29 September 2007
I`ve seen a claim elsewhere on the web that Caminito deserves respect as the worlds first outdoor pedestrian museum. Maybe the claim has some merit.
Maybe.
Regardless of the verdict, in terms of photo opportunities, the faux-tango-clinch-with-tango-busker-on-Caminito is up there with holiday snaps of folk standing in front of the Big Pineapple.
The view looking away from Caminito.
29 September 2007
There`s a famous tango song about fog on the pungent river Riachuelo. No fog around today, just a light diesal haze.
28 September 2007
Tango Brujo, dark brown suede with bronze stamp. I had these made up for me. I like how they look, they have a nice flexible sole, the heel is a good height for me, and most importantly, the shoes feel good!
27 September 2007
Men will tango with me here, Men will waltz with me here. In fact, I`ve even found a couple of buddies who specifically like to tango with me, and one who likes to waltz with me. Until last night however, I`d only managed to score one milonga, at Canning, my first Friday night in Buenos Aires. It was a perfectly nice nice milonga, but didn`t have the Aaahhh factor of some of the tangos and waltzes that I`ve had here since.
Thing is, everyone seems to have their especial favourite partners for milonga. It`s a tough nut to crack. Last night however, I finally managed to get a memorable milonga.
Marisa has been doing a show a couple of nights a week at one of the swanky hotels in town. Last night she asked if I`d like to come along to watch. The show consists of a good standard tango trio, Marisa and her partner Claudio dancing tango, Claudio doing a brief Manly Argentine Folkloric demo, and a couple of very average singers. The show is in the hotel lounge/bar, and very strangely, the dance surface is carpet! Remarkably, Marisa and Claudio still did a good job at pulling off a decent tango performance. The audience talked through the singing (I understand this). They also talked to a lesser extent when the musicians were playing by themselves (which I found frustrating). Everyone however was attentive for each dance number.
The show has a locutor who does a spiel bewteen songs. At one point he talks about how tango has travelled all over the wold, and then he walks through the audience asking people where they`re from, whether they have tango in their country, and whether they dance tango. At the end of the show, he talks about how tango is a social dance, and invites a couple of tango dancers from the audience to dance with Marisa and Claudio as demonstration.
Of course, the night I was there, I was invited up to dance. The trio started playing – a milonga! So, my second milonga in BA was in a five start hotel lounge bar, on carpet, in my street shoes, in front of an international audience *chuckle* , with a fantastic dancer! At the end of the show, a few of the people in the audience came up to me a told me I was a lovely dancer *preen*
It was crazy. It was fun. And yes, it was memorable.
25 September 2007
A common theme I heard before coming to Buenos Aires was that in general, the men who dance at the traditional milongas prefer dancing with pretty young things. At a milonga a bit over a week ago, I sat next to an older porteño woman who was grizzling bout exactly the same thing. Look, she said, they only want to dance with young women! I dont think she meant just young; she meant young and showing a bit of midriff.
She`d arrived af the milonga after me, and for her first twenty minutes or so, didn`t get one dance. Sitting next to me, on my other side, for the first part of the evening, was another older woman, Marta, who was up for practically every dance. Marta was not showing midriff. Looking around the room, there were other older women who were also in high demand.
So the `pretty young thing`story is not entirely true. What is true, is that as a general rule, the better dancers prefer to dance with someone else who dances well. At the same time, they`re more likely to give an unfamiliar face a chance, if that face is young, smiling, and comes with some bonus bare flesh.
To a certain extent this works to my advantage. Although I dress conservatively, and am an introverted grump, I look sufficiently young to get a reasonable number of offers to dance.
Is it about sex? Yes, in a way it most definitely is not in Melbourne. In Melbourne, I haven`t once been directly propositioned while dancing tango. I`ve been on the receiving end of some subtle inuendo from a couple of people, but nothing that`s not easy to shake off.
In two and a half weeks of dancing in Buenos Aires I`ve been blatantly hit on several times.
Some of the men in question were average level dancers, obviously on the look out for a sex starved tourist. These are the men who disregard the cabeceo, and walk right up to the foreigner and ask them to dance.
A couple of my `ìnvitations` however have come from quite good dancers. Are they also on the prowl for unwary tourists? After a chat with Alanis the other day, I suspect that it`s not just foreigners that they`re after.
