Interview with Gavito
Thanks to Ray Rudowski from Hong Kong and with his permission, here is part of the transcript (will update once he has translated all) of an interview (in Spanish) of Gavito by Miguel Zotto. Here Gavito shares some of his views on tango, role of women and his “struggles” during his early days of teaching. Sadly he died not long after the interview. For me the central message is:
“I say that any man who dances tango and doesn’t look at the woman as a queen, will never be a king. For me it’s all about respect for the woman.”
Taipei Tango Festival 2009
The annual Taipei Tango Festival is set to kick off next week (16-21 September). Despite the worldwide economic gloom and doom, four fantastic couples from Argentina will be featured, namely
- Javier Rodriguez & Andrea Misse (the regulars)
- Leandro Palou & Romina Godoy (2nd time for Leandro)
- Esteban Moreno & Claudia Codega (4th trip)
- Damian Esell & Nancy Louzan (2nd time)
Having attended four festivals in the past, I can say that this is definitely one of the premiere annual events in the tango scene in Asia and highly recommended. Unfortunately, after spending much of my holiday budget in the earlier part of the year, I will be missing it for yet another year.
Since the first edition of the festival (maestros included Javier Rodriguez & Geraldine Rojas, Leandro Palou & Andrea Misse and Guillermo Merlo & Fernanda Ghi) in 2003 that I attended, the community in Taiwan has been going from strength to strength. In contrast, having been in the tango community in Singapore since almost the beginning, I can only lament the many missed opportunities in the past 8-9 years. I guess things are really put into perspective when, with the departure of a handful of men to the Taipei festival, the weekend milongas are almost certain to be very quiet during the festival weekend!? Well, with top-class maestros making trips to Singapore regularly for the past 3 years now and more large-scale events on the horizon, there may still be hope yet! 😉
Full circle
For many years, and probably unlike many fledgling communities around the world, the Tango community in Singapore suffered from a systematic problem: there were no high-calibre local instructors. This was natural as everyone who was dancing in Singapore at the time started in the same boat – from scratch! The local scene was essentially at the mercy of visiting teachers who travelled to Singapore at their own expenses(!), and who furthermore taught a variety of styles and levels which were sometimes incompatible from one instructor to the next. See, for example, this list of Tango teachers who had given short workshops in Singapore over the years. Suffice it to say that there was quite a variety of styles.
While some teachers returned regularly to Singapore there were usually long gaps between visits. It was not really until 2006, when IXI Danza and Tango Oriental undertook considerable financial risks to hire specific teachers and started organising workshops on a larger scale compared to previous years, that there was some consistency in the quality of instructions. Unsurprisingly, since that time there has been a mini-boom in the local Tango scene, as evidenced by the number of regular milongas and local instructors. Due to a number of intensive workshops by the same overseas teachers, the level of dancing has also improved dramatically over the past three years.
Shopping for teachers
As any Tango community slowly matures, inevitably more and more people will decide to join the teaching ranks. Consequently it can get very confusing for new-comers wanting to take up Tango. How can they choose who to learn from?
Under the circumstances, a commonly cited advice is to “watch how the teachers dance”. While this is not too bad, I feel that it is insufficient. Firstly, the correlation between dancing skills with teaching/analytical ability is not always guaranteed. Secondly, to the untrained eye, as long as someone seems to be able to move with some degree of confidence (even if he is throwing the partner around, or she is back-leading her partner), everything seems well. Or is it?? 😉
The following list, perhaps not exhaustive, is how I usually advise a new-comer when I am asked the question. For simplicity, I will assume the teachers always teach as a couple. By the way, obviously this list implicitly excludes anyone who starts teaching after having learnt for a year or so, no matter how “good” he/she seems – unless we are talking about very young communities of less than 1-2 years old.
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