Seattle Tango Magic pics

BOOYAH!

Portland Valentango 2007 baby!

Buenos Aires, 2nd trip

This trip definately beat out the 1st one. I got back in town Thursday, and was in B.A. for about 22 days. It's pretty rare that I dream in Spanish, but it happened last weekend, which might be an indicator that I either miss it a ton, or spent a ton of time there. Here are the highlights:

I was living in Almagro, spending 14 bucks a day to stay at a friend's apartment, and loving it. Being a block and a half away from the Corrientes subway is amazing.

My first act was to get a cell phone, and print out cards. Wow, did that ever help.

I went to milongas nearly every evening. I went to bed around 6 AM on average.

I was in full carpetbagger mode, considering that the exchange rate was 3:1 in favor of the dollar. I bought clothing galore, custom magen davidim, and a lot of tango shoes.

I was living half a block from Eugenia Parilla.

I took about 4 private lessons a week, and taped 10 minutes at the end to review. I also took a voice lesson on latin vocalization.

I found the ideal girl, tall great dancer, Jewish, and cute. I may have to import her...

I saw 5 people at Ezeiza airport on my way out. 2 tango teachers / performers from LA (Hugo y Miriam), a couple of people that I saw a lot at milongas, and a tango flautist that I met during New Years.
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Well, pictures next time, hopefully that won't be in another few months :P

Happy New Year, here's to new posts

Hi everyone, it's been a damn long while hasn't it? I'm going to gloss over quite a bit of the tango goings on and just get to some of the more interesting events. Starting at the St. Louis Tango Festival 2006.

I was able to stay at Lauren Wilmore's place, with a friend of mine from Seattle who now lives in North Carolina. From what Viktoria tells me, it's a bit of a tango wasteland out there. Still, staying with them was great, Lauren's place was beautiful, and she's paying 66% of what I'm paying for a much nicer place. Go figure though, St. Louis vs. Seattle.

The festival was good, with fun dancing, and lots of old faces. It was funny, considering they hadn't seen me in about a year, and my dance has evolved quite a bit since then. That and my look, which had people comparing me to John Lennon. This comparison happened about 5 times in Buenos Aires on my 2nd trip, but that's a story for later.

The festival was great, and people pulled together. There's a bit of conflict between two camps , but it was put aside for the festival. I think one of the big highlights and coincedences was that an old friend since grade school, who I also saw at Wash U, showed up randomly at the venue, and was checking out tango. Considering the fact that he's moving to Ann Arbor, he might get into the scene.

Saturday I attended Oliver and Luna's workshop, which was full of complicated steps. Still, with a nice small group, they were able to help me with some fundamental things which helped my dance out. Their beginner / intermediate class in the evening at Tango Divas was great, and I think that I should take more entry level classes, if I want to teach others better.

Sunday I had a practice with Eva, who I saw up in Portland, and I found out about from Sean, when I visted San Fran. She's definately a good dancer, and since she spent 5 months in BA after graduating from college, she has a wealth of things to share. That evening, I went to Club Danzarin, but practically noone was there (damn Olympic finals and closing ceremonies!). Luckily there were some good people to chat and dance with.

So much happened at the Portland Valentango festival that it's hard to start, but I guess I'll go the easy route, chronologically:

I got contacted by an Italian woman named Luisa, who told me that she had space for me at her apartment. When I arrived Thursday, I met a german guy a few years older than myself named Ralph. This particular festival was a lot kinder to me, I was able to sleep pretty well on a couch, and Luisa lent me a scarf which served as a blindfold. This was a godsend, considering the difficulty I had at the last Portland festival, where I'm so wired, the smallest amount of light will wake me up.

The night I went to the opening milonga at PPAA, which was being DJ'd by Hung-Yut, a pretty interesting guy with a rather strong set of opinions on the music, as well as a great DJ. When I got in there, I was a bit floored by all of the people who I recognized from Buenos Aires. I felt pretty good to be there, and there was a quality selection of follows available to me.