I`d gone in to pick up the shoes she`d made for me, and she asked how I`d been. Had I been dancing a lot? I explained that the flu had slowed me down. Ah, she said, you need to get the Fullgrip T. She wrote the name down on a piece of paper for me. Is good for flu, will make you feel much better. Is also, she added as an afterthought, very good for the sex. When you meet a man at the milonga, you should take some before you have some sex with the Argentine man, and the sex will be very, very good. Lots of energy. Be careful though.
I explained that I had a boyfriend in Australia, to which she said, then you shouldnt take for the sex, but is still good for the flu.
So not only are the milongas a pick-up place, they`re also fueled by pseudoephidrine. That explains the 70 year old at Confiteria Ideal who took a shine to me, and who danced like the energizer bunny.
24 September 2007
You`re looking at toffee stawberries on a stick, covered in popcorn. In the spirit of experimentation, I tried one. Yup, it tastes pretty strange.
Sunny day at the San Telmo market, and the tango orquestras were out busking in force. I took this picture just as the guys started playing Comme Il Faut 
Tango dancers were also out busking. I`ve seen a bit of tango-for-a-buck-on-the-streets now, and it`s all been pretty ordinary. Given the surfaces that the dancers have to work with, this is not surprising. One group of dancers at the San Telmo market had stopped dancing for the day, and instead were charging tourists a few pesos to pose with them in photographs. Prodding the client into a tangoesque pose is all part of the service.
22 September 2007
Mum`s getting impatient. She wants to see some shoe action.
I guess most people reading this blog know that I have very small feet indeed. In the larger scheme of things this is a good thing. I am a small person, and I`d look silly with big feet. The downside of having small feet is that I don`t have much choice in respect of footwear. In Australia, most (adult) shoes start at the size just up from my size. When I started tango, I danced for the first six months in street shoes before biting the bullet and going dance-shoe shopping.
These are the shoes I ended up buying. I actually had them made for me by a ballroom dance shoe manufacturer in Preston. The off the shelf model that they were based on was a flesh coloured ballroom satin sandal with diamentes. While I`m not exactly a clothes horse, there are some things that I just won`t wear. I think you might understand what I`m talking about here.
For the last two and a bit years these shoes have served me well. My dancing however is at a point where a little more height would be good, and sometimes – just sometimes – it would be nice to go to a milonga in shoes that went a step beyond `functional` in the style stakes.
A few months after buying my first pair of dance shoes, I also bought a pair of dance sneakers. The sneakers have also served me well, although truth be told, they`re just a little bit too clunky for good tango. I`ve been yearning for slimline dance sneakers for some time. When I get my new sneakers, I plan to keep these old sneakers for dancing on rough outdoor surfaces.
So we come to Shannon`s Buenos Aires Shoe Quest: hunt down three or four pairs of good looking dance shoes with heels, and one or two pairs of slimline dance sneakers.
How have I gone so far? Well, it seems that even in Buenos Aires, it`s not easy to buy shoes for small feet. However, after going to practically every tango shoe shop in the city…
The first pair of shoes I bought were from Tango Brujo. They`re frippery, and they feel about a centimetre too high for me to be comfortable in for heavy duty dancing, but they have nice flexible soles, and they`re a red that I like Tango Brujo make shoes on request, so I`ve placed an order for a pair of dark brown suede shoes with a closed back, and a slightly different heel.
The next pair of shoes I bought were from a famous Buenos Aires tango shoe manufacturer that doesn`t have a web site, and prohibits on-sellers from posting pictures of their shoes on the web. There are no printed catalogues of their shoes. Everytime I see an amazingly styled paired of shoes on the milonga dance floor, they inevitably turn out to have been made by this manufacturer.
In keeping with the game, I won`t name the shoe manufacturer in the same post that has a picture of their shoes, although I will write a seperate post a little later to talk about the experience of buying these shoes. The height of these shoes is the same as the Tango Brujos, but the balance feels much better. The soles are stiffer than I like, but I`m hoping that a bit a dancing will sort that out. And yes, I love the look of these shoes!!!
The next pair I bought were made by Alanis, a designer who runs her own shoe store. They`re not as glamourous as the other shoes, but the height is just right for me, and apart from feeling a little uncertain about the long term viablity of the sandal style back, I feel like they will be good comfy dancing shoes – so – I`ve asked Alanis to make me a pair with a closed back in a heavier duty black leather, to use as practice shoes.
Other than the shoe shop that I`m being coy about naming, the best looking shoes I`ve seen here are at Neo Tango. Unfortunately, the heeled shoes at Neo Tango that fit me, and feel good, are in colours I`d never wear (sigh). Their sneakers however also fit and feel good, so I went a bit crazy and bought a pair with olive trim as well as a pair in functional black leather.
I`ll post pictures of the shoes I`m waiting on once I get them – OK Mum?
And with that, I`m all shoe shopped out. Just as well, eh?
21 September 2007
I have flu. Sore throat, aching body, sneezing, general blah. I didn`t dance Wednesday, missed class this morning (Thursday), and despite an afternoon nap, am in no good shape to dance tonight. If my Spanish was half decent I could watch documentaries on the tango channel on TV, but my Spanish is only barely functional. You have no idea how frustrating this is. The other night I turned on the tango channel after getting back from a milonga, and there was an interview with Alfredo Genovese. The images were fantastic, but I couldn`t understand any of the interview. Arrghhhh..
I could of course use this as an opportunity to write an actual post about Tango In Buenos Aires, except the reason I haven`t written much about this so far is that its difficult for me to sift out what parts of my tango experience are meaningful to write about. Fuzzy-flu-head doesn`t help – so – tango experience post continues to be deferred. I`ll see if I can get it together this coming Sunday…
14 September 2007
So I think I´ve finally settled into a kind of routine. My first few days here were a little crazy. Along with the jetlag/LA diversion debacle, I hadn´t got the knack of how to fit everything into the day. Sleep, food, classes, milongas, shoe shopping… it´s a fine balance, complicated by BA shops in general not opening until latish, and food places closing up the kitchen at 3pm. I met an Australian woman from Byron Bay (Jan) at La Glorieta (an open air milonga) who said the trick was to have a main meal at around 2:30pm. I´ve tried it out, it works.
Today (Friday) I´m off to the Maba gallery, checking into a shoe shop along the way, late lunch at 2:30, home for a half hour nanna nap, off to rendezvous with Augustin (more on my new tango playmates soon) at Plaza Bohemia at 6pm, followed by class at Canning at 9pm, then La Viruta around midnight to listen to some live music that Marissa recommended to me. Then up in time on Saturday morning to go to Aurora´s clase agrupale, tecnica para mujer, a las once y media.
Phew.
14 September 2007
For my first few days in Buenos Aires, the weather was warm and humid. In BA this doesn´t just mean that you get sticky when you step outside; it means that you get embalmed in smog. I´m talking black stuff under the fingernails within hours of leaving the house. Yum.
On Tuesday however, the weather started to break. By Wednesday morning, it was cold and thundery. While the air wasnt quite clean, it was certainly much pleasanter walking weather. So, with no tango classes on the agenda, and having just about run the gamut of tango shoe stores (yes, more on that soon), I decided that the time had come to take a exploratory stroll around the barrio of Palermo.
The plan started off well. I braved the colectivos (buses) for the first time, and managed not to get lost. But as I stepped off the colectivo in Palermo – torrential downpour. Despite my trusty fold-up umbrella, my feet were drenched within minutes. Things looked grim. I really don´t like cold feet.
And then, in the distance, I espied … Zivals!
Not long after I first started dancing tango, I bought some tango CDs over the internet from the Tango Store. My CDs turned up within about two weeks, wrapped in beautiful old fashioned brown paper. It was magical. For those folks not in the know, the Tango Store is a speciality internet seller of tango music which is run by the Argentine CD/bookstore Zivals. I´d known that Zivals was located in the centre of the city, and had it on my to-do list, but I hadnt known that there was a branch in Palermo. Oh happy chance.
The man behind the counter, Martin spoke fairly fluent English. I was Australian? Was I familar with Nigel Westlake and Peter Sculthorpe? Of course. I waxed lyrical about Piazolla playing Piazolla, and gained further credibility.
Half an hour later I walked out the door, having listened to the 10 CDs recommended by Martin, and buying 9 of them. The cost was 210 pesos which works out around AU$80. Happy customer. My feet were still wet, but I reckoned a subramino would soon fix that.
