Day of tango at the Copa

The December 1994 issue of the Argentine tango magazine El Firulete reported the first celebration of the Day of Tango outside Buenos Aires. Billed as the International Day of Tango, the event took place in Fremont, California at a place called La Cueva. Representatives of the Bay Area Tango Association, and event executive producer and publisher of El Firulete Alberto Paz, took turns to read from various essays about the lives of Carlos Gardel and Julio de Caro.

December 11 has been the Dia Nacional del Tango in Argentina since 1977 when it was decreed as such in commemoration of the birth dates of the creators of the voice and music of tango, Carlos Gardel and Julio De Caro, respectively. The person behind the efforts to establish a National Day of Tango was Ben Molar, a poet, editor, maker of stars and pop stars and patron of the cultural life of Buenos Aires (named distinguished citizen of the city), head of the Academy Porteña of Lunfardo and the Academia Nacional del Tango.This year, the Academy of Tango – Texas, an Austin-based non-profit, celebrates the first official “Day of Tango” (Dia del Tango) festival with live performances by area tango instructors, professional performers, poets and musicians.

The Mayor of Austin, Lee Leffingwell, recently issued a Proclamation designating December 11th as the Day of Tango, and the State of Texas Governor’s office has also recognized this date as a momentous event. With the approval of La Academia Nacional del Tango de la Republica Argentina, The Academy of Tango-Texas is proud to bring this momentous celebration to Austin!

Downtown Austin

The Copa Bar and Grill is located in the heart of downtown Austin in a very old building, offering the sights, sounds and flavors of Latin America. It features a diverse lineup of live music, and on Tuesday nights it is the home of Always Tango weekly milonga.

As we arrived, we were directed to the second floor where they had set up the room for vendors (shoes, dresses,and books) and a food table catered by Buenos Aires Cafe.
Shortly thereafter we came down to the ground floor salon where the festivities took place.

The first hour was devoted to introductions, readings on the history of tango, poetry and an Argentine folk group dance in typical native attires.
During the second hour, dedicated to the Golden Era, hosts Alicia and Juan Carlos took turns to dance with various members of the community followed by a group performance by students of Daniela Arcuri.
Gifted musician Glover played several tango classics on the piano and a short segment of open social dance followed.
At the 3 o’clock hour, a piano performance by Renee Casarsa took the audience through a quick trip back in time with compositions like El choclo and El entrerriano to Piazzolla’s Verano porteño.
Then it was time for the Evolutionary tango performances by several hot couples that included Monica and Gustavo, Julia and Jerry, and ourselves.

Participants Certificate presentation

The evening continued with more poetry reading, singing, and musical performances followed by Neo Tango performances (whatever that is because it all looked like So You Can Dance meet Forever tango) highlighted by Judy Foster, former disciple from San Antonio, and talented Daniela Arcuri. A final number featuring heavily tattooed dancers didn’t seem to meet the climatic expectations for a fair ending to an incredible day, but it got the mostly local audience whistling and cheering.

Happy to have been there

Valorie and Alberto dance to Indio manso with the Carlos Di Sarli orchestra

The way some people act can make us all proud to be in the tango, or truly ashamed of that…

About a month after I suffered a cardiac arrest on the way to customs at the Calgary airport, the fog that had followed the initial total darkness in my brain, began to dissipate. The panic of falling asleep for fear of not waking up gradually faded away. Physically there was no residual damage whatsoever, but the emotional scars from the incident have changed the way I deal with unpleasant people.

One day I ran into an exchange between two women on our local tango list. One had forwarded a series of long posts describing in tabloid like detail the confidential information Valorie had been sharing during the ordeal, including very intimate family information regarding my status. The other’s one line response was This girl writes beautifully, and then she went on writing that she had forgotten something she wanted to gossip about.

This girl was Sandra Miller. She is the host I never got to meet in person.

According to her partner Ralph Bennetsen, she is a former Public Relations executive he took under his wing and helped to found the Epicurean Tango Society early in 2010. I know, because I spent almost a year of weekly telephone calls mentoring, advising, and teaching her how to be an honest promoter and a successful member of an established tango community. During that time, I sent her CDs with music for her milongas, Mardi Gras masks, and even Chicory Coffee. Such was the relationship we had developed. It seemed the right thing to do, to share the knowledge and to support a total neophyte trying to fit into an existing community. We have done many times over the years, and I don’t regret doing that with her.