On Friday, I went to 3 workshops. Creativity in tight spaces and close embrace by Nick and Tara, Nuevo tango floorcraft for traditional milongas by Andres and Meredith (who I studied with in BA), and 720 degree multiple single-axis turns by Mila and Korey (who I also saw in BA).

The milonga that evening at Norse Hall was pretty solid, with an alternative milonga starting up at midnight upstairs. I got to dance with Mila which was a blast, she definately has a lot of personality, which she conveys through her theatrical dressing, amongst other things. Near the end of the evening, I danced with a college student named Amanda until the bitter end. The music was pretty good, and the live session with Korey, Nick, and a third bandoneonist playing La Cumparasita, helped top the evening off with a bang.

Saturday I slept in, and took follower and leader technique with Murat and Mariana, and I took cool combinations with colgadas with Andres and Meredith. Murat taught the concept of 3 axes of contra body movement, which related to a concept which I came up with on my own of having 3 axes of (dis)connection. I mentioned this, and some of the applications. Murat mentioned his interest in hearing more, and gave me his e-mail address. After this, I chilled at home and prepared a meal with Luisa and Ralph.

The Grande Ball was hosted 2 blocks away from where I was staying, and was packed with at least 600 people. Every teacher involved in festival workshops performed, as well as Carlos Copello, who had his own thing going on Monday. Carlos had a surprise dance where he danced "Rock" (aka Jitterbug, which is widely danced in Argentina) with Luna, and stole the show a bit by doing a take away, thanking everyone, prior to starting back up dancing some more. Alex Krebs' live ensemble, Conjunto Berretin, played a nice set, and near the end 3 other bandoneonists joined in.

I was able to hitch a ride with Amanda to Post Grande Ball, where I ended up dancing until the bitter end, 6 AM. Probably due to my dance sneakers which have a rough surface in contact with the foot, I had an experience which every follow who I asked has gone through. Basically, after resting, my feet toes and metatarsals felt like they were on fire, prior to numbing them with an entire song of dancing.

Sunday I attended a single class by Nick and Tara entitled the geometry of nuevo tango. They did a great job of cutting into the minute details of sacadas, and alterations, and I feel like I'll be rapidly improving with some of the base concepts which they provided.

I went to the alternative milonga at Berretin, which was a first for me. There was live music, and some interesting moments, like when Alex went onto the dance floor with his saxophone, or when a guest singer did what sounded like a cute Tom Waits impression. In terms of dance, with alternative music, I have a lot more freedom to express myself in any way which reflects the music. It could very well be anything (eg: Carmen, Tom Waits, Gotan Project, Fiona Apple, and more) and so I decided to play around with hip and chest ornamentation.

At the beginning of one tanda, I was talking to an exotic looking New Yorker of Hawaiian descent, and we both loved that song so much that I mentioned later the idea of connecting, prior to even dancing. We ended up dancing a slow paced tanda, chock full of body rolls, and other goodies, some of which were initiated by her, which left me feeling high. I experienced something similar to this with one of the Portland girls, although not quite as intense.

After all that, I got a ride from a nice German woman named Sybile (who happens to work for Microsoft) to the Portland Airport, and back to the real world.

Happy Valentines day! Here's to a holiday created expressly for businesses.

Last weekend was rather interesting. I got contacted by Vladimir regarding a gig that might be happening with a Persian singer named Faramaz Assef. Around the middle of last week, I found out that I would be dancing with Amber, who I contacted to find out if we could practice together prior to the shoot. Amber happens to be one of the better dancers that I now know, with years of experience in ballet, as well as a fair amount of time dancing lindy and tango.

