7 mayo 2008

Ah, Zivals. Such great service. I ordered a batch of cds there last Friday and they arrived on Tuesday. That's crazy fast from Argentina. Usually it takes exactly a week, which is fast enough. But four days, weekend included? Dang! Props also to DHL. Thanks guys.

In the spirit of my growing collection and also inspired by Alex's blog, I've decided to share some lists of current favorites. Alex proposed a Top 10 Golden Age tango list but I think that's kind of impossible. Instead, today is dedicated to the singers. Who are my favorites right now? I know I'm going to leave out some biggies, both on purpose and inadvertently, but in no particular order:

Carlos Gardel - No explanation needed. He is the king, always will be. Current favorites: Melodia de Arrabal, Canchero.

Angel Vargas - The golden tone of his voice, the expression, the confidence. No singer has done more for an orchestra than Vargas did for D'Agostino. Try listening to a D'Agostino without him and see if it grabs you in the same way. For me, at this moment, it just doesn't. Some current favorites: Como El Hornero, No Vendrá.

Raúl Berón - To me, he is the master of subtlety. He can sing very softly but never loses richness, and his dynamic range makes his strong passages that much more effective. His control can make other fine singers with the same orchestra seem relatively coarse and sloppy (compare his work with Demare alongside that of Horacio Quintana). Some current favorites: Tarareando (with Caló), Una Emoción (with Demare).

Julio Martel - I'm not a big fan of De Angelis and with the notable exception of his valses I tend not to dance when I hear his music come on. But I have to admit, he had a good ear for singers, and my favorite of his group is Martel. There is a kind of unabashed romanticism and earnestness about his voice that moves me. Check out his control with his vibrato and the way he rolls his r's. Some current favorites: Acordes Porteños, La Vida Me Engaño.

Alberto Podesta - I remember very clearly "discovering" Podesta one night at Salon Canning and Nido Gaucho began a tanda. I'm sure I had heard the song many times before but somehow it was as if I'd never really heard it at all until that moment. Such longing! The very next day I went out and bought the cd, and listening to it through I couldn't believe I had somehow missed out on his genius for so long. Until then, I had mostly thought of Di Sarli in terms of his instrumentals. I see him and Berón as musical brothers. It's interesting to compare their renditions of the same song, ie. Al Compás del Corazón. Some current favorites: Lloran Las Campanas (with Di Sarli), Paisaje (with Laurenz).

Ricardo Ruíz - A truly unique voice in tango--sweet, utterly refined, with a kind of eerie, almost androgynous quality. I find that here, in the SF Bay Area, he tends to get passed over on dj playlists in favor of his Fresedian brother Roberto Ray, but it was his voice and the way it complemented the "old movie soundtrack" orchestration that initially drew me to Fresedo. Some current favorites: Buscándote, Volveras.

Well, that does it for now. Next time: The pianists.

4 mayo 2008

Have been feeling a bit out of sorts lately, a kind of mild occasional vertigo that happens for no discernible reason. Apparently, I'm not alone in this as other people I've talked to have mentioned the same thing. It is clear there is only one possible explanation.

The earth is wobbling on its axis.

Of course, the collective governments of the world along with the elite scientific community have been very hushed about this as not to create a global panic, but we dancers can feel it under our feet. When we do a giro and feel ourselves tilting, or when we try to hold steady during a parada/pasada and feel our planted leg undulating underneath us to keep us upright. It must be the tectonic plates far below the hardwood floors of the milongas shifting in their continuing currents away from Pangaea, haphazardly churning into disarray due to the unsteady spin of the planet, which is swaying and shuddering like a decelerating top.

Are we doomed?

Perhaps the earth just needs a little adjustment. First off, we need to remind her to keep her core solid but flexible and clearly dissociate the energy--feel the energy projecting upward through her spine and out the top of her head, and down from her lower lumbar through her legs and into the ground. Keep her chin and shoulders down, chest and neck up, ribs and pelvis tucked in. Have a little flexion in her legs for stability and agility, and spread her weight evenly across her feet or perhaps skewing a bit towards the front. And remind her to always take care of her own axis; she can't depend on the sun to always do it for her (maybe sometimes his lead is going to be bad and in those cases she doesn't want to sacrifice herself).

Then again, maybe there's just a bug going around, or the weather that's making us all wonky. Or that I've been drinking too much coffee and/or maté lately.

19 abr 2008

Recently, my tango partner mentioned in passing how, when she is dancing at a milonga, one of the things she focuses on is the dance space, and it made me wonder if this is part of the responsibility that a follower should share or if it she should leave it to the leader's discretion.

My take is that, ideally, this should be solely a concern for the leader, in the sense that the leader dictates the path that the couple will follow but also regulates the energy of expression. And of course, there is the all important rule that the leader takes responsibility for safety, both of his partner and himself but also for that of the couples around them.

