Since October, 2011, I’ve been teaching tango at La Pista dance studio in San Francisco. I teach on Wednesdays with Tom Lewis, the owner and architect of this amazing salon. Mila Salazar, the beautiful dancer seen en apilado with Jesse, below, had been teaching with Tom but she is now gearing up to start a […]
Beginner’s Mind Tango
January 24, 2012 by
We focus on beginners to tango and to aspiring tangueros who have never danced. All our classes start with exercises to help you keep all-important technique in mind as you execute steps. Tango technique can be summed up in three important body mechanics: spirals, weight change (or transference of weight around your axis), and pivots
Writing is writing, fiction or non
January 24, 2012 by
We are all weavers of our destiny. We are all reading our life as its plot, theme, and larger story unfolds before us. Or, we might say, taking in the woof and warp of the tapestry as it falls into place. Some of us are just more aware of the loom and the materials at hand.
Writing As Refuge – workshop overview
January 22, 2012 by
3. Process from the inside out: Brief chat on blocks & obstacles (acute & chronic) to writing process, real & perceived (or imagined). I’ll share a bit on my work to break through (using meditation, art therapy) and point to Tolstoy, Hemingway, Woolf, Styron, and other luminaries who all had it. Can you name writing’s Public Enemy No. 1? 4. From the outside in: We’ll read a couple of short pieces, one on the magic & mystique of writing (how it lets our hidden self/material float to the surface); and a second short essay that exemplifies how the deeply personal telegraphs or unpacks the universal.
How is writing like drawing?
January 19, 2012 by
Writing is drawing that’s been untied and retied. But he likes it as Drawing is writing that’s been untied and retied.I like both. Food for thought.
Tango is like a pulsar, like Venus, like Earth . . .
January 8, 2012 by
pulsars are stars that are wearing down, falling apart like worn out humans. Pulsars are “the remnants of once-mighty stars that emit beams of energy like cosmic lighthouses” and they are born when the core of a massive star stops producing energy. However, says StarDate, f they partner up with another pulsar they regain energy and get strong again. Just like in tango: “. . . if they have a companion star, they can spin up again by stealing some of its gas — a process that can make the pulsar spin hundreds of times a second.”
Kuan Yin’s Prayer for the Abuser
January 8, 2012 by
Read at SF Zen Center by Jana Drakka, Saturday Sangha lecture, Jan 7, 2012 Kuan Yin’s Prayer for the Abuser To those who withhold refuge, I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being. To those that cause a child to cry out, I grant you the freedom to express your own choked […]
Tango in Nairobi, Africa
January 7, 2012 by
Oh, how many people told me “You won’t find tango in Nairobi?” They didn’t know Mario Ruggier, a native of Malta and naturalized Canadian who came by way of Geneva two years ago to work in Nairobi in an engineering capacity for the U.N. also. (There are some 25,000 expats in Kenya.) Mario found that only ersatz tango—the ballroom stuff of stiff frame, bodies held apart, making like a tulip. So he began to teach the real thing, Argentine tango and now he has a good following. I was received with open arms and close embrace.
When is tango like a horse?
January 6, 2012 by
My favorite radio show, WAIT, WAIT DON’T TELL ME had a guest on who said, “You have to have strong legs, a good back, and stamina, but it’s all in the technique.” He could have been talking about tango. But he was a famous horse jockey.
Tango on Virgin Redwood
December 6, 2011 by
In the eight years of my tango addiction, I have tangoed on many types of floors and surfaces, indoors and outdoors, from Paris to Prague, New York to San Francisco, Buenos Aires to Montevideo. But I have never danced on virgin redwood. Such was the case this past weekend at the lovely 186-year-old Weller House Inn in Fort Bragg (Mendocino), California.
Writer’s Intensive Workshop
November 29, 2011 by
A full day (8 hours) of writing instruction in a very small group (limited to six participants).
You’ll learn everything from unlocking the writer within, the six key elements of winning creative non-fiction (or personal essays)to understanding the all-important narrative arc, how to shape it, how to cultivate your voice (or voices!) and the delicate art of self-editing. You will write, write, write, and leave inspired.
