Here are two little videos of Diego Amado and Valérie Lafore: I've seen him around at European festivals but haven't actually met either of them (I would love to!). I'm interested in these videos because of the contrast of style. There are quite a few dancers who vary how they dance very markedly depending on context, partner, inspiration, mood, their current thinking, whatever. I find this a convincing illustration of just how misleading the concept of 'style' can be if you try to put people in categories based on it.
I love this one:
Love it! It's totally absorbing, I'd be (discreetly - well, ish) watching it work its way around the dancefloor with pure delight. This is the kind of dance where I'd be wondering "what are we doing and how come it's legal? Does anyone even realise how much fun I am having here?"
Now here's another one, a joint demo with Jorge and Maria Dispari, who some of you know. Same man, same woman, different and darker music, different context, noticeably different so-called-style in my view, perhaps coming mostly from a different pattern of choosing what to use in the music (more in the vein of what Jorge Dispari does, to be exact, which I perceive as dancing to less of it - as a style choice).
This dance is great looking, and very well-dressed, but I'm not gonna rip its tie off, or even give it a Valentine's card, and it probably wouldn't fancy me either. Nothing wrong with it, great quality, but it's different and not quite my type. I know some regular readers may well prefer this one to the other. It's all good.
But what I find fascinating is that there are quite a lot of people who can technically deliver quite a variety of so-called 'styles', in different contexts, at different times, to different music or with different ideas in mind, to very high standards. I know at least a few myself. I'm not saying there's any reason why you would want to achieve that, beyond insatiable curiosity or sheer bloody-mindedness. It's up to you. But people do it all the time, and it's often a mistake to think about people in such terms.
Anyway you can catch them at Carrément Tango, Marseille.
Monday, 14 February 2011
Diego Amado and Valérie Lafore: a Valentine's Card
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Fun and Food
Ahhh I had so much fun at the tea dance in the middle of nowhere (see link on right) - lots of lovely dancers, lovely atmosphere, lovely space, good flow, quite crowded, about ninety people there, buzzing. It's getting popular so there's not a lot of space, you need your milonguerotrousers. Quite a few people you'd otherwise see at Eton or maybe Bramshaw.
Tip: the empañadas are very good and as soon as they are announced everybody makes a beeline for them (instant chaos, gannets) and they disappear in seconds. So if you want to eat more than one, try to spot their progress through the oven when you get yourself a cuppa so you can kidnap them as they come out. Alternatively, while everyone else is trying to get one is a great time to have about two-thirds of the floor to yourself and stretch your legs a bit.
I like that it's quite long so you don't feel you have to chase dances; and that also means I'm happier taking risks with people I don't know, especially early on, which is good too 'cause it spreads the love around.
Now I'm going to watch France v Ireland. You never know what either of them are going to do.
[Update: they've thought up a system. Now you get a little card as you come in the door, and you swap it later for your empañada. That way, everybody who wants one, gets one, and nobody gets to waylay them on the way from oven to table. Much more orderly and fair-play. You can have another later if there are any left.]
Monday, 31 January 2011
Everyone suddenly ...
... was just having so much fun. I had so much fun. The dances were fun, but it wasn't just them, it was the friends I hadn't seen for months, the laughter, the chat, the glass of wine, the atmosphere, the music (happy DJ) everybody had a smile on their face. Everyone was dancing around and having a fab time.
That was so much fun. And if I hadn't gone there, there was another place I could have gone to where the same might perfectly well have happened (and I hope it did).
That was so much fun it was ridiculous.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Festivalito con Amigos, Saarbrücken
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| Some fairly typical buildings opposite my hotel |
All photos in this post are mine, none of the videos are.
Disclosure: I know some of the organisers and regard them as friends (albeit not people I see all the time or whose personal stories are any of my damn business).
The Workshops: I didn't take any (although I had planned to - my partner fell ill). So I can't say much about them. They had three sets of people giving the workshops, two from Argentina and one from Amsterdam, I'll mention them all later.
Layout and Atmosphere: There were four milongas, each in a different location. It would take too long to describe each location in detail, especially as the chances are it will change next year. They are all within easy walking distance of the centre of town. There were two big ones at night and two small ones in the day time.
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| Dancing in the Johanneskirche |
Hospitality: Ok to excellent, depending on the venue. On Friday night, lots of water, juices, other drinks and some nibbles were included, and substantial sandwiches were sold for €2. On Saturday afternoon, lots of water and soft drinks and cake were all included. At the Johanneskirche all liquid refreshments including bottled water were for sale (but very reasonable - big bottles) in aid of the church building fund - you could get tap water if you needed it - and there seemed to be some cake included in the entry price. The Theater Blauer Hirsch sold good food (although it ran out), beer and other drinks and coffee for very reasonable prices, again there was a charge for bottled water, but you could get drinking water out of the taps if you needed it. The facilities were in all in order although I did have to queue briefly at the Johanneskirche.