So then, as the leader evaluates all the myriad factors that will, moment to moment, inform his interpretation, the follower should have two primary areas of focus: the nuances of her partner's lead and her own axis. The leader, for his part, will not put anyone in jeopardy through bad decisions, ie. marking a strong boleo, media luna, or large circumference / high energy turn in the direction of another couple or perhaps a chair leg or table, aggressively bulldozing his partner toward a space in order to claim it ahead of another couple who is moving in that trajectory or using her body to tailgate another couple, etc. If the leader is conscientious about the space then there should be a consistent and comfortable flow to the dance.

My concern when the follower takes the responsibility for this space is that, assuming the leader is already being careful, there will be a kind of excess of caution that feeds on itself and negatively affects the flow. That is to say, on a dance floor that is packed or otherwise safety compromised, the leader already will take this into account and modify the couple's energy and dance space accordingly. If on top of this the follower also takes the incentive to regulate the energy and the space it will result in an excess throttling of energy and a kind of overprotectiveness that causes rigidity and loss of what limited freedom the couple has in the given circumstance.

Again, I am only speaking ideally, as there are never absolutes. But I feel that to dance with too many eyes focused on protection (especially here in the states) is to compromise to the extent of irrelevance. Shoulders and shoes will rub, couples will get cut off, there will be the occasional bump. All this is unavoidable, and to overly prioritize the attempt to completely eradicate this from the experience is to completely neuter expression, which is just as much your couples' right as any others' on the floor who may be more aggressive in exercising that right.

This is my take at the moment, but I would definitely like to hear what others think.

14 abr 2008

Have not been in much of a tango mood lately. Don't know if it's because of the high volume I've been getting at work, the crazy ass weather in the Bay Area, taking care of my mom (she's better now) or just overexposure. For the past couple weeks I've been keeping it almost strictly in a practice mode with A. We've been attending the advanced class with David and Mariana on Wednesdays which has been really refreshing for us. I'm not one to take many classes and apparently people know this about me, as colleagues were expressing surprise at my attendance. D and M structure the lessons around an extended sequence which they demonstrate piece by piece and deconstruct along the way. The point is not to memorize the sequence but to understand how the elements interconnect, which will in turn hopefully give the dancers greater insight into making different connections as well as gaining proficiency and possibly devising new variants of the elements. It's fun and challenging to get outside of my comfort zone which admittedly is something I tend not to do, although in principle I know it is necessary to keep growing. And this class leans toward modern concepts (single axis, centrifugal force, contradictory leads, etc.) which I haven't really explored in depth, although for the most part I have previously studied the movements to some degree and can manage fairly decently--again, somewhat to the surprise of those who know my conservative dancing tendencies.

Aside from the workshops, A and I do our regularly scheduled practices on Thursdays and Sundays and beyond that I haven't gone out much, maybe one or two milongas per week. And on the occasion that I do go to a milonga I've been averaging maybe one tanda for the evening, sometimes none. That's fine. I think that by the time summer hits I'll probably get more energy and incentive to get more active again.

28 mar 2008

Wednesday night @ Cellspace turned out to be a great evening, which was a blessing considering some of the difficulties that arose in the last minute. The evening before, my computer started having a glitch where it wouldn't send a signal through the audio output for some reason. I think it's shorting out somewhere and I'm going to have to take it to the shop.

Side note: Funny thing about these Macbooks, they always start acting all wonky immediately after the warranty expires. My previous Macbook had a complete meltdown of the motherboard about a month past the warranty which would have cost around 800 bucks to fix, which is why I bought the current one. Now I am a month past the current warranty and this happens. I know Macs have some true believers out there and I have always been a Mac user myself, but this is not only a drag but seems to show a pattern of unreliability...

Anyway, I ended up having to DJ through my iPod by syncing my playlists in the durations when my co-DJ Sabrina was on. She turned out to be the star of the night music-wise, drawing a bunch of people to our table to ask, "What was that last song?" I, on the other hand, feel like I was the solid backup player, kind of like the person who plays bass. You don't really notice them but they are the ones really laying down the foundation. And in retrospect I think that was the role I played by leaning heavily towards strong traditional tango tandas. I feel like we had a good mix and kept the energy moving really well. We had the seats pretty empty the whole night, and when we were done we had folks beaming at us and presenting us with high praise. It's a great feeling to know you are keeping the dancers happy. It's not a responsibility I take lightly.

***

Before the milonga I watched the classes--one beginner and one intermediate/advanced proceeding concurrently--and it occurred to me that there seemed to be a noticeable gap between them. That is, the beginner class seemed to cater to absolute newbies, while the intermediate/advanced class catered to people who should have pretty solid basic technique. But in the i/a class there wasn't really anybody who was at the level at which I think the instructors intended when they created their lesson plan. They began with a simple warm up where the leaders were to exercise their back ochos--not leading the ocho but performing it themselves. But when they commenced I couldn't see anyone who could do it properly. This isn't really all that surprising since in action it is pretty rare for leaders to do back ochos. But it is such a basic element of the dance that the technique should be present regardless. And this is where the gap in level seems to be. Many (not all) of the people taking the i/a class were clearly beyond what was happening in the beginner class and it is understandable that they would want to study something more challenging and unfamiliar to broaden their realm of possibility. Yet it takes time to really solidify even those primary concepts that are introduced during our initiation into tango.

