I had my first television appearance for Tango, an Argentine Love Story this morning on AM Northwest in Portland (KATU/ABC), channel 2 there. It was a lot of fun. Dave Anderson is a stand-up comedian, so it was all very lighthearted. I gave him an on-the-spot lesson . . . .
Tango Art, Heriard Cimino Gallery
October 15, 2008 by
These gallery images are of a May 2003 exhibition held at New Orleans’s highly revered Heriard-Cimino Gallery, a noteworthy survivor of Hurricane Katrina. The works belong to artists Rosario Marquardt and Roberto Behar. Please visit the Heriard-Cimino Gallery site for more details on these and many highly acclaimed artists.
I’m in the Red Room
September 12, 2008 by
I’m proud to announce that I’ve been accepted as a Red Room Author at the Web site of that name. I’ll be in the same Room with such luminaries as Barak Obama, Maya Angelou, Salman Rushdie, and my much-esteemed former writing coach, Ericka Lutz, not to mention many writers like myself, who are not widely known. Yet. What an honor. The site’s hosts accepted me over night—waiving the usual two-week period of approval. How affirming is that!
Happiness is a Warm . . . Book Review
September 6, 2008 by
Cusumano, Camille. Tango: An Argentine Love Story. Seal, dist. by Publishers Group West. Oct. 2008. c.272p. ISBN 978-1-58005-250-4. pap. $15.95. DANCE Tango has been the subject of several recent books, from Marina Palmer’s Kiss and Tango to Irene D. Thomas and Larry M. Sawyer’s The Temptation To Tango to Robert Farris Thompson’s Tango: The Art History of Love. Cookbook author and novelist Cusumano, as her web site (www.camillecusumano.com) declares, “is a writer who dances tango,” and here she recounts her journey toward self-awareness set in the context of an extraordinary year spent in Buenos Aires.
Tango Links
August 11, 2008 by
No, it’s not a story about a sensual golf course . . . just a list of tango-related links I think are useful to any tango aficionado.
My Kind Tanguero
August 6, 2008 by
The earth stood still and I lowered my gaze. The heavens opened up and angels’ trumpets backed up the bandoneons of the tango music playing. Behold, before me, a true bodhisattva—one of those enlightened beings who volunteer to stay behind and help others reach liberation before they will enter Nirvana.
His kindness and selflessness were rare in the milonga. Instead of scaring away newbies, which happens frequently, he was treating them with compassion. Not with the haughtiness of those jaded ones who think they have the steps down and you will make them look bad if you don’t match their level.
Tango-dancing Buddhist Falls from Grace
June 27, 2008 by
. . . and sees the Light It was fall in Buenos Aires, which is spring in the States. Late one morning, light poured through my two open terraces into my eighth-floor Recoleta apartment. It was the soft but vibrant autumnal light that always arouses such nostalgia in me. So, before setting to work at […]
Why Tango is Not Macho
June 24, 2008 by
Last century, in the early ’70s when I first went to college and began to learn about the inequalities between men and women, I had the audacity to come home and at gatherings of my traditional patriarchal family, share my raised consciousness.
The changes I thought the world needed went over like a lead pizza. I took a lot of ribbing for years. But what my brothers, uncles, and, most especially, my father, did not realize was that I was talking about men’s liberation, not women’s.
Why Tango is Yoga
June 23, 2008 by
“Lo que a muchos averguenza, a otros hacer gozar.” “What shames many, gives joy to others.” -Caption to a tiled mural that features tango dancers, Retiro subway station, Buenos Aires, Argentina Following is an excerpt from Chapter 8. Falling Down and Getting Back Up Again, in my travel memoir, Tango, an Argentine Love Story (Seal […]
Images: Buenos Aires, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile
June 19, 2008 by
Tree Creature in my Palermo Park, Buenos Aires, on a lazy Sunday. Side street in Historic Colonia, Uruguay. Gaucho Museum in San Antonio de Areco. M My sister, Grace, in front of El Balcon Colonial, San Antonio de Areco Interior of the little Recoleta church (Nuestra Senora de Pilar) where I take refuge when my Zen […]
Tango is Zen
June 19, 2008 by
Excerpt from Tango an Argentine Love Story (Seal Press). “Stay close and do nothing or you might miss it.” Tenshin Reb Anderson, Zen monk, speaking on enlightenment Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2006 . . . Tango’s spell for me was gradual, not sudden, but when it hit home, it moved into my life like a long […]
Tango at Candlestick Park, with Libertango
June 18, 2008 by
I’m standing left of Christy Cote (her right) or the fifth face from the left (if you don’t know Christy). We performed during halftime at a 49ers game in September, 2005, at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park (known by many ridiculous other names now–thanks to corporate brainwashing). It was in celebration of Hispanic culture and there […]
Viva zapatos!
June 5, 2008 by
Just fooling around–this is not the whole collection. Tango shoe fetish -click here for a video
Tango is Yoga
February 1, 2008 by
Appeared in the December 2006 issue of dancenotes Yoga’s secret ingredient for partner dancers By Camille Cusumano If you’ve ever felt that dancing tango requires the stamina of a martial artist, then you’re ready for Carmen Iglesias. A yoga teacher and tango dancer, Carmen has developed a program that supports the special demands of Argentine […]
Tango Under the Stars
December 12, 2007 by
Buenos Aires’s first annual tango in the streets took place Saturday, December 8, 2007, on Avenida de Mayo. Live orchestras played and live people danced. The event was a success. Two days later on the same street, Argentina’s first elected “Presidenta,” Christina Ferdinand Kirschner, took office from her husband, Nestor Kirschner. Some of these photos […]
Savoring Patagonia
September 13, 2007 by
Dark peaks, many still cloaked in snow, rag the horizon. Besides the druid-like towers, a formation called the Cuernos del Paine rises above Lago Pehoé, one of many lakes we passed, whose waters seem to come in three shades—emerald, aquamarine, and sapphire. When the relentless wind blows, it’s a sight to see hundreds of frothy white caps stand up and dance on their rippling waters. wild hares browsing, and horses running loose from a nearby estancia. Milky Way achingly close. The sky is so dense with stars,
Yoga’s secret ingredient for tango and other partner dancers
August 7, 2007 by
If you’ve ever felt that dancing with a partner requires the stamina of a martial artist, then you’re ready for Carmen Iglesias. A yoga teacher and tango dancer, Carmen has developed a program that supports the special demands of Argentine tango-and, in essence, of all partner dancing. All ballroom dances require that the leader and […]
Around the world on a dance floor
January 19, 2006 by
I plan a trip to Paris, a city I love. It’s not the Louvre or the Left Bank, though, that draws me back this time, but a dance. I shoot off an e-mail to tango teacher Jean-Sébastien Rampazzi and hold my breath until he replies: “Yes, I can see you for a private lesson at la Casa del Tango.”