Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Journey


We did get to one milonga in California.  Tangueras and tangueros know that they can find the local milongas wherever they go, and will be welcomed into an international community.  They love to search around, find the address somewhere in the world, walk up or down the stairs, around the corner and listen for the familiar notes of the tango.  Then they find themselves at home again.

But much of our trip was not play.  We were working, and had business and family to attend to there in the land of eternal sunshine.  Every day I walked three or four miles starting in Cardiff, surf and surfers on the left, all the way to Encinitas, north up to Swami's.  Swami's is the affectionate name given to the Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda who lived on the bluff and by his own labor created the exquisite gardens there on the temple grounds.  Established in 1937 in Encinitas, and carried on by followers today who exercise careful stewardship of the land on which the retreat center stands, and also of the lands around the community which they care for and make available for public benefit.  I am not a follower, but I admire the organization greatly.  Yogananda Paramahansa's book,  Autobiography of a Yogi  is a classic.

I always make my pilgramage to the gardens, which are open to the public, and always speak in soft whispers and gentle splashes every day to visitors who each interpret this stunning legacy according to individual needs.

California is a strange place.  Sunshine does not always seem to bring out the best in people for some reason. I spend some time at an outdoor plaza where people get their Starbucks coffee and hang out in the mornings.  I hear people talking.  People talk about their feelings, a lot.  Stick thin, overly tanned, panic showing in eyes that cannot express through the botox. Desperate.  I always want to say, "do you see there are orange trees here,  there are pots of exotic flowers?  We are sitting under frikkin' palm trees and we can see and hear the ocean across the street!  Hello!  There is a hummingbird landing on your head!"  But no one would hear me, or see me, because I am over thirty and not wearing this year's hip gym clothes.
I heard one muscle man guy say to a weeping woman, "nothing can make you feel bad unless you allow it."
A typical sort of California sentiment.

A couple of years ago I sat on a bench in the Swami's garden on the bluff over the sparkling Pacific.  My father had called me a week or so prior to this, to say, almost apologetically, that his long, grueling and inspirational marathon run with cancer was about to end. Forever.  I sat up there and felt it like a black fog and it went right through me, while my middle daughter sat calm, quiet, slipping her arm around me to take some of the impact.

This trip I sat there again, alone.  The bad (?) sad feeling was still there, but different now that my father's transition is complete, that he is past all that business of the dying body.  But the feeling is all there, bringing me along on my own journey.

That guy at the Starbucks, maybe he was right in his own way. You can put up a thick and muscled suntanned wall around your heart--you sure can. You won't feel bad because you won't allow it.  But the problem is, you won't feel anything else either.

The way I absorb that garden, and what I learn from it, is to hear a message from beyond the Swami's life on earth.  Make a garden, make life beautiful, feel all of it.

Friday, October 23, 2009

If You Are Looking For My Artwork...

...go to this.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Workshop Schedule, Igor and Morticia!

Weekend of sort of creepy Joy. Be totally milonga-ready after one weekend of workshops with:
Igor and Morticia! 

Thursday night 9:00-9:30   50. dollars.  Reservations required
Seminar on the really real tango.

Discussion of important tango related topics:
How North Americans destroyed tango.
How to have a good time in Buenos Aires Milongas. Special section on not committing the Faux  Pas of smiling or being too nice. Includes special information on learning to look melancholic and downright depressed.
Why the taxi driver is always mad at you.
What to Wear: Why Argentines can wear blue jeans but you can't.


Special opportunity to sign up for Igor and Morticia's tango weekend in Buenos Aires. 4000.  Does not include air fare, lodging, lessons, food, or anything else.  Partners are not required but if you don't have one you won't get to dance.  Note:  We need more leads! Cash only. Special deals on shoes and psychiatric care, both provided by our good friend El Gato, who will also dance with you. 50. per hour. Cash only in USD.


Friday night 9:00
Welcome Milonga for Igor and Morticia.  15 dollars, does not include anything.

Workshops 20. each for one, 55. for two. (people) or 150. for the whole day...for one, 300. for two. Women who are single plan on paying for both you and your partner.  No you don't need a partner, but you have to pay for one.(partner that is).  Men without a partner better find one or pay for yourself. Hint: It helps if you don't wear bike shorts. Cash only.

Saturday 12:00-1:30 Walking and Traipsing around.
How to walk.  Thought you learned to walk when you were a baby?  Did your parents think that was walking?  Did you?  How have you managed to get anywhere with that silly walk? Think again.  Igor specializes in staightening you up.  This is the first in a progressive series, so don't even think about taking just one workshop!  First we learn to walk heel first.  Then Morticia will pull you around by your bra strap to condition you to like being humiliated. All very useful for the beginner.

Saturday 2:00-3:30 Women's Technique
Walking to music.  Women will achieve a more graceful walk by looking in the mirrors all afternoon and pointing and flexing their feet while trying not to fall over. Morticia works extra hard to convey just how unprepared you are for dancing with any grace whatsoever.

