Salon Canning
On Tuesday (7 April) night, we made plans to go to Salon Canning after a late afternoon class at EAT with the Dispari’s. This night was special for a couple of reasons: Color Tango was playing and Julio and Corina will be teaching a class as well as performing later. Since I have always enjoyed their dancing and their recent seminar, what more could I ask for?
Salon Canning, which I have heard so much about, was a nice and spacious venue. It has a high ceiling and a square dance made of chequered timber. There are large portraits – many depicting Claudia y Esteban – hanging on the walls, and large professional-looking speakers hanging above the dance floor. In short, I liked the venue and was looking forward to a nice of enjoyable dancing.
Sunderland
My first memory of Sunderland was a scene from the documentary “Tango: our dance” I saw close to 10 years ago. I remember thinking to myself how strange it was that people were dancing in a basketball court!? And the amount of space they had! Why then, all this talk of having to dance in crowded milongas? Of course, that was way before I got a better understanding of the dance itself and also the fact that there were many different milongas – the ones in the downtown have smaller dance floors, for example.
Well, we made it to Sunderland last night. My first two thoughts were: 1) it looked exactly the same as what I had seen in old video clips as (obviously…) and 2) it was smaller than I’d imagined. In fact, it seems to be generally true that photos and videos tend to make such venues seem larger than they are!?
By the way, the beef lomo that they serve is fantastic. Plain but surprisingly tasty. It may look horrendously large at first but definitely possible for one person to finish!
Hands-on cabeceo
I had previously commented on what I thought was the gist of the cabeceo. Since arriving in Buenos Aires, I think in principle what I wrote was still applicable. However, two additional and essential ingredients are required for success: accuracy and speed, especially at the more “competitive” milongas.
Firstly, as always, it is important to know who you may like to dance with – which in itself may require a few repeated visits to the same milonga – and to hope that he/she will look your way. Secondly, time is of the essence, because once the floor starts to get filled up, your line of sight will be blocked and, depending on the seating arrangement of men and women at the particular milonga, the window of opportunity may be lost. By the way, I am still trying to figure out how some men still manage to cabeceo after people have started dancing. It seems the only option after that is for the men to take a walk!?
For these two reasons, while I have had limited success with the cabeceo at the milongas I have been to, it can get a little stressful for a new-comer to the milonga scene in Buenos Aires. To add to this mix, as a total stranger, you may not always get the more favourable seats which makes cabeco extra difficult.
BA: week 1 quick review
I must admit, I arrived in Buenos Aires with very few specifics as far as scheduling of my stay here is concerned. However, it’s funny how time seems to fly even though nothing much seems to be happening!? I suppose this is partly because of the need of traveling everywhere by public transport like subway or buses – unless one was prepared to take taxis all the time although at certain times during the day the traffic can be horrendous too.
So after one week what have I managed to do?
Classes
With our friend’s help, we quickly made to our way to Escuela Argentina de Tango (EAT) and familiarised ourselves with the possible regular classes during our stay. By the way, EAT is a fairly reputable Tango school here with a variety of teachers offering their services. Our strategy is simply to sample the group classes at EAT during the first week in order to find out what styles/teachers we’d like to explore more in the remaining two weeks. Initially I was considering to try out DNI and Tango Brujo, which are two Tango Nuevo schools, but that is probably too ambitious given the little time we have.