1737  Notes from Buenos Aires 27

Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 15:10:49 -0500
From: Rick McGarrey <RICKMCG@FLASH.NET>
Subject: Notes from Buenos Aires 27

Sin Miedo
(Part 2)

Later I took Alejandra to a couple of his classes, and
because she is a friend of his, and one of only a
handful of women he dances with regularly, I got to
know him a little. I find his classes so difficult
and so advanced, that it's almost impossible for me
to learn in them. For me, just watching him dance,
and taking my time studying his film is enough. I
suppose I would say that I measure my slow maturing in
tango in terms of him. My first phase was being
inspired by Tete in the first place- by being shown
that there is a higher level of music and movement to
aspire to than the steps I had seen in other videos
and classes. For the first time I saw tango as
something serious and deep. The second stage for me
was the harsh realization, after about 2 years of
trying, that I could never dance like Tete.
It was hard to accept that a little old man who looks
like the guy with the beer belly who might come by to
fix your water heater had physical skills that I
couldn't begin to approach. I thought he was the
only real tango dancer, and I felt I would never dance
tango until I could do what he does. Now I have
reached a third, and I hope more mature stage. I have
finally come to realize that I don't HAVE to dance
like Tete.

Tete is an instinctive being whose oversized talent
seems to have displaced some of the more normal
personality traits. Since I'm referring to movies I
might as well throw in 'Cobb', about the brilliant and
violent baseball player, and 'Pollock', about the
tortured painter. I see them, like Tete, and even the
fictional Emmet Ray, as a different class of human
being. These are people whose obsessions seem to have
placed them somewhere beyond the limits, unblocked by
the normal goals and constraints of society. In that
sense, what they do isn't so much about ego, because
deep down they don't really care what an audience
thinks- or probably if one even exists. Put them
alone on a desert island, and Cobb would still be
running at palm trees with his spikes up, Pollock
would find colors to splash, and Tete would be doing
some strange dance to his own internal music.

Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately) I don't really
know the man- but I probably know his dancing as well
as anyone. I have bought, begged, or shot every inch
of video I could acquire, and I watch them all the
time. The best known are the two Trenner
instructional videos- but they aren't the best, and
Tete doesn't like them at all. They are sometimes
confusing, and it takes work to get much out of them-
but they contain pure gold if you look. Some of the
dancing in them is not his best either, but even an
occasionally uninspired Tete, is still in a different
universe from everyone else, and every so often he
loosens up. I am, however, the lucky owner of two
bits of film that really stand out. One shows a
younger Tete dancing at a large workshop somewhere in
the U.S. It is less than a full dance, only about 2
minutes, and I don't even know who his partner is (but
she is good). Tete sails around the floor of the
college gym with the grace of Joe DiMaggio, or of
Michael Jordan, practicing his art with no apparent
effort. There are worlds of knowledge in every step
he takes, and a large part of what I have learned in
tango comes from this 2 minutes of film. He's in a
practica, and there are about 20 students in the
place. They are practicing ochos and ganchos, or
sitting and looking at class schedules. 100 years
from now he is the only tango dancer that anyone will
remember, but no one even notices him.

The other bit of video I have is transcendent. An
older Tete is before an audience somewhere in Europe
with Sylvia. The music is 'Gallo Ciego' and he
spends the first minute of the performance stalking
the floor nervously, with the body control only he
has... hunting for inspiration. Then, after about a
minute, he finds it. During the very, very difficult
and complex middle part of the Pugliese piece, Tete
seems to actually become the music. It's the only way
I can describe a minute of tango that goes beyond
anything either Alejandra or I have ever seen. We've
had the tape for about a month, and each time we see
it, we sit quietly when it's over. The last time we
watched it was late at night after coming in from a
milonga, and again, we just sat for a moment.
Finally, Alejandra, who is not prone to overstatement,
said, 'It's too much...it's just too much to watch.'

I talked about the start, and the middle, but I didn't
talk about the very end. You have to remember this is
Tete. After performing the most brilliant 2 minutes
of tango I have ever seen, he loses interest. He
starts fooling around, and throws the rest away.

End.


Chau! Hasta luego! We're flying north tonight, so
that's it for the reports. There won't be much time
to write when we get home, but that's probably good.
I've monopolized things more than anyone in the
history of tango L lately, and I would like to thank
the list members for putting up with my daily spewing
forth of almost every thought that's passed through my
mind over the last two months. And I would especially
like to again thank all of the people who took the
time to send nice personal messages.

If I have time later I'll try to clean up the reports
and put them on the 'Tango and Chaos' website. I'll
put a note on the list when I do it, so if anyone
wants to look for information on some of the milongas
I've talked about, it will be there.

Abrazos,
Alejandra y Rick