Four inch heels mandatory!  The spiky ones that cost 200. dollars and fall apart in a few weeks. It is totally worth it though as Morticia will show you in her amazing special demonstration (no extra charge!). Once you learn to levitate (in the advanced class),  the shoes last longer. Igor will supervise and help and handle all of you who signed the waiver. For the men who paid for this workshop, sorry, no refunds. You can make good use of this time though by training yourselves to step toe first, as we have changed our minds about the heel first thing. Denise will be here selling gorgeous and hot "Chaussures Qui Font Mal".

Saturday 4:00-5:30 Fitness for Tango.
Everyone will be revived by all the exercise they get in this workshop on endurance for tango.  Pilates, Yoga, Running, Bicycling (espeically for you Portlanders), and a smattering of pole dancing for the remainder of the afternoon will get you all warmed up for tonight's milonga.  It will sure help when you start doing those overturned back sacadas with a double helix twist.  Your back will thank you! Being in shape is crucial for the milongueros of Buenos Aires,  as you can see in all the YouTubes.  So let's get moving! There will be a cigarette break at 4:10 and another one at 5:00. Bring wine to share with the instructors.. It is not included in the price.
Bring a towel, some bandages, and provide an emergency contact.




10:00 La Milonga de los Malos Suenos.  

With perfomance by Igor and Morticia, if they show up. 25.  BYOB. There might be crackers and cheese.

Sign up for a Private lesson for your once in a lifetime opportunity to study with the true masters of the really real tango.  You don't want to miss it because you won't get another chance ever, except next spring and then next fall, and then the year after that. See our web schedule for details.

Private Lessons Available for 175. for one (teacher) and one (student). For two teachers it is more but we can't figure out how much.  For two students it is not a private lesson anymore and won't be any fun.  Bring a piece of paper with the price you are willing to pay. It is less if you are young and beautiful but tell us first because Morticia won't like it, and special arrangements have to be made. Remember ladies (and gentleman) that this is the way to get to dance with Igor. Maybe the only way, but not guaranteed.

Available time slots:
                               Monday at noon, but we won't be up yet.
                               Tuesday, never
                                Sunday, we will be gone.
                                Monday again at noon but in Boise
                    
  

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Muma

Muma, a milonguera from BA was here for the past week.  I could not take the workshops all weekend, but I tagged along with Alan to his private lesson with her last night.  Muma (her only public name, like Cher or Bono) promotes, and teaches the older classic style of the salons.  She danced with Ricardo Vidort, it is said, and since he, and so many others are gone now, there is a struggle I think to preserve and promote something that is very hard to teach.

The old milongueros, as Argentine friends and writers tell us, did not teach.  They did not take lessons, they learned on the floor.  They learned from each other, from watching and sharing tricks, and they did not travel around giving lessons and creating fame for themselves.  They were milongueros plain and simple.
The way they move has a special quality.  I am wondering to myself, can a tiny secret of how to step, how to move the foot and leg, be a bit of preservable history?  If not for YouTubes and the few living examples that some of us have seen, and even danced with, this dance would be lost forever in the dust of history.
Boring and unsolvable arguments abound about styles and techniques of tango.

 Life evolves, things change.  The only constant is change.  Nothing is the same as it was even ten years ago in this world.  So why care? Why do Muma, Alicia Pons, Susanna Miller, Ruben H, Tete, and the rest of them travel, at their age, to a far away country where arrogant people do not embrace them, where the food does not suit them, where the generally optomistic and dispassionate people do not get it at all?  What keeps them from running away screaming when they see swooping high kicks delivered with wild disregard, and disrespect for age, talent, history, grace?  The money has to be a motivator wherever you come from.  But for sure, it is about more than that.

Is the promotion of this old way of dance about keeping antiques? I hate antiques.  The furniture of the old days had better be totally free of bad spirits if it comes to my house.  The few pieces in this house are well known and any bad vibes are purely family history and would be here anyway.  But it interestes me.  That a tiny way of setting the foot, of holding the center, that that place of physical movement can tell us so much, can reveal to us a sense that a person felt, many years ago, in a land far away. Or just yesterday, right here.

P.S. Scroll down to previous post for video of Vidort.  I especially like seeing this room where Cherie and Ruben invited us to their table, where they made sure we danced...and where, if we are lucky, we will dance again in the afterglow of the giants of tango.

Note:  I am not promoting anyone, or any particular style, just writing down things I am thinking about.

Ricardo Vidort y Myriam Pincen - Chique (Canaro)

Monday, October 12, 2009

Work and Tango

I don't know how to keep the energy up during a big rush of fall work.  In addition to my work, I have a house and garden which at this point look rather scraggly and in need of TLC.  I have family to see and to help, and trips planned, and a husband who works in a job that requires him to be "on" for way more than a standard forty hour week.  It is up to me to keep the home running smoothly so that he can do what he does.  And I take it seriously.  But given all that, I am feeling a little wobbly, worried about getting it all done. 