Almost a month passed after my return from Calgary, when I realized that I had not heard from Sandra and Ralph. I wrote expressing my gratitude to both of them for being there to support and comfort Valorie and my daughter, and hoping that they had understood that for Valorie and Gina, the person lying on a hospital bed was a husband and a father, and that their only concern in mind was to make sure he received the right medical treatment and that he could return home safely.

I was also very happy that they had resumed their activities with success, and wished them both a very special Merry Christmas and a Happy and Very Prosperous New Year.

I wrote to Sandra and Ralph a number of times in the span of two months. They have 66 copies of our Gotta Tango books that we had shipped to Calgary to sell there, as per her request, along with a couple of dozens of Mardi Gras masks Sandra planned to sell at the Epicurean Tango Society‘s Mardi Gras party in March 2011. We wanted to a figure out a way to dispose of our books.

It has been been four and a half months, and we have not heard or read a word from either one of them. I asked for ideas and suggestions to many people I trust. I was shell shocked by the responses! Here is a sample.

– Sorry because she took a traumatic event in your life and used it to promote herself in tango. How pathetic is that? It hurts me too much to see people like Sandra use tango so selfishly to promote themselves.

– Whatever Sandra was to you before you went to Calgary, she obviously isn’t a friend to you now…

– I guess you can never tell about people by appearances. Sorry to hear that you’re having to deal with this kind of person.

– This lady sounded like a piece of work from the start. Asking Valorie to do a class while you were in intensive care? She is crazy. It sounds like you are not going to get your books back… And, tough if the post upsets her. She was your friend. She’s acting like SHE got screwed. Like you guys just didn’t keep your commitment because of some silly reason. Sorry that you have to deal with people like that.

– Unbelievable…..she was using your tragedy to gain “friends” for marketing purposes. She’s gone from my friends list. Sorry this happened to you 😦

– I did find it ‘weird’ that after your misfortune she asked to be my ‘friend’ on fb. I thought a friend of yours would be a friend of mine. I will ‘unfriend’ her immediately.

I’m very disappointed because I trusted and believed that these two were honest, ethical and decent people. I can’t figure out the reason for their behavior, what’s in their minds, or why they’ve chosen to act in such an uncivilized manner.

The odyssey tested my family’s resilience and determination in making sure I had the proper care, and that my return home was safely planned. I know that their focus on the real crisis is what saved my life. There is no doubt that they did the right thing.

I’m grateful for having lived to talk about it, and for getting to see what life might have been if I hadn’t come back.

So, the time has come to bring closure to this unfortunate chapter. Sandra Miller had the choice of acting like decent, honest, and responsible adults do. Both her and Ralph seem to have chosen to act the ways dishonest people do, and that makes me sad and sorry. We are writing off 66 books that we sell for $25. each, and the cost of two dozen Mardi Gras masks. I would have preferred to tell them to keep them for all their troubles. Instead, we feel our trust violated, and our property stolen.

The way some people act can make us all proud to be in the tango. This girl writes beautifully, but her dishonesty and lack of ethics are a real shame and she doesn’t deserve to be part of the tango world we live in.

Not long ago, tango in the US was one happily dysfunctional family. We were young and wild and we loved to visit all our brothers, sisters, and cousins at a time when tango traveling was not yet an option for the grand majority. We had begun the life of the traveling teachers in 1996 going up and down the state of California.

In 1998, some tango in-laws had opened the only salon in the Midwest devoted exclusively to the promotion and preservation of the Argentine tango. A series of life circumstances led them to work very hard to renovate and decorate a 4,000 sq ft studio on a property where an A&P supermarket once existed, before a laser tag game room, and a martial arts studio did business at the premises.

One balmy Chicago night, precisely Saturday, June 6, 1998 we culminated a week long series of workshops with a memorable tango party at Tango nada mas. As weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, the family grew apart, feuds developed, and people went their separate ways creating their own micro communities, shoving the welcome signs in the attic of oblivion.

As time went by, many memories vanished, including the overwhelming elegance of Tango Nada Mas, the carefully selected tango music, and the way we felt for these members of our tango family for whom we had the most sincere affection and friendship making their happiness ours.

