The Quintessential Voice of the MexAmerican in the Land of Patagonia

I read two brilliantly written books this past month. I recommend them both to anyone who loves good reading. They are Caramelo and Women Hollering Creek, by Sandra Cisneros. Some time ago, I read The House on Mango Street, the book she is most noted for, and thought it one of the best books ever. I had the pleasure of recently meeting Ms. Cisneros. She is just as amiable as she is a wordsmith.

Earth Day

On the Santa Ana ranch, the end of the day is approaching. As I watch vestiges of light over eucalypti lining the horizon, and I reflect on a day spent listening to mocking birds, watching hawks glide over me, catching glimpses of hares and foxes darting into patches of woods, and breathing air scented with autumn leaves, I am reminded of what I love, and synchronously, what I forgot….that today is Earth Day. If you read this blog entry before midnight, go outside and sit on your lawn, or look up at the sky. Connect to the collective consciousness, as it is best found through meditation in natural surroundings. Do something environmentally friendly, if you can. Mark today, even if you read this blog late, April 22nd, on your calendar. Next year, remember it. We owe it to ourselves and the rest of the world. We would not be here if it were not for the trees, plants, and animals. As I sign off here, I would like to recommend a book for everyone to read, Hole in the Sky, by William Kittredge.

Colectivo: how to get around in Buenos Aires (via Home Hotel Buenos Aires)

Colectivo is the name given in Argentina to public transportation vehicles. They represent one of the best-known traditions of the city. With very affordable ticket prices and extensive routes, the colectivo is by far the preferred mode of transportation around Buenos Aires and their frequency makes them equal to the subway systems of other cities, but on wheels. We “Porteños” have a love-hate relationship with the colectivo. On one side, they te … Read More

via Home Hotel Buenos Aires

1963, February 23 – BIRTH OF CLAUDIA LEVY

1963, February 23 – BIRTH OF CLAUDIA LEVY.

List of 67 Movies Every Man Should See at Least Once

List of 67 Movies Every Man Should See at Least Once
compiled by Stephen Page

1. China Town
2. Patton
3. Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (dir. Sam Peckinpah)
4. Easy Rider
5. The Dirty Dozen
6. Dirty Harry
7. The Godfather
8. The Last Detail
9. Mean Streets
10. Cool Hand Luke
11. Rocky
12. The Deer Hunter
13. Raging Bull
14. To Kill a Mockingbird
15. Good Will Hunting
16. Saving Private Ryan
17. Gallipoli
18. Cross of Iron
19. The Guns of Navarone
20. MASH
21. The Manchurian Candidate
22. Apocalypse Now
23. Pork Chop Hill
24. Battle Cry
25. Catch 22
26. Stripes
27. Caddyshack
28. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
29. Henry V (dir. Kenneth Branagh)
30. Macbeth (dir. Polanski)
31. Romeo and Juliet (dir. Zeffirelli)
32. Kill Bill
33. Gods and Generals
34. The Lion in Winter (dir. Barry)
35. The Seven Samurai
36. Shaft
37. Animal House
38. Ghostbusters
39. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
40. The Longest Yard
41. The Untouchables
42. The Hustler
43. The French Connection
44. Where the Red Fern Grows
45. Shane
46. Old Yeller
47. A Christmas Carol
48. High Noon
49. Casablanca
50. The Spirit
51. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?
52. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
53. Star Wars
54. Matrix
55. Pulp Fiction
56. The Magnificent Seven
57. Wyatt Earp (dir. Kasdan)
58. Open Range
59. The Expendables
60. A Street Car Named Desire
61. Red River
62. East of Eden
63. Rebel Without a Cause
64. Taxi Driver
65. Lost Highway
66. The Postman Always Rings Twice
67. The Wild Bunch

Day 24 in Buenos Aires. The good stuff is hidden.

I was intent on making the most out of this last week in Buenos Aires and squeezing as much knowledge as possible out of the teachers I have been working with. As the holidays are coming up, their availability disappears and I feel sad and envious of people who live here and can take classes with them anytime they please. I met some peers through friends at La Viruta and didn’t understand why they were saying they wanted to try tango but hadn’t gotten round to doing it. They lived in Buenos Aires and had access to hundreds of teachers and resources. I was coming literally from the end of the world to get a taste of what they could so easily have. I tried not to let the time pressure get to me but the mere fact that I booked four private lessons in my last week shows that indeed I was feeling it quite a bit. Armed with my flipcam, I taped exercises, asked questions and tried to get a final rundown of everything that they thought was important to tackle when I went back home. I was feeling rather sad about the prospect of leaving this incredibly stimulating environment and returning to a much smaller and more limited pool of tango opportunities, of which the lack of a partner that suited me hurt me the most. But like everything else in life, there was probably a reason why it had to be this way right now for me and I decided to trust the universe that in due time it would let me know what it was.

