Coming to Buenos Aires to dance Argentine tango?

October 28, 2011 in Beyond this blog, Live your dreams, The tale of my book - Happy Tango

If you’ve found Sallycat’s Adventures you might be thinking of travelling to Buenos Aires, perhaps for the first time, to dance Argentine tango. That’s exactly what I did almost five years ago. You can read the first ever post I wrote on this blog where I revealed my original plan, here.

When I arrived in Argentina, I didn’t have friends here, speak Spanish or dance terribly well… actually I danced terribly, I was almost a complete beginner. It took me months to gather my confidence, get to grips with the ‘cabeceo’ (eye-contact contract to dance), work out which milongas I liked. You might only have a couple of weeks. That’s why I wrote Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires. Its mission, to help you find your dancing feet as fast as possible in what might seem a very foreign tango culture, especially in the most traditional tango venues.

Happy Tango was published in paperback in June 2010 and is available worldwide via Amazon and other major online retailers. It has received nineteen 5* reviews on Amazon.co.uk and nine on Amazon.com. It has been given a great review in the UK Dance Today Magazine. It has been recommended wholeheartedly in the new 2011 edition of the Lonely Planet Buenos Aires City Guide. To keep readers up to date about changes in Buenos Aires that affect the book’s content, there is an Updates Blog and a Facebook Page. However, I did write Happy Tango to be useful even in the face of inevitable changes on the ground; much of the book delivers strategic and cultural advice which remains as current as the day I wrote it. An ebook version of the book is planned.

Happy Tango has now been tried and tested by hundreds of Argentine tango dancers from all over the world, and it has proved itself to be an ultra-useful practical guidebook. It’s also written in a chatty, accessible style which allow readers to feel that they have a happy, generous-hearted and experienced friend alongside them as they set out on their tango adventures in Buenos Aires. Even if you’re not a tango dancer yet, but feel drawn to knowing a little more about the sensual dance that offers a closeness in its embrace that beguiles and bewitches men and women alike, Happy Tango would be a great starting point and might even have you longing to come to Buenos Aires yourself.

Hear me interviewed by John McCarthy about coming to Buenos Aires to dance the Argentine Tango on Radio 4’s Excess Baggage programme, the programme was broadcast live on Saturday 29th October 2011; the tango item follows an interview with transoceanic solo-rower Roz Savage; listen here.

Treat yourself to an entertaining and super-useful read, or treat a friend.
Buy Happy Tango today!

Please do buy before travelling as the book is not widely available in Buenos Aires.
Click a link to buy Happy Tango from:

amazon.co.uk
amazon.com
amazon.ca
amazon.fr
amazon.de
amazon.co.jp
barnesandnoble.com
BookDepository.co.uk
BookDepository.com

Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires
Don’t leave for Buenos Aires without it!

I no longer write regularly on this blog. Comments are therefore closed.
Thank you to all my readers for your continued support.

Listen to your soul, seek joy, live your dreams, and be well.
Sallycat

Tags: Happy Tango

You will know where to find me

May 21, 2011 in Beyond this blog, Live your dreams, More about Sallycat | 5 comments

I made a new book for fine-artist and poet Beverley Fry.
It’s the first book I made for a client.

If I hadn’t already written and published Happy Tango (which journeys on successfully with its own Updates Blog and Facebook page), I would never have known how to make a book and bring it to market for someone else. If I hadn’t followed my own heart and flown to Buenos Aires to dance, Happy T. would not have been born and Beverley would not have Panning in her hand. I see the books I create for others as realisations of their dreams.

I built a website for editor, Helen Coyle. It’s the first website I made for a client.

At the photo shoot for the ‘Meet the Editor’ page of IndyEditorial.com Helen shone with light and delight. The photographer Julie-Anne Cosgrove captured Helen’s brilliance perfectly. I saw with my own eyes the product of talented people working together, combining skills and gifts to create something greater than any of them could produce alone. If I hadn’t started writing a Wordpress blog in January 2007 and continued to write it in various incarnations for four years, I would not be in a position to design websites for others. You can see the products of my design work at facebook.com/sallyblakedesigns. I see my websites as celebrations of the amazing individuals I make them for, and as catalysts for connection between those individuals and their clients.

I am writing my second book. I’m writing it live at facebook.com/happyheartsquest (if you would like more joy in your life, you can read and enjoy the Tasks even if you’re not on Facebook).

If the book’s ideas inspire and transform the lives of others as they have already transformed me, I shall be delighted. My job is simply to write the remaining pages. That I know I can do. If I hadn’t written a blog and then a book, I wouldn’t have developed the confidence to start creating the HappyHeartsQuest. There will be a website too one day at happyheartsquest.com but I’m not quite ready for that yet. I see the HappyHeartsQuest as a part of my purpose for being on this earth.

Since February 2011, I have been painting. You can see my paintings at sallyblakedesigns.co.uk/art. At the moment (update added April 2012) I’m painting Buenos Aires cityscapes, like this one.

When I paint, I become someone I love. The Higher Me. The painting comes heart and soul direct to hand. There is no head involved at all. When I look at my paintings it is as if I did not do them. Someone I love tells me I was an artist in a past life. The way I put my paints, three brushes and two plastic pots into a carrier bag and head off around the city to paint without fuss is so relaxed, that I actually think she may be right. Yet, if I hadn’t began to free my artist’s spirit with dancing first, I don’t think I would ever have picked up a paintbrush and brandished it with such joy. I see my paintings as the results of my hand recording the energy that I see onto paper. I record the connections between me and my subjects, with paint, and I understand connections because I once, long long ago now, began to dance tango.

Tota my wise astrologer and soul guide told me a little story.

A woman sees an artist she recognises (Picasso, say his name was) in the street. She asks him to paint her portrait. He says yes. He goes to her home. In less than 10 minutes he has her energy captured there on the canvas in paint. Finished. She asks the price. $10000 dollars he says. No way, says she. It only took you 10 minutes. Er, no madam, says Picasso. There I am afraid that you are wrong. It took me my whole life.

All that I do and work in now has taken me at least forty-eight years to learn, and over four years of those have been lived fairly publicly here, on this blog. But my life goes back way beyond January 2007 and the very first post on Sallycat’s Adventures. My ancestors. My parents. My nature. My nurture. My careers. My miscarriages. My horrors. My delights. My marriages. The games I have played. The drinks I have drunk or not. The degrees I have studied. The gardens I have made. The love I have known. Many who have read me here on Sallycat’s Adventures have understood me and valued my words and celebrated my efforts. Others have not understood me at all because their own stories have meant that they could not. Both are OK. Both have taught me much. Both are included in my forty-eight years and so go in to everything I now create, go into my ever-expanding portfolio of life-work.

Without every single person who has read this blog or commented on it, I would not be the deeply creative and productive and joyful human being that I have become. Well, I would have had the seed in me, but it may not have blossomed into its beautiful flower.

I thank every one of you from the bottom of my creative heart. I ask you to support me in any of my new ventures that appeal to you. If my stuff does not appeal to you, I am equally happy. But, please make the most of every minute you have and go forth and make great life-works of your own.

And there I think I will leave it. If I do not write here again, you will know where to find me. At my creative cauldron. Making magic.

On learning to be the tango boy, when you are really a girl — Part 2: Energy

March 14, 2011 in Connection coaching, Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires, The journey to 'be the boy' | 12 comments

Photograph courtesy of Alan Marks, UK

Absolutely the most intriguing part of learning to be the tango boy has been finding out how it feels to hold a woman in my arms for three minutes. Not just one woman, but many women. Every one of them unique in physique, unique in technique, and most of all, unique in energy.

I’ve written quite a bit about energy in the past, for example here, and indeed one of my 11 Sallycat’s Rules for Happy Tango in Buenos Aires (in my book Happy Tango) is Rule 4: Exude magnetic energy.

Perhaps it’s part of living a path of the heart, or a result of listening to my soul, or just a consequence of getting older, but with every day that I am alive I become more aware of the energy that I send out into the world and of the energy of every other person I come into contact with; sometimes I think I can even see it (sometimes faded and empty, and sometimes pulsing with life). Lately I’ve begun painting portraits and I feel that the result on the page is a pure combination of my energy and the energy of the subject combining and being revealed by my paint stokes over a period of thirty minutes or however long I allow for the paint to speak. I think it is the same for every conversation we have, every act of love we make, every tango we dance; perhaps it’s a combination of different energies to make a moment, and nothing else at all.

In 2011, after four and a half years of tango, I dance purely for the bliss, or whatever you want to call it. I long to rediscover it with men I know already, and I seek it with strangers who will create it with me for the first time. It leaves me dizzy. It leaves me with questions. It leaves music singing in my ears. It leaves my heart racing. It leaves me out of breath. It leaves me sitting out the next tanda so as to savour the rush and welcome the cool. It leaves me wanting the next opportunity to feel it all over again. It leaves a scar of desire and mystery on my soul, that can only be soothed by more of the same. And it leaves my own energy more complex, more vibrant, more magical; I think that the dancers who are meant for me find me, in part, by sensing that my energy is a match for theirs. And they are able to, when I choose to reveal and release who I really am, because, of course, it is always within my power to hide.

