Mozo Guapo

My favorite milonga performed by my favorite people in BsAs: Ruben y Cherie.



Don't you just feel the joy of milonga that these two radiates...

Superb Musicality

I've been watching this video over and over again. The more I watch it, the more I appreciate the musicality that they've showed in this performance. The embellishments just decorate perfectly.

Back to the public eyes again

Last Friday I was dancing at a milonga. One guy came up to me and said: " Can I ask you a question? "

"Sure."

"What happened to your blog?" he asked.

I have never publicly stated the reason of turning it private. Some speculated that I was hiding because I couldn't face the heat of debates or different opinions. My reason was simple. My blog " Buenos Aires....where my tango journey begins" had become very popular. I could no longer write my thoughts without reservation. Sometimes when I wrote about my experience at the local tango scene, people got offended or felt uncomfortable. So there you go, only a few people got to read my thoughts.

Over the past year, I often received email requests to read my blog. People still remembered and were interested in my journey and my experience. Another tango friend of mine came to me on the same night last week and asked to access my blog.

And I started reading blogs again recently and felt that the newcomers could probably compare notes with someone whom had gone through similar journey of being a beginner, crazy about tango and see how I have evolved and how I still hold certain principle since day one.

So there it is...my public blog: My tango journey continues... Hope you enjoy it.

Do it a million times...

I went to Cesar's milonga workshop yesterday. First time I took a workshop in two years. The workshop itself wasn't quite interesting, partly because of the overall level of the participants. Yet I learned something from this amazing teacher.


Cesar was a very good teacher. He stressed on fundamentals and the very core of tango. It wasn't about teaching the steps, even in the workshop environment. It was about dancing with feeling to the music, about walking with cadence.

One thing he said had particularly struck a cord. He stopped the class after watching for while and seeing most of the people were just rushing the steps. He told a story of how his father taught him dancing tango.

Cesar's father told him to just walk to the music. After a while, Cesar got bored. But his father insisted that he kept on walking. It was not till the 50,000 times that Cesar walked that he started to find cadence in walking, that he found something interesting in this seemingly boring walking. Repeat a million times, until you are bored...and you start looking for something interesting in the simplest thing... then you find tango.

Breathing exercise

I discovered a practice myself this morning while driving to work. Listening to Pugliese on the road, I suddenly found that I was breathing along with the music. I thought that this is a good exercise. Like in Yoga practice, I was always told to just enjoy the breath, pay attention to the breath and let it take me to the presence. I think it also works in dance.

Try that: find any tango music and try to breathe along the music. It is a good exercise. It helped me to be more center and relax in the dance, more submerging in the music and the embrace.