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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.

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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.

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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!

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
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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

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My latest BsAs tango lesson

April 24, 2009 in Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires | 14 comments

IMGP3398 On the subject of surviving some of the day to day challenges thrown up by living in Buenos Aires, one of the most positive young people I have ever met in my life says to me, You just have to laugh… at life, at life in Buenos Aires, at yourself. She’s right. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly – right? (G.K. Chesterton, I believe)

In a few months of a giant iceberg of bureaucracy (the tip of which I’ve mentioned on this blog), some big emotional growth stuff (which I will perhaps mention one day), a recent huge effort on progressing my little ebook guide for first time tango travellers (which I’ve kept pretty much to myself to keep the pressure off and VOD quiet, but progress is being made, honest), and crossing the bridge from smoker to non-smoker (which has driven me to want to kill at times)… 2009 has all felt a bit too damn serio.

Last week I knew it had indeed got a bit too damn serio when I and a dear Brit friend in town went to dance a last tango or two with Ariel before he set off on a teaching tour around South America, and I could barely complete thirty seconds without tripping over my own feet. I haven’t danced with him for a while, and instead have settled rather comfortably into the arms of my regular milonguero style dancers in my regular milongas. Nothing wrong with that of course, but I was a bit shocked at how my body, for whatever reason,  just didn’t behave quite the way it once did when faced with the wonderfully exciting and talented Ariel. Of course that little experience had VOD yelling at me all the way home on the number 15 bus: you are lazy with your tango, you don’t push yourself enough with your tango, you should be going to the more ‘high powered’ milongas like all the people passing through, you should be spending more money on tango classes, what a waste of all the effort you once put in… blah, blah, blah.

It really can be the strangest thing, living in Buenos Aires with tango now a smaller than it once was (but nonetheless vital in the quest for joy) part of your life, where you are constantly meeting people who are here for a shorter time than you, for whom tango is the main reason for their visit, as it was for me in my first year. Unfortunately of late, I have noticed that it can lead me to make comparisons, and that VOD always wants to place me in the ‘less than’ category.

Of course I know that actually I love my Buenos Aires tango:  the milongas I go to; the wonderful men and music that make my tango joyful; all the friends (whether living here or passing through) with whom I share any of my dancing hours; the social aspect of the milongas I like; that my guys look right into my eyes as we part and I know that they have felt the moment as much as I… I love it all, and yet when I am tired, or sick of chasing paperwork, or missing Galaxy chocolate,  VOD starts up – an echo of a once far louder VOD, of UK origins, that tells me I’ve got to get better, be better, be seen to be better, be thought of as ‘advanced’ tango-wise (errrr by who exactly…?). Oh how I do not like that voice.  I also know that none of the effort I once put in to my tango classes is wasted: it is in part because of half decent technique that I can dance at all in the milongas, and give the pleasure that I do to my guys.

Once upon a time I danced most with Ariel and Carlos and my body got used to their ways. Lately I’ve danced more with the milongueros and some lovely tourists passing through than either of them, and even Carlos laughs at the little milonguero style things I do with my feet now: you never used to do that before – it’s so milonguero! He’s right. And it’s OK. We laugh about it, and that is where I want to be. Light hearted and loving towards my tango and the piece of me that is a tanguera and that is evolving just like the rest of me.

I’m not saying that there isn’t room for me to learn (I’m always learning and mucho in the milongas), or that I won’t take any more classes in tango… but for now, the fact that I’m not doing so is in part dictated by my life circumstances, and in part by choice as I come to terms with what is important to me in tango and what isn’t at this point in my tango journey.

Whatever the future holds, I don’t want to take myself too seriously, with respect to anything, but definitely with respect to tango, in my efforts to satisfy VOD (who can of course never be satisfied). I prefer the playful, innocent, enthusiastic joy that is Barbie: the Barbie who ran out onto the dance floor one night at Club Sunderland to dance vals with C. only to discover that it was the exhibition (Oh that’s why we’re sharing the floor with Osvaldo Zotto and no-one else!); the Barbie who excitedly announced to the world on this blog that she was a ‘milonguera’ after a few months in Buenos Aires, when I think she really meant ‘tanguera’; the Barbie who wants to write honest posts like this one in the battle against VOD. Thing is, what is tango joy for Sallycat and Barbie will be different to what is tango joy for you and your Inner Artist and that is perfectly ok. I have to love myself enough to be proud of who I am at this point on my journey. And stop comparing myself to anyone else or allowing VOD to beat me up, in tango or in life.