Then, just the other day, looking for something else, it was such a enormous surprise to find a videotape containing some great memories of our Chicago visit that we had long forgotten, but after watching it, we’re almost sure that Chicago will never forget… Just in case, here is reminder.

A Night Chicago Will Never forget video

It seems that 2006 was a very busy year for us, according to a recently found CD with a series of videos of performance at various locations. Somehow the memory of these presentations had been erased from the cognitive mind, much like the good times during the kids growing years vanish after they start acting like jackasses forgetting everything they’ve been taught. Or at least, that’s what one thinks simmering in a latent state of resentment

There is no doubt that we were happy to walk into a ballroom function, and step onto the dance floor to show “two styles of argentine.” The beige suit was acquired in Buenos Aires during our Katrina exile, and I recently took it to the tailor for a two size shrinking alteration.

But what really strikes me as I watched the performances, is the appreciative reaction from the audience to even the simplest of moves improvised as we go through the motions of a tango and a vals cruzado. Valorie tells me that ballroom people are taught and encouraged to applaud, cheer and show their appreciation to a performing couple. Maybe you’d like to watch…

Dancing in front of an appreciative ballroom audience at a Senior Center on July 22, 2006

By guest writer Kwana Minatee-Jackson

This weekend I had a real treat. The world of blogging is so odd. You have these strange relationships based on comments of snippets of a life a person felt free enough to share. I mean who knows how truthful or authentic the person on the other end of the computer is being? Are they who they portray themselves to be? It could all be smoke and mirrors and you could finally meet a person that you have a little blog crush on and it could be like meeting a star that you’ve seen in the movies and you’re like, “crap, they were much taller on screen.”Well folks, I’m happy to say I got to meet one, well two, of my blog crushes this weekend when my buddy Patricia (PVE) had Valorie, The Visual Vamp and her sweet love Alberto from New Orleans over for lunch.

I couldn’t wait to grab the DH and run up the hill to see them. First off the DH did think I was a little cra-zy. You’re meeting another blogger from where? Well not five minutes into our meeting he was just as taken as I was by Valorie and Alberto. They are two of the loveliest, sweet, funny and genuine people you’d ever want to meet.

And they tangoed for us!!! So beautiful. It’s now on my list.

Sunday afternoon was a great day. Thanks for a great lunch, Patricia. And it was a good feeling for me to come out from behind the computer myself and to meet someone who instantly felt like a friend and who was just what she presented herself to be…really real and a good vamp.

Kwana, Valorie and Patricia

For another lovely blogpost about Valorie and Alberto outing to Hastings-on-the-Hudson from host Patricia, please click HERE

It’s pretty amazing to think that one week ago I had reluctantly agreed to have an angiogram, knowing quite well after a couple of years of denial what the photos would show. The “test” would be immediately followed by an actual angioplasty, which consists of reaching the blocked arteries with a catheter and craftily opening them up with a tiny balloon followed by the installation of a wire mesh (stent) that prevent the artery walls from collapsing again.As we took the first spins last night at the milonga, I definitely could tell the difference of feeling my heart receiving and pumping unrestricted flows of blood, and as the night progressed happiness trumped fatigue while our attention focused on next day’s announced Night of the milongueros.

As we prepared for our brown bag lunch lecture Valorie negotiated with the organizers our participation in the exhibition where local milongueros would be featured. As a returning milonguero thirteen years later, we were thrilled to do an exhibition. We wonder what the doctor would say if he new what I was doing way too soon! But, paraphrasing the immortal words of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Cholo character in Naked Tango, “Alberto only lives because of his tango.”

Alberto and Valorie dance to Recuerdo at the Tango Fantasy in Miami Beach

Once upon a time, thirteen years ago to be precise, we landed in Miami International after having spent over a month in Buenos Aires being born again tangueros. We had been invited to the First Miami Tango Congress being held at the Ramada Inn Deauville in Miami Beach. On another plane flying the same route and almost at the same Osvaldo Zotto and his new partner Lorena Ermocida arrived at the same time. Just a few nights before, we had shared with them the emotional presentation of their new partnership at Almagro, and witnessed the standing room only applause with which the audience sent them off on the first of their many tours around the world.This was the first time I had been to Miami, and I thought that life couldn’t get any better, little did I know what laid ahead for us, but I digress…

Up and coming new kids in the tango scene

The entire week was a full of people, music, shows, and lots of dancing. We seldom left the building and we saw the pool and the beach from the large windows of the hotel.