Anyone or anything interesting that turned up or happened: There were some short-and-sweet performances from the teaching couples. I found these quite interesting; they were all close-embrace-only tango but with markedly different and distinctive personal styles. At the Johanneskirche, Sebastian Coli Bazzini and Josephine Boza were youthful, leggy and well-glued. Rodolfo “El Chino” Aguerrodi dances with a facial expression of deep distress, as though this is his last dance ever; his partner Miho Omaki as though she's President of the Freedom to Party Party. It was compelling, for me. At the Friday night milonga, Antonio Martinez siezed the mike and made a long announcement paying tribute to Detlef and Melina and how much he appreciated their way of dancing, then proceeded (with Francesca Bertelli) to do a demo that was really quite reminiscent of them but at the same time quite different. It all went on for quite a while due to announcements being made in at least three languages, but I didn't mind. Anyway, I also enjoyed watching them all socially and I like the thing they do at the end where all the organising and teaching couples do one dance all at once like a mini-milonga - so I'll embed this one:
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| Christian Tobler and his DJ display |
Getting in: The pass for all four milongas was €40. It's essential to book early or you won't be able to get in to the smaller ones. You need to bring the pass with you and have it marked for each milonga.
Getting there and getting home: I stayed at the City Hotel, and walked happily to and from all the milongas. Some of those on a tighter budget stayed in a youth hostel which is less central but it's still all perfectly walkable.
As for getting to Saarbruecken itself, you can fly to Trier and take a train from there, but I took the Eurostar directly from London. You change trains in Paris (there's a five-minute walk from Gare du Nord to Gare de L'Est) and Saarbruecken is the first stop on the inter-city-express to Frankfurt. It's only just beyond the French border, and French is quite widely spoken there, I heard it often in restaurants. The train from London to Saarbruecken takes between five and six hours in total depending on how much time you spend stopping over in Paris. Morning trains get you there between lunchtime and teatime, having lost an hour to the time difference; an 8am train home got me back in my flat for lunch. Flying such a short distance is significantly slower, what with faffing about at airports, but it's much much cheaper.
The website: http://www.tangokombinat.de/ and http://www.tangodesalon.de/. Neither gets updated very frequently [Edit: Melina reckons weekly, but if you want to know where she and Detlef are and what's going on, I'd recommend following them on Facebook, plus you get the Extreme Ironing and miscellaneous banter. Edit: added FB link.] but there's usually a downloadable PDF with the complete programme, addresses and everything.
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| La Despedida at Theater Blauer Hirsch |
How it went: Really well, for me. It was long enough for me to really get into it. I danced with many friends, from home and abroad, fine dancers and delightful people. There were so many lovely dancers from so many places. Mostly I had bits of a language in common with them, sometimes we could find two that were mutually semi-intelligible for between-dance remarks, I enjoy that. The quality of dancing generally was high, and although there were some who were not so skilled, and there was much variation in personal style, there weren't really any clueless showoffs bouncing about causing problems for other people. I saw one significant bump, and I had a few touches, more at the evening than the daytime milongas - the floors were pretty crowded a lot of the time. My favourite was the last one, which felt particularly happy. I personally prefer the smaller spaces to the larger ones, as in the larger ones I find it harder to circulate and dance with the people I want to - I find them a little disorienting and develop a tendency to hide. Plus I think they make some people very tense, especially if crowded, and that's not good for bumps. But some people probably have the opposite preference, it depends on your social character.
The seams were getting a bit tight in places, and they want this festival to stay fairly small with a relatively intimate atmosphere, so it's likely the format will change a bit over the next few years. Possibilities include changing the mix of venues, or dropping the workshops and going more in the 'tango-marathon' direction; any or none of those things might happen. They also do an event at Christmas, check the website for details.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
The sort of thing that you might do for fun
The reason I post this video by Céline Deveze is not that there's any particularly wonderful dancing going on (though most of it looks pretty good to me and it's crowded but doesn't look bumpy), but because everyone seems to be having such fun.
The tango that appeals to me is a relatively simple, physically undemanding dance, with all of the complexity provided by the music, and it's the sort of thing that you might want to do at a party, for fun, with lots of different people, some known to you and some new, sometimes perhaps even in fancy dress.
I think we often make it too difficult and dramatic.
On the other hand, it's rather a subversive thing to do. All these people are much closer together and involved with each other than ballroom dancers, or jivers or lindyhoppers would be. They're much more intensely connected; they are varied in age and in other things, and some of them are very beautifully dressed, or wearing ears or tails or elaborate feather masks or imaginative costumes. And they really look as though they're enjoying it. Naughty, huh? Almost as outrageous as four women swiping a meeting room and knitting together for an hour at lunchtime.
