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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 they smilling? They have had no meat, wine, caffeine, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, or tango for four days. Very little social contact.
f you can write, there’s a reader waiting to read what you have to say. Why not start publishing your prose? The time has never been more auspicious—and I’ll tell you why. If you are coming to Buenos Aires for your first time, be prepared to find inspiration daily in this lively Latin city and its culture, full of surprises.
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.
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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 […]
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.
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.
“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.
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.
The bares notables (notable bars and cafes) of Buenos Aires are best accessed at this site.
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 […]
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.
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 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.
I´m a “porteña” (born in Buenos Aires), a tango dancer, and I walked the path of Art all my life ( painting, dress and make-up design for the stage, dance, chant…) And, as I see it, Art is the expression of the Soul and its vital experiences through materials, sounds, colours, movement, etc… So, when the time came to express myself through jewelry, the poetry, passion and sensuality of Tango Argentino came up naturally in my work too.
My teacher, also a tango dancer and son of a well-known jewelry artist in BA, worked for over 12 years at the famous “Tiffany” in New York and conveyed to me the secrets of the finest jewelry.
Here is a brief, very basic primer for beginners in tango, which I wrote for Inspira Travel, an agency here in Buenos Aires for whom I’ll lead some tango-themed tours in November. You can check out their site, too, for great trips all around Argentina. Tango music is something the most unschooled among us recognize […]
Flat Stanley is the mascot for a group of second graders in Centreville, Maryland. His travels around the world help the youngsters learn geography because Stanley returns home from his visits (via mail) with tons of photos – and videos in this case. I hope I have done my part to put tango on the map for—and in the hearts of—young people.