I think this is an issue that I often see in classes here. Maybe it's because the classes tend to be too short in duration, but what seems to get neglected is some significant time to work solely on technical exercises. In many classes I see instructors allowing a brief warm up--usually consisting of a free dance for one song--and then immediately begin with the class topic. In Argentina I felt there was a lot more focus on technique, especially during the warm up, and what I have observed in other dances it is the same thing--particularly in classic dances, like ballet. Now, I don't have a beef with people who are casual dancers and aren't interested in investing the time and work into bringing their tango to a certain level. As a dance of the people I welcome those who are just looking to have a good time. These people are really the meat of the community. But for those who have higher aspirations it needs to be made clear that this is not a dance you can take for granted and think you can achieve success. Tango is d i f f i c u l t. Even for people who have danced their whole lives. And there are no shortcuts. Progress takes time and a lot of hard work, some of it tedious and frustrating and potentially painful physically, mentally, and emotionally. But this is what all the dancers we admire have gone through. To think you can get there without the same kind of struggle is basically to dis those who have worked so hard to get to where they are.

26 mar 2008

Quick post: I'm scheduled to DJ at Cellspace tonight, and wanted to give a heads up regarding something I may play as an experiment. So if you hear a tanda beginning with "Vi Luz y Subí" by Libedinsky/Narcotango, be aware that it will be a mixed tanda and there will be NO SPACES between the songs.

21 mar 2008

Tonight my friend Mariana is leading a workshop for women's technique. In disclosing the focus of the workshop she has made an emphatic statement that she will not teach adornments, and in the promotional materials she says, "You don't need adornments to be pretty, you are pretty." So why does she seem to have such a strong aversion to adornments?

We had a talk a while back about this. I once asked her which women dancers she admired. One of the names she mentioned was Lucia Mazer, and her reasoning for this was because Lucia never wastes energy with extraneous movements. That was an attitude that Mariana strongly agrees with. We got on the subject of adornments and embellishments and she seemed to feel that they take away from the unity of the couple. This was a view that was heightened the more she practiced the leaders' role and would find that the followers' embellishments tended to interfere with her intentions. Beyond that, she apparently thought they spoiled the aesthetic of the dance.

Now, Mariana, if you don't know her, is an exceptional dancer. She's one of the few followers I've met who truly seems to enjoy and excel at *every* approach that a leader provides her, from the absolute beginner to the elite and from the most strictly traditional to the wildly experimental. She seems to have an uncanny knack to adapt instantaneously to whoever she dances with. I have always loved watching her dance but until we had this discussion I never even noticed that she doesn't use adornments. And yet she is absolutely compelling. Why?

Regarding adornments, the current trend for followers seems to be the more, the better. It's as if followers are looking forward to and/or paying a large amount of attention to every space between the leaders' marks for the opportunity to make a display. Aside from aesthetic, it seems to be an exhibition of skill for women to decorate their transitions. In my opinion, perhaps the single biggest influence to this current aesthetic is the dancing of Geraldin Rojas de Paludi, particularly during her time with Javier Rodriguez. Now, I'm sure they are no strangers to anybody who may be reading this and that my singling them out is fairly obvious. But I wonder if many followers are missing something about her dancing, something more vital and bewitching about her dance than her obvious skill with ornamentation. And it is something that she and Mariana, despite their different approaches to the dance, both have in common. That is their complete investment--emotional and physical--in the leader. It's not about technique, it's all about attitude.

"A woman, totally connected with her man," Mariana said, "what could be more beautiful?"

As a leader, I am fairly neutral when it comes to adornments. I utilize them in my dance but don't make them an emphasis, and as far as leading a woman who uses them it generally doesn't bother me. I will say that despite the claims of some, who say that you can make them essentially invisible as far as the partner is concerned, they always affect the mechanism of the dance. Even when the movement is masked by a very skilled dancer, there is always something transmitted even if it's only subconsciously. And when I dance with someone who I know uses a lot of them I tend to limit my dance in order to indulge their interpretation, but also to keep from tripping them over their own feet. I still enjoy these dances, but in a sense I feel that they aren't really all my dances. Like in a way I was just providing a vehicle for the follower to make her statements. And as a leader, that's not the most satisfying feeling. Not to say there shouldn't be give and take, a sharing of expression. But dancing with a follower who places excessive emphasis on adornments is kind of like having a conversation with someone who won't shut up and give you a chance to interject, or like someone who you feel isn't really listening to what you say but is just waiting for the next opportunity to get her two cents in.