A Harvest Festival Remembered 2009
on Nov 21, 2009 in holidays A republishing of my annual Thanksgiving post. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, even if this coming Thursday isn't your traditional day. We all have much to be grateful for.Each autumn when the harvest is brought in, the people of the world throw a p...

Call Me Multipatriate!
on Nov 19, 2009 in expatriate Because it's been several years now since ExpatWomen.com made me Mentor of the Month, and because I'm asked these same excellent questions over and over in my daily life meeting "foreigners" here in Buenos Aires, I'm posting this interview here. Expa...

Tramatango
on Nov 18, 2009 in tango show A new tango show opened on Corrientes this past weekend, and your tangocherie was there to scope it out for you.Tramatango is the new vehicle of Milena Plebs, formally of Tango x2 and Miguel Angel Zotto; this time out she is the director, choreograph...

Club Español: The Good News and the Bad
on Nov 17, 2009 in Buenos Aires milongas Last Saturday Club Español had its first milonga in years! That's the good news.El Club Español (Bernardo Yrigoyen 172) is one of the most beautiful buildings in Buenos Aires, and, unlike so many others, it still is perfectly preserved. As my secre...

Milonguero Holiday
on Nov 13, 2009 in tango Background reading for this post is The Dark Side, and Of Milongueros y Milongueras on The Tango Jungle.Tango pastel by Vera BervWhen dancers contact us about planning their tango time in Buenos Aires, I often ask them about their goals for this par...

"The Empanada Brotherhood"
on Nov 12, 2009 in books Let's go back to Greenwich Village in the early sixties and take a seat at a tacky empanada stand on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets. Let's eaves-drop on a bunch of kooky Argentinians as they expound and moan about La Vida. When writer J...

Learning By Looking: Legs Wide Open
on Nov 7, 2009 in tango Here are some more examples of how we can learn by looking at photos, in our goal to become self-correcting.The guy above has got that right leg far outside the "couple," making him vulnerable to losing his balance and/or tripping someone beside him...

Learning By Looking--First in a Series
on Nov 3, 2009 in tango One of the goals of Ruben's and my classes is to help students become self-correcting. Once they have a basic technique and a knowledge of what to do and how to do it, then they will know when they make a mistake and can work on it. For this reason w...

BOO!
on Oct 29, 2009 in fun holidays Play your cards right and dance well this weekend! Or else...El Guazon will give you a Tarjeta Roja--Expulsion!!--from la pista!(Are you scared yet?)...

Vettriano and His Secrets
on Oct 27, 2009 in art I've always been a fan of the surreal. (Maybe my life has seemed surreal to me, even before I knew the meaning of the word.) My earliest art memories (late 1950's) are of dreamlike paintings in the halls of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles...