I was standing in line to get coins (I do this a couple of times a week, since they’re in extremely short supply, but are the only way to pay the fare on the buses), when an Argentine man in his late seventies began chatting with me. We kvetched for a while about the long line and the bad service, then talked about the economy, life in Buenos Aires and in Argentina in general, the weather, being a tourist here and in Europe, plus a few other topics. He spoke heavily-accented, rapidfire porteno Spanish, but I understood the better part of what he was saying, and he had no trouble understanding me, so we continued to talk outside the bank. It turned out that despite his age, he was still actively working with tourist agencies around the world to bring tourists to Argentina, and continues to travel to Europe and Asia regularly. He talked about the neighborhood where we were, saying it was called Villa Freud because of the high concentration of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists living there and said it had become one of the most expensive places in the city to buy an apartment. Then, when I explained that we were here for tango, he said that he used to dance, but doesn’t anymore because of his age. So we started to discuss tango, I told him how it’s danced and taught in Europe, the USA and in Argentina, my perceptions of milongas here, alternative music and the increasing interest in Golden Age tango music around the world.

He said the same things I had heard in private classes as well: that to dance tango, you don’t need to do a lot of complicated steps and acrobatics, instead, you must listen to the music, the lyrics of the song you’re dancing to, and dance to the compás and the cadencia with your heart. As we continued to talk standing on the sidewalk in front of the bank, he quoted several lines from Naranjo en flor and then from Volver, saying that they were beatiful poetry that one needs to be able to understand and appreciate in order to dance to it:

“Toda mi vida es el ayer
que me detiene en el pasado,
eterna y vieja juventud
que me ha dejado acobardado
como un pájaro sin luz.”

“Volver . . .
Con la frente marchita
Las nieves del tiempo
Blanquearon mi sien”

I said that as a foreigner I found it hard to understand some tangos because of the old lunfardo (Buenos Aires slang) used in them. He suggested that I ask local teachers about these, so I can really get the meaning, and, therefore, feel what the poets meant when they wrote them.

He also talked about the importance of the embrace and how he much he liked the elegance of dancing tango de salón at the milongas where everybody used to take great care to dress and look their best. I was starting to wonder if he was one of the milonguero types who stay up all night to dance and womanize, but no, he’s been together with his wife for over 50 years.

He said society has changed a lot, for the worse, that the city is less secure, human, and friendly than it used to be. He used to go to the same bank for several decades, where he was on a first name basis with the employees, and before talking business, they would always have a bit of small talk about what they had done since the last time they had met. Now you get impersonal service and long waits in line, with special service reserved for the bank’s “Privilege” clients.

He mentioned an address, Boedo 777, where he used to dance. I told him we had been taking classes just two blocks from there with Jorge Dispari. That part of Boedo, near Avenida San Juan, is a very famous tango neighborhood, where many well-known figures of this dance were born or lived for a while, with name plaques on a lot of buildings and street corners in their memory. There is actually a tango titled Boedo y San Juan, written and composed by Enrique Cadicamo, who grew up in that neighborhood. Like many tangos, it describes a nostalgic longing for the past, a love of the streets where the poet grew up, and the changes in the neighborhood as the old streets and buildings disappear . . .

We talked for nearly an hour (including the nearly twenty minutes spent waiting in line). As we said goodbye, he wished me a pleasant stay and said he hoped I will want to come back again one day.

“You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls.” -Merce Cunningham

We have been living in Buenos Aires for about a month now, taking tango classes and workshops during the day and going to the “tango tourist circuit” milongas in the Palermo district at night, with occasional trips to more traditional ones such as El Beso or La Baldosa. From our own experience, from observing other dancers and from conversations with Argentines, it seems that locals go to milongas with very different goals from tourists. Understanding these differences can help you avoid a lot of frustration — if you want to have a better time at the milongas in this city, read on.

First, outside of Argentina, in many tango communities milongas are shorter then here and they are a place for dancing — as much dancing as possible during those 3-4 hours in the evening. So those who are dancing tango anywhere outside of Argentina are most likely used to dancing quite a bit at their local milongas, and chatting, socializing, etc. was probably on the back burner for them. Their main goal was to have some really great tandas with their favorite partners.

Second, most people who come here will spend thousands of dollars on their trip, including airfare, accommodation, classes, milonga covers, etc. It’s natural to think that one must get their money’s worth, and that this should include dances with the best local dancers as well. Otherwise, we could all just stay at home, right?

