Misia & Peter – tango blog

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).

Friday (November 28)

Tango intermedio with Anibal Montenegro & Anabella Cruz Heck (@Tango brujo)

Tecnica para tango with Martin Gutierrez & Samantha Di Paolo (@Tango brujo)

Tangocool practica in Villa Malcolm (Av. Cordoba 5063, 8 pesos)

[I'll write a description later - I'm in a serious shortage of free time ;) ]

Thursday (November 27)

Despite the heatwave and sultry weather, we made it to three classes, two of them in a place without air conditioning! ;)

Tango 3 with Christian Duarte & Carolina Lafata (@DNI)
–We started with a rebote focusing on separating the pendulum movement of the hips versus chest staying forward with the partner. Then we played with a cute combination of gancho and following enganchada, focusing a lot again on the hip movement (down down down & a little bit backward!), using the adductors of the inner thigh plus keeping the chest forward with the ribcage closed and using the latissimus dorsi. Great class!

Tecnica with Carolina Lafata (@DNI)
– we continued working on the enganchada. After the regular warm-up exercises, we did an exercise in which we were projecting the leg without the weight, keeping the hip down, stretching the area around the hip and maintaining the chest forward and connection in the embrace.

Tango intermedio y avanzado with Mariela Sametband & Martin Gutierrez (@Tango brujo)
–the last class in the series of classes devoted to giro. This time we were working on the giro structure applied to the line and different variations – with suspension, double time, gancho and boleo etc.

Though terribly tired (partly because of dancing, but mostly due to the 40 degree (that’s Centigrade) heat and 70% humidity) we managed to find some energy and headed off to Salon Canning (Scalabrini Ortiz 1331, 18 pesos) for a milonga. Orquesta Sans Souci was supposed to play and Fabian Peralta and Virginia Pandolfi were to dance. To our disappointment, there was no electricity in Salon Canning (the power grid went down in several parts of the city due to overload from the air conditioners) and a storm was about to begin. We were directed by El Chino to the nearby La Viruta (Armenia 1366) (and warned that ‘the kids’ in the neigbourhood have guns + on the way there was no light and the storm was hanging in the air), where the classes were still going on at a quarter past midnight. We thought for a minute about staying, but seeing that the practica after the classes was scheduled only until 2 AM and that it was mostly local beginners we headed home. A few minutes after getting back to the apartment we realized that Practica Rara was supposed to be going on just a few blocks from us at J. D. Perón 1785, so we headed over there. The lights were on in the third floor windows, but we could not hear any music and no one answered the doorbell, so after several rings we finally called it a night. You can’t say we didn’t try.

Wednesday (November 26)

Tango 5/6 with Pablo Vilarazza & Dana Frigoli (@DNI)
–even though the temperature was around 32C and the humidity around 70% Pablo and Dana managed to catch the attention of their students by a difficult (for some really confusing) concept of density in the movement and applying in the presented movement (which i don’t know how to describe even). The second part of the class was more feasible – namely nice colgada with gancho.

In the evening we took a intermediate/advanced class in Tango brujo with Pablo Retamar & Anita Monteagudo, which was recommended to us. Despite the recommendations, we didn’t like it. The topic was boleos, linear and circular and different variations – and the teachers failed to explain some really important technical elements that are important (in our opinion) for these movements.

Tuesday (November 25)

As the heatwave took its toll on us we did two classes with Martin and then waited till the evening to cool down a little bit and went for Practica X (Medrano 476, 8 pesos) where Rodrigo Palacios and Augustina Berenstein were performing.

Educacion postural + tango nuevo with Martin Gutierrez (@Tango brujo)
–the class is normally taught by Martin and his partner – Carolina Pizzo, however, she’s away so it was only him and turned out into the technique class,of course, excellent one! :)

Tango intermedio y avanzado with Martin Gutierrez & Samantha Di Paolo (@Tango brujo)

In between the classes we saw World Press Photo 2008 in Centro Cultural Borges, which made us even happier then ever that we live in Europe…

Monday (November 24)

Private class with Maxi (@DNI, 80 pesos)
–Maxi is the yoga teacher at DNI and one of the specialist in the technique. Therefore, as a warm up we did some exercises to strengthen our feet and stretch the spine, open the chest etc. all in order to find the right posture for dancing. We were both convinced that after all our posture is quite good, yet, it appears there still things we need to work on and teach them as well. We continued with learning how to breathe properly, how to connect with your center and with your partner, doing connection exercises. For both of us it was really useful, for me particularly the part about connecting the embrace with the center and the technique of the hip movement in walk.

Milonga class with Oscar Casas (@El beso, 20 pesos)
–this two hour class was devoted to all the crosses in milonga… great as usual :)

Saturday – Sunday (November 22-23)

On Saturday we took a class with Carolina Lafata & Christian Duarte (@DNI) – tango nuevo in the closed embrace and we enjoyed it a lot, finally learning how to do a nice gancho (for a woman) backward in close embrace. As it was warm and sunny (almost 30degrees!) we were off to the Recoleta open-air fair straight after the class. Having bought lots of bombillas and calabash gourds for drinking mate (as well as few pairs of earings ;) ) we enjoyed delicious Freddo ice-cream – mascarpone with strawberries and chocolate with whole almonds…mmm…

As it was getting even hotter during Sunday, we decided to explore the Buenos Aires’ park, namely, Parque 3 de Febrero, which consists of many other parks… Our first destination were botanical gardens (Jardin Botanico) designed by Thays – the guy who introduced the beautiful jacarandaes in Buenos Aires. Jacarandaes’ blossoms are of delicate violet colour and are the most characterstic trees of Buenos Aires.

The second destination was the Japanese gardens (Jardin Japones) in which we had few moments of rest and we were lucky to see the exhibition of the orignal Japanese kimonos.
All the pictures from both gardens and Recoleta are here :)

On Sunday evening we went to the milonga Porteno y Bailarin (Riobamba 345, 20pesos) which was supposed to be the closing milonga of Pulpo’s Tango Week, however around 12:30 it was still dead and the music was inaudible due to huge fans, so we didn’t stay for long…

Friday (November 21)

Tango class with Oscar Casas (@El beso)
–another very good class, we played with low and high boleos for close embrace and sacadas with consecutive enganchadas.

Tecnica para tango, intermedio and avanzado with Martin Gutierrez & Samantha Di Paolo (@Tango brujo)
–soltadas, ganchos, piernazos and soltadas – that would be the best summary of the class. We were working mainly on the technique of these movements – having the stability in the supporting leg, appropriate density and relaxation in the free leg, appropriate hip position and the changes in the embrace during the soltadas. Uff.. hard, but great :)

After yesterday’s Nino Bien experience, we decided to call it a day after the classes and headed off to see the new James Bond – Quantum of Solace and enjoy Havanna’s alfajores =)