That was a time when we all were united by an innocent love of the tango and everything and everyone that represented any aspect of it. Above all, our visibility as publishers of El Firulete and hosts for upcoming stars in the San Francisoc Bay Area gave us the opportunity to enjoy the company of an entire new generation of teachers and promoters.

A vocation to lead the way… Can you recognize Osvaldo Zotto, Amy Calio and Lorena Ermocida?

As the day of of our return trip to Miami thirteen years after the first tango congress, the main concern was how I would fare a trip five days after having undergone angioplasty and still working on a low blood count condition. Truthfully I felt some anxiety ready to ambush me as we walked through the airport, and as much as I tried, nothing on the trip to the hotel look familiar, not even the hotel when we arrived. I was convinced that thirteen years ago we had been at another place because I couldn’t recognize anything around the hotel, and the hotel itself.

It was this morning that our gracious hostess Lydia reminded us about our first time here at this hotel. Suddenly layers of memory began to peel off until it was clear that the feeling of deja vu that was haunting me, had a reason to be. We were living the past all over again. Progress has taken over the area, and the neighborhood is a boiling pot of immigrants and locals with a significant presence of Argentines and authentic Argentine food. Holy empanadas Robin, at times it felt (particularly when it came to grab a bite to eat) that we had stepped on any typical Buenos Aires neighborhood.

First impressions, thirteen years later in Miami Beach for a great festival

There was a time when sharing the details of every teaching experience out of town was part of the pleasure of savoring the transformation and joy we brought to so many lives over a period of three or four days. As a matter of fact, we began to do the sharing in our publication El Firulete as early as the December 1997 issue. Over the years, the monthly account of our teaching experiences took the form of a hard copy blog before blogs existed. A few years ago the 28 installments were transported to blog format and they reside now under the name of Tango Our Dance. The series was our calling card for a long time, and it was actually pivotal in attracting the attention of the Acquisitions Editor of Human Kinetics and their commissioning of the book Gotta Tango to us.Over the years we were surprised to hear vocabulary, definitions and descriptions originally written in the Tango Our Dance series become part of the tango lexicon used in discussion groups and by an entire new generation of traveling teachers. Occasionally, there is a message out of the blue that compensates from the loneliness of an unknown cyberspace and the need for an occasional pat in the back for the years we have spent educating the future teachers and dancers in North America since 1996.

“Really, It’s me who needs to thank you 🙂 When I first devoured “Tango, Our Dance” a decade ago, it made so much sense, it felt like a true revelation. I believe I still enjoy the benefits of taking the wisdom you so generously shared to heart, right from the beginning when I started to dance. Lucky me! And of course my heartfelt thanks extend to La Mariposa too.” – Suzanne E., Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

During those early years there was also a curious habit of making teaching more important than dancing. We were all in the embryonic stages of salon tango dancing and every opportunity to dance was welcomed with open arms. Some like us had the fortune of being exposed to the best exponents of the Argentine tango dance, during the 96 weeks run of Forever Tango in the San Francisco Bay Area. In our case, pure luck made our destinies cross paths with Esther, Pablo and Marisa Pugliese early in 1996, and because of them, we took our first trip to Buenos Aires in 1997 to meet the father, Mingo. That was the turning point in our lives, and the beginning of the incredible ride we have been on ever since.

But there were those who having completed a half a dozen tango lessons, put their former ballroom, salsa, what have you experience to test, and began teaching as well. You knew that they were teaching because in every conversation on just about any subject, they would manage to include several variations of “we were teaching” as part of whatever else was happening in their lives. Eventually I ended up admiring the persistence of those people, and the way they made themselves believe that they were actually tango teachers. Not a single one is around these days.

The other thing that got to be annoying were certain pros who counted on us to employ them organizing workshops, inviting them to our festivals, etc., etc. We began to find out that they would take due notice of our written chronicles about people and places where we had been, and proceeded to follow our trail soliciting business for themselves. Of course there was nothing wrong with that, except that coming to our home, grabbing a copy of El Firulete and closing the bathroom door in order to write down the details of places and contacts in secrecy, when they could have had the information for the asking, was the beginning of the end of our career as promoters of ungrateful and immature show dancers without a show to dance in.