When I dance the tango boy (and I say ‘dance’ in the softest of ways, because I really mean when I am exploring what I can do in a practica or when I am working with a British woman to help her to focus a more confident energy into her embrace — it will probably take me years to actually ‘dance’ the boy), I have been stunned to find out very quickly who I have in my arms, sometimes even as she walks towards me: grounded and calm or nervous and flighty; present or scattered; staying with me or backing off; open (risking vulnerability) or defensive (sometimes decorated with chatter or laughter or apologies…). I have been amazed by how different each woman feels in the embrace and sometimes, within just a few seconds I feel that I know more about her than perhaps she even knows herself. Is that how men feel when they hold me? I hope so.

Some tango dancers say that for them, the music is everything, that it resonates with their every cell and creates the dance; I think that when both partners match each other in their depth of connection to a particular piece of tango music, then the possible level of connection with each other deepens too, but only when the personal energy of each partner allows it to be so.

Others seek perfection in their technique, because they believe it enables more fluent interpretation of the music they love and a physical ease that allows for deeper connection with their partner; I think that given a certain necessary level of technique, it is finding, listening to and understanding the body of their partner that can result in the richest possible tango connections; while ‘perfect technique’ (by whatever definition, as there will be many differences of opinion!) on both sides may help, it is no guarantee of a great connection. And what an audience sees on the outside may bear little resemblance to what is felt on the inside by the two dancers. Great technique can make smooth and heavenly tango, I have no doubt of it, but if either partner blocks (consciously or subconsciously) the energy flowing towards connection, then I fear the dance may have the look of a heart but will really only be the shell of one.

Saturday night, at Los Consagrados I had mixed tango experiences, it wasn’t my happiest evening on the dance floor. Why? My body was tired after dancing four days out of six. A few of my favourite dancers were missing and another left early, and though he danced one tanda with me, I felt his energy unusually distracted (as I’ve seen him at four milongas this week, perhaps he was tired too); I allowed myself to get excited by chat with a girlfriend I haven’t seen for a while and made a couple of less-brilliant partner choices because I lost my focus to enthusiasm: one man drove me with his arms and another was more interested in trying to hook my leg around his than anything else (I didn’t like his energy and so stiffened my muscles so as not to obey, which either made him think I couldn’t do what he wanted or know that I didn’t want to… at least he didn’t hiss Hook in my ear, but his energy shouted it, just the same). When I entered the milonga my own energy was sky high, up for it, excited, looking forward to moments of bliss, but when they didn’t come, it dipped fast because I was tired, and I realised the error of my ways; I’d forgotten to stick to my own damn rules.

In Happy Tango I share my own 11 Rules for Happy Tango in Buenos Aires. Here are three of them. Rule 1: Only accept or invite a person you have observed dancing (this rule I do break often, because as I say above, you can’t always tell, but you can tell things like ‘driving arms’ or ‘bouncing’ or total lack of care, and so it can pay to be vigilant and make good judgements rather than totally random choices). Rule 4: Exude magnetic energy. Rule 7: Leave your expectations behind. These are the three that slipped my mind on Saturday.

These days I spring back fast from tango disappointments. A thirty minute wait, in the sudden and unexpected chill of Buenos Aires autumn, for a bus that never came, left me alert. I sheltered in the safety of the doorway of Centro Region Leonesa. I heard English on the lips of people discussing which way to turn out onto the street. I couldn’t help but speak to them, Just walk left to the corner and taxis will be heading into town. And the man replied, We’re going to La Nacional, why don’t you come with us? I declined the milonga, but shared the taxi… I thought I’d get out and take a bus further on. A few streets later we discovered (when I gave a few personal details in answer to his question about what I was doing in Buenos Aires) that the guy reads this blog. He said a lovely thing about it; I was quite moved that he seemed delighted to meet me. We shook hands with big smiles. They went on their way to dance, and I celebrated his comments by treating myself to the rest of the taxi trip, chatted with the driver all the way home on the subject of Argentine men and their love of women, went to sleep thinking of the generous-hearted energy in Eugene that made him offer me a ride, and the open-hearted energy in me that allowed me to accept, and the joyful moment of recognition that followed.

As it is in tango, it is in life. Confidence. Open hearts. Generous energy that reaches out. Bliss always a possibility. If I want it.

OK, that said then, I’m ready for more; day off yesterday to refresh my enthusiastic zing. Today, La Nacional, I am there.

Meanwhile, my question for you is this, How much attention do you pay to your partner’s energy when you meet them on the dance floor, and how does their energy affect the way you dance? In the interests of my ongoing fascination with connection in the social-tango embrace, do open your tango heart and share.

Interested in discovering more joy?

On 1.1.11 I founded the Happy Hearts Quest on Facebook. With daily inspirations and weekly practical tasks, the Happy Hearts Quest (HHQ) is a Quest for Joy, and you are welcome to join in. You don’t have to be a member of Facebook to access the HHQ; you can find the page at facebook.com/happyheartsquest and you can find the Task Notes (Tasks 1 to 8 have been published so far) by clicking the Notes label either on the left of the page or at the top of the page, according to the way the page is presented to you by Facebook.

You can read how the HHQ came to be, on this blog, here. 72 hearts have joined so far. Go on. Encourage your he(art). Take part!

Tags: Energy, Happy Tango, Los Consagrados, magnetic energy, tango journey, The Rules

On learning to be the tango boy, when you are really a girl — Part 1

February 2, 2011 in Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires, Sallycat in the UK, The journey to 'be the boy' | 20 comments

I never thought I’d want to learn to be a tango boy. I mean, why (in heaven’s name) would I when I can get bliss, and feel like the most desirable woman on the planet whenever I want, in the arms of men?

But that was before I got a bee in my bonnet about passing on (to my fellow Brits who want to feel deeper connections in their tango abrazos) what I’ve learned from the milongueros I love the most, on the subject of tango heaven. I can never quite graduate to be a man, so I can never feel what a milonguero feels as he embraces a woman, but perhaps by putting myself in their steps I can glimpse a few clues to their mastery. At least, that’s my enthusiastic-Sallycat/Barbie theory.

The practice has been one month (so far) of two, hour-long, private-lessons each week with my own master-teacher, Ariel Yanovsky. He originally taught me how to be a woman in tango, clean and classy, salon-style. Then, the milongueros got their hands on me, and took the pivot out and put the could-be-termed-bad-habits-by-the-Villa-Urquiza-buffs in (‘cos the dance floors are packed in BsAs, the steps are short-ish, and the hip-wiggles feel gorgeous to both them and to me). Now, having said Extend, slide, arrive to my female-tango-dancer a zillion times, Ariel is teaching me to do something else entirely in order to ‘be the boy’.

I gave him a bit of a challenge. One month, because we’ll be in different countries for a long time after that. Teach me enough so that I can spend the months ahead practising my boy-technique and building my boy dance skills and dance-floor-navigation skills. Shall I do three classes a week? I asked. And he said, No, and explained that we’d be covering a lot of ground fast, and I’d be better to spend some time practising with a friend to allow my body to absorb and remember what I was learning in the lessons. One day you’ll ‘get’ things and the next day you’ll forget them, then one day the ‘penny will drop’ (yep, he knows that phrase in English) and your body will finally understand… might be soon but more likely it’ll be a while ahead. I knew exactly what he meant. I’m already a tango dancer, and I understand something of my process of learning to dance, where body tends to lag behind mind. I’m a hell of a lot more relaxed than I was during month one the first time round; I don’t freak out when I can’t ‘get something’ I’m being taught, I know it’s a process, just like any other learned skill or new behaviour. Plus, this time it’s more important to me to enjoy myself than anything else. “Dancing tango” and “learning new stuff” are on my Joy List, after all.

Tango mujer (foto by Helen Coyle)

Tango boy (foto by Ariel Yanovsky)

I am slightly shocked to find out how distant ‘learning to be the tango boy’ feels from ‘learning to be the tango woman’. It just doesn’t seem like the same dance at all… Thinking versus voiding the mind. The need for decisive action (even if it is a pause) versus the choice to surrender. Calculation versus invited response. I am shocked, but I rather like it. But I think my reaction is more awe and wonder than anything else. Frankly, learning to be the boy appeals to the achiever in me, the problem solver in me, the mathematical and logical and analytical mind in me, the musician in me, and it offers me exploration of opposite sides of my being, the yin yang of me. Yet, the whole experience makes me acutely aware that, as the Wikipedia entry for yin yang says, Opposites only exist in relation to each other. In this learning experience, most definitely. Knowing the girl side of the coin makes me curious about the boy side and leaves me clapping with excitement at the differences I am discovering. Had I only ever learned the boy part, perhaps I’d be giving up already at the amount of decision-making involved. Now, I’m just in awe of how my favourite male dancers do what they do. They are utter geniuses. And I am hooked. I have to know more of their secrets.

In my classes, Ariel teaches me technique, foundation steps that I can link together to build my dance, awareness of the direction of the dance and the ronda, how to stay safe and how to cope with obstacles. He checks I understand everything we do by testing me, making me say what I will do before I do it, asking me to explain what happens when things go differently to what I expect. As we work I know he sees the cogs of my mind turning and meeting and pausing and puzzling and finally dancing. I think I surprise him with my processing and implementation of all that he teaches. He says Very good! a lot (which he rarely did when I was learning to be the girl). I say, No, wait! Don’t tell me. Let me work it out! a lot. Our hands meet in ‘high fives’ at the end of each lesson and I hug him, exclaiming, Wow! It’s amazing! I can’t believe I did that… but I did.