Here is the Martha Graham quote that dear Gabriella tore from a magazine and pushed into my hand as she left Buenos Aires, having been my tango partner in crime for four months, in 2007. It is time for me to read it again every day and to remember that whatever, and whoever I am in tango today, this minute – it is enough:

There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it! It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

In the spirit of that, I love the photo at the top of this post of me hugging the UK bear. I didn’t see many other folks doing that the day I was in Plaza San Martín. Touching maybe, hugging no. Perhaps it was an un-cool thing to do, or a bit embarrassing, or wasn’t allowed at all… oh bloody hell, who damn well cares…

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Beautiful Barbie made me do it ;)

Sallycat

PS. Incidentally, if you want to read a great post on the subject of one tanguero’s tango journey to date, try this one: The intricacy of simplicity by Ampster Tango in Seattle. It’s honest, and that is why I love it.

PPS. And in case you’re new to this blog, here are a few other BsAs tango lessons I’ve had along the way:

November 2007

December 2007

January 2008

April 2008

September 2008

January 2009

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My latest tango lessons

November 13, 2007 in Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires | 27 comments

DSCF2041 My tango lesson yesterday did not go too well. Ariel was tired. I was tired. It was like we were two slugs dancing. The difference between us is that even when he is exhausted he dances great, me on the other hand: my legs were wobbly, I couldn’t stay on my axis and even the simplest things felt like I was wading through treacle. Every new tango I thought, ‘Sal, focus. You’re gonna dance like you know you can this time.’ But no. It just was not to be.

In the beginning if a class went along these lines I got very despondent. When I arrived in Buenos Aires I was still in the phase of wanting to be perfect. I wanted Ariel to see me dance and tell me that I would be a great dancer. I wanted to stun him with my brilliance. I knew that no way was I brilliant. But I desperately wanted to be. For weeks he used to ask me to walk alone, and then walk alone with decorations and then walk alone with full turns in every step. I used to cringe with embarrassment as I wobbled and tipped in front of him. Sometimes I felt like crying. Sometimes I felt like screaming. But I didn’t. I just kept trying. He used to say to me ‘Don’t worry. Even if you don’t do it great, it will help you dance better. And one day you will do it great when you are not even trying. And even if one day you do it great, then another day you won’t. And it’s ok.’

Over time I noticed that my body was remembering, learning, becoming steadier and more able to do what had once had seemed impossible. I realised that every single thing we did was going in to my head, into my body and into my soul even when I thought it wasn’t. I learned that the combination of my subconscious mind and my body is actually unstoppable. If I allow myself to relax and simply try things out in the classes rather than worry, then some day later (maybe the next day, maybe the next week, maybe the next month) I will find myself doing them quite naturally. This leads to some very happy moments of surprise and delight. Gradually I have stopped worrying about being perfect.

I am not saying that I don’t still have bad days. Now that I know Ariel far better, I am not one to hold back my feelings. I swear a lot, have been known to refuse to carry on doing something, have stamped my foot with frustration. I give him the evil eye (see the picture above!) when he is telling me to correct one of my bad habits yet again. But always we laugh within seconds and he gives me the ‘don’t worry speech’ and we live to fight another day!

And I am not alone in my ups and downs. Over my months in Buenos Aires I have met up with many tango dancers who are here to learn, just like I am. Most of them have shared at least one of their bad moments with me. And I have shared mine with them. It goes something like this…

We arrive. We want to learn fast. We want  to dance great. We take too many classes. We dance every night. We get tired.  We get confused. We get frustrated. We convince ourselves we can’t dance. We ask ourselves why we ever came here in the first place. Maybe we are exhausted. Maybe we had a bad night at the milonga. Maybe we had a tough class. Maybe we are just human.  Maybe we have a cry. Maybe we laugh with a friend and share our gruesome experiences. We pick ourselves up. We carry on. Then, one night or one class or one tanda later it all comes together again and we are flying once more. It’s all part of the process.

I am learning that a tango journey cannot be rushed. The body will take just as long as it needs to walk along its tango path. The more I think, the more I worry, the more I care… well it’s just better if I don’t.  I know I will have low energy days and I know I will have days when my body just isn’t working well, but now when I walk out of my class, whether it has felt great, or whether it has felt less than great, I KNOW that my body has learned something, all by itself. And I know that one day soon or far it will reveal what it has learned to me, and I will smile again.

And there is something else too. Now when I think of what I seek DSCF1963in my tango it is not perfection. Instead I want that my body understands enough to allow my soul to dance. The truth is that in my most recent dreams I see Carlos and me dancing close in the Buenos Aires milongas when we are in our eighties, him singing his favourite tangos in my ear, my heart beating next to his, our two bodies melded into one. In the end, those are the tangos I long to dance. By then, the perfectly executed back sacada will be a dim and distant memory, but my soul will be singing with joy to simply be walking backwards in his arms.

