Tango
September 11, 2008
- I am reluctant to tread such volatile and controversial territory. But I can't resist this once. The other night I heard famous neurologist, Oliver Sacks, speaking about his book, Musicophilia, on NPR. He described a patient who had been struck by lightning, in the face no less. He recovered and then, at age 40 or so, suddenly became highly musical and spiritual. He became a classical performer ...
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September 4, 2008
- "A veces me pregunto si no será mi sombraque siempre me persigue, o un ser sin voluntad.Pero es que ya ha nacido así, pa' la milonga,Y ,como yo, se muere, se muere por bailar."("I ask myself sometimes if it's really my shadowthat's always chasing me, or some being with no will of its own. But it was born this way, for the milonga,and, like me, it dies, it dies to ...
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July 29, 2008
- Argentina has seldom looked kindly upon business innovation — and especially manufacturing innovation — because of a pervasive opinion in the country that things not made in Europe are of second- or even third-rate quality and value. Huge land grants to those who'd brought off the Spanish conquest, and the centuries-long reliance on those lands — and the Indians who lived on them — as the ...
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May 27, 2008
- TangoCalifia™ presents ¡Milonga en el museo!, an evening of Argentine tango music and dance at the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, on Friday evening, June 27 from 6:30 to 8:30 PM.In a re-creation of the great Argentine tango dance halls that exist to this day in Buenos Aires, a few hundred couples will dance in this “milonga”, bringing the passion, intensity and ...
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April 26, 2008
- You walk down a sidewalk in Buenos Aires at your peril. Potholes, immense cracks in the cement, deteriorating curbs, and sudden whole absences of pavement can plague every footstep. This is worsened by the fact that sidewalks in this city are often very narrow as well. You must walk with your head down, watching, which is perhaps why so many Buenos Aires citizens appear lost in thought, a bit ...
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April 15, 2008
- Tango is back, the kids are dancing it in Buenos Aires and world-wide, and this is a good thing. It was relegated for many years –- especially in Argentina, where it was born -- to the status of an old dance done by old people in a rickety sort of way. There were several reasons for this. Rock and roll came to Argentina in the nineteen-sixties with the same force with which it went ...
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February 14, 2008
- Astor Piazzolla's music is nothing if not controversial. Among the Argentines themselves, there seems to be two opinions. One was voiced to me some years ago by an Argentine tanguera whose artistic views I always listen to, when she said that "Tango is tango, and Piazzolla is not!" The other is stated just as militantly in favor of Piazzolla's efforts. Wildly so. Piazzolla died in ...
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January 29, 2008
- On that day in 1994 I didn't know how to walk. "What do you mean?" I asked Nora. She stepped toward one of the chairs at the edge of the practice room, before the large mirror. Traffic noise from Geary Street poured in the open windows. She sat down and crossed her legs. I felt vulnerable before her, a laughable figure wet with sweat. I could not see how I would ever achieve ...
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January 22, 2008
- 1.Nora sensed that I was weakened, doubtful, unhappy. "Poeta," she said. "There is a moment when a man has to study with a man. I can teach you much more about the tango, take you much farther down the path. . ."She fingered the glass of wine before her. The beef steak on her plate put up only slightly more steam than the chicken oreganato on my plate. Her nails were ...
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January 9, 2008
- There is a tango entitled "Tengo Miedo", written in 1929. Tu cariño me enloquece.Tu pasión me da la vida.Sinembargo tengo miedo,tengo miedo de quererte.(Your affection drives me crazy.Your passion gives me life.But just the same I'm afraid, I'm afraid to love you.)In New York some years ago, I danced occasionally with Julietta, a woman who had had three husbands, two of whom she had ...
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