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July 30, 2007
Maria & Matias
 click to enlarge |
{ From .trip.tango.paris.: stage 10 juin advertising a workshop. } This is a good example of tango dancer's torsion, as well as lattisimus development. What do you think they are doing, back ochos, front ochos, a turn to the left, a turn to the right? Can't tell because the technique is the same for all of them. |
Posted by joegrohens at 11:17 PM | Comments (1)
July 25, 2007
Playboy to broadcast tango series
MILONGA HOT PLAYBOY BAILA EL TANGO - todo el tango en internet - 10tango.com
In the first decades of 20th century, the sensual character - when not openly sexual - of the tango scandalized the well-thinking classes. One hundred years later the tango launches in Playboy TV. "Tango: Prohibited dance" is an Argentine production with international projection that is released the 4th of August in the cable channel of the conejito. They will be twelve episodes, set in one milonga in the 1940s.
This is not exactly the image I had of tango in the 1940s. :-D
Video feature on "the making of" this film: danza tango copiapo
Posted by joegrohens at 02:34 AM | Comments (0)
Interview with Juan Carlos Copes
A revealing interview with the patriarch of tango for theater, who is also the originator of seminal teaching methods still used today (for better or worse). Tango. Milonga. La Noche Porteña. Buenos Aires. |
 (Click to Enlarge) |
Posted by joegrohens at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2007
Lindsay Lohan to Tango
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Lindsay Lohan to Tango in Next Movie Role - Lindsay Lohan : People.com
Well, this is kind of interesting, I suppose. I do hope the movie about Gardel is good. Maybe if Lindsay looks good doing the tango it will make more 20-year olds want to do it to. |
An official announcement is expected this week for Lohan to costar in the new romance Dare to Love Me, sources close to the film confirm. It's the story of Tango legend Carlos Gardel, who was involved in a steamy romance with a prostitute, only to have his world shattered by a bullet that kills her and leaves him crippled with a fragment in his lung for life.
The movie is set in Buenos Aires in the 1920s and centers on Gardel and the mysterious woman.
No word on Lohan's exact role in the film, but sources say she began taking tango lessons Friday for an hour a day – all while wearing the alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet she's had on her leg since emerging from rehab on July 13.
Posted by joegrohens at 12:46 AM
July 18, 2007
Interview w. Milena Plebs
(Click to Enlarge) |
Amazing Interview Article: CLOSE TO REVOLUTION { via dekay.org } |
By Laura Falcoff
“It would be good for tango to continue evolving, so that it could stay alive and avoid crystallization of forms,” says Milena Plebs, who, as dancer, choreographer and also as a qualified observer, is interested in how this dance shows itself and changes.
Her view is particularly appreciated in a milieu that recognizes her as the great renovator of the tango dance scene alongisde Miguel Angel Zotto, starting with the creation of the Tango x 2 company – which they shared until 1997.
¿How do you think the development of the tango dance is possible? Along what tracks?
I am thinking of how I can do it, or how I can get others do to it through what I write. Wishing tango to keep on evolving, to foster new forms, is not a fanciful wish. What usually happens is that when something new crops up, it soon crystallizes and you can see clones repeating the same sequences, dancing couples who copy each other, perhaps to different music but with the same forms. This is why I am especially interested in improvisation.
In what way?
By increasing the value of improvisation as a unique moment from which new forms can arise.
What’s your opinion of the tango you see at milongas and the tango you see on stage? Let’s leave aside tango at dance houses, which perhaps is not worth mentioning.
Just like it’s not worth mentioning championships, either. As to the question, I think, firstly, that instructors should take a longer time and more effort to explore the many possibilities each dance instance opens up. Tango is made up of certain elements, certain steps, which can be combined in different forms. Students, and dancers in general –some people know about this, but very few- should be taught that the end of each step leaves the door open to different possibilities.
And to those countless possible combinations which your proposal aims at.
Usually, dancers are taught blocks of sequences which become very difficult to break up later. You will see dancers, both at milongas and on stage, who, when starting a sequence, do not stop until they end it. That sequence may be formed by, let’s say, ten steps, and each of them gives you the chance to break up the sequence with maybe two or three different alternatives. A more active approach should be taken when learning to dance tango, rather than a passive one, taking what the instructor gives me or what I copy from a video. Improvisation is an action in the present continuous, choreography is in the past.
Could you expand on this idea?
Choreography is present the moment you create it with your partner during rehearsals, when you are searching for steps. Once it becomes settled and is repeated, it is no longer present, it is past.
Do you consider, then, that improvisation could, or should, be taken on stage?
I do not have an answer to that today. I only speak about things I think about; let debate take place among everybody. What I can say is that dancers who prepare their choreographies must take pains so that their creation will not look too automatic, too fixed…too boring. A very basic and obvious piece of advice to prevent this is to keep your mark, to have the man keep marking movements on stage because the dynamics that arise from this are totally different. I think it’s all about looking for the way to shorten distances between choreography dancing and spontaneous dancing. I’m not saying that you should do away with choreography, but that it should preserve the freshness and organic spirit of improvised dancing.
Regarding dance show concepts, have you seen anything interesting lately?
I liked some parts of Natalia Games and Gabriel Angió’s show, those in which they really achieve a fusion between tango and hip-hop, and they don’t do this always so I believe they should research some more. And at the Festival Cambalache 2006 I saw an interesting piece by the female dancer –I believe she was Swedish- with Ezequiel Farfaro, based on one of her ideas; the starting point was a meeting between tango on the one hand and contemporary and theatre dancing on the other. There were moments when they succeeded in giving a new meaning to the tango embrace; it seems to me that there is a lot to explore there, even with a broken embrace.
Posted by joegrohens at 12:26 AM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2007
ee cummings - yes, this could be about tango
since feeling is first
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
Posted by joegrohens at 01:13 AM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2007
Santos y Demonios y Negros y compadritos
Santos y Demonios - Negros y compadritos
Article discussing the development of tango, samba, candombe, including points of crossing, similarity and difference.
Tango and Samba, words that sound similar if pronounced in the bantú of the 19th century, are classed as brothers and carriers of a poetry as rich as it is violent, children of the marginalized but with destinies common and universal.
Posted by joegrohens at 04:11 PM