See the story in pictures of one of my tango classes

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The 4 week tango

April 18, 2007 in Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires | 6 comments

Me at La Ideal There comes a time in a Buenos Aires tango adventure to set down a progress marker. After 4 weeks of private lessons with my teacher Ariel, we made a video of the two of us dancing a tango together.

It’s hard for me to remember how I danced when I left England. In BA I am taking 3 private lessons a week plus several group classes. Ariel took me right back to the basics: walking, walking with decorations, pivots, pivots with decorations, ochos, ochos with decorations, giros, giros with decorations, barridas, boleos, cadenas, my ganchos. At the end of my first 4 weeks we had covered a lot of ground. We also learned the basics of milonga. From this time, four phrases stick in my mind:

  1. ‘Extend, slide, arrive’ which refers to any step I take. This is often replaced by ‘Not with the body’ which he whispers in my ear as we dance, whenever I forget. My understanding is that as long as I have only extended my leg first he can change his mind about the step, if I have gone with my body then his options are closed down.
  2. ‘Chest, hips and legs’ which refers to any pivot. This means that the legs are a consequence of the body’s actions and can therefore pivot in a decoration and boleos are a natural extension of this idea.
  3. ‘Give me more resistance’ and if I do not I am in danger of falling backwards and pulling Ariel with me. Ariel dances with a very strong energy.
  4. ‘The embrace’ which reminds me when I forget to open the embrace when given the slightest indication that he wants, or I am going to need space. We always begin our tangos in the closed (very closed!) embrace which is completely normal in the Milongas here. But frequently within the tango we move between closed and open embrace to dance anything that needs space to feel comfortable.

These concepts felt alien to me when I arrived here. Of course I am certain that they had been taught but my body had not understood them. I was permanently tense in the upper half of my back and in my shoulders and as a result my legs did not flow in their movement. Slowly I am absorbing what I am taught, I am relaxing and enjoying my dancing like never before.

Of course I was a little tense in the video tango. I knew I was being filmed after all. Maybe there are mistakes. Certainly in time there will be additional decorations, more style… But during these first 4 weeks I learned to dance a slow, controlled tango, mostly employing with confidence the four ‘rules’ above.

So, because I am brave and I promised honesty, I will let you see the videos I make, this one today, one in 4 weeks time, one in eight weeks time and so on… Then you will be able to decide for yourselves whether it is worth pursuing a tango dream or not. I guess for me, what ever you think, whatever the outcome for me, it has been worth it already for the journey itself, for the great adventure.

Watch a video of me and Ariel dancing a tango after 4 weeks

The video is on Picasa and for some reason has no cover picture but just click on the black ‘photo’ to see the video!

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The BA Tango Lessons

March 15, 2007 in Buenos Aires Information, Diary of a Tango Dancer in Buenos Aires | 2 comments

I have been here one week and my tango is improving by the hour. It’s even improving while I sleep according to my private teacher, Ariel. Honestly, it works like magic. On Monday in my first lesson we worked over and over on different exercises to improve my walking. The exercises were difficult and I lost my balance many times. I swore alot. Today (Wednesday) we worked on decorating walking and ochos with crosses. We decorated ochos before the pivot, after the pivot, in the pivot.  Today I hardly ever lost my balance. How had that happened in 48 hours? My body just KNEW what to do. We broke up the exercises with tangos to try out the decorations. Next lesson we will be working on giros.

Ariel speaks great English, is a lovely guy and unbelievably knows Pastor who gave me my private lesson at the Tango Tangk in February. So, I am loving my private classes which is good because I have three a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday, each an hour and a half long.

I am attending group lessons to experience different teachers, understand the various styles of tango, learn sequences that may be danced in the Milongas and meet people – especially men. It is important to arrive at a Milonga with a potential partner, dance with him and show off your dancing to the male throng.  Gabriella and I cheekily ask the guys we like to dance with for recommendations of their favourite Milongas. If we show interest they quickly say, ‘Oh we are heading to XYZ Milonga on Friday, why don’t you come along?’

So far I’ve been to two group tango classes – each totally different:

  1. Escuela Argentina de Tango. Cost 14.50 pesos (£2.50). Held at the Centro Cultural Borges. Number of students: 20. This school has a mindblowing schedule of classes all day, every day with different teachers taking each class. The class I attended was fast, furious and scary at first. We learned four sequences with no in depth individual tuition. The moves included many giros, voleos and a pivoted volcada with decoration. Arghhhhhhhh! The leaders were mixed (as they are in any country of course) and sometimes I knew I was being led wrongly, but pointing that out politely in Spanish at this stage is not an option for me. Oh and another thing, of course the whole class was in Spanish…
  2. La Escuela del Tango. Cost 35 pesos (£6). Number of students: 6. Held at Claudia Bozzo’s dance studio in the Montserrat district. This is an atmospheric space and I loved it here. Claudia taught the class and tried out her English for me which was brilliant. She gave highly individual tuition and to my joy assessed me as – wait for it – ADVANCED! Claudia is Eduardo Bozzo’s sister and I laughed because she is so similar to him in her teaching with regards to musicality and needing to feel the music.  She even explains things in a similar way, for example ‘Attack, attack, attack!’ Again the leaders were mixed but I think I will get more from these classes with Claudia than from the different teacher every time approach of option 1. above – for the first month at least. So I will be going back tomorrow.