Argentines, on the other hand, go to milongas to socialize — to hang out, talk with friends, drink beer, and so on, from about 10-11 pm until way into the night. If they feel like dancing a tanda, they will get up and dance one, but most likely only a handful of times a night and usually with their friends from their table or group. (There are exceptions, of course, but this is what we saw and heard in general.) Many locals at the milongas are also involved with teaching tango, and they go out after having taught a couple of group or private classes that day.

So, in most milongas, there are tourists really actively trying to get dances all the time, and there are Argentines who would rather just be left alone. But this is just the beginning of the differences. The rules (“codigos”) of asking up partners can be quite confusing, too.

In the Palermo milongas, the cabeceo rules vary quite a bit. In Salon Canning partners are asked mostly via cabeceo, in Practica X (which really functions as a milonga) or the milongas at Villa Malcolm it’s a mixture of cabeceo and walking up to the lady, in La Viruta it’s mostly directly asking her up — with the darkness and crowds it would really be impossible cabeceo anyone across the dance floor.

In La Baldosa, a milonga visited almost exclusively by locals, people seemed to be dancing mostly with those at their table, while at El Beso, men and women are seated separately. In theory, this should make cabeceo easier, but there are so many tables and they are placed so tightly together (with women seated in multiple rows behind one another) that it’s often very difficult to cabeceo someone without the lady in front of her or behind her misunderstanding the invitation.

To complicate things further, tango tourists as a group seem to have something of a bad reputation here. Having danced in Canning a few times, I can really understand this one. Most Argentines, regardless of their level of dancing, are quite good at navigation and are aware of the line of dance, lanes, the space around them and other nearby couples. (This is not only true on the dance floor — just watch them navigate a crowded Corrientes sidewalk at rush hour.) Some tourists, however, cut in and out of lanes, crowd the couple behind or in front of them, lead or follow high boleos, ganchos and other moves completely inappropriate for a crowded milonga. I can see how locals don’t want to take a chance on someone they don’t know because of this. They have to see you dance a few times until they can be pretty sure that you are able to lead or follow not just well, but safely.

This pretty much leaves the tourist with two options. You can spend your evening at the milonga as if you were at home, trying to dance as much as possible with the other tango tourists (most of whom are very high level dancers, and are also eager to dance a lot). You are likely to be pleasantly surprised: there are lots of dancers who teach tango at home or have a serious background in music or other movement modalities, which can lead to truly wonderful dances. You can also try the local way: relax, get a drink, circulate, make eye contact and chat with Argentines, and maybe after a while you will dance with them as well. For this, at least an intermediate knowledge of Spanish is needed as most of the locals don’t speak English or any other foreign language at a conversational level.

In milongas in Europe, one can see quite a bit of energy and sometimes even acrobatics on the dance floor, but less of the simple pausing and dancing to different instruments within the same song that can be observed in milongas in Buenos Aires. It is these qualities that can give a milonga its flow and special energy, so I was very happy to find several videos of Sebastian and Mariana performing to La melodía del corazón. As far as I can tell, these are not choreographies, rather, the dancers know the music very intimately and improvise each dance in a way that expresses the qualities of the various parts of this song.

Sebastian Arce & Mariana Montes -- Dublin performance:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcJxPHeyhuk

Watch how the quality of their movement changes two minutes into the video, when the violin solo part starts — it’s almost like slow motion, but watch Sebastian’s left feet for just a second at 2:13.

Sebastian Arce & Mariana Montes -- performance at La Viruta:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWZIdfmcDUU

Here, the violin part starts at 53 seconds — again, note the flowing, soft movement they switch to immediately. At 1:07, they take a few quick, playful, rhythmical steps, then immediately return to the previous quality, slowly transitioning back to more complicated, faster movement over the next 15-20 seconds.

Sebastian Arce & Mariana Montes -- Sitges performance:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaY3IwlIg9s

Unfortunately, the first few seconds of the song are cut off, but you know what to look for. The changes are obvious at 0:27 and at 0:41. Here, instead of a gradual transition into more energetic dancing, they preserve the flowing quality until the end of the violin solo.

Sebastian Arce & Mariana Montes -- Moscow performance:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLIN5m3gM7g

One more beautiful interpretation of the same song. Again, note how the changes in the quality of their dancing follow the changes in the music.

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 :)

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 ]

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 :)

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!”.

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.

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.

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) :)