Mar del Plata in photos

I finally got to Mar del Plata, Argentina’s much loved and much maligned seashore. Those guilty of the latter have certainly not grown up in New Jersey where the seashore sports some of the same grit. The tango—at Milonga de Gente Madura, on Gason near España—was wonderful.

The Tango Lesson for Virgins

Teaching tango this morning to virgins – total beginners, I had them first just walk as they normally would walk, in a circle, the line of dance, which is always counter-clockwise. Next, I had them walk applying sensory awareness techniques that are commonly used in guided meditation, Feldenkrais, Pilates, Alexander technique, and the oldest known practice of SA on earth, yoga.

The Last Tango Christmas Show

December 23, 2009 Eugenio Maria follows me around like a puppy, trying to be heard over the din of music and chatter. He is telling me I’m beautiful or something similar. We’re milling around at the Christmas party awaiting the Tango Show at Jose T. Borda psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires where I assist in […]

Tango and mi madre

They say that in dancing a three-minute tango you learn more about a person than you would over six weeks’ worth of coffee chatter. Well, how about when your partner is your mother? What’s left to learn?

Port Townsend Tango Festival

I attended this festival last January and it is among my favorites now. Port Townsend is a stunning historic Victorian seaport that is gateway to Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula. The town with lovely restaurants and hotels is worth the trip in itself. Note the hotels giving special rates, below. Enjoy! If you can’t read this […]

Tango Therapy

Gustavo’s eyes were dead or resting in pharmaceutical peace, while Mattias’s were hyper wild from years of cannabis and other drug practice.

The thing that stays with me is how well both men, wardees at Jose T. Borda psychiatric hospital, dance tango.

The hospital is in Buenos Aire’s Barracas barrio and I assisted in the bi-monthly tango class on a Wednesday afternoon. Dr. Guillermo Honig is the psychiatrist in attendance, though he doesn’t participate in the class.

Why are these people smiling?

Why are they smilling? They have had no meat, wine, caffeine, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, or tango for four days. Very little social contact.

Done it here ever?

I do it in bed all the time. I’ve done it on planes, on my bicycle, and even in my mother’s living room. This morning, like many, after dancing tango for hours the night before, I do it to release tension.

Writing, editing, and publishing

Get help with all your writing/editing needs – features, stories, memoirs, essays, books, proposals, and more — non-fiction and fiction.

Mother Seton Class of ’69 40-year reunion

From those halls of truth and knowledge . . . We—most of us—stepped through the doors of Mother Seton Regional High School one last time in June 1969 and here we are 40 years later. I don’t think there was a woman in attendance who had actually aged 40-years’ worth. Call it the marvels of […]

Romantic Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is now the romantic city on earth.

Tango at Larkspur Library

An Evening with author Camille Cusumano She dreamed of Buenos Aires and living the sensuous tango life . . . Camille Cusumano, San Francisco resident, did just that. She can tell you about her experiences on which she based her memoir and about the new book she’s writing, Get Tango, Dance your way to happiness.

Tango at SF Museum of Performance & Design

She dreamed of Buenos Aires and living the sensuous tango life . . . Camille Cusumano, San Francisco resident, did just that. She can tell you about her experiences on which she based her memoir “Tango: An Argentine Love Story” and about the new book she’s writing, Get Tango, Dance your way to happiness. The evening’s program includes a reception, reading by the author, tango dance presentation, and a free tango mini-lesson.

Argentimes review of Tango, an Argentine Love Story

“I flow with him like quicksilver on an incline. I am the passive element, shifting with his center until we share one sweet spot, wordlessly agreed upon” reads a phrase in the opening chapter. Written in the present tense, Cusumano’s memoir reads as if she is recounting a long, strange dream. It begins with her departure from a disastrous break-up in the US. She decides to turn her tango vacation into an indefinite stay in a foreign land, leaving behind her past while trying to unpack that baggage in Argentina. Through her Zen practices, she connects her love for tango while attempting to find peace with the life she left behind.

Tango sideways

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For tango followers who want to soar

I’ve thought about this state of weightlessness while dancing with various partners, how I soar when the points of contact, even with negative space, feel equally weight-bearing. Obviously this state is dynamic. You don’t affix yourself to your partner (kind of as they do in ballroom tango) and then stay there. You must be completely and perpetually aware, ever shifting, ever present, to find the balance. Like skiing, skateboarding.

Buenos Aires notable cafes and bars, New York Times

Check out my July 12, 2009 New York Times piece on Buenos Aires’s bares notables. Be sure to look at photographer Kevin Moloney’s slide show of some of the bares notables. The city’s list of notable bars and cafes is up to 53. It seems the city’s Web site is not only slow but disfunctional […]

For tango leaders who want to soar

I believe in airborne tango – and that exactly describes what it feels like. It feels as if the pull of gravity is no more or less than the press of the man’s palm against my own; no more or less than his torso against my torso; no more or less than his right arm’s pressure against my left side or than the pressure of my breath on my lungs;and equal, if opposite, to our horizontal momentum . In other words, it feels as if you could turn us sideways, inside-out, or upside-down and we’d still feel the dance same way. there is no more pressure on the balls of my feet than on my palms or back.

Mass hysteria in Argentina, swine flu

Each year, two million children worldwide die from diarrhea that could have been cured with an oral serum costing about fifteen cents, writes Carlos Alberto Morales Paitán, pediatric doctor at Children’s Hospital in Lima, Perú. But his email, which reached me via Argentine friends, was not about that too common tragedy.

Tango in Jeopardy

Tango was on Jeopardy, featured as a category in the first round of the TV game show on Tuesday, June 24. Just as I was telling someone who is not in the “Tango Club” that, yes, tango is like a cult, there it was on mainstream network TV. I felt elated—the dance that is more than a dance was finally of wide-spread interest.