Me and my talented teacher, Ariel

The prácticas with my girlfriends are kinda funny. I go to El Beso where there is a pillar in the centre of the dance floor. It’s a relatively calm práctica, so there is only one lane… well, one lane… and me dancing round the pillar; it seems full of magnetic energy that pillar, leastwise it seems to attract me. Still it’s helping me too, because as long as it’s drawing me in, I’m not banging into the other couples dancing outside me. Actually, at the ends of tandas, there have been a few high fives between me and my partners (one or two of which have been men; and one even said that he had rarely seen me as happy).

In the beginning of learning to dance as a woman, tango eased my then-tormented mind, gave me a safe place to become beautiful for the first time in my life, and allowed me to connect via my darker edge to release my inner glow. I’m learning to be the boy at a time when I have already connected with my spirit, so maybe it’d feel different if I hadn’t. But, my first impressions are that, in my case, since I am really a girl, being the boy is a lighter experience than being the woman was. It feels more like a game to me than a serious matter. It seems more of a mental challenge than a physical one because my body already understands the fundamentals of tango. It wakens my mind and leaves it buzzing, whereas as normally tango surges through my body and leaves my mind soothed in the wake of its rush.

As a writer, there is so much I want to share of my learning. How does the power I feel as a tango-boy differ to the power I feel as a tango-woman? What do I feel when I hold another female in my embrace? What depth of connection is possible when I, a girl, am dancing as a boy? That’s all to come in Parts 2, 3, 4 and beyond of On learning to be the tango boy, when you are really a girl.

Meanwhile I am in the UK again (supporting my Mum in her recovery from oral cancer), missing the Buenos Aires milongas where I am glam-female-with-fan-in-hand, and in a ‘tango boy’ frame of mind. Thus, I am in the mood to celebrate men! In particular, four brilliant UK-based men of tango. Each of these guys is doing a tango-something in 2011, that I want to enthuse about with Sallycat-passion. I’m very happy to know you all, however slightly or greatly, and I’m hereby awarding each of you, right here and now, an Absolutely Bloody Brilliant Barbie Award or ABBBA (First awarded, in June 2009, to Chacho at 2×4alpie, the maker of the platinum-and-leopard practice-shoes I wear to dance ‘the boy’ today).

Andreas, David, Steve and David, congrats from me and Barbie, and a zillion thanks for having put a bit more ‘Happy Tango’ energy in my 2010/2011 UK days. Guys, you rock!

Andreas Wichter of Tangokombinat (tangokombinat.de) and Abrazos — Encuentro Milonguero UK

ABBBA awarded to Andreas for masterminding (with his wonderful woman Lynn and his Tangokombinat colleagues) the first ever “Festival of Social Tango” to be held in the UK, on 6th 7th and 8th May 2011; the website gives the following details: 3 days and 2 nights of dancing await aficionados of social tango. Over three days you can take part in workshops with some of the best salón teachers available, work with friends in guided and open prácticas, or sit, chat and dance in the Hex, our central all-day meeting place. At the milongas, you will be dancing late into the night to the best Golden Age tango music chosen by excellent DJs. Sounds super, doesn’t it? I’ve been in touch with Andreas in the lead up to the Event’s launch, and think it’s a unique and exciting happening that lovers of social tango will not want to miss; I even asked him whether girls dancing as boys will be welcome, and he says Yes, Abrazos will smile on anyone who embraces their fellow dancers with love, friendship and respect. Perfect. Book prontísimo, before places sell out!

David Venney of Vidadance (vidadance.com)

ABBBA awarded to David for bringing to the UK (and international) market great, beautiful and worthy men’s tango shoes, a pair of which have been bought, worn and much loved by Carlos (and are shown, in the pics above, on his feet, which you can tell are Argentine because of the gaucho trousers — luverly aren’t they?). The Vidadance shoes are stylish, well-crafted, well-priced, and there is even a simple foot-sizing system available on the website which actually works for ordering online – Carlos got the right size first time, without trying on the shoes before he bought. Brilliant!

Steve Morrall of TangoUK (tangouk.co.uk)

ABBBA awarded to Steve for his exciting and original work in the field of development of musicality in tango dancers; especially, his weekly workshops in Advanced Musicality at Bramshaw Tango (which I would love to attend one day), and this brilliantly clear and effective chart of tango orchestras through time (click here and go to Page 6 for full details). Steve has always been an inspiration to me because of the strength, passion and generosity in his tango heart, the wide range and quality of the tango events that he runs with his wonderful wife Debbie, and the musical genius that he brings to the British tango page. Have you heard the music he improvised as a theme for the Happy Hearts Quest? No? Click inside the box where it says ‘1. Pure Happy Hearts’ to listen and see how beautifully it beckons you to join The Quest for Joy that I’ve founded on Facebook for 2011. It’s fab, and so is Steve!

David Bassett of Shrewsbury Tango (shrewsburytango.com)

ABBBA awarded to David for his masterful development (together with his wonderful partner Alison, and assisted by the super teaching of his resident teacher Sharon Koch) of a thriving UK social tango community with a core of capable yet refreshingly humble male-dancers at its warm heart (and the women are fantastic too). I still have to pinch myself that a tango community of the quality and strength of Shrewsbury Tango exists in the very same town where I live when I am in the UK. It is as if someone put Dave and Alison and their Thursday practicas and Monday men’s sessions right here in Shrewsbury, just for Me and C.! I do not think any tango community could have welcomed us more warmly, and the fact that Dave is of such similar tango mind to me, is surely heaven-sent. And even better, David says the same about me (!), which makes me certain that The Universe has had a hand in our meeting and working together. I’m going to be running workshops, on the theme of connection, for David’s tango community in the summer, and I’m very excited about that.

The joy in my boy tango-embrace (Thanks G.)

Ah, how marvellous that learning to ‘be the boy’ has caused me to pause and consider then men of the tango I adore. And not just the men I dance with, but all the tango men past, present and future who add their spirit to every step I walk on the male side of the dance. Guys, by dancing in your tango shoes for a while, I wish that I may I understand you and know you better, and appreciate you even more than I already do.

The lovely trophy image above was originally on the web at dealbreaker.com

Tags: Abrazos, Andreas Wichter, Ariel Yanovsky, being the boy, David Bassett, David Venney, Sharon Koch, Shrewsbury Tango, Steve Morrall, tango journey, UK Festival of Social Tango, Vidadance

My Quest. Your Quest? The Happy Hearts Quest, 2011.

January 6, 2011 in Live your dreams | 12 comments

2011. The year before the end of the world?
I’m going to live it as if it were my last.

(If you do not know by heart who Sallycat, Barbie and VOD are, please read this post of February 2009)

On the afternoon of the eve of the great and mighty year of my lucky number 11, I was in Buenos Aires, wondering what I was going to do next on the path of my life’s work. I was joyful with the journey I’d taken in 2010. An affirming and confidence-boosting review of Happy Tango had just appeared in the classy UK dance magazine Dance Today. It was cause for great celebration of one dream lived, but it had reminded me that while I must push on with promoting Happy T. around the world, the cycle of creative thinking that had conceived and written the book was complete.

By synchronicity in the days leading up to the year’s end, I’d read this brilliant Paulo Coehlo post titled Together. Inspired, I’d asked my artist friends to contribute their own art on a Facebook comment thread, so that we could, Together, light up a beacon of inspiration to lead us, into 2011. One of the artists who commented on the thread called me Sally the Catalyst. It felt good. Another friend smiled when I told her and said Sallycatalyst. It felt great.

I decided to check in with Barbie. I’d put her out on the balcony with the plants over Christmas; maybe I’d sensed she wanted something as fresh as zesty green. I’d given her leaves to touch, stood her between the mint and the oregano, lifted her skinny arms to welcome the good energy in. On New Year’s Eve, I picked her up and stroked her long blond hair, hair like I’d had once myself when I was fourteen before I cut it all off and it grew back brown then grey.

How you doin’ beautiful little girl? I said.

Well. About bloody time, Sallycat! She stamped her tiny foot and I imagined she longed to shove a branch of oregano right under my nose.

Thank God you kept me breathing in those Morning Pages all summer and autumn and summer again! Thank God for Julia Cameron, eh? But Sallycat, forget about Paulo and Julia! Remember that inspirational book we want to write, will you? You know, that one that’s going to transform the lives of millions… written by You and Me… together. Time to make a start! Don’t you think?

Oh Barbie. I know. I know, I whisper. I never ever forget that book. My one true dream, to somehow pass on to others what life has taught me about the quest for…

But before I can utter the single word that packs my heart so full that it longs to burst and share, VOD pipes up, all sing-song-y and booming like a tuba as if I am deaf,

It’s just that you don’t really have any ideas, do you? No. No. Nooooo. It’s all already been done. Paulo and Julia have it cra-acked.