The years have passed faster than I care to acknowledge. Mind blowing events have left their imprint in our lives, the terrorist attack in 2001, hurricane Katrina in 2005, a carotid endarterectomy in 2008.

We have learned to take care of each other and be protective of each other. As much as I hate the idea that there are so many things we may not have a chance to do, or places we may not get to see, we treasure unexpected experiences such as an invitation to teach musicians of the Baltimore Symphony how to dance tango. In 12 hours, over a three day weekend. That’s what we did recently, flying out on a Friday, teaching four hours from 10 am Saturday and Sunday, and from 9 am on Monday. Then flying back on Tuesday.

On the way back to the bed and breakfast on Mt. Vernon, after we were done Monday afternoon, we couldn’t stop marveling at the dedication, stamina, and above all the determination of a group of talented musicians to take instruction and put it into practice. It was as usual the beginning of a report to the report where we tell the world how great teachers we were again, how we… how they… but something unexpected happened.

As we went through the review day by day and people by people, one of us said, “This one is just for us to remember”

There was no New Orleans flag being raised, and no band to play the Saints, but the tears and the emotion were real when Sid Grant announced that couple number 20 were the 2009 US Salon Tango champions. The capacity crowd at the Stepping Out studios in Manhattan exploded in loud cheers and applause and the organizers and remaining finalists surrounded the winners in a sea of hugs and congratulations. Couple number 20 locked eyes and shared an emotional moment of pleasurable intimacy. We had never been so proud of each other. People we’ve never seen before seemed to be beaming with pride and joy.

True to form, we took the second place couple to dinner and at 4 in the morning we walked into our Brooklyn host home and left the First Place Cup on the kitchen counter and went to sleep. When we got up late the next day, we were treated to the first honest, sincere and overwhelming display of joy and admiration for what we had accomplished. This was coming from the other half of our set of friends and acquaintances, what some call the non tango friends and others consider a touch of reality.

The trip to New York in July was planned around three purposes. Valorie‘s birthday, Valorie‘s meeting with a publisher, and my secret desire to put our lifelong devotion to the tango out in the open for everyone to see, judge and criticize. Up until the moment our number was called in the semifinals, Valorie had humored me, from secretly “training” while dancing the full length of a huge dance floor in New Orleans, to showing off to friends on the outdoor deck of a magnificent estate in a remote corner of the hamlet of Kerhonkson in Ulster County, and on to the treacherous salons of Manhattan. She might not realize how good she is, or how I was betting on that to handicap and craft a come from behind victory. The much touted US championship was almost a family affair rudely dissed by the popes of New York tango who seem to have a high opinion of their dancing as long as they are not asked to put it on the line for others to judge. While the mostly local participants tried to outdo each other to show us out of towners a thing or two about dancing in the big city, we read the rules of the competition, and our winning strategy was to be the best at complying with them in every aspect.

The last few days of our New York trip we walked the city with one foot on the tango sidewalk and the other on the sidewalk where our friends in the publishing, interior design and financial world live their power point driven lives. Our friends from a pre-tango time, all immensely successful in their endeavors, treated us to delicious meals in their sumptuous mansions and made us feel so important in front of their friends that we began to like the celebrity treatment. In contrast, our best tango friend and his sidekick dutch treated us to a diner before running out like most New Yorkers do to pretend that they have something important to do.

At one milonga during a miserable rainy evening we were asked to dance after having paid the cost of admission and introduced as simple dancers. Before and after the dance, we were treated to a litany of complains from one of the organizers of the championship. We heard that people had complained about people who knew how to dance entering the competition, that it wasn’t fair to have an all Argentine professional panel of judges, and that very likely next year they’ll have American judges because the talkative senior citizen lady had perennially placed second during her ice skating days. What?? STFU.

At another milonga, the host we’ve known for years barely said hello. That evening we had the first of many puzzling acts of secrecy that followed us into our home city. People coming to the table and whispering things like, You opened a completely new side of tango for us! It was a pleasure to meet both of you! or, My teacher, my friend and I were impressed the way you dance. At home, people behaved much in the same way one approaches somebody who has had an irreparable loss. A hug, a faint Congratulations and a kiss. This in a city where people jump into spontaneous second line dancing when a crawfish makes it across the highway without being squashed. To be fair, a former disciple turned teacher and promoter managed to write in his newsletter that New Orleanians tangueros should be very proud of our beloved teachers becoming the US salon Tango champions . Later, he invited us to dance at a milonga he was playing the music for.

