Misia & Peter – tango blog

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).

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.