Misia & Peter – tango blog

Mi ultima noche en Buenos Aires…

The time really flies here and so i find myself packing as tomorrow i’m leaving Buenos Aires… Totally off topic: Buenos aires means “good air” – yet one could say that the city has no air at all. The air is heavy and dirty and the noise level is beyond all limits. I’ll be double happy to spend Christmas in the countryside and then the New Year party just by the seaside. And sea in winter is so so beautiful… and empty :) I always recall the amazing scene from Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind with Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey when i think of the sea in winter…

Anyway, back to Buenos Aires and the temperature oscillating between 30 and 35 degrees…
I spent my last weekend here taking part in the previously mentioned Festival Cambalache – I watched alltogether 6 theatre performances during the weekend with my impressions varying from “wow, that’s amazing!” to “someone wake me up when it’s over”. In any event, it was worth seeing all of them. I have two favourites:
1) Living by Pablo Inza & Mariela Samtband – because of the sense of humour, wit and excellent acting
2) Sintonias by Milena Plebs with Cecilia Garcia, John Galindo, Claudia Jakobsen, Ezequiel Farfaro, Silvia & Alfredo Alonso dancing – seeing them dancing was like a magnet for me, i was sitting there hypnotized and couldn’t believe the quality of the movement and excellence of the dancers.

On Monday I took a class with Cecilia Garcia @Tango brujo – Entrenamiento corporal. I used to take this class two times a week last year and i must say it has changed a little bit since then – of course, for better. Around 2/3 of the class were the stretching and core strengthening exercises from yoga and pilates and my favourite – rolling on the floor :) Another 1/3 of the class was contemporary dance sequence – which looked really simple, but when it came to doing it with faster music and proper technique and quality of the movement – no one really could master with Cecilia. Excellent class, i wish i few took more classes with her… well, next year then i guess!

My last class in Buenos Aires was with Martin Gutierrez – technique of course! In the first part of the class we were working on our coordination, balance in boleos backward and forward and on turns. Leitmotiv: ‘use your upper body please!’ or ‘don’t move in one block please!’ ;) The second part of the class was devoted to barridas. I took part in the class as a leader so i had lots of fun finding the right position for barrida (triangle of course ;), what else?) and drawing a beautiful croissant with my foot as i was doing barrida. We played with some more advanced variations, but as my leading skills are much more at the intermediate than advanced level, i tried to polish the basic version of the proposed sequence. Ech… i will really miss these classes and Martin’s sense of humour.

The rest of the day i spent running around and saying goodbye to all the teachers and friends. As a goodbye present i got a recipe for empandas con pollo / with chicken which are served in DNI. If i have some energy left after the workshops on Saturday and Sunday, i’ll try to make them for the Sunday ‘Buenos Aires milonga’ in Feszek. We’ll have all the ingredients necessary for a good fiesta then! :) (along with mate and alfajores)

Now i’m packing and listening to Adios Buenos Aires by Orquesta Tipica Victor with Angel Vargas singing… (for sure, I’ll play it on Friday milonga :) ) Hopefully, next time we can come back here for longer … 3 months? half a year…? who knows :)

Wednesday – Friday (December 10-12)

The closer I am to leaving, the more things I need to think of, organize etc. In one word: holidays are already over ;) So in between the classes I’m organizing and preparing the website for the Danube Tango Meeting, corresponding with Homer and Christina Ladas (they’ll be in Europe and they’ll most likely visit us during the first days of August, I truly can’t wait to meet them! ), preparing for our December workshops (in Hungary and in Poland) and organizing our classes in January… uff.

At the same time – ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…’… no snow in Poland yet, but I can feel the Christmas atmosphere when I hear from my mum about baking Christmas cookies & packing presents. It’s really a beautiful time in my family, full of warmth and love. And of course delicious food ;)

When it comes to the classes, I’ll mention the most important one – Tango contact improvisation workshop with Javier Corrales & Anayansi Macherel. That was my first ‘real’ meeting with the contact improvisation -I had heard about it before but any action vanished into thin air. The workshop was deep and meaningful, showing me the new planes in my dancing and in general in tango and the possibilites of the contact and the embrace. It also helped me to understand what it means to dance with your whole body and how to be balanced in imbalance (el desequilibrio, for example: in colgada) with the help of the Body Mind Centering. It also helped me to get rid of some sterotypes that i had in my mind by, for example, an exercise in which i was doing salto and jumping on the lady that was 1,58tall and in general petite. Or when i had to receive weight and sustain a grown up man in a similiar exercise. What seemed impossible, was much easier once you followed the contact. I left the class relaxed and felt almost enlightened :) Since January – contact improvisation classes and contemporary dance classes in Trafo are awaiting me :)