So, we met up on Saturday, and ended up practicing for an hour and a half prior to heading out to the Valentine's milonga at El Encuentro. For me, the quality of follows usually dictates the quality of the milonga, although being able to hang out with fun people, and good DJ's helps. Overall, I had a marginally better time than at club Danzarin on Sunday. A slight damper on my fun was when I was entering a parking lot that was probably full, and there was a truck which was trying to back out of it. I honked the horn for a good 3 seconds, but he couldn't see me and his music was on too loud. Fortunately, the damage wasn't bad.

So, I got home a bit past 4 in the morning, and decided to open up the shades a bit to make sure that I'd get to the 11:20 call time in LA. I ended up waking up at 7, and struggling back to sleep prior to getting up around 9:30. Given that I ended up on set for about 10 hours, it was a tough day. The pay was a bit less than $10/hour, but it was worth doing.

I was the first one to arrive on set, followed by Amber. I talked to Faramaz about the lyrics, to see if they could be a source of inspiration. It ended up being the most lovey dovey !@#$ I think I might have heard. It was just line after line of things like: I was born to love you. We had a scene in which Faramaz was supposed to be the tango teacher, which went ok. The female lead in this was a stage dancer from LA named Parisa whose name indicates her Persian origin.

Here's a pic of us as a group:




















In later scenes, Faramaz is being wed to Parisa, and for a second music video, he happens to be wedding an actress named Melissa, who mostly sat around in a dress waiting for her part to actually start (around 9 PM, and she arrived around 4, yeesh). The fact that he was marrying random brides in two seperate music videos on the same day was pretty hilarious.

After the practice scene, I gave three of the contemporary dancers a primer to tango, which they never ended up using. Our next scene was actual tango, with Faramaz in the center, and 3 couples dancing around him and Parisa. The floor was pretty slippery, and by that time I was a bit tired, so unfortunately I wasn't able to give it my very best, especially compared to the previous evening. Still, it was fine, and to the random person who doesn't dance, it was probably excellent.


Here's a pic of the guys:












Here's a nice pose with me and Amber:






















The last scene worthy of note was the shooting for the second video, where our group dressed up as waiters. There were four hip hop dancers, to who walked off the set because of "explotación" to quote one of the dancers. Bear in mind this was at 9 PM, and they were doing take after take, because Faramaz thought the original choreagraphy was too difficult. Given that, they had to make something simple up on the spot. Something similar happened with myself, Vlad, and the third gentleman. So, I was taken off the stage because I couldn't get in synch with something completely new, and I ended up doing a solo.

Here's a pic of the aborted (at least for me) group dance:















Partly because of my frustration, and partly because of being slap happy, I performed what I would like to call, "Riverdance on crack." I considered this to be almost as bad as this Hasselhoff video. I basically did steps out of chacarera, where my right leg was moving a rapidly like a spastic horse rearing up on its hindquarters. Bear in mind I was wearing a waiter outfit with bowtie, my hand on my left hip, and my right hand holding up a tray with a couple of glasses taped on. At one point in my overenthusiasm / crazyness, I rolled out on an ankle and a glass which was taped on, fell off the back of the stage. I was ok, but I was laughing so hard it probably took a good minute for the next take, and the whole room got caught up in my mood. I'm not sure if I want this footage on the cutting room floor, it'll be pretty funny to see a random white guy doing crazy dancing in a Persian music video.

Overall, it was an interesting experience which might act as a door to other opportunities. It was fun, and makes for a good story. My roomate happens to be Persian, and I think we're going to get a kick out of these vids when they come out.

Last weekend I went to Robin Tomas' workshop in San Diego. As a side bonus, my mom was staying in Carlsbad at the 4 seasons, so I was able to check in there on Friday night, and Marius' place on Saturday. Friday night I went to Ciao Bella, where Robin and Linda Garwood performed.

Saturday and Sunday were workshop days, and Sunday evening I went to a DJ Chamuyo (chat in Argentine slang) where Robin gave some solid tips. I'm thinking about starting to DJ more seriously, and learning more about things like flow of energy level within a tanda, and from tanda to tanda, was helpful.