The hammering has died down and I think the paint should be dry enough to reveal a) the addition of a new photos page that is connected directly, hence the banging and the sawing, to b) the LimerickTango photo pool on Flickr.
Limerick Argentine Tango Night & Workshop
Date: Saturday September 13th
Location: Upstairs, The Bank, 62 O’Connell St, Limerick
Workshop: 7.30pm
Subject: “Leading ganchos in close embrace” for int/adv. students (we will work in order to make this with disociation of the body, and learn how to do the ganchos using little space).
Instructor: Beatriz Cisneros of Buenos Aires, New York, Turin and now Cork.
Milonga: 9pm - 1am
Price: Workshop €10, Milonga €10.
WARNING: This posts contains unprovoked rants.
If you are going to hold forth with staunchly held incendiary opinions on your blog then you really should provide a mechanism for response, be it comments (you don’t have to publish them) or an email address (you don’t have to read them), as it will prevent me from having to cite entire blog posts in a manner that makes it look like I’m rounding on you as opposed to engaging in an open and honest debate. Yes Movement invites movement I’m writing about you. Your approach smacks of the priest railing down on people from the pulpit and then using his position and authority to quench dissension. I know the establishment of the “colonies” allowed for many to flee across the Atlantic seeking “to” practise and persecute as they saw fit, but those of us who remained in Europe sought to diminish the power of those priests gaining freedom “from” such control and we really don’t like it when people try it on.
First of all if you are going to quote in large tracts then use the smegging blockquote tags provided. It’s the sixth button from the left in the editing panel. It’s really helpful in distinguishing your diatribe from others.
Not too long after a new “tanguero” pranced (oops moved) into town, a friend of ours commented that watching this guy dance made her seasick. This prompted me to post the following quote on my Facebook page and it lead to an interesting debate with a tango friend.
The quote:
New “Nuevo Tango” Sacrifices Tradition and Grace
…”There is a kind of (for lack of a better term) tribal European dance that many people believe is tango, which is indeed called tango, in which the basic precepts of Argentine tango dance are being ignored, things like a proper lead, following the music, knowing the history of the dance and the music, respecting your partner, dressing well. These are concepts one would think would be the bread and butter of tango, which has traditionally been the most difficult social dance in the world, and one of the most beautiful…..
…I call it Playground Tango.
There is a great deal of this in North America and Europe, and it is all quite self-congratulatory. It represents a break from the old. Indeed it looks down its nose at the old as “revolutionary,” “alternative,” and “organic.’”
The full article can be found here.
Did you honestly expect the tango to go out into the world and remain pristine? Christianity and Islam couldn’t achieve that! How do expect a dance from the shores of the La Plate to do any better. Its origins lie in the meeting of many cultures why exactly did you expect it to stop subsuming new elements. (more…)
As well as swinging the odd sword I have also been known to bend the bow (a 32 pound middle ages Hungarian bow in the pursuit of field archery, for those who are curious). An old archery training annecedote came into play in this weeks class, which I thought I’d share.
It’s a concept of being ‘under the bow’. With all the compressive forces on your bow arm (the one holding the bow) there is a tendancy for tension to creep into the shoulder and have it rise. This isn’t good because you are looking to form a nice T with all the forces acting bone on bone rather than having nervous muscles in play.
The effect can be simulated by lifting a jam jar while holding it from above with your fingers by its lid. You will feel, as you raise the jar, your shoulder tense and rise. Next lift the jar by placing it on your upward turned palm. This time your shoulder shouldn’t rise. Instead you should feel the muscles behind your shoulder blades come into action.
Note: the lifting should be done out to the side in the same space that the hold occupies.
The purpose of this exercise is to avoid ‘chicken wing’ tango and tension in the shoulders. By bringing the action from ‘underneath’ you can achieve a nice firm static hold that communicates out the intention of the chest without having to hang her hand from the rafters or twist her wrist into submission.
Kudos to John Rownan for taking part in RTEs Consuming Passions program and sharing some of his love of tango with the world.
Right, eight weeks down, time to look back over what I have done.
I’ve covered ochos, backward and forward, turns, mordidas, the dreaded basic eight and one or two other steps all executed from the walk. So walk, ocho, walk. If anything this keeps them moving as opposed to jumping along the line of dance in fits and starts of block steps.