He sings the last word like it has two syllables and he crushes on, with his stuck record that’s called Keep-Sal-Safe,

How can anything you write ever make a difference when the world is gleaming with bright stars like Paulo? You don’t have a vision, and you’re not clever enough to think one up. I mean, what are you gonna call this book of yours? Oh… um… oh I know… what about ‘Happy Hearts: Sallycat’s Guide to the Quest for Joy’, for bloody example? I mean, how friggin’ ridiculous is that? It sounds so naff. Happy Tango? Happy Hearts? Joy? Magic? Quests? Oh pleeeeeeease…

But now it is his turn to be interrupted,

Oh pleeeeeeeese… that’s IT! I LOVE quests! Barbie squeals at excitement pitch, and VOD immediately shrinks to the size of a shrivelled pea.

Barbie jumps out of my grasp on to the Mac keyboard on the table in the square metre of space just inside the balcony doors that is my work/make-things-happen zone. She dances up and down on the keys clapping her hands…

And, let’s face it, Sallycat. Some folks did think we were a weeny bit mad when we called our guide book Happy Tango, didn’t they? But we weren’t. It was fun and different and carries our spirits to those who want to embrace them! And we still feel happy whenever we see the book, don’t we?

Yes Barbie, we do. We DO!

Sallycat, it’s time to make something new? But look, not a book yet. Let’s play first! You love technology, right? And so do I, but I’m a teeny bit bored with Wordpress. I want to conjure with photos and links and podcasts and multimedia and easy-peasy-to-usey. Let’s be all 2011 and go with the flow of millions! Let’s use Facebook! I love Facebook. It’s soooooooo clever. The perfect place to spread magic fast. And, listen up Sallycat, if our experiment works, we’ll be on to a book anyway…

She shuts up and leaves me to believe.

I put her back among the plants to recharge her batteries. I’m gonna need them. Then, I think for about 5 minutes.

A Quest. The Happy Hearts Quest, 2011. A Quest for Joy. A global community of people on a path of the he(art) together. On Facebook, because I want the challenge of a new medium with which to channel my creative energy into the world. My head spins with ideas. VOD is nowhere to be heard. I sit at the Mac. And this is what I create. Click

here

to discover the Happy Hearts Quest on Facebook. It is now into its sixth day and 33 open-minded life-adventurers have joined the Quest. Will you be the 34th?

On the Quest there will be inspiration. There will be practical, useful and empowering tasks. There will be community. There will be shared art. And, there will be joy, if we want it.

2011. The year before the end of the world? I’m going to live it as if it were my last. What about you? Go on. Encourage your he(art). Take part!

Here’s the first Task of the Quest, to give you the idea, in case you are not on Facebook yet. The remaining 51 Tasks will always appear first on the Happy Hearts Quest Facebook Page because it is the platform on which I feel I can best achieve the sense of community that I want to encourage with the Happy Hearts Quest. Some or all of the posts may also be shared on Sallycat’s Adventures, but I’m not sure yet. I always reserve the right to change my mind!

Task 1: the Joy List © Sally Blake 2011

In my life before tango, I didn’t really have any dreams at all.

I understand when people say,

But I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I wouldn’t know where to start. I mean, how do you find your dreams? How do you KNOW?

In the summer of 2006 I didn’t know. I thought my life was over when my husband walked away and left me wondering at the real value of a a perfectly manicured lawn, detailed plans for a loft conversion and an MX5.

Five short weeks later, in the Casablanca bar (Bayangol Hotel, in case you should ever need fairly central and half-decent lodgings in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia), I wrote a list. It was the simplest of lists — a list of things I thought might possibly bring me relief in the days gaping back at me from the UK autumn that was to come.

You can see I wasn’t very convinced about the list’s worth, I wrote “What’s the benefit?” at the top of it. I really meant, What’s the bloody point? It will all fall apart anyway, in the end.

My Mongolian friend wrote a list too. We talked the lists over into 2am, in the country that we, by that stage in the Gobi adventure (great pictures here) we had just travelled, referred to as Neverland. By the time we’d finished, I had a second list scribbled, with a fraction more energy in it. See the word in capitals at the top, ticked to indicate I’d make it a priority? Well… my friend’s Italian girlfriend danced, and he wanted to learn so they could dance together at their wedding. To be honest, I’d been thinking of salsa, but the giggling enthusiasm of my friend talking about something called “Argentine tango” made me change my mind.

I didn’t know it then, but in the time it took me to write down those five letters, my life path had shifted, and a future of unseen possibilities had formed to lay in wait behind the bleak desert landscape that bulged in my mind.

I had many rocks to scramble over until tears stopped blurring my view — a lonely journey back to Moscow on a Russian Tupolev, a second divorce (I’d already known one), the sale of the garden and home I’d nurtured for one and a half decades, a broken love affair or few, learning to walk backwards in stiletto heels, flying alone out of my country for the first time, opening my heart to the unlikely possibility of true love, putting down the cigs I’d picked up (after a fifteen year break) on a Gobi desert dune, enduring several bouts of depression beyond the point of wanting to die, cracking a new language and culture, letting go of friends and lovers whose paths needed to diverge from mine, becoming the daughter I needed to be, becoming the partner I wanted to be, becoming the whole soul God had always intended me to be. And a few more things besides, that I have yet to reveal.

On the way to fewer tears, I unwrapped an unexpected gift. I danced. I wrote a blog. I made books. I played with information technology. I shared my truths and experiences with people and saw how watching their growth boosted mine. I learned what I loved to do (and what I didn’t). I began to know the dreams of my soul.

Let’s hear that echo of who I was once, again..

But I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I wouldn’t know where to start. I mean, how do you find your dreams? How do you KNOW?

I have kept a Joy List in a notebook ever since that first list in 2006. I didn’t believe in that one when I wrote it. But I did it anyway. And I’ve DONE the things on my Joy Lists, if possible, one every day. Some of them I’ve not loved with wild passion, and they’ve fallen by the wayside or faded (eg. kickboxing). Others, it turned out, are as important to me as breathing, and so, they led me to KNOW.

Joy List C was written in 2010. Scrawled in the back of a tiny notebook, added to as the year went by. The focus has changed a bit since the 2006 lists; less about what I think might bring me joy and more about what actually does. In the lands of one of the most vast deserts in the world, I was starting from what seemed like nothing. Now, somewhere between Buenos Aires and the Shropshire hills, I’m building on and exploring from within a life I already love.

On January 2nd 2011 I sit at home alone feeling a weeny bit sorry for myself because C. has gone out with a friend and I had expected him to spend the evening with me. I could go dancing at La Milonguita, but I’m sulking unattractively on the sofa, so I decide not to. Then, staring at the Christmas tree lights flashing in the hearts of angels and fairies, I remember the coaching session I gave a friend last week. I’d set her a task, told her to make a beautiful and worthy frame for her Joy List, to celebrate it, to make it real. I get out my pack of new felt pens (actually written on my Joy List C as “a new set of felt pens”). I start a very colourful work of he(art), Joy List D.

By the time I’m done, and I’ve propped the list up next to my bed where it will be the first thing I see when I wake, I’ve forgotten about my self pity, and instead I just can’t wait to write this note for the Happy Hearts Quest. I’m excited to try out Facebook as a blogging medium, and to see if anyone is interested in making a Joy List for themselves. A Joy List to kick start their own evening, their week, their year, or even their whole-damn-lives.

The morning after, I read my Joy List D, to C.

He says, How special that so many of the things on it are so small, I mean in a good way small.

Yes, I say, What a relief it is to realise that the things that can give you most joy in life cost nothing and you can have them any time you want.

But there is more beauty in a Joy List than that. The things on the list may seem insignificant, but actually they may be the keys to the discovery of dreams. A “set of felt pens” could mean illustrations drawn for a book one day. “Singing Once in Royal David’s City solo for friends” could mean bringing a viola-playing-past back to life with Carrillón De La Merced the first composition learned and played. And a single word, followed through and pursued with passion, could bring into focus a future beyond the wildest imaginings of a life-weary mind, as it did for me.

Which words on your Joy List could unlock the life you have always wanted? Or which already have?

Depending whereabouts you are on your Happy Hearts Quest, you will have a different story to tell. And I cannot wait to hear it.

Week 1’s Happy Hearts Quest Task is to write your very own Joy List, frame it with art from your heart (paint, glitter, felt pens, photos, words, silver paper all allowed and positively encouraged), take a photo of it (or a piece of it to preserve privacy), and post it to the Happy Hearts Quest wall. If you dare. Go on. Encourage your he(art). Take part!

Tags: Happy Hearts Quest

The tango music I love – The Gift (Part 2a)

December 20, 2010 in Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires | 15 comments

When I wrote The milongueros I love – The Gift (Part 1) about the men in Buenos Aires I love to embrace and why, I received many enthusiastic comments from around the globe. People sent me their experiences, details of blissful moments on the dance floor, even poetry. And a few people asked me a simple question.

What about the music? they said.

Ah, I thought, as I read through my post. Good point. Had I focused too much on the men, and taken the music for granted?

