Palo Alto Milonga at All Saint's with lesson beforehand by Pampa Cortes with Elaine Kho assisting. Topic: Generous Partnering - Using the Pause & Adornments How leaders can use pauses to give followers time to shine and followers enjoying the moment in beautiful ways. This was an excellent lesson, with a lot of verbal instructions on the wherefores and whys of The Pause. There are many moves we can do in tango. The Leader can and should take his time. The Leader can enjoy the embrace. The Leader can enjoy the embrace of the Follower in his arms. He can enjoy the music. Sometimes the music is so beautiful that it's like you fall in love with the woman for three minutes. DiSarli, Sassone, and Pugliese have a lot of pauses. With Pugliese, there are lots of pauses, long moments where the Leader can shine, too. The point in dancing tango is to enjoy the music, enjoy the movement, enjoy the Follower in your arms, even if she's not yours. DiSarli died in the 1960's, and Pampa remembers him. DiSarli's music was famous for the piano parts -- going back and forth and adding accents. That's because DiSarli was a pianist. With Troilo, who was a bandoneonist, the music, the bandoneon, starts immediately, and is a very prominent feature. We dancers have a lot of time to do fancy things, but we need to learn to take our time. The Leader needs to give the Follower time, she will come to you. Leaders should be courteous to Followers. In Buenos Aires a long time ago, there were 7 men for each women, so the Leader had to be a very good dancer, and respect that the Follower had a lot to say about tango. To practice these concepts of taking our time, waiting for the Follower to shine, enjoy the music, etc., we did a sequence that included a Leader right foot sandwich, to Follower's two back ochos, to another sandwich, to a Leader parada followed by a Follower pasada, another Follower back ocho, and then another parada. At various points, like before the Follower pasada, she can embellish and the Leader must wait for her. In addition, he could actually lead her to do an adorno as she is at their close side of the embrace ready to pasada over with her left leg. She does, and then he leads her back to do a soft beat back (more like a rise) against her standing right leg, to walk out forward with her left leg. It was a very good class, and many of the nuggets of the lesson came out with Pampa sharing his knowledge of tango music and orchestras, as well as the culture and history of tango. His musicality series of lessons on Wednesdays sound like they would be pretty good, and his balance class on July 18 sounds fantastic, where all dancers will do exercises by themselves to help them improve their ability to balance. The milonga was only very lightly attended since it happened during Nora's Tango Week events. I had a pretty good time though as everyone was friendly and social. I also got to take a doggie bag home of the cheese, crackers, and finger desserts. It was a very pleasant, low-key kind of night.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Late Shift Milonga...sort of... I figured I was taking a wild roll with the dice since this was the Nora's Tango Week Celebration Tango milonga night. I cruised on by and peeked in the window. It was only very lightly attended. There were two Leaders I enjoy dancing with, and three Leaders that I do not enjoy dancing with, and several extra Followers, and a lot of people just sitting around and chatting (not dancing). It was only 9:30 p.m., and 2:00 a.m. seemed an awful long way away. So I decided not to go in. Though I didn't go to Nora's Celebration Tango, thanks to mamborich, I got a vicarious thrill at being able to see the excellent show that was put on. I especially liked the last three videos...
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Come Join Me!
Thursday: Verdi Club
Friday: MUSE @ City Dance Annex (two dance floors, one traditional and one alt)
Saturday: The Late Shift FINAL MILONGA -- this is going to be an insanely competitive tango night with 5 milongas (Late Shift in SF, Sausalito, The Beat, Lake Merritt Dance Center, and Nora's in Palo Alto).
Sunday: Pampa Cortes BALANCE workshop
Tuesday: Buenos Aires Art Deco lecture and milonga @ Hamilton Ballroom
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