With Gabriel, we covered few things and practiced a lot to allow my body to ‘understand’ what he was saying. Axis work still took most of the hour and he explained to me what the three types of axes were. The first axis was forward where the weight of the body was on the ball of the foot and was used for walking. The second axis is exactly in the centre, with the weight distributed on all the foot, including the heel. The third axis was a bit outwards to the back and was used for the very fast giro for example. To move to first and third axis, the man has to ask you first with his lead, he said, otherwise you are always in the centre. We then when over the anatomy of the giro and he did very slowly for me where the feet should be at each point of the movement. The two main things I took away from this part were that you have to pay attention to where your feet land – they need to search for the man and not be directed diagonally outward – and that while you’re turning in relation to a centre of gravity in the middle, you’re always passing through your axis and need to make sure that is so in order not to rush forward through any of the steps. He explained there are three kinds of giro. One is a giro corto which is essentially like doing just one of the elements of a giro, e.g. turning together for only half of what the movement of a normal giro would have been. Then there is the normal giro that is classically done with your feet drawing a square on the floor – step forward, pivot, step sideways, pivot, step backwards, step sideways. Then there’s the kind of giro we went over in the first lesson when we were looking at the notion of suspension, which is used for very fast movements, whereby the man leads you to the third axis I mentioned above, and absorbs the weight of your body into his hand. The reason that Gabriel explained that this works for fast giros was pure physics. If both the man’s and woman’s weights is shifted outwards but they’re still holding on to each other, there’s very little weight left in the middle and the giro can continue ad infinitum. This is useful for complex figures that don’t end in just one giro. I left with a smile on my face because I felt like I learned a great deal but also because during the final 10 minutes of our class when we’d cover milonga, I finally got the repeated cross steps that I had been so afraid of this entire time.

With Roxana and Sebastian we focused on changing dynamics during the dance from fast to slow back to fast as well as fast movement, which did incorporate a lot of fast giros. The first practice dance was a disaster. As soon as I heard a fast D’Arienzo, I went on autopilot and started rushing throughout, completely forgetting that only how controlled my movements had been only a few hours ago. How could it be possible? Sebastian and Roxana gave me some feedback and I realised that I hadn’t listened to him at all, but rather done my own interpretation of the music. I decided to actually pay attention during the second practice song and he commented it was much better. Roxana commented that I actually didn’t have to join the legs during the giro every single time otherwise it risked slowing me down. When I told her I associated joining the legs with going to your axis, she said being in axis didn’t happen because you pulled together the legs but because the position of the head was on top of the body and being out of axis happened because you left the head behind or forward. I am not sure that the axis is only determined by the position of the head but what I think she meant was that everything else was in alignment except for the head and it’s something she’s commented on the very first time I took lessons with them. During the fast giros, Sebastian said he needed to feel my back on his hand more and that I was delayed ever so slightly causing him to slow down as well. In my experience with both Sebastian and Gabriel, I realised how precise tango movements are. It’s a matter of milliseconds and centimeters, and everything you don’t do correctly or on time has a domino effect on the ensuing steps. It’s beautiful and daunting at the same time. I noticed that Sebastian and Roxana don’t call out explicitly this third type of giro that Angio was talking about and although they say to make sure the back is strong and that the leader can feel it but that I shouldn’t put weight on it. Sebastian said that I should be on what I refer to as the second axis even during fast movements so I’m starting to think that Gabriel’s way of doing that fast giro is simply different, perhaps not to the naked eye but in terms of what goes in the making of it.

It seemed with Seba that I got the hang of his changing dynamics quite quickly so we then moved into practicing high speed giros and other complex movements. The point her was to learn how to manage my body and maintain control even when things seemed to get really challenging to follow. And challenging they did get. If Gabriel had killed me with extremely slow movements that had sent my muscles twitching, Sebastian was killing me with very fast ones that sent my head spinning. Sebastian is truly a force of nature. I was breathless, sweating and dizzy as he twisted and turned around the room. I thought there was a battery powered revolving band around his waist that just kept turning and turning and turning. I loved it though. And while I didn’t exactly complete the movements with grace, I did follow everything and didn’t trip and fall. We had fun, we laughed, I messed up and we tried again. This was the best class I had had with him. He’d talk to me during the giros and say things like, ‘make the forwards the forward left step bigger’, ‘give me more back pivot in the left leg towards me, not diagonally out’, and I’d try it a couple of times under his guidance and then he’d speed things up to see if the body would remember it. I loved the adrenaline rush and we were able to connect a bit better today. I’m glad I took classes with him and Roxana. I think they’re one of the most skilled dancers in tango salon today, incredibly nice, humble and hard working. However, Gabriel Angio’s strength compared to them is that he’s not only a highly skilled dancer but also an amazing teacher, who relies on a 20+ year experience to deliver the lesson in a way that you’re most likely to understand and absorb, as reflected in structured, piece-meal approach he took with me, rather than overwhelming me with a laundry list of all the things that were wrong about my dancing.