Back then, despite having danced tango for three and a half years, and three of them in Buenos Aires, I still felt a bit uncomfortable when people asked me about tango music. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the traditional stuff. I did. I’d fallen head over stiletto heels in love with it in 2007 — and I tell that bit of my story, of how I went from pop to scratchy recordings of Pugliese and other marvellous tango-music men, in my book Happy Tango, so, I won’t repeat it here. By the time I wrote Happy T. , I had favourite tango orchestras and could reel off a few of them (D’Angelis, D’Arienzo, D’Agostino, Caló…) with honest passion in my voice.

However, I am a woman who has never won a game of Trivial Pursuit in her life, and slickly trotting out titles and dates on cue in answer to questions such as What Golden Age tangos do you like? seemed unlikely ever to be my destiny. I felt I ought to be able to do it, but I couldn’t. I knew I loved to dance to certain tunes and if they came on in the milonga I’d sit up, energise my most magnetic stare and feel frustrated if I couldn’t find a partner who loved them as much as I did; but, when a dance partner confided the name of a particular favourite, between tangos (as they often do in Buenos Aires), I wouldn’t say I exactly raced home to search for it on iTunes or write it in my notebook. I knew of some tangos by name, ones that maybe Ariel my teacher (whose tango knowledge reaches way beyond Trivial Pursuit), or Carlos, had enthused over. But, I was a person who felt the music rather than needing to register its ‘apellido and DNI number’. Or so I thought.

Then three things happened, and my musical world shifted a little on its familiar axis.

1. In the UK in July 2010, at the invitation of the social-tango-and trad-tango-music-loving organisers of Shrewsbury Tango, I began to research teaching a workshop on ‘deepening the connection in the social tango embrace’. I had to choose the music for the session. I sat at my computer listening and noting and learning… and wanting to know more, because, I realised that if I am to share anything of what I have been taught by ‘the milongueros I love the most’ about soul-to-soul connection in tango, I have to use the music to do it. In fact, I discovered, my choice of music can almost do the job for me — ladies, you try entering the embrace to a haunting introduction such as that of Jamás Retournarás from Al compás del corazón (Miguel Caló with vocalist Raúl Berón) without longing to be in the arms of a man who can lead you to melt.

2. On my return to Buenos Aires, a favourite milonguero broke my tango heart by abandoning me for another woman for the tanda we’d regularly danced over a period of many months, and I found I could not rest until I’d tracked the music down by name and played it over and over until it (and he) was out of my system. It may sound extreme, but I had to do this or I knew I would never be able to dance to the music again. I can’t tell you the orchestra concerned, because I think it courteous to protect the identity of the milonguero — his favourite tandas are as familiar to his dance partners past, present and future, as his dance shoes are to his feet. And I owe him courtesy. I’m sad to have lost an adored embrace, for now at least, but I will remain in the man’s debt for my whole tango life, whether we ever dance together again or not. He placed the tracks that ‘make him tremble’ in my soul’s memory, where I will hold them as gold. My ‘milonguero I loved the most’ scarred me with tango music itself. How could I not want to know its name?

3. To discover whether it’s possible for me to pass on something inspiring and worthwhile on the subject of ‘the gift’ in the tango embrace, I’ve begun a whole new journey — learning to ‘be the boy’ as Ariel (my wonderful teacher) puts it. Last week, by the end of my first lesson, I was able to navigate him around his living room without banging into the walls or the furniture. And, to investigate the boy-part thoroughly, I’m going to have to know my tango music more intimately than ever before. I can’t help wondering if the tracks I will choose to dance when trying to help women to relax and give their gift to the real men of tango, will be the same tracks that I most readily surrender to as a woman. Can’t wait to find out.

These three music-related happenings seem to have started a bit of an avalanche… you know that thing where once you become aware of something, you see it everywhere. A favourite dance partner of mine (from Australia) and I talk in the pause between tangos of how fun (and useful for getting to know the music) it would be if the DJ had an electronic board displaying the name and orchestra of each tango as it’s played. On Thursday at Nuevo Chique the organiser enthused about D’Arienzo as if he were an old friend and tears of joy blurred my eyesight. This Saturday at Los Consagrados I found myself surrendering to a strong milonguero from La Plata and a tanda of Láurenz and feeling quite desperate to identify the final tango that left me dizzy with release — the rather aptly named (as it turns out, in the light of point 2. above, though its lyrics convey a far deeper level of sadness), Abandono.

Yep, the signs of synchronicity are there. In wanting to know tango music more intimately to help me understand its effect on a soul with a desire to dance, I think I am definitely on a good path. However, I’m always going to be more heart than head, so don’t be surprised when I tell you I adore Fresedo, you ask me what my favourite track is, and I just can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I drank with way too much characteristic passion when I was young.

And as for whether my original post, The milongueros I love – The Gift (Part 1), spoke too much of men and not enough of music. I don’t think so. In my case it was the embrace of men, and not actually the music, that got me hooked on dancing social tango. If you’d simply sat me solo, on day one, in a room with a CD player, a disc of classic tangos and a disc of Robbie Williams and told me to choose which to dance to first, I’m sure that I’d have picked the Robbie Williams, just because my British soul was well used to its sound and beat. It was men — my dream dancer of Hampshire, Ariel, Carlos, a multitude of milongueros in Buenos Aires — who taught me to love tango music through their dance. That isn’t to say that tango music isn’t the mother and father of all these fabulous-tango-dancer men, because, of course, without its existence there would be no tango embrace and none of the resulting gifts. In that sense the music always comes first. Plus, it is the music that dictates when the men in my current tango life dance, and when they don’t — for example, Carlos will be very unlikely to leave his seat for Di Sarli, whereas when D’Arienzo blasts over the pista he just can’t stop himself. And if both the man and I are jumping to our feet for the same track, I think the chances of bliss in our embrace are upped to the height of a full moon above the earth.

So… music. Music. Tango music! Yes, it matters, and the longer I dance, the more it matters to me. Abso-bloody-lutely. My favourite tango music is one of the wings on which my tango soul flies. The milongueros I described in The milongueros I love – The Gift (Part 1) are the other. To release my tango ‘gift’ with utter abandon and leave the eyes of men shining with the perfect combination of surprise, relief and desire, I need them both.

What about you?

Guys, perhaps you can substitute the word woman for man in some parts of the post above.
Anyone who wants to deepen their knowledge of tango music — the history, the personalities, the sounds, the lyrics, the lot — try the websites planet-tango.com, todotango.com and milonga.co.uk.
The photograph at the top of the post is of La Glorieta from where tango music fills a Belgrano park on Saturday and Sunday evenings from 7pm.
If you’d like the full story on how to make the most of Buenos Aires tango, why not treat yourself to my book Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires?

Tags: Ariel Yanovsky, Golden Age music, milonguero, tango connection, tango journey, tango music, the gift

The essence of tango?

December 11, 2010 in Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires | 28 comments

Reading Bora’s Tango Journey from Buenos Aires, and in particular Day 8 and the comments on it, sends me reeling back through the years to 2007 and the post I wrote in December of that year called More tango lessons, the tale of a painful episode that I will never ever forget. I know the theme isn’t quite the subject of Bora’s Day 8 post, but the sum of her Buenos Aires writings (up to Day 12 so far) moves me and causes me to remember some of the pivotal steps on my own tango journey. She and the people who have commented on her post have prompted me to consider the ‘real’ tango in this city, and what it means to me, right now, in 2010. Why am I still dancing tango in Buenos Aires, three years on?

The other day I had cause to tell the following little story to a dear long-time-tango-dancing friend. She laughed and exclaimed something along the lines of, Sallycat, you have just described the essence of tango! Here’s what I told her. See what you think.

.

I’m sitting in a milonga where it’s pretty quiet and it’s easy to see everyone in the room, the dancers on the dance floor and the folk sitting the tanda out. It’s the afternoon and there are people present who never frequent the late-night milongas.

I see quite a few men I wouldn’t really care to dance with. Maybe I’ve danced with them before and don’t want to repeat the experience. Maybe I haven’t danced with them, but they dance in a way that does not encourage me to want to leave my seat. Or, maybe I am repelled by the ugly and all-too-visible shapes of their egos or the fact that they are obviously only interested in dancing with the outer beauty of youth or the prospect of a quick lay, one of which I do not have at age forty-seven and the other I will never be. I will decline to embrace these guys. I let them go in my mind. These men are not for me.

I begin to look for the men who I might want to embrace. I keep my eye on one man I’ve never seen before. I do not see him dance. He sits quietly, on his own, sips from a small coffee cup.

I do leave my seat, for Fresedo, Donato, D’Angelis, Caló and the valses. The rest I sit out. It’s hot. There’s no aircon. The wall fans can’t cope. I save myself for music I love. At the start of each tanda I glance at the man again. He’s pretty old, I’m guessing eighty. He looks frail, but his fresh white cotton shirt has perfect creases ironed into the sleeves. Maybe he just dressed up to come and listen to the music and soak up the tango memories seeping from the walls of the place.

Or maybe not, because with the first few notes of the new tanda in the space between us, he is looking back at me, inclining his head and mouthing the word, Bailamos?

I decide to take a risk — well, in truth, I’d decided it an hour or so before, and he probably knows it. I dip my head in a small movement, mirroring his. He stands for the first time since he arrived in the salón.

When he embraces me I know for sure he has lived a lot of years. He holds me with a telltale combination of security and uncertainty in his physical contact. It isn’t his energy that gives him away. I feel his presence strong and proud, but there is a slight shake in his arms, a momentary tremor, the voice of his body telling its long story to mine, from the first touch.

My body reacts to reassure his. No backing off on my part, or transmitting hints of social conditioning about age or tango ability or tango technique. He may shake slightly, but I have chosen him and I will focus entirely on him and give him my all. I hold him as close as I can and breathe with him. I sense every point of connection with his body. I breathe with him again. With him again.

He breathes with me.

His first steps are relatively simple, and I know he guides me deliberately in to a place that feels good, for me, and for him. He wants us to find the common ground, somewhere where he knows I’m hearing the same music he does and can respond to it without holding back.

Once he has me there, safely on the launch pad, he begins to flex his dancing wings. I become certain that he has waited in his seat all afternoon for this particular orchestra, and now he wants to bring the music that he loves to life, through me.

And the development of his dance across our four tangos? It’s as if he begins with a pencil sketch on a single sheet of paper and ends with a power-packed painting that could fill an entire wall of the Tate. I feel every mark through his chest, and I add my own choices to his as my confidences builds. I hear the music he has selected for me. I respond to it and to him. My energy is not passive, but present and alive in his arms. He paints musical masterpieces on the floor. I feel every knot of tension leave us and I dissolve in the warm melting pot of the security of our hug, the strokes brushed into intricate spontaneous patterns by our feet, the notes written long ago and now rushing through our ears to our legs, and our clasped hands that tense and relax in a way that makes me notice how my skin is hot to his cool. We are a match. We are one.

By the final tango in the tanda, every hint of his physical tremor is completely gone. I am dancing with the spirit of a young man and with a soul that has danced for over fifty years. I become certain that we are dancing in the 1930s, that we have chosen each other in a packed tango hall where a live orchestra is playing, that I am the only woman in his world and that he is the only man in mine.

When he finally pulls away from me I see it in his eyes. I’ve surprised him, as he has surprised me.

Or maybe I haven’t surprised him at all. Maybe his eyes simply speak of triumph that he has so effortlessly extracted my ‘gift‘ and left me wanting more.

Afterwards he escorts me back to my seat and I need him to. I ask him how old he is. Only slightly breathless, he says,

Eighty-two.

I say,

Yes, but you dance like you are twenty-two.

He chuckles.

And you are twenty-two, he whispers in my ear.

I giggle. He kisses my hand.

I can’t dance the next tanda. I need to allow my heart beat to slow. I go to the bathroom to wipe a damp paper towel over my forehead, tidy my hair. When I come back the waiter is clearing the coffee cup from the man’s table. My ‘frail’ eighty-two year old has gone.

.

So, what do you think?

And, what do I think?

I think that what we each consider to be the ‘essence of tango’ (or the ‘real’ tango, or whatever you want to call it) and the freedom we give to others to discover and speak of and celebrate their own version of it, probably says more about us than it does about what the essence of tango truly is… will it ever look or feel exactly the same to any two of us? I don’t know, but I think not.

I do know, in my own case, that I’ll always remind myself to remain open to finding the essence of tango in Buenos Aires in the lower-key places, in the humble people, in the quiet of the afternoon, in the last hour of the late-night local milonga, in the second or third rows back in the tango salóns, in the hearts of men who dance for joy to the tango music they truly truly love. And every time I discover what I seek in the arms of those men, I will thank my own tango angel Carlos (seen in my friend Shaun’s beautiful photo at the top of this post, and described in my 2007 post mentioned earlier) for helping me along my path to discovering the intense and very precious essence of tango that I will dance in my heart till the day I die.

Sometimes I will find the bliss I seek. And sometimes I won’t. But, I believe that somewhere in this city (aka world, aka life), what my soul needs in its quest for joy of all kinds, including in tango, is probably always there, right there under my nose. Whether I find it or not is probably pretty much down to me.

That said, I’m off to Los Consagrados.

And wherever you’re dancing tonight, I wish with all my heart that you find what your tango soul is looking for.

Happy National Day of Tango to every one of you!

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

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If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

Click a link to buy Happy Tango from:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.com
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BookDepository.co.uk
BookDepository.com (the Book Depository offers free shipping to many countries). If you prefer to buy from your bookstore, then you should be able to get them to order you a copy, wherever you are in the world. Ask for:

ISBN: 9780956530608
Author: Sally Blake
Published by: Pirotta Press Ltd
Publication date: 30 June 2010

Tags: Buenos Aires milonga codigos, Buenos Aires milongas, changing sallycat, tango journey, tango lessons

The energy on my dancing feet – Buenos Aires tango shoes 2010

December 6, 2010 in Buenos Aires Information, Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires | 11 comments

Tell me what you’re looking for and how much cash you want to spend, I say, Then I can decide on our route.

My friend is a tango-shoe virgin — so far she’s been dancing in footwear that resembles ankle boots and, I imagine, must deliver very sweaty results on 35-degree, early-summer days. I say this based solely on knowledge of my own feet which, alas, do not stay muy dry after three hours of dancing, even in winter. We’re standing on the corner of Montevideo and Avenida Santa Fe in Buenos Aires, at 11 o’clock in the morning on the first Saturday in December. I’m remembering my own first tango ‘danced’ in leather-soled cowboy boots from Mongolia, and the pair of shoes that followed those boots: ugly black closed-toe affairs bought in a dance shop in Basingstoke in 2006.

I’m looking for a pair today, too, I tell my friend, I might treat myself… if I find the perfect shoe.

It’s almost eighteen months since I bought my 2×4alpie favourites, and I’ve neither bought nor worn anything else since. I’ve been waiting for the new models of 2×4s for women to be ready, but they’re not due till next year. So, I need a fresh-smelling pair of tango shoes that will feel comfortable from the moment I step into them and that can cope with a pretty intense workout on dance floors of stone (common here in BsAs) as well as of wood. I don’t really expect to find anything that fit the bill, to be honest, but introducing a girlfriend to some of the tango shoe stores in Buenos Aires is a great opportunity to see what’s on the market as we approach 2011.

In Recoleta we visit Taconeando (on Arenales), GretaFlora (the new store on Uruguay) and Comme il Faut (just off Arenales in its slightly-tricky-to find-if-you-don’t-know-it’s-down-an-alley-and-up-some-stairs location).

Taconeando has prices as low (and therefore as relatively affordable) as around $300pesos, a red and black pair that my friend loves, but not in her size, and nothing to tempt me, because I already know their styles (though I like the youthful, trendy look of some) don’t work on my feet. The shop assistant leaves us to it, but tells us the shoes available are only those on display — no other sizes — which seems a bit odd, and I can’t help wondering about the economic climate, the rampant inflation in Buenos Aires and how tango-shoe businesses are being affected by the combination of the two. The brand retains its original designs, but the shop itself does not have the up energy that it had the first time I went in there in 2008. We move on.

We are the only customers in the new GretaFlora store. The store has a classy, designed-for-Recoleta feel, but I’m a bit disappointed to realise we’re in a store selling mainly street shoes for around $700-plus pesos a pair; the tango shoes — which do have a beautifully-crafted look — are from $580pesos (I think the assistant says that) and I’m afraid I decide on the spot that I’d probably save that sort of cash for a shoe with an interchangeable sole, in other words the new models of 2×4s due in 2011. While admiring the stunning leather and stone-cluster clip-on flowers behind the counter (a relative bargain at $90pesos a pair), we learn from the friendly and kind assistant that it’s the Palermo GretaFlora store that has the full range of tango shoes… this new store is really for weddings, parties, luxury footwear for off the dance floor. No-one else comes in while we are there. We thank her and move on.

I already know I won’t be buying anything in Comme il Faut as I just don’t find their shoes flexible enough or cushioned enough for my slightly damaged left big-toe joint (I’ve got 4 pairs of CiFs in my kitchen cupboard that I never wear). However, once my bum is on that velvet couch of theirs, I can’t resist trying a pair in black patent leather … but no, I was right, the toe bar is way too hard for that left foot, so I hand them back fast. My friend, on the other hand, predictably falls in love, with a delicate design in red and black that conjures words like France and sex and goddess and daring romance. She spontaneously starts doing adornos on the carpet in front of the mirror and clapping her hands, and I see the SOLD sign reflected in the shop assistant’s eyes. But, it seems, my friend is not the impulse buyer that I myself can be. She leaves her heart’s desires in a box with her name on it and promises to call before 3 o’clock if she wants them. We’re told they’re $440pesos for cash (surprisingly similar to the 2009 price) including $10pesos to get cromo (a coarse suede suitable for the average dance floor) sole put over the standard leather (slippery on wooden floors). As we leave, two female customers come into the store to take our place. I think I count four assistants ready to serve them. A quiet Saturday or the norm these days? I seem to remember the sofas overflowing with eager punters in the past. We leave Recoleta behind and make for the scruffier Microcentro.

We walk a roundabout route up Esmeralda to take in TangoBrujo (I was once tempted by the comfort and trendy denim of a pair of shoes in there), but instead of the buzzing shop and high-energy tango school I was expecting to find, I’m confronted with the sad face of a dusty, locked building that offers only a feeble memory of tango, trapped in a few remnants of window signage. Perhaps only the ‘go’ in tango is left there, stuck in time on the glass, and we do indeed move on, with me muttering, I knew there was something up when they closed for renovations last year… hell, I’ll have to cover it again on the Happy Tango updates blog. My energy drops a notch at the loss of a place that so many of my younger friends enjoyed over the years, but I remind myself that sometimes things have to fade so that new things can grow in their space. I march my friend on.