On the topic of contemporary dance, postmodern dance and tango – Cambalache festival has just started this week. It’s a festival organized by Pablo Inza and a group of other tango gurus here, which presents all the new trends in the area of tango, theatre and dance during the week of performances in the theatre, seminars/workshops and exhibitions. I zealously bought the tickets one week before and on Thursday went for the Funcion 2 with Sharna Fabiano’s Uno, Karine Monneau’s Quebrada and really excellent Eurydice Ascendente (by the group called La Semilla, with Kara Wenham, Nina Tatarowicz and Julio Ernesto Bassan among others).

[more about Festival Cambalache and Fiesta Cambalache soon... now i'm off to bed.. :o ]

Monday – Tuesday (December 8-9)

I made yoga classes my daily routine – on Monday it was with Stella Detoni, today with Maxi, tomorrow entrenamiento with Maxi. It’s a bit hardcore and challenging to do yoga when the temperature is oscillating between 32 and 35 and humidity is around 65%, however, I’m not giving up :)

I’m taking also Tango 1 classes (@DNI) learning how to lead – just recently cross with different rebotes. It’s really helps me to understand the structure of the tango much more and make my following better. I love the idea that some teachers (for example Sharna and Isaac) introduce at the beginners courses – that women and men learn both roles, leading and following. First, it solves all gender inequality issues plus deprives people of stereotypes and helps to solve “it’s your fault!” problems.

As today’s Martin and Samantha’s class was cancelled, I took Vals 4/5 (@DNI) with Christian and … (? Maxi’s girlfriend, promise to check tomorrow her name :) ) and was very nicely surprised by the detailed musical analysis of the step plus the lead ( I learnt both to follow and to lead the sequence). We were playing with weight changes, the boleo linear (lead on 1, boleo is on 2) into an ocho (on 3)… really fast… then we stopped in the middle of women’s backward (man’s forward step) to learn how to grow and lead lifting of a woman’s leg (of course, grow up with your body & center, not only hand or leg). Afterwads we did a sacada (relasing the leg and the going down). To sum up – lot of fun and really cute step :)

In the evening, of course Practica X :)

Saturday – Sunday (December 6-7)

As Peter has left to Hungary on Saturday morning (giving me a gorgeous bunch of red roses before =) ), I went for two beginner classes to get better at my leading and see how they teach the beginners here.

Principiantes with Daniel Tuero & Cecilia Piccini (@Tango brujo)
–the class focused on walking, embrace and connection explaining lots of the structural elements of tango in an innovative way. Very very useful. No step was taught and we started with walking, walking and walking. I loved the explanations and concepts and hope to use this knowledge during our next beginner course.

Tango 1 (@DNI)
–the class was taught by a group of DNI teachers, which was nice in terms of getting help during the class however a little bit chaotic. Anyway, I learnt how to lead rebote with a forward turn, after which we added one sacada into the woman’s turn. 1/3 of the class was of course walking.

There are two important event in December when it comes to tango in Buenos Aires (or more: Argentina). December 11 is Dia Nacional del Tango and on December 6 there is La Gran Milonga Nacional. For this occasion beautiful and wide Avenida de Mayo (it resembles Champs-Élysées a lot) was closed and two stages for tango orchestras were built at the ends. In the middle – thousands of people dancing tango :) The dancers’ scene was divided in a similiar way as the milongas – next to the scene where Los Reyes del Tango was playing were old milonguers while most of the young crowd was concentrated next to the scene where Sexteto Milonguero was playing. I stayed for Sexteto Milonguero’s concert – I can only comment it with Eric Cartman’s words “Awesome!”.

Friday (December 5)

Tango intermedio with Anabella Cruz Heck & “???” (@Tango brujo)
–the class is regularly taught by Anabella and Anibal Montenegro, however, he was on a trip, so Anabella was teaching with someone else (unfortunately, i don’t remember the name of the guy replacing Anibal). The style was also different, much more traditional than nuevo – cute close embrace steps which looked simple but confused us a little bit.