I didn’t have energies left to go out dancing during the night. In between classes I had walked a few hours in the blistering heat checking out a few tango shops and had ended up doing some damage to my wallet at Mini Pinzon, which is the only tango store that has convinced me that my money is well spent there. There was nobody there during the time I had called for an appointment so it was like having my own private shopping assistant and the entire shop to myself. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, trying on all sorts of clothes. I asked her if she had anything in the back where the seamstresses were working that might fit me. She came out with a bright green dress with patches of leopard print dispersed throughout it. By itself, I hate bright green and I hate animal print clothes so if someone had described it to me I would have pursed my lips in disgust. But there was something different about that dress. It was bold, it was wild, and it fit me so beautifully. I fell in love with it. Just like the tango ring, it had been waiting for me in the back this entire time. I thought to myself, you just ever know until you try it. A lot of things had been like that for me during this trip. The teacher I had been most eager to learn from I felt hadn’t taught me much and the one that I had discarded during a group class had turned out to be amazing. The world class dancers that I was so excited to dance with didn’t necessarily make me feel the magic I felt when I danced with certain ‘normal’ people. Taking a choreography class ended up rewarding and informative even though I dislike heavily choreographed stage tango performances. The famous milongas weren’t necessarily any good and the place that I returned most happily to was a predominantly milonguero place, even though I preferred to dance in a different style. There was no prescription for what was going to be right. I would know when I see it, just like that dress. And it seemed like some deeper digging was always needed to find the really good stuff, like asking the shop assistant at Mini Pinzon what was available that was not on display.

 

This article first published on Bora’s Tango Journey …. follow the blog!

 

Agenda Malba 22-10-10

 

http://www.malba.org.ar/web/exposiciones.php?subseccion=actuales

 

This news first posted here Malba

 

 

 

 

Mother´s Day Menu´s

Next Sunday is Mother´s day in Argentina. Celebrations are usually centered around sunday lunch. Whether it is a family asado or homemade pasta, these options usually have mom working in some way or another.

My favorite way to treat my mom on Mother´s Day is to take her out for lunch, providing the perfect opportunity to try something new. Restaurants throughout Buenos Aires are packed with reservations for this upcoming Sunday, October 17th, so planning ahead of time is key. A few spots that have prepared a Mother´s Day Menu will be the Peruvian all time favorite, Astrid y Gaston, or traditional porteño classics at Raices.

Many restaurants are preparing specialty menus. Whatever your choice may be don´t forget to book ahead of time, and honor thy mother next Sunday!

SPANISH VERSION

El próximo domingo es el Día de la Madre en Argentina. Las celebraciones generalmente se centran alrededor del almuerzo del domingo. Sea un asado familiar o pasta pasta, estas opciones suelen hacer que la madre de la familia termina trabajando por un lado o por otro.

Mi forma preferida de celebrar el Día de la Madre es invitarla a un restaurant para celebrar la ocasión. Brindando asi, la oportunidad perfecta de probar algo nuevo. Los restaurantes de toda Buenos Aires se llenan y suelen agotar sus reservas para este próximo Domingo, 17 de octubre, por lo cual, anticiparse es clave. Muchos preparan un menu especial para celebrar la ocasión, como ser el menú del siempre favorito restaurant peruano, Astrid y Gastón. Tambien se podran disfrutar los clasicos porteño en Raíces.

Muchos otros restaurants abren sus puertas con propuestas especiales. Eligan lo que eligan, no se olviden de reseervar con anticipación y ante todo hacer honor a la mama!

This post first published on Buenos Aires Foodies

Tartan Ball

La Scottish Argentine Society los invita al baile que se llevará a cabo el sábado 23 de octubre, en el Colegio Buenos Aires English High School, Melián 1880, BelgranoR. El Buenos Aires Scottish Guard presentará un show de música y danzas escocesas.

Los sábados 9 y 16 de octubre a las 3 p.m., para quienes deseen aprenderlos,  se enseñarán las Scottish Country Dances que se tocarán en la fiesta, en la misma dirección.

Reservas: Centro: 4312-7244 o 15-5340-9920, Oeste y Belgrano:4662-1866 o 15-3666-9012 y Norte: 15-3852-3567. Tickets $ 30.-

El bar abre a las 8.00 p.m. y el Grand March empezará a las 9.30 p.m.

post courtesy of Pablo Laurito:potenza78ar@yahoo.com.ar

capture the flag, a film

capture the flag will next screen at:

The Vancouver International Film Festival
September 29-October 15

Visit the website at:

http://www.capturetheflagthefilm.com/festivals.html

read the book

Visit Rebecca Chace’s website

Rebecca Chace’s blog