A new round of classes will be continuing Wednesday nights from July 8th at St Theodore’s Church Hall in Toorak Gardens. Your class teachers will be in contact soon with the details. If you aren’t enrolled in our Wednesday Intermediate and Advanced classes and would like to join up, please let Irene know straight away.

Please note that a new series of classes for Intermediate and Advanced dancers will begin Wednesday 20th May. They will be in the evening starting with Intermediate at 6.30pm (Kellie and Andrew), Intermediate at 7.30pm (Kellie and Mark) and Advanced at 8.30pm (Kellie and Mark).

These upcoming classes will focus on some new and interesting steps, revise some ideas from your previous classes, and of course take some time to revisit the techniques covered by the recent workshops by Fabrizio and Celi.

To help us maintain balance across all classes, please contact Irene to make sure you are enrolled in the class if you haven’t already confirmed with your class teachers.

Fabrizio made a huge impact in his last tour of Adelaide nearly two years ago in May 2007, where he focused on close embrace salon dancing principals and fundamentals. He is touring New Zealand and Australia again and Siempre Tango is proud to offer workshops with Fabrizio and partner Celi Arias this May. Five different workshops will be held from the 10th to 15th May 2009 and these are highly recommended to tango dancers of all levels.

As the events are being held during the week, we have had to hold the classes at different venues.

MONDAY Eastwood Community Centre
95 Glen Osmond Road, Eastwood
(map | streetview)

• Monday 11th May 7.30-9pm Close Embrace VS Open Embrace (All Levels) ($25 person)
• Monday 11th May 9-10.30pm Musicality According to Fabrizio (All Levels) ($25 person)

WEDNESDAY St Theodore’s Church Hall
Corner of Prescott Terrace & Swaine Ave, Toorak Gardens
(map | streetview).

• Wednesday 13th May 7-8.30pm Accelerate your Tango (BEGINNERS’ CLASS) ($20 person)
• Wednesday 13th May 8.30-10pm Milonga con Traspie (All Levels) ($25 person)

THURSDAY North Adelaide Community Centre
176 Tynte Street, North Adelaide
(map | streetview)

• Thursday 14th May 7-8.30pm Soltadas (Int/Adv) ($25 person)
• Thursday 14th May 8.30-11.30pm MILONGA with Performance ($15 if you haven’t enrolled in workshop / $10 if you have enrolled)

Going by the amount of interest from people I’ve spoken with, my advice is to make sure you get in quick to guarantee a place in the classes of your choice.

Siempre Tango is returning to the Dom Polski Centre (232 Angas Street, Adelaide | map), Saturday March 28th. The evening begins at 8pm and runs through until midnight.

In November last year, Siempre Tango organised a visit to Adelaide by Sebastian Achaval & Roxana Suarez who showed everyone how beautiful traditional tango can be. Sebastian made a comment on the night of their performance at the Dom Polski Centre (see below), that the atmosphere reminded him of the feel of milongas in the Buenos Aires suburbs.

Come along this Saturday night from 8pm to midnight, enjoy the music, the dancing and discover what Sebastian meant.

I know we said the last event was the last one, but due to popular demand Siempre Tango brings you the ultimate outdoor Rotunda event at Elder Park.

Come along Saturday, March 14 from 8pm to 11pm to get in the spirit of the festival season and dance Argentine Tango in the beautiful surrounds of Elder Park and the Torrens River. Bring your dance shoes (rough surface friendly), picnic blanket or chairs and a basket of nibbles and drinks.

This event is FREE for everyone including members of the public. Hope to see you there.

Pugliese’s music has a strong rhythmic beat and he is regarded as a pioneer in the use of syncopation and counterpoint and influenced Horacio Salgán (1916- ) and Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992). La Yumba (meaning dance in Creole Ki-Kongo), Negracha (Black Woman) and Malandraca (little rascal) are amongst his most famous pieces. In the 1940s La Yumba became recognised as an anthem for his orchestra.

In the 1920s he wrote Recuerdo (Fond Memory), one of his most successful early pieces and dedicated to the people with whom he played pool and drank in cafes. The lyrics are by the poet Eduardo Moreno (1906-1997). Pugliese started playing professionally at the age of 15 in the Café de la Chancha. For a short time, in his early life, Pugliese played in a band with Francisca “Paquita” Bernardo (1900-1925), the first female bandoneonist in tango.

Throughout the years Pugliese’s orchestra was banned from being broadcast as a means of political censorship due to his espoused communist leanings. To alert the dance hall when Pugliese was arrested, a red carnation or rose was placed on Pugliese’s piano by the band members as a ‘symbol of absence’ (simbolo de ausencia). He was a member of the Argentine Communist Party for most of his life, and he ran his band as a cooperative with equal pay cuts for all players. He was jailed by General Farrell (1887-1980), and Juan Perón (1895-1974) for 6 months in 1955 and also by the military regime that ousted Peron. (In 1983 there was a return of democracy).

Pugliese’s statue is on the corner of Corrientes and Scalabrini in Buenos Aires and his tomb, in Chacarita, often has red carnations on it.

Information source:

Thompson, Robert Farris. 2005. Tango: the art history of love. United States: Vintage Books. P200-203

and

TodoTango

…about Carlos Estevez, a tango dancer & one of the first writers of tango

Carlos Alberto Estevez, a bank clerk and tango dancer, wrote about tango, ‘its prowess and its defiance,… for the in-house journal of his bank, Banco Europa para America Latina (BEAL)’. These articles helped place tango in its historical context.

Estevez was nicknamed ‘Petroleo’ (gasoline) either because his famous spins reminded people of ‘the whirling pinwheel in the glass dome of the 1940s gas pumps’ or ‘his beverage of choice was cheap red wine, called petroleo in lunfardo because of its dark colour’.

NB: Lunfardo is an argot (ie a secret language and means ‘slang’ in French, Spanish & Catalan). It was developed at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century by people from the various less wealthy socio-economic groups in and around Buenos Aires and Montevideo possibly to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations.

Information source:
Thompson, Robert Farris. 2005. Tango: the art history of love. United States: Vintage Books. P 247-249.
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunfardo and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argot

Tango parody

The ‘hard’ (duro) style of tango, stiff arms, faces side by side, was seen in Paris before World War 1. This was parodied in films such as Some Like It Hot (1959), Last Tango in Paris (1972), and Soldier of Orange (1978).

Juan Carlos Copes (1931- ), the first person to choreograph Argentine tango for professional dancers on the stage, said it looked as if the male and female involved were ‘looking for someone better to dance with’. It is believed the prowlike stance was invented by men dancing with men.

Information source:
Thompson, Robert Farris. 2005. Tango: the art history of love. United States: Vintage Books. P 219-221.
and
http://www.totango.net/copes.html