1503  Notes from Buenos Aires 5

Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 12:32:14 -0500
From: Rick McGarrey <RICKMCG@FLASH.NET>
Subject: Notes from Buenos Aires 5

A trip to the other side.
(part 2, continued from 'Notes from Buenos Aires 4)

So, last night we sat in Cacho's milonga, and I found
I was getting up to dance the same tandas as Nestor.
We both like tango picado and vals, although he also
danced the milongas, which I never do. I'm enjoying
the music and dancing so much on this trip that the
only time I've had to film is during the milonga
tandas, and I'm getting too many of them on film. I
told Nestor he was a good dancer because he danced
like me, which he thought was funny. His tango story
is similar to most old milongueros. He danced mostly
with other men in the neighborhoods in the fifties,
and then quit during the years of the military
repression and the rock & roll years of the sixties
and seventies. He began to dance tango again in the
eighties, and since his retirement from the ship
docks, he dances more. He says that in the fifties in
his neighborhood there were two types of tango. The
first was simple tango, called 'tango sencillo'
or 'tango liso'. This was done mostly walking
forward, without steps, and it was danced with the
couple close together. The second, more advanced
style, was called 'tango cruzado' or 'tango con
cortes'.. In this tango, you would stop, separate a
bit, and do patterns and adornments. Before dancing
with a woman you would ask which type she knew how to
dance. He said that as people learned more in the
eighties, they often began to stay separate so they
would have room to do more steps. Now, he says,
people have moved back to dancing very close
together. He's not sure why, but he thinks crowded
conditions may be a factor, and also better dancing in
general. He says people now move to the music better,
and can do steps in close embrace that weren't done
before. His style is now the classic rhythmical close
tango of most of the milongueros. He thinks tango is
of a better quality now than in the past.

I will note that when I came down here with Alejandra
this trip, I thought the clubs would not be crowded,
since it is the winter off season, the economy is
still bad, and we are going to places off the beaten
track. I am happy to report that the opposite is
true. Every place we have been has been very well
attended, with many actually too crowded for
comfortable dancing. Tango is alive and
thriving.

After a couple of hours, 'Un Cacho de Tango' began to
really fill with people, and Cacho, who is a character
and a showman, took the microphone and worked the
crowd into a frenzy, with a rant about River Plate
being better than Boca. Then in the midst of this
bedlam, he did something embarrassing for me. He
called Alejandra and me up to the microphone, and
introduced us. He is a big jokester, and I was
introduced as the great professional photographer (I
know nothing about cameras) and a famous tango dancer
from Arizona. He talked about Alejandra for awhile,
and about what amazing dancers we are. Of course, the
crowd began to chant 'Que bailen! Que bailen! Que
bailen!' While this may be the dream of some people,
for me it was a nightmare. You may guess from my
posts that tango is a very private, internal thing for
me. Last year I had a bad experience when Natucci,
who is an engineer, and a true professor of tango,
apparently had a glass of champagne and got it into
his head that my way of feeling the music was unique.
Because I learned tango almost solely by watching
videos of old tango dancers while living in the
western U.S., he wanted to record my style on film. He
insisted that I be interviewed and then be filmed
dancing in front of people at El Beso with his
partner, Eladia Cordoba. I tried to get out of it,
but I couldn't. This was not a good experience for
me, and I didn't dance well at all. I have a copy of
the film, and I have never been able to look at it.
So now, here I am standing in a club in el arrabal de
Avellaneda with several hundred Portenos chanting 'Que
bailen!', and I had promised myself last year it would
never happen to me again. And it would have been
especially tough perform in this club, for a reason I
will mention later.

So, I'm ashamed to say, I took the coward's way out.
No one can make you dance if you don't want to, so I
just said no, I can't do it. The crowd settled down,
and Cacho took them on to other things, but I felt
bad. Especially when Nestor told me something later
that touched me. I said I didn't want to insult them
by declining, because I know they were trying to be
polite. But he said that these people really wanted
me to dance. For you to come to this club from the
U.S. and show such an interest in the club and to
dance with their music is special for them. He said,
quote: '--------- (a famous old dancer of the stage)
could dance here, and no one would pay special
attention. But they are very interested in you.'

Because of Cacho's joking, a shy old couple came up
and ask me if I could take a picture of them dancing.
Alejandra explained that my camera was different, and
it didn't take photographs. Then I thought, since it
was digital, there might be a way to get a photograph
printed from it. They asked about the cost, and of
course we told them we wouldn't charge them for it.
During these negotiations I noticed something funny
going on. They were both very sweet and smiling, but
when the little man would start to speak, the lady
would give him a secret poke in the ribs with her
elbow, as if to say, 'Be quiet, I know how to deal
with these rich people. I don't want you opening your
mouth to mess things up'.

This club is very old. A bit later, Nestor got the
small aging custodian, and he found a key, unlocked a
door, and took us up some cluttered stairs. In the
room above, you could see painted on the
wall 'Pulperia Leales..1903'. One hundred years ago,
this place had been on the edge of town, and it was
one of those places where you see pictures of horses
tied up, gauchos sitting around playing guitars
outside, and women serving drinks out of a window. It
later became a 'Rancho' (I'm not sure what that is),
and then later it became the neighborhood club it is
today. Mounted high on the wall in this small room is
something unique and special, and the old custodian is
very proud of it. It's called, an 'Escudo Nacional
con la Bandera Argentina y Laureles' and it's not easy
to describe. It is a huge, ornate picture frame with
glass, and inside it is about a foot deep. It
contains a work that is like a large intricate three
dimensional sculpture or emblem made of gold thread,
and sewn white and pale blue silk fabric, representing
Argentina. I can't really describe it, but it is
stunning and spectacular, and it literally took
thousands of hours to make. A total of only three
were made using a tremendous amount of tedious labor
from hundreds of prisoners in la prision de Villa
Devoto. One of the two others is in a place of honor
in the Casa Rosada, which is like the Argentine
version of the White House in the U.S., and the other
is in the Congreso building (like our combined
Congress and Senate). In the U.S. something like this
would be priceless, and guarded night and day, but
here this masterpiece hangs, mostly ignored in this
old room above the club. Then the custodian found a
key to a very cluttered office with poor light, and we
went in to look for something else. We rummaged
around for awhile, and I was the one to find it. I
climbed over some old furniture, and on the back wall,
among yellowing pictures of gauchos, and formations of
solders, I found a picture of a group of some of the
early club members, sitting sternly in their 1920's
suits, in what looks like the very same office we are
in. It's well known that the history and roots of
tango are closely tied to working class people in
clubs like this one, and here was something very
interesting. Sitting among the early members of this
very club is a young Carlos Gardel, smiling his
entertainers' smile. A few years later he would be
killed in a plane crash in Colombia. They had told me
downstairs that this was actually his club. He was
one of the early members, and here was the picture
that certainly seemed to prove it. For me to try to
perform tango here, in this place, before these
people, would have been impossible.

End.