When it came time to crack the nuts, an eclectic number of our students and friends, plus a couple of strangers sponsored us with real money, and we went to Buenos Aires. Eventually we began to have a really great time being a part of the whole world championship there. We have our fans, both young and old. The young ones were fascinated by us. The old ones respected us. Valorie thinks that they should surround the stage with panels so the audience only see bodies from the shoulders down, showing the legs and feet of the dancers and not their  faces. Our lower half looks much younger, she says, adding that the government of Buenos Aires who funds this event is trying to brand tango. Like any advertiser, they want young, attractive faces as the poster children for the tango. They are packaging it for glamor now, trying to elevate the tango from the neighborhood social club image of the working middle classes.

Regardless, we had a blast. Valorie wore a classy black and white outfit both days, red shoes on the second day. I wore light striped trousers, white shirt with a tan tie one day, a golden tie the next. Black jacket. Red socks ala Fred Astaire, and my lucky burgundy and black shoes. We looked spiffy if I may say so. Our outfits really stood out as different, not trashy, and not corny and we were very comfortable in them too. Our look was one of classic salon dancers in the 1940’s. The first day we danced well, but the second day was even better. We worked the simulated dance floor on the stage very well. The music was great on both days. People gave us our fair share of applause, and when we came out the stage door, a whole flock of strangers congratulated us. Later we came to the realization that the strategy of following the rules to the letter in the cradle of tango that worked so well in New York, flew in the face of the alleged desire of the government to use fancy lipstick on the lips of… well you know what I mean, but…

I found out to my chagrin that the anxiety and nervousness of actually dancing on command in front of people resulted in chest pains as we took the stage on both days. It  must have been scary for Valorie fearing I might die me in her arms but she stayed in form cool as a cucumber trying not to shake in her Comme il fauts. She was my rock and I know she wanted me to have this moment, and for us to have it as the devoted tango couple we are, having dedicated our lives to preserving and fostering the tango for all these years, and doing this, seemed fitting. What’s amazing is that we were troupers and acted our parts very well, because no one saw the distress we felt sometimes. They said we looked like we were having a great time on stage (and we were!).

For us, we have already accomplished so much to be proud of and happy for but we want to go back in 2010 – thinner and healthier – we feel it is important that as mature dancers we don’t give up and keep showing our stuff. We made a statement in the preliminaries, and inspired many people. We would do it again, because we had a blast. And even though the public party line is that these championships are “fixed” and are less relevant than crawfish crossing the road unharmed, we garnered a lot of admiration and respect for even stepping up. It takes a lot of guts to show your stuff. And we are still the US champions, a fact that was proudly acknowledged by everyone we met in Buenos Aires. People were very proud of us, and we are very proud of ourselves for taking on this challenge. Oh, when the saints, oh when the saints go marching in…

Today the Festival and Mundial de Tango came to an end with a great closing milonga at the Harrods building in downtown Buenos Aires. As milongas go, we expected people to attend and the live orchestra to thrill the crowd that would come to listen and those who came to dance. The dancing exploded into the street, and Calle Florida become another dance floor.

Well, there he was Anibal Gomez recreating the sounds of the Orquesta Caracteristica Feliciano Brunelli and the place was packed wall to wall. The characteristic orchestra in the 40’s and 50’s was like a Lawrence Welk-like all around orchestra that played fox trots, polkas, cumbias, valses, pasodobles, and milonga among many other popular rhythms favorites at the time. The sound of the accordion was predominant and the rhythm section was supported by guitar, bass, and drums.

But the icing on the cake was the Los Reyes del Tango Orchestra alternating sets with the Caracteristica for an incredible evening full of spontaneous dancing in every available space of the old mega store of the fifties.

A beautiful aerial view of one of the dance floors inside the Harrods building. People were dancing, people were watching, everyone was sharing a state of unadulterated enjoyment on an unforgettable hot Sunday evening in the Buenos Aires winter.

Dancing with the Anibal Gomez Orquesta Caracteristica

Dancing with Los Reyes del Tango

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