Writing Intensive Workshop, Beginners
November 29, 2011 by
A full day (8 hours) of writing instruction in a very small group (limited to six participants).
You’ll learn everything from unlocking the writer within, the six key elements of winning creative non-fiction (or personal essays)to understanding the all-important narrative arc, how to shape it, how to cultivate your voice (or voices!) and the delicate art of self-editing. You will write, write, write, and leave inspired.
Francis Ford Coppola on Writing
November 25, 2011 by
Coppola says, “I’m convinced there is a hormone in the blood of young writers that makes them hate their own writing.”
The one thing all of my students needed, no matter how skilled they were, was encouragement to keep on with their writing. Having come through the mill of self-doubt, self-criticism, and other self-destructive resistance, I knew how to give the honest support they needed. Writing can be lonely. It can be frightening. In fact, it brings up the whole prism of emotions. But there is nothing like the satisfaction of pulling out the story we know is in us. It is no less art, no less grand and magnificent than Michelangelo’s pulling his David from the block of cararra marble.
Truths, Half-Truths, & Truths-and-a-Halfs Writing Workshop
November 25, 2011 by
A writer of integrity never wants to have the footnote after her/his name that James Frey, who “fictionalized” his memoir, will forever have. The bald-faced lies may have earned him some dough, but you don’t want a liar’s fame. In the long run it won’t serve him.
However, there are much less egregious examples of bending, re-focusing, refracting, embroidering the truth. Is there ever a place for it in creative non-fiction? A number of respectable writers have said there is . . .
Your Passion is Your Prose Writing Workshop
November 25, 2011 by
As journalists we’re trained to be detached and objective in our reporting. However, there [Virginia Woolf] are many markets and outlets for the writer who can report on a topic objectively AND with passion. I jump-started a successful food-writing career (books and feature articles) after publishing one article in a free monthly pub. I built a successful travel writing career after publishing a story on a gourmet bike tour in France in a monthly newsletter. Eight years ago, I was bitten by the tango bug and . . .
Trick & Treat
October 30, 2011 by
You never know who you will run into in New Jersey. That’s Dancin’ Will with me. When we met on a transatlantic cruise from New York to Lisbon in 1998 I had no idea we both had Jersey Shore connections. You’ll get my drift. Aka Bill Rodgers, Will was a social host on that cruise and I was on a assignment for VIA Magazine. So I stepped all over his toes. He still remembers it. Buddy Morrow (then 80 years old then) and the Tommy Dorsey Big Band played on the high seas for us.
Captive Backpacker Suffers Helsinki Syndrome
October 29, 2011 by
I was taken prisoner for six nights and seven days by a Sierra Club Local from southern California. I am now suffering from Helsinki Syndrome. I fell in love with my captors.
They marched me up tall mountains, some more than 11,000 feet above sea level. They led me into an isolated northeast corner of Yosemite National Park. They did not need to blindfold me for the sun was blinding at those dizzying heights. My vision was filled with blue sky so deep it had the loft of velvet. Scintillating, light-reflecting lakes with diamonds bouncing off the surface finished (Finnish-ed )the job. For I was a captive audience. They didn’t need to lure me by appealing to other senses, say, like filling the air with a fragrance so divine – of pine and vanilla of wood baking in sun. But they did.
Tango Brujo
October 26, 2011 by
A spell comes over me as soon as I step into the warm envelope of tango’s embrace. No matter who my partner, no matter how skillful he is. I learned early on that tango is a language that defies our limited speech. Everyone who attempts tango eventually wanders through this portal into Big Space of Limitless Expression. Therein, each dancer finds her/his secret. This is what I mean by tango brujo.
My Tango Teaching Style: Street Tango
October 26, 2011 by
” . . . And tango was born anew in my body each time with each partner. It was exhilarating to just let it happen, not knowing, not worrying, each time I entered the dance. And becoming so eager to dance with every man sitting on the men’s side of the dance hall. My mind was torn down. My whole body was shaped and re-formed by this experience.”