Saturday 21st February.
Best Western Pery’s Hotel, Glentworth St, Limerick (www.perys.ie)
Instruction by Beatriz Cisneros (www.beatanguera.weebly.com)
Workshop 1: 2.15-3.45pm €15
Desert island tango exercises
Technique exercises for when you’re stranded and can’t get to the dance floor
Workshop 2: 4-6pm €20
Sequences for the close embrace
3rd Anniversary Ball 8.30pm - 1am €10
I shall prefix this post by stating that it is written from the perspective of someone who is six foot three and therefore taller than the majority of followers I have danced with.
You will see tango monsters just before the embrace is engaged. It is where the follower reaches up to the embrace of the taller leader. But she doesn’t just lift her arms. For some bizzare reason she lifts her arms by raising her shoulders to her ears and adding for effect splayed reaching fingers. From the leaders perspective it looks like he’s being attacked by a lurching zombie. Hence tango monsters.
One of the pluses of having to travel for over an hour to other milongas is the conversations on the way home.
One topic that came up a while back, and that has made recurring appearences since, is the idea of the blatant lead. The lead that specifies where and how the follower should move to almost pinpoint exactness. A lead that lacks subtlety but more importantly one that hasn’t learnt, or been taught, to trust in the followers expression. I lead an ocho giving intonation towards its general shape and trust the follower in being able to express the step. I don’t need to micro-manage her step.
It is not acceptable to approach tango on your own terms. To absorb and adapt to tango you must be prepared to shift your ground.
But so too must tango, and especially its travelling teachers, adapt its explanations to those new to it. If it desires to be understood, then it must understand.
I occasionaly prefix contrasting explations with “the Irish walk this way but the tango asks that you walk this way”. Only to realise that the class has only one, or no, Irish representative.
Always try to remember as a teacher that the view from the inside out isn’t the same as the view from the outside in.
The following was recounted by Redmond O’Toole at the launch of Limerick’s 2009 Unfringed performance festival.
The gypsy girl goes to the grave of her former lover who was killed by her rich now husband, at whose hand her former lover died, and using her gypsy incantations rasies him from the dead. They dance a dance for what brought them together was that they danced well. The gypsy girl tries to convince her lover to stay above ground. They dance again. Again the gypsy girl tries to convince her lover to stay above ground. They dance a third dance. Finally the former lover decides that the place for him is below the ground, not being particularly happy that the gyspy girl is married to the man who killed him, and so returns there.
A tanda, three dances and a return to the underworld.
I have five lessons to teach. What lessons they choose to learn is entirely up to them.
-Nanny McPhee
The lessons that I have learned in tango have not always been those that were being taught. What can be taught and what has to be learned do not fully overlap and therein lies the rub.
A is for Advanced Accomplished in years of dancing; what many soi-disant ‘Advanced’ dancers are as opposed to the advanced individuals they think they are.
Enrique & Marion, of Caminos de Tango, will appear on RTÉs Ones Seoige, Monday 16.25-17.20, where they will give a demonstration and be introduced to their challenge candidate who they will be teaching.
What exactly do you do for an encore?
Pulp - This is hardcore
This is exactly what goes through my mind when I see dances by Wonderboy - “every flash move” type dancers. Why exactly are you putting yourself under so much pressure to come up with “move” after “move”? Contrast this with those dancers who keep things predominantly simple and then add in a flourish, a bit of flash, which reminds you why they are out there on the floor performing. (Fernando Galera & Vilma Vega would be an example)