Céline's next "Week-end milonguero," with fancy dress ball, is in the last week of January.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
The Adventures of Saj
I have just been very much cheered up by an overheard conversation on the Tube.
The speaker, who for the purpose of this story I shall call Saj, was a man of about twenty years, insigificant build, immature facial hair, lots of gel, and somewhat deceptively innocent appearance. He described his exploits and adventures as a Londoner and Manchester United supporter (you may now have detected a certain nonconformity) to two friends, the more vocal of whom I shall call Jaz.
SAJ
And the train stopped!
JAZ
...!
Sunday, 6 September 2009
On the Pull ...
And from the Drafts file.
When I was a teenager in the North of England, one of the most mysterious things about my world was why people wanted to go out "on the pull".
It's one of those things I don't care at all if other people do - good luck to them, have fun - as long as it's not compulsory. My own reaction has always been "eww" - undignified, pointless, depressing and dull.
While my personal reaction is unchanged, one of the things have found as I learn to dance tango is that I think I can now imagine what kick people get out of doing the ‘Newcastle* Tango’ all night (The music's crap, and you get glandular fever, or worse, plus a headache in the morning from the beer, as though the music wouldn't have been enough. The beer is to keep you warm, instead of more clothes. Along with deep-fried Mars bars). I don't know exactly why they get the kick out of doing that specifically, but maybe I see what the kick is. I just have different demands for my kicks. And my interactions with people. As I've danced for longer, so that fewer of my partners are strangers, the revelation has faded, but I try to remember.
Perhaps I would have had the same revelation had I chosen any other social dance. But I doubt it.
*I didn't live in Newcastle. They're just more famous for it there, that they are where I was. For actual tango in Newcastle you could try here or here or here, and there's a video of social dancing here, with the lovely Oscar Acebras and Carlos Quilici playing a milonga.
Saturday, 4 July 2009
More reasons to dance (not necessarily tango)
Some time ago I wrote a little bit about why I dance tango.
Now Ampster has a nice piece about why he does. Some of it's the same and some of it's different.
I noticed that, like at least two others of my readers, he is or was also a student of martial arts, not at all uncommon among male tango dancers. At a certain point I wonder if they sometimes think "I could be grappling with this big hairy twerp trying to kill me, or I could have a beautiful woman in my arms, and the technical difficulty level and time commitment is about the same. Where did I put my brain?" But I merely speculate.
Ampster: Hobby for the old and broken: Its a vernacular that I feel special knowing. Its something that I can make people happy with, one partner at a time. Its a hobby that doesn't involve danger, combat, serious physical injury, pain, trauma, nor booming things. ... Most of all, its a hobby I can share with my beloved Mrs. Ampster.
One of the reasons we have in common is that many hobbies can be rather isolating. In his case, he wants to share with Mrs. Ampster. In my case, I have always had a tendency to be shy, and I have to actively take measures to reduce the harm that causes me. Social dancing is a very good approach. I definitely feel the same satisfaction in making other people happy, one at a time. It's pleasant and gives me confidence. But perhaps more importantly, it makes me happy. Because the dancing has real interest and challenge and and joy in itself I feel motivated to stick with it even when I am anxious, and that builds confidence too and gives me a chance to manage the anxiety and get comfortable with people, at least to a point I can work from. I'd certainly suggest some kind of social dancing, not necessarily this one - I think you should pick the one that appeals to you personally - to people who are habitually shy. You can make a decision that you're going to do it and then just stick at it, going to a class every week, and it has a certain structure and boundary to it as well as a sense of achievement and as well as being fun in itself. It has its own little world that you can find a place in. The fact that it's not easy means your mind is occupied with the task and not feeling bored or selfconscious. You can still hide at other times if you want to, or not, if having the practice inspires you to seek people out a bit more.
[Update: and twenty minutes later, he says more. I particularly like the bit about making friends you just happen to like.]
Sunday, 7 December 2008
Why I Dance Tango
I am a social dancer. That's what I wanted when I took my first lesson.
I want to express myself musically, without making a big performance of it. I want to interact with men, and other women, in a way that gives me joy and doesn't weigh me down with burdens. I want to get all dolled up, once or twice a week, and feel graceful, and sensual, and fun-loving. I want a reason to wear pretty clothes and shoes. I want to do something with my body, and delight in it, and have it appreciated by other people. I want to do all this as well as I can, but without an obligation to anyone but me.
It's not that I value less the rest of what I am. I just want to expand what it means to be me.
As for why this dance rather than another one, this is the one where I don't have to fake.
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