Milongas are the reality of tango here and often there is insufficient space to try out anything fancy learned in a class. I have now been to three different Milongas: Confiteria La Ideal, Sabor a Tango and Salon Canning. Of these Salon Canning was my favourite. We went on a Monday night – the ‘happening’ night there apparently. We took some non-tango-dancing friends with us. It was much more informal than the other two and dances came easier. The performances at ‘half time’ were inspirational. All three Milongas cost 15 pesos to get in.

The last two nights I have skipped the Milongas. I am exhausted from the Spanish classes, private tango classes, group tango classes, shopping for dancewear, finding an apartment for April and May and eating steaks… However, I may head to Confiteria La Ideal tomorrow afternoon because it has been recommended to me and I’m getting serious Milonga withdrawals as I type this at 2am Argentine time! Alternatively I could pop out there now of course…

See pictures of my BA Tango Lessons and a BA Milonga

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The UK tango lessons

February 26, 2007 in UK Prologue | 3 comments

Picture of tango workshop This weekend I took some world class tango lessons. Jenny Frances and Ricardo Oria were the guest teachers at the Tango UK Tango Tangk and they were AMAZING! Jenny and Ricardo are lovely people, breathtaking dancers and inspiring teachers. They work as a team in the group classes to break down and then rebuild the sequence they are teaching. By the time I was dancing the sequence in full, I completely understood what I was doing. It was like magic! And it was great to have both the male and female perspective explained. Jenny and Ricardo made the classes relaxed and fun. There was alot of laughter as well as hard work. I found myself able to dance beautiful sequences with confidence. I loved every minute except for one…

At about 4.30pm during the second workshop on Saturday I felt an intense pain arrive and remain in the arch of my left foot! Alas I had to sit out accompanied by freeze spray, Ibuprofen rub and bandages for support! I couldn’t dance at all on Saturday night and my spirits plunged.

But then Jenny and Ricardo performed for us. I was mesmerised. I have never seen tango danced live with such intimacy and passion. I wanted the dance to continue forever. As I sat watching, I determined that my foot would recover. I would have my scheduled private lesson with Pastor Jurado on Sunday and I would enjoy the remaining group workshops. The will is a powerful tool. On Sunday, with freeze spray and bandages to hand I was back in action. Jenny suggested I dance in my flat shoes with socks over the top. It worked – no pain!

My lesson with Pastor was a revelation. We worked on three things:

  1. Energy and connection in the chest, tilting forward from the feet. I learned to give more energy through my chest while keeping my stomach taut so that I could feel every lead in the closed embrace. If I ever backed off even a millimetre he whispered ‘Push’ or ‘I’ve lost you’ and I knew it. As long as I gave my energy in to meet his there was NO DOUBT what he was asking me to follow. More magic!
  2. Extension of the leg from the hip but placing the heels DOWN everytime. Much greater stability in every move. I felt rock solid.
  3. Relaxing the right arm but maintaining the position of the hands in the central line of the embrace. I learned to push back slightly into the leader’s hand if he is pushing into my hand to maintain that line but otherwise I must RELAX that arm.

I am fully aware that these are all things that Eduardo has taught me. He is a great teacher. I hope though that hearing it all from someone else has forced the penny to drop. The hardest one for me is the right arm. I tense it all the time. Pastor and Eduardo have made me dance without using it at all and maybe this is something I need to practice until my brain and muscles finally get the message!

As we danced, Pastor let me into many secrets of the Buenos Aires Milongas, the etiquette and unspoken codes that a single girl in the city needs to know. My eyes were certainly opened, so more of those in a future post… The fantastic news is that he is going to be in BA while I am there and we have exchanged details. What a ‘kick ass’ time we could have if we meet up. It might mean I actually get a dance or two with an Argentine…

See pictures of my tango lessons at Tango Tangk 13

Learn more about Jenny Frances and Ricardo Oria

Learn more about the Argentine drink Yerba Mate

Picture of Sallycat and Shaun dancing

As a follow up to an earlier post on this blog, I have more fantastic pictures that Shevki took at the Coco Rio Argentine Tango night. There are even some of me and my dream dance partner of Hampshire dancing a tango for our friends. Enjoy!

See Shev’s photos of the party at Coco Rio

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