 (11-month cycles give you more inflation, just like 30-day months, which is how all gyms here work). So here are some prices:

dish/old/new/rise
Almond Chicken/12/14/16.6%
Wide Rice Noodles/10/12/20%
Spring Rolls/4/5/20%
Chinese Vegetables/6/8/33%
Seafood Casserole Thinger/25/30/25%

Most of the dishes are on the 15-20% rise in 11 months, but some rise as much as 33% (that's the max as far as I can tell).

So how cheap is Buenos Aires... ummm, it's getting worse fast. And for all the geniuses out there who say, "yeah, but the cambio will change to accommodate", that's just dead WRONG in the short- to mid-term. The government is buying up dollars to keep the dollar up at 3+ pesos, but if and when they stop doing this the dollar will drop to 2.5 or so. Then I'll be ending this blog, I think.

The point is that yes, the dollar does fall into line, but when? How long did we have uno-a-uno for here? I wasn't here but it was about 10 years of fiction.

Saying Cool Stuff, Moving In Little Space, Practicing Alone

First off, last night's trip to La Viruta demonstrates, yet again, that if you can't do enrosques very well alone they're not going to come out too well on the dance floor.

Secondly, I was starting to think about the different variations that you can do on a move: rotation, angle (and other rotations, for instance you can walk leaning to the left causing a counter-clockwise circle), distance, rhythm... but it's strange, and it's something I noted with salsa for a while too: for the first few tangos you feel like the king of the world, trying out all kinds of different moves in different directions and everything feels so new. But then you eventually fail to develop any themes, fail to relate better to the music... and then I'm just bored, kind of flitting back and forth and doing what's necessary to finish the song. So I have to work on plugging into the woman and the song, even if there is little space like at the Viruta last night (too little space since it was Saturday, but there was an abundance of women).

This is interesting, though I don't think I'll be too coherent here: there were a few times in which I was able to have a good night in salsa for hours and begin to discover new relationships between moves and other moves, etc. Now that is the point that I want to get to: improvisation.

Encircling The Bear

So first off, a quick comment about the ochos milongueros thingers: I just tried them out a whole bunch and what's up is that it's probably the first lead where you have to become aware that you're not leading the woman in terms of your space but rather in terms of hers. So to get her to cross after a sidestep, you have to do three things (still wondering if it's two or three): get her moving laterally, twist her and then pull her a little bit in the direction of the cross. Now that sounds very dangerous because you could pull her off axis... I'll have to keep thinking about this.

Cool figure tonight in Copello (with Cecilia Gonzalez and Gustavo, who it turns out is really great) which looked something like this:

#	Lead	Follow	Comments
1	RF	LB	4-track with l on f's left (salida en 5)
2	LF	RB	rebote, so either peso medio or whatever
3	LB	RF	here the woman starts a right turn
4	RF	LS	L does a sacada leading the woman into a big planeo
5	-	RB	really just the continuation of her left lateral move, sacada-ed
6	LF	-	man whips his hips around to get his left foot to her right, freno
7	RB	-	man shifts his weight back onto his right foot (but as far to the left as possible, to leave the woman room to step forward comfortably)
8	-	RF	woman steps over man's left foot

Oh man, this stuff is so boring to notate...

So anyway, about encircling the bear (and then I've got to get to another disfraz party): I figured this out with Italian and then with Spanish and never really got it with salsa but I'm getting it with tango. If you study enough, the same problems that you thought you'd beat come up again and again (with a slightly different form each time). So if you just keep studying, eventually you'll get the time to work on them because they're important recurring problems.

So at first the universe of knowledge that you're trying to learn just seems to damn large, but then later the basic part of is knowable. For instance, enrosques while the woman turns are difficult, but you will eventually have to tackle them, and they will keep coming up and you will keep getting better at them.

Isn't it great how I don't even explain the bear metaphor? I'm off!

Ochos Milgongueros

So I don't know about ochos milongueros but I was working with crossing the woman on a side step just now (with my chica, maybe dating a dancer does pay off?) and I finally get it. It's two sequential movements that you lead before the woman gets to her weight. First you lead her to the side, then you turn her, all antes de que llegue a su peso. It's really easy once you know what you're trying to do. Why doesn't anybody ever explain this shit?

Off to class at Copello with Cecilia Gonzalez (I think), then to a fiesta de disfraces (again! I'm really getting good use out of my wig), and then if everything works out I'll hit the Viruta at about 3am. Now that I'm back dancing again :)

Another Day, Another Dollar (Well, Not Really)

Another intense tango day, where I did everything except what I'm supposed to do, which is to work on balance at home alone. Although I did do my Iyengar Yoga class as usual (I go three times a week to an excellent place in Barrio Norte), which was quite painful and nice. Now that I've been at it for over a year it's taken on some real meaning.