The last class we took together (in 2008 of course!, we want to come back :) ) was our favourite class of the week:
Tecnica para tango, intermedio y avanzado with Martin Gutierrez & Samantha Di Paolo (@Tango brujo)
–this time the topic was rebotes/rebounds combined with totally cute sort of tomada and of course gancho! (Martin’s class without a gancho is unimaginable). Relaxed atmosphere and great help of the teachers left us with the feeling that we had a great great time… Next week I’m going to attend to their classes alone plus some classes for beginners as I want to see how they teach beginner classes here at the heart of the tango plus polish and develop my leading skills.

Samantha Di Paolo, Martin Gutierrez, Michalina Patrzalek, Peter Stefanics (@Tanbo brujo)

The other good news: in 2009 (maybe spring? maybe March? maybe autumn?) we are going to invite Samantha Di Paolo and her European partner to Budapest for workshops! :) Here you can check out her blog and impressive curriculum vitae.

Thursday (December 4)

We took only one class today as we were running errands before Peter’s departure on Saturday. We expected it to be with Christian and Carolina as it was usual on Thursdays, however, there was a change of teachers for December and the class was taught by Kyoko and Adrian.

Tango 3 with Kyoko & Adrian (@DNI)
–we were positively surprised by the level of explanation and expertise of the teachers. We were working on a sacada with levantada combined with an enganchada and rebound. Even though the level of the class was supposed to be intermediate, in our opinion, it was more than that. The teachers operated on the levels suitable both for intermediate and advanced students.

Wednesday (December 3)

We devoted the whole day to our first professional photo session with Roberto Sanz and his daughter. The first part of the session, in the early afternoon, was done in a studio, then after a couple of hours we all got into a cab and went to San Telmo, where we walked around and they took a few shots of us at a various locations.

All in all, it was hard work — being intimate and at the same time making sure the angles and the light worked and our faces could be seen, repeating and adjusting poses and trying to come up with interesting steps that made us look good and which we could hold for several seconds. In San Telmo, we began in a park with Roberto being a bit worried about security: it was a weekday late afternoon, with few people around, and they had very expensive cameras and lenses with them. We all relaxed more towards the end when we went to Plaza Dorrego and took some shots in front of typical Buenos Aires doorways. (There are open-air milongas during the summer there)

At the end of the session, we got all the raw material (several hundred high-res .jpeg files) on a DVD. We chatted for about an hour about Argentine politics and the economy, then parted ways around 8 PM. After arriving home, we looked at the pictures more carefully and agreed that they were indeed extremely well done. For a first try, it was quite good in our opinion. Have a look at this small gallery (click on the minature to see the whole image) :)

Tuesday (December 2)

Tango intermedio with Jose Media & Natalia Lindo (@Tango brujo)
–the teachers have won Mundial de Tango in the category “Escenario” (so choreography + stage tango) and in this style they’re teaching. I have no idea what they’re doing in teaching in Tango brujo, which is mainly nuevo school… anyway, lots of ganchos and boleos, done extremly fast and with a technique that sometimes was close to the use of force than the energy of your body, disassociation etc.

Tango intermedio y avanzado with Martin Gutierrez y Samantha Di Paolo (@Tango brujo)
–as always – fantastic class. Even though we were the only couple – the rest were ladies, the teachers extremly well handled the situation and adapted the class so that we were all happy at the end. We were working on linear boleos combined with colgadas… mmm… poetry ;)

Monday (December 1)

We cannot believe that it’s already December – the time is really flying here…
We started the last week of Peter’s stay here with a private class with Maxi (@DNI) – we did a bit of yoga for stretching and strenghtening our core muscules and feet and afterwards we concentrated on the connection and hip movement in rebotes.

Milonga con traspie, marcacion para hombres y adornos para mujeres with Gabiela Elias (@Escuela Argentina di Tango in Centro Cultural Borges)
–supposedly intermediate – advanced level, however, the level of the participants was nowehere near.. Very traditional class when in comes to teaching.

Tango intermedio y avanzado with Daniel Tuero & Cecilia Piccini (@Tango brujo)
–we worked on the concepts from the previous week – overturning the hips of a woman plus sending her out ;) plus add to this different sorts of sacadas. Fun and excellent explanations! :)

Saturday – Sunday (November 29-30)

As usual on Saturday we took a class with Christian Duarte & Carolina Lafata (@DNI) – tango nuevo in close embrace and as usual we enjoyed it a lot :) Afterwards, we headed for San Telmo market and design fair ending up hidding from almost torrential rain in Havanna…
On Sunday we had a great pleasure to visit Caroline Neal (the director of the fantastic “Si sos brujo”) and her husband – Ignacio Varchausky (a great musician, see: El arranque).