I have time yet to really make something with my career, and it has to take priority. 

Then there is tango.  I dance a little less, and that is just fine, but even that is taking more energy than I have.  I nearly had to go home early last night,  then I warmed up.  It was a great night, and the joy it brings me keeps me going.  But wow. How do people do it? I don't think I can proritize any of these things.  How to?

P.S.  I missed the Muma workshops, but Alan went to all of them.  Someone asked where I was, and he said that I was working and had deadlines.  The person said, and Alan quoted: "I didn't know artists had deadlines."
This is the kind of thing that makes me a little crazy.  What do people think artists do anyway, sit around and sing Kumbayah?  We work.  We work with our hands and our brains, and our eyes, and we have to run a small business besides, which no one trained us to do.  Galleries and museums and arts organizations are businesses as well, and the have set dates for the delivery of work and for submissions.   Besides dealing with them, I have to be at full awareness and skill level to be a participant in the art world.  I am getting a little ranting here, so that's all.
And to make things worse, blogger seems to have taken away my spell-check. How the hell do you spell Kumbyyah anyway.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Entrega, reposting just because.

This was originally posted more than a year ago, but I am reposting because Tango Commuter was musing on the meaning.  I don't know the meaning, but I had thoughts about it.

Informed passion. A trinity: Man, Woman, Music.
Literal translation: Deliver, or Surrender.
In our case, it may be safe to say that surrender is the more accurate meaning, but not the whole story. It seems like one of those zen koans or a riddle. How can I attain something which is unattainable, and which is really in it's essence, a letting go, or surrender.

I recall a night at a milonga about six months ago. Sitting, dancing a few tandas...nearly at the end of the tango road, sitting there thinking how many hours, how many trips to workshops, how many fruitless hours learning steps and moves. All the while knowing that there was some kernel, some heart, some little bite of chocolate and love and juice, waiting. if I could only get there. How much can one invest in a little promise that keeps moving away as soon as you get close, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? You know it's there, like God, Love, the Future, the Universe, Springtime, but you cannot see it or feel it except in a dream. Driving home, nearly in tears over the unreachable joy that waits somewhere at the end of a maze, beyond the dark tunnel.

How do you know it is there. At the very beginning of learning this meditative dance, it is felt, and almost anyone you talk to, who has stayed with it, will tell you, yes, it is there, I am waiting for it and I am patient, and I can go there. When all the stars line up, and the partner knows, and you know, and the music starts, and you launch your little boat upon the waters of tango. On that night, you know, or have, entrega.

Even now, knowing that it can be found, the truth about tango is that there are people who can dance, and admirably so, and then there are people who have "it". They might be rank beginners, old, young, fat, thin, beautiful, not beautiful, strong, weak. It does not matter.

I would like to know how others define etrega, and what it means to them. It may be too delicate to talk about. If so, then we will not.

Rick McGarrey at TangoandChaos, where there is an essay on this concept, and David, at RealityPivots, thanks for ideas about the meaning.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Pass the Pasta Please.


Pici noodles, made by Tina and friends this past summer.  Bon Voyage my milonguera friend.


Sometimes from this perspective, of dancing tango for five years, it occurs to me that it isn't nearly as hard as people make it out to be, or as hard as I thought it was.  Tying oneself in knots, tottering around in adornment classes, doing gobs of drills, spending lots of money on workshops that never really sink in or make sense...and then there are the trips, the shoes, the festivals.  We have to have a talk about tango expenses one of these days.
It is a business, this tango, and it appears to be a hard business for those who make their living from it. But why should tango be so difficult for the student? It takes some technique and awareness.  But is it necessary to be an athlete? For most of us, we just want to enjoy our dancing. Last summer during a dinner here, two of Seattle's best dancers were at the table when I said I needed to take more exercise classes and get in better shape, lose a pound or ten.  They all sort of shrugged their shoulders, digging in to more pasta and salmon, and said, more or less: "meh, it isn't too important to be very strong." O.K. I say, allright, "pass the pasta.! 

Now, I have a general attitude, which is to dance with those I want to dance with, to stay quiet, (although at times I fail), and to just follow.  In the future I will: Listen to the dancers and teachers that I admire, work at it as much as I feel like. And mostly, I will have some warm connections along the way.  I am not that good, but my partners aren't complaining, and there is growth through calm steady attention. Getting to this place is the harder journey.

I poured a lot into it for five years. I think it could have been easier though, but possibly not as profitable for some. I have paid plenty for it, in real money, sweat, bruises physically and bruises to my self image. And every day I start over as a beginner in spirit. But, now, time to relax, and to detach. Most really good teachers already know that some things, maybe most things about tango, cannot really be taught, and that no amount of drills and conditioning, and self-denial  will make a milonguera. So, I think they might consider teaching that.