How many more shops can we fit in before they close (3pm or even 2pm on a Saturday)? The six clustered on Suipacha? I’m thinking this, when into my mind pops the image of a metallic lime green toe-bar with an embroidered swirl — an Alanis shoe I saw in the window of Diagonal Norte 936 in 2009. I remember the shop and realise that I am almost standing outside it. The door of the tiny store is open. And inside, a smiley woman is dancing, kind of bopping actually, to tango music, as she organises the window display. Her vibrant energy reaches me before I get to the threshold. Let’s just do this one first, I say to my friend. And we go in.

Hey! How lovely to see you dancing so happily, I say aloud to the woman, in my heavily British-accented Spanish. I can’t help myself… the words tumble out to greet her.

I’m Silvia Alanis! She almost sings it, And these are my shoes. I design them!

She enthuses to us about the old models, the new models, the details that she is most proud of. She darts around the shop, touching this shoe and that. I notice the stitched signatures, the pink heart in the Alanis logo, the Alanis strapline You can fly! and the fresh leather smell of the new models for the summer season being unpacked on the floor. Silvia Alanis proceeds to help me find exactly the style that will feel secure and strong on my feet, and as she does so, we talk about the addictive nature of tango, about the milongas, about the men in the milongas. We laugh a lot. I sense that her business is alive and kicking and, I hope, growing. I know I want to wear her energy when I dance. It shouts CREATIVITY AND PASSION! I buy two pairs of her shoes at $430 pesos each. I show her Happy Tango, and the Alanis entry in it under 10 Tango Shoe Stores, tell her how the lime-green toe bar and embroidered swirl stayed in my mind and led me back to the shop one year on.

I reckon we are with her about an hour, though we do pop round the corner to the stores on Suipacha (still there but with one or two small changes not really worth mentioning), where my friend buys a Titania-worthy pair of deep-green shoes in a packed-with-customers Flabella for less than $300pesos, while Silvia Alanis makes final adjustments to my own new shoes down the road. On our return she puts the shoes on my feet and measures exactly where the holes in the straps should go. I leave the store beaming and confident that I won’t sit in the milonga later wishing that I had a hole punch in my kit bag.

By the time we’ve trekked back to Comme il Faut for the red-and-blacks, it’s 2.55pm. Comme is about to close, but now it’s heaving with customers (so perhaps GretaFlora and Taconeando are too) and I realise that the many tango visitors who frequent the night-time milongas (and the tango shoe stores) are probably not out shopping at 11am in the morning. Unlike me who wakes at 6am to have breakfast with C. before he heads off to work, even on a Saturday, and who dances in the early-evening milongas as a result. I can choose to dance three hours at a Traditional-style** milonga and still be in bed by midnight, thank God.

My friend and I laugh our goodbyes with excited voices wishing each other well for the night’s dancing and for the new shoe try outs. I can’t wait to step into a pair of mine at Los Consagrados where I’m headed later.

But, I’m a little nervous. How will it be to be led on to the pista with an unknown quantity on my feet — brand new shoes carrying only the energy of Alanis and whoever else has touched the leather? My 2×4s may be well worn and in need of fresh air and retirement, but how many miles have they danced with my soul? They are packed with a sense of security and familiarity, memories of my tango footwork, imprints of every piece of music that has resonated through them. They’re the first dance shoes that have felt as a perfectly moulded extension of me. Can I ever get that feeling again? Should I really have trusted my heart in deciding to take Silvia Alanis into the embraces of ‘the milongueros I love the most’? Or should I have kept scrubbing the 2×4s with CIF cleaning creme for a little longer?

The night ahead holds the answers, and as I turn from waving my friend chau, I can’t help noticing the slight slink and swagger in my walk, as I stride down Corrientes towards the moment when I will take my new shoes onto the dance floor to lose their virginity…

Dammit. Who says tango isn’t about sex?

For pics of my old and new tango shoes, in all their December 2010 glory, click here.

There is a good interview with the founder of Taconeando, Marlene Heyman, in the November edition of the Cambalache magazine, which appears to be a new and topical ‘tango magazine’ first published in April 2010; the website is very informative with details of concerts and other events posted. Enjoy.

**For my definition of a Traditional-style Buenos Aires milonga, you’ll have to read a copy of Happy Tango — my book.

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

Join the book’s Facebook page for all the Happy Tango updates from Buenos Aires; click here and then click ‘Like’.

If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

ISBN: 9780956530608
Author: Sally Blake
Published by: Pirotta Press Ltd
Publication date: 30 June 2010

Tags: 2x4alpie, Alanis, Buenos Aires tango magazines, Cambalache, Comme il Faut, Flabella, GretaFlora, Marlene Heyman, Silvia Alanis, Taconeando, Tango Brujo, tango shoes

Buenos Aires, November 2010

November 26, 2010 in Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires, Live your dreams | 14 comments

We spill out of La Confitería Ideal into Suipacha with the mini-dramas of our tango afternoon on our lips and with our feet aching from the combination of stiletto heels and a stone floor. I have shared tandas with a few of the milongueros I love the most. I know that by the time we’ve eaten pizza on Corrientes my wings will have folded back into their everyday shape, but that I will probably leave a few fresh, rainbow-coloured feathers in my wake for at least twenty-four hours. Osvaldo Fresedo is the music that has sent me flying today, and I know that I’ll still be hearing Después del Carnaval when I lie in bed later trying to sleep.

To get to pizzería Guerrín we have to cross Avenida 9 de Julio. Last week we dodged buses decked out in royal-blue-and-yellow flags and dangerous toppings of Boca Juniors fans presumably coming into town for their Superclásico clash with River — then, the combination of traffic lights, potential sudden stops and male bodies balanced on colectivo roofs of slippery metal sent our voices to a horrified pitch. Tonight though, the widest avenue in Buenos Aires is filled with Carmina-Burana-style music and folding chairs. A stage as huge as an office block replaces the usual traffic, and contemporary dancers give their all to an audience of thousands. We stand behind the safety barriers for a few minutes and stare. My friend has her eyes on the dancers. Mine rest on the watchers who soak in the free concert. I am sure I see a few pairs of wings unfurl in the crowd. My own wings twitch and a forgotten memory returns to me of how I saw the Ballet Rambert perform Ghost Dances set to haunting South American music when I was at University in London, and how the moving performance left me with a longing to be a dancer. It can take time to learn to fly, I think to myself and I tell my friend about the surfacing of the memory. Being with her tonight has allowed it to survive drowning in the foggy pool of years lived long ago. I thank her.

We go for the pizza. She gets two individual slices and I get the fugazza con muzzarella – chica, half for me and half to wrap and take back for Carlos. We’re midway through our meal when the man on the next table has a seizure, or is it a heart attack? For a moment I wonder if he might be dying. A woman starts shouting for a médico. He begins to vomit. Lumps leave his mouth in arcs and I am certain that he must have already consumed more than one pizza. There’s a buzz of manic action as people flock to help. Then as suddenly as it started, it all stops. He stands up, wipes himself down, sits back at his table with his friends. Only the smell of what happened remains, and soon that is masked by mops dipped in buckets of disinfectant. Let’s get the bill, I say. I turn to signal to the waiter and as I do I see that the dark energy has left the sick man and leapt elsewhere. A fight has broken out just inside the front door, where queues of people jostle to buy take-away porciones of some of the most popular pizza in town. Two women. Screaming. Fists out, I assume, though the details are hidden from me by a chaos of bodies. The violence lasts for a few minutes. La cuenta, por favor! calls my friend, and our waiter finally drags himself from oggling the aftermath of the fray.We pay up, exit and leave the uneasy spirit of the night to feast on the diners we leave behind. Or that’s the plan anyway.

On the few blocks between the restaurant and the number 60 bus stop on Callao, we trip over too many split bags and spilt rubbish, I jump as a disturbed soul yells out behind me, and we are accosted by three strangers who break the usual codes of personal space by touching the Guerrín bag in my hand and who ask us for money and Carlos’ dinner. We choose to step into the path of traffic, rather than stay on the dark stretch of pavement behind a boarded-up magazine kiosk where we can be too easily surrounded. A kind-passer-by-man-in-a-suit moves between them and us as we stand stranded on tarmac. Taxis swerve to avoid us. The possibly drugged-up threesome move on towards Congreso. The red lights of a brand new number 60 rounding the corner are a relief. With a Muchas gracias Señor we thank our guardian angel of a guy and climb on the bus.

There are ghosts on Callao and Corrientes tonight, I say to my friend.

Welcome back dear Sal, she laughs.

My heart beat begins to slow as we turn into the quieter side streets. I check my folded-away wings are undamaged. Text Carlos I’m safely on the bus. Hear an echo of Fresedo. Hug my friend goodnight. Head home.

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

Join the book’s Facebook page for all the Happy Tango updates from Buenos Aires; click here and then click ‘Like’.