So tonight I went to DNI and had class with Sebastián and Eugenia, which was a great class. They just worked on some simple figures, working on weight and connection and that kind of stuff. I'm trying to think of what I learned... hmmm....: suck my gut in, don't pass the mujer on the left (keep the connection), and then with Eugenia there were different things about leading the woman. The real issue is that you have to (duh) lead the woman into what you want her to do. It's a bit hard to figure out how you're fucking up the lead without somebody who knows telling you, but probably not impossible. You just need to try everything slow and see how it works out.

Then I went with my friend Julia -- who is a classically trained dancer who has done shows in tango and everything, but she's fatally bad to dance with... not sure how to explain this yet -- to Villa Malcom to the class for Tango Cool. Although it's not that close to DNI, it's a great option because you get 2 for 1 (class and práctica), and it's one of the best prácticas de la semana.

Anyway, I really like to take one weird class a week, and Tango Cool is definitely it. Today we did pretty cool stuff: just basically getting the woman to cross (in all different directions). So today Gabriel was basically taking the same tack as Carla Marano but breaking the teaching a bit more into stages. Getting the woman into back crosses to the side are apparently the same as ochos milongueros, which unfortunately I'm not familiar with.

Oh yeah, then he worked on another concept which was really nice, which is how the man can cross to break the woman's turn and turn the direction around. Really nice stuff.

The practica was absolutely great, with really good people and a really good vibe. Some of my favorite people were there, especially Kathalina who is now very very old (birthday). She's got to be one of the most generous people that I've ever met in my life, but she's also got a really good eye for stuff in tango. A lot of her comments are spot on, which is really exciting.

I was dancing pretty well tonight for a bit, but sometimes I just start repeating myself. I'm beginning to think that the problem is not vocabulary, but a bit deeper (and perhaps easier to solve). I have enough figures and ways to move.

Separating Lead From My Movement

Let's see how this Tangotation thing works (http://www.easytango.com/dance/Tangotation)... yesterday in DNI we did two really great figures to work on separating the man's lead from the woman's movement. Something like this (nice that Blogger allows you to use tables even if the WYSIWYG doesn't)....

First Figure

#	Lead	Follow	Comments
1	LF	RB	Lead and follower don't transfer weight completely (medio peso)
2	RB	Nothing	Man moves right foot back and to his left, but his hips (and most importantly his torso) stay locked forward. Hip-hopish
3	Nothing	RF	Man and woman are turning clockwise, getting in line with the man's back foot
4	Nothing	LF	Pivot ends and woman is on LF facing the man. Man has to wait until woman completes this pivot, that could take a while.
5	LS	RS	Move out for two (básico)

Hmmm... that wasn't too bad but I wonder if anyone will actually understand the figure from these notes. Although that's really not the point: the point is that I can remember the figure from these notes.

And then we did the figure the other way around, basically: again, the point is the same, that the lead plants the follower in her medio peso and then moves around a bit and then brings her with him. That was Cristian and Carolina's class, and they're always great. Plus, Pedro is a bit verde, but he does help out with the classes quite a bit.

So I'll be trying out these different kinds of notation from time to to see how they work for different figures, and to see if I can start developing some kind of vocabulary to work with.

Now the most important point that Cristian made last night was a really nice one: the man starts out by learning structures and by marking them brusquely to the woman. Later he starts to lead them in a softer fashion. The main point is the man has to have the structure that he wants to lead clear, because otherwise it's very uncomfortable for the woman (she is either paralyzed or does any movement out of nerviousness).

And my point: later, by varying the rhythms, combinations and other stuff (angles and height, for instance) the man starts to truly improvise the dance. When he can truly connect with the song, his partner and invent new stuff, he's a good dancer. And when that happens and the couple looks great, he's a great dancer.

Cold and Sunny in Buenos Aires, and just like last year, I can't figure out how to make my calefacción turn on (yes, I've read the instructions). Huge tango night ahead: DNI, then Copello, then Villa Malcom (probably, but there's also a birthday party I should get to... this is a busy period for Argentinians, with a lot of birthdays and so forth).

Weight On The Balls Of Your Feet

I've commented a whole bunch that there are few practical advantages to hanging out with dancers a lot, since they seem to dance less than people that are learning dance. But sometimes they just see things that you would otherwise miss.

I was hanging out at my chica's place last night and she has a little dancer friend there who teaches contemporáneo. So I say, "well, if I could just learn to balance my weight on the ball of one foot I'd be happy." And I show him how I do it and he looks at my knee position and he realizes that it's all wrong. I always thought the point was to be on the ball of the foot and use the big toe to sort of hold the structure up. This is wrong. The knee has to be over the center of the foot (and then the hip has to be aligned somewhere in this whole thing too, I'll have to figure it out). So the point is that your can't roll onto the arch of your foot, but rather you have to keep your foot centered. So I'll be working with this. The key words are "keep your knee over your middle or third toe."

And then spinning (or doing enrosques of whatever type in tango) uses this same part of the foot. So that's something to work on.