Pugliese

A lot of people dance Pugliese like stage performance on the milonga floor. Because the music is very powerful, average dancers will try to dance every beat. Pay attention to the floor next time you are in a milonga and not dancing to the tanda, and see how many of them dance frenzily.

The key is to control yourself and ride on top of the music, not just follow the music. Breathe along the music, use small adornment and movement to express the music. Take the time to dance, to talk to and feel the partner. Dance it like tasting a fine aged wine.

I don't normally dance Pugliese, hard to find the right partner. But when I do, it's often the best tanda of the night.

I always learn something when I watch them dancing.

Embrace

I was at Javier and Stella's advanced class on Saturday morning at Tangocamp Roma. There was this young chica, slim and pretty, waiting for the class to begin by the door. Judged from her wristband, she was at the intermediate/advanced group. Apparently she was one of those Javier followers (such as myself :P) who tried to take every class with Javier.

The first half an hour, we did nothing but walking individually forward and back, up and down the classroom. Then we did a lapiz on free leg, walked a step; lapiz on the other free leg and walked another step... so on and so forth.

After twenty minutes Javier explained embrace, and asked us to pair up. This young chica paired up with me. Javier showed us the exercise: just put our arms around each other and walk.

I opened my arms and she put hers around me and embraced me. I could feel that she was tense, holding her breathe and nervous. Yet, there was something different, something that I felt I rarely experienced. She embraced me with feeling and emotion.

Stella stopped us at one point, corrected her posture and the way of her walking. Then we changed partners. The moment the other woman embraced me, I instantly missed her embrace. We partnered up again after two more changes till the end of the class.

We did nothing but walking in embrace. I was in a state that I was only aware of my own breathe, the music and her being. I could almost feel the emotion going through her body. And it was powerful.

After ten fifteen minutes, Javier stopped us and then put on a Pugliese. I turned around to her and we embraced again. All of sudden she loosed the embrace, mumbled something and gave me a little kiss on the cheek. I was a little surprised. She turned me around: Javier and Stella were doing a demo for us at the end of the class...

I had never had the chance to dance with her again, in the milonga. She was dancing with this guy for hours two night in a roll. I was too proud to walk over and asked her, although a few times I almost did.

I watched them dancing on the floor, amidst the frenzies of the crowd. They were just embracing each other; her eyes closed, his half open, her posture slightly awkward, foot lifted in the air from time to time, his moves far from grounded, but they were in their own world.

I danced till Monday morning and went back to my room to pack. I went out to the bar and tried to get some coffee before leaving for the airport and saw her at the reception with her luggage.

We smiled and waved at each other and I kept on walking. Half way back to my room, I couldn't help it but turned around and walked up to her.

"Are you leaving?" I asked.
"Yes" She looked at me.
"eh...I think you are going to be great. Keep dancing the way you do. You dance with such emotion..." I pointed to my heart.
"You too, with great emotion" She said sincerely and a bit excited.

We embraced each other for a long moment, one more time...

On my way back to my room, I realized that we didn't exchange any information, no names, no e-mails, nor facebook info. Somehow I felt that I would see her again somewhere, in one of the big festivals in Europe or a small milonga in BsAs. Next time when I dance with her, she would be great. She already had the most important quality. Technique is not important (as Javier told me), it would come as long as one works on it...

But "nobody can teach you the feeling..." as Gavito said.

Tangocamp Roma 2009 Recap

This was my first Tangocamp experience and my first time dancing in Europe. I'd wanted to attend Tangocamp since 2007 and put off due to various reasons. Although I am not a big fan of tango festival, I took the trip as a vacation of visiting Rome and my friends in Umbria with tango as a side trip.

I had a very good time at the Tangocamp Roma, met some old friends (it is truly a small world) and got to know some new friends. It was more of a social event for me.

Class

I was a little disappointed that our group (advanced 3-5 yrs) did not include any Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne class. I had to take a drop in with them. I skipped three of my group classes and instead took one advanced extra with Damian Esell & Nancy Louzan and a intermediate/advanced with Javier Rodriguez and Stella Misse. Together with the class of Pable Inza and Eugenia Parilla, I had learned more ganchos and volcada in three days than in the last three years.

I know I am biased, but the classes with Javier and Stella were more beneficial for me. He started all the classes with half an hour walking back and forth, explained and corrected. In the advanced class, he introduced the idea of embellishment by instructing us to walk and lapiz on the free leg. In the intermediate/advanced class, we learned the exercise of giro and sacada, which I thought was helping me a lot.

Milonga

I thought the New York tango scene was pretty bad till I witnessed the festival scene. The piso was messy. Granted, it was a large milonga and had probably over three hundred people on the floor at the same time. But it was a large floor and I did see a lot of space in between couples. But it was those Gustavo/Chicho/whatever names wanna be who danced with no regards to the others. There were a lot of them.

I danced in the beginning and after 2:30am when the floor was cleared a bit. Still whenever I was on the floor, I felt the my dancing space was threaten. I got bumped into twice by the same guy from behind in one song. One guy made the effort of passing me around outside the floor and back... A lot of guys danced with their head dropped and tilt down. They led women doing all kinds of high boleos, or the women just did it by themselves. I almost laughed when I saw the seriousness of the hilarious moves.

That being said, I still enjoyed most of dances except one or two tandas. I made a rule to myself that I would not approach woman and ask for dance. If a woman doesn't understand the rule of cabaceo, she is probably not the type that I would enjoy dancing with anyway. Friday night, I had great tandas all night. Sat night the energy dip a bit, but Sunday I danced till five o'clock in the morning and went to my room packing then to the airport.

DJ

Since I am also DJing, I was paying attention to the music that was played. Although music played in all three nights was good, I found that the energy was not well controlled. And the music selections were plain, mainly on six major orchestras. For example, all three night I heard the same tandas of Tanturi con Campos: una emocion, oigo tu voz, with two more by three different DJs. And I hated mixed orchestras and four songs in a milonga tanda. But it was probably just me. :-)

All in all, I had a very good time at the festival. I was told by a woman from Rome that the level of dancing didn't reflect the actual quality of dance level in Rome. A expat friend of mine who lives in Italy told me that the level of dancing was much higher in other festivals in Italy that she had attended this year, such as the ones in Firenze and Torino. You can probably tell by the lineup of teachers at those festivals.

Now I had the experience, although very limited, of dancing in Europe. I would still come to Europe, the history and the root of tango is much longer there than in the states, but more for being tourist with tango as a bonus. For serious tango trips, I wouldn't be anywhere else but Buenos Aires.