If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

Click a link to buy Happy Tango from:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.com
amazon.ca
amazon.fr
barnesandnoble.com
BookDepository.co.uk
BookDepository.com (the Book Depository offers free shipping to many countries). If you prefer to buy from your bookstore, then you should be able to get them to order you a copy, wherever you are in the world. Ask for:

ISBN: 9780956530608
Author: Sally Blake
Published by: Pirotta Press Ltd
Publication date: 30 June 2010

Tags: Avenida Corrientes, Buenos Aires restaurants, Fresedo, la ideal

See you soon!

October 13, 2010 in Live your dreams, Sallycat in the UK, The tale of my book - Happy Tango | 23 comments

Sallycat’s Adventures has been quiet this summer, I know. Stuff happened that, on the face of it, didn’t seem to fit with a blog, originally written from Buenos Aires, that aspires to climb to the giddy heights of inspiring others to live their dreams.

My UK family has found itself up close and personal with the (pretty grim at times, and especially so for my mum who has undergone surgery to build a new tongue from part of her arm) realities of oral cancer. Somehow, it seemed just too much to expect readers to leap from tango connections of a blissful kind, freshly-published tango guide books and dancing for joy in Buenos Aires, to the National Health Service (impressive though it has turned out to be), intensive care units, and the gruelling side effects of thirty-three days of daily radiotherapy to the mouth and neck, and the accompanying chemo treatments. Know what I mean?

And yet I do find blogs that drift away into the ether with fewer and fewer posts a little distressing. When the updates stop, I ponder over the authors. Have they got writer’s block? Have they lost their passion for the subject they once championed? Or, have they changed their whole life philosophy/direction and can’t bring themselves to come clean? And of course, perhaps most importantly, Are they OK? I don’t want you to be wondering those things about me. So, whatever the circumstances, I’ll briefly share with you where I (Tango dancer. Writer. Adventurer.) am in the light of finally (and, oh how fortunate I am that I’ve been given until the age of 47 to discover it) being faced with the truth that neither my loved ones, nor I, will actually live forever.

I’m in England, in the town where I was born. I’ve been here through late-spring alliums into late-summer dahlias and this week, as I walked into town along the bank of the River Severn, I held out my hand to try to catch falling leaves. After four months in Shropshire, supporting us all with his guardian-angel-calm presence, my beloved C. is now back in Buenos Aires. We are lovers, life partners and soul-mates of the most profound kind and we will fill each other’s arms again within weeks we hope, but for now, we are unexpectedly but necessarily apart, connected every day by Skype, and every instant by the powerful knowledge that closeness is certainly not about distance.

Whenever I don’t write to you on this page, it’s usually because I’m considering stuff that I’m not yet ready to tell, or it’s because I’m having to turn my attention elsewhere. This summer its been a combination of both, and in all honesty, with what’s happening with my Mum and the fact that I have temporarily spun from full-on tango dancer, writer and adventurer into eldest daughter, big sister and chief carer, I’ve temporarily lost the personal resources and hours in the day required to blog my heart out about my life journey, even if it is in the interests of inspiring others to Go for it! That’s why there have been no updates here for over a month, and why I can’t promise that there will be more any time soon.

I just don’t want you wondering about my silence. And, if my silence continues for a while, this post is by way of explanation.

My mum’s cancer is teaching me many things, most of which (like in my case, before this happened) you wouldn’t want me to tell you (it’s a human self-preservation thing). But, hey, when it all kicks off unexpectedly and you feel aspects of your own life shrink as if to fit inside a 60ml syringe or put on hold because you need to do your bit for someone you love now, you sure as hell become doubly happy that you did indeed go after your own dreams while you had the chance.

On that subject, the journey of my book Happy Tango, has been a gleam shone into the gloom of too many hospital days and I want to say a huge Gracias to every one of you who have supported me in my efforts to make Happy Tango the classic tango guide book that I, and many of its readers, believe it deserves to be. If you have already bought it, I thank you. If you have given it a great review, I thank you. If you have interviewed me, I thank you. If you’ve ‘Liked’ or ‘Shared’ the book’s Facebook page, I thank you. If you have recommended the book to a friend or a student or a teacher or a community of tango dancers, I thank you. Please keep doing it all!

One thing. When spreading the word, do remember that Happy Tango is not any old ordinary guide book destined to go out of date without a thought for its reader. It’s a guide book with its very own Updates Blog! As changes happen on the ground in Buenos Aires between editions of the book, the Updates Blog will aim to keep readers up to date with major ‘need to knows’. So far there have been updates on Práctica X, El Amague, Tango Brujo and GretaFlora. The book’s Facebook page will publish news, sometimes even faster than the Updates Blog can (as in the case of milonga Loca! last weekend), so do please click here to visit the page and ‘Like’ it (by clicking the ‘Like’ button at the top) to get notice of all the updates direct to your Facebook feed. Be part of the Happy Tango community. Comment on posts and share with other readers. Make sure you stay in touch!

If you’ve enjoyed the book already, or if you don’t fancy investing in it for yourself (!), here’s a suggestion. If you are buying a Christmas gift for a tango dancer this year, then why not make it my guide book? In fact, if you need to buy any kind of gift for any fan of any kind of dance at all, then Happy Tango could be just the thing! Let’s face it, the fabulously entertaining Strictly Come Dancing is on our UK screens again, and Strictly’s Vincent and Flavia will be touring with their own tango show Midnight Tango in 2011, so (in the UK at least) what could be a more topical present than a book that aims to help turn fantasies of dancing the real thing, Argentine tango in Argentina, into reality?

So that’s it. Where I am. For now.

I’m sorry I haven’t been able to write to you for a while. I just haven’t really known what to say. Thanks Christine in LA for commenting on my last post today, and reminding me not to disappear completely without a word.

I have learned, on my journey to Buenos Aires and beyond, that it’s more joyful to keep gaps, changes and separations, whether temporary or not, upbeat. A light and easy, See you soon, works well for me. That way, there’s far less drama and a lot more hope. So, for now, I’m going to stick with smiles, and leave you with Me and my Dad and my darling C. larking about, a few weeks ago, just off the A1 (M) in northern England, in the company of the biggest angel I have ever seen.

May guys like him protect you and me and my Mum until we meet again.

Keep flying towards your own dreams my friends, and I’ll see you soon!

Sallycat

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

ISBN: 9780956530608
Author: Sally Blake
Published by: Pirotta Press Ltd
Publication date: 30 June 2010

« Older entries

Sallycat’s Adventures

Coming to Buenos Aires to dance Argentine tango?

Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires
Don’t leave for Buenos Aires without it!

Listen to your soul, seek joy, live your dreams, and be well.
Sallycat

You will know where to find me

On learning to be the tango boy, when you are really a girl — Part 2: Energy

My Quest. Your Quest? The Happy Hearts Quest, 2011.

here

Task 1: the Joy List © Sally Blake 2011

The tango music I love – The Gift (Part 2a)

The essence of tango?

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Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

Join the book’s Facebook page for all the Happy Tango updates from Buenos Aires; click here and then click ‘Like’.

If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

The energy on my dancing feet – Buenos Aires tango shoes 2010

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

Join the book’s Facebook page for all the Happy Tango updates from Buenos Aires; click here and then click ‘Like’.

If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

Buenos Aires, November 2010

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

Join the book’s Facebook page for all the Happy Tango updates from Buenos Aires; click here and then click ‘Like’.

If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

See you soon!

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

BUY MY GUIDE BOOK!

JOIN THE QUEST FOR JOY!

Click the pic below to discover 26 Places I love in Buenos Aires

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Sallycat’s Adventures

Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires Don’t leave for Buenos Aires without it!

Listen to your soul, seek joy, live your dreams, and be well. Sallycat

Andreas Wichter of Tangokombinat (tangokombinat.de) and Abrazos — Encuentro Milonguero UK

David Venney of Vidadance (vidadance.com)

Steve Morrall of TangoUK (tangouk.co.uk)

David Bassett of Shrewsbury Tango (shrewsburytango.com)

Task 1: the Joy List © Sally Blake 2011

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Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

Join the book’s Facebook page for all the Happy Tango updates from Buenos Aires; click here and then click ‘Like’.

If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

Join the book’s Facebook page for all the Happy Tango updates from Buenos Aires; click here and then click ‘Like’.

If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

Join the book’s Facebook page for all the Happy Tango updates from Buenos Aires; click here and then click ‘Like’.

If you’ve enjoyed reading Happy Tango, please recommend it to someone else who would enjoy it too. Thank you!

Buy Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires, and start flying towards your own tango adventure in Buenos Aires, today!

BUY MY GUIDE BOOK!

JOIN THE QUEST FOR JOY!

Click the pic below to discover 26 Places I love in Buenos Aires

GET THE LATEST POST. SUBSCRIBE TO SALLYCAT!

Archives

Translate this page

A tiny bit of self protection

Visitors since we moved to sallycatway on 13/12/2008

Who’s been reading since the last clustrmap was archived?

And in case you lose track of the time in Buenos Aires, it is now precisely…

Happy Tango: Sallycat’s Guide to Dancing in Buenos Aires
Don’t leave for Buenos Aires without it!

Listen to your soul, seek joy, live your dreams, and be well.
Sallycat