Am I happy with it? Not entirely. I’m happier. Perhaps somewhat satisfied. It has been July and August the quietest time of the year. A perfect time to experiment but your sample size will never be big enough to draw accurate conclusions. It is, however, doing what I want it to do. Each week is a valid starting point and by putting a sequence of classes together with aporimately the same difficulty, instead of one that bludgeons the dancers with increasing complexity, I have unlocked some of the leaders innate creativity.
To paint a picture; most courses present a ramp up tango mountain. I have carved a plauteau where the beginner dancer can run around and grow so that when they come to move further uphill those cliffs aren’t as big as they used to be.
Last night I watched ‘Maestro’ the BBCs latest celebrity talent competition where the prize is to conduct a piece at the last night of the proms. A number of the comments made about conducting and the individuals conducting ability, I felt, were quite pertinent to tango, especially for leaders.
“Listening while conducting… follow as well as lead”
“having something to say”
“Rhythm, colour, style, shape and phrasing”
“give the room, the space, the invitation”
“learning the gestures like an actor learns the lines, I want to hear what you have to say”
My money is on Sue Perkins, especially after her rendition of Danny Elfmans theme to the Simpsons.
Before a camera is even touched much of the hard work of photography is done. The elements that make a photograph - those of location finding, pre-visualising, composing and planning - all come before a lens is fitted. The only equipment needed for these crucial steps are a pair of photographer’s eyes. Training those eyes to see potential in a location, envisaging how a scene could look, appreciating the nuances of light, motion, colour, perspective and composition, is what photography is all about. Developing that vision is a journey that never ends.
David Noton, Waiting for the Light
I understand this statement as a photographer. I can translate that sense of vision into how I dance. Just how to engender that sense of vision in others, I don’t know.
The basico cruzado.
Yes I know I wrote that I was doing away with the cross but in the end the old ‘basic-8′ was the most suitable for the eight class. There are a number of reasons it finally made the list. It had to turn up at some point otherwise the migration path from preparatory class to tango class becomes rather tricky. Secondly it’s the only time it appears on the cycle. It is not ‘just the cross’ with the attention focused on what ever else the phrase entails.
A lot of attention was placed on the walk, in close embrace. Part of the difficulty in developing the lead for the cross is learning it in the ’softer’ open embrace. In the close embrace the sense of the lead is more obvious even if it does bring up toe tripping issues.
It’s a subject that I have been meaning to write about for some time. So thanks to Alex’s post for kicking me into action.
It’s the old chestnut about tango beginning in the brothels of Buenos Aires, a typical version coming from the BBC News
Tango was born at the end of the 19th Century in the brothels and bars of Buenos Aires when men, in simulated knife fights, danced with other men.
The same kind of line is trotted out every time a celebrity dancing show features tango, be it ballroom or argentine. In these instances they are partially excusable because such lines are “like a lamppost to a drunk, more for support than illumination”. Where they are not excusable is when they are trotted out by those deeply involved in argentine tango. People who should be able to describe the origins of the dance with something other than the caricature. People who know that the benefits of dancing the tango are far much more than the opportunity to play pimp and prostitute.
The whole idea that the tango was danced as some sort of prelude with the prostitute never really sat well with me. She makes her money (and that of her pimp or brothel keeper) on her back and not by tripping the light fandango. I normally counter this argument by pointing out that the church was against the tango. It’s not that difficult to take a statement from the pulpit along the lines of “I don’t want you visiting places where the tango is danced as they are frequented by women of low morals” and twist it into “if you are dancing tango with a woman then she must be a prostitute”. Similar connections were made about the travelling houses in Ireland by the priesthood. Very against excessive socialising, they were. The problem being it was the priests who kept notes and not the tango dancers.
But then I read an article about waiting in line on a busy Saturday night at an albergue transitorio or Telo. It makes some sense for the prostitutes to dance with the clients if there aren’t enough serviceable rooms for the available number of prostitutes. Select a girl and while away the time it takes for a room to become available dancing. It may have been a way to get some money out of those who didn’t have enough change for the other services.
Whether or not this was the case is irrelevant. Constantly harping on about the goings on in the brothels of Buenos Aires just covers up for the fact that the sensuous nature of the tango is just as valid for everyone. I am not denying that tango was danced in the multitudinous brothels and whorehouses of Buenos Aires. But it did not start there. It passed through, in much the same way that many statesmen pass through brothels in their youth. The only thing that starts in a brothel is an outbreak of syphilis.
The title of this post is that of the chapter of Saturn’s Childern by Charles Stross which I was coincidentally reading at the time of this post.