I Could Not Resist

I got an email from my mom with these photos. Some might do double-duty for tangueros and tangueras everywhere...






These outfits were made of condoms for a fashion show in China for Reproductive Health New Technologies and Products. Condoms of all shapes and sizes were used to make dresses, hats and even lollipops, tight-fitting wedding gowns, scaly-looking evening dresses, outrageous bikinis and other garments made entirely of condoms.

Update on Our Feathered Dancing Friend

For all you Snowball fans, Snowball and Irena will appear on the David Letterman Show on Thursday, November 1st.

He also has a new video out :-)

Hanging in the Balance

On days when I'm feeling particularly tired or uninspired, sore, or just bored with the tedium of my process, I troll Flikr or other photo sites for a bit of uplifting.

This photo stopped me in my tracks. It is not only beautiful, but it is very "yin/yang" - a pictorial representation of Chapter 12, The Power of Balance (which we'll discuss in the book club, starting November 1). In it I liken the opposite energies in each of us to the opposite energies of a wave: active as it crashes upon the shore and passive as it withdraws back into the ocean.

This picture, however, simultaneously expresses both passive and active energies - the same sort of sustained containment humans have of both energies, the balance of which we must each have to dance Tango properly.

In our Tango embrace we are suspended between active and passive, each energy responding to its opposite in the instant it is expressed.

To All the Men Who Will Only Dance with Cute Young Things:

If Even Cold Blooded Reptiles Can Laugh in the Face of Adversity...

Apparently, this reptile is common in Iraq, where many of our troops keep them as pets for downtime entertainment.

Is there a lesson in here? Maybe he's overheard our arguments about "open" vs. "closed" embrace?

The Provocative Nature of Personal Opinion

I was recently involved in a very cantankerous discussion on another blog for expressing a personal opinion regarding what I personally like and don't like in my Tango. I was alternately called ignorant, arrogant, closed-minded, and a moralizer; as having hang-ups and "issues"; and was told to move to Iran. All this from people who simultaneously celebrate our American right to liberty and expressions of personal freedom.

The issue at heart is not really important, since this sort of counter-moralizing happens with any topic where people disagree. I don't mind engaging people with whom I do not share a point of view. I think that's what makes life exciting, and I believe it is how we grow as individuals. Besides, just because we disagree doesn't mean we have to be rude to each other.

Unfortunately, this kind of dialogue cannot happen when comments escalate into personal attacks, nor when it becomes clear that the commenters are not following the conversation, but are posting to rant and spew their diatribe. In this particular case, my comments to explain my point of view on a very specific issue went ignored while the ranters continued escalating generalized issues that were not being discussed by anyone other than themselves.

I do, however, find it highly amusing that "liberal"-minded folks so often suggest banishment to another country to those who do not agree with them.

Tango is Forever

For all the hoopla and agony we go through regarding how much tango is changing and how we're going to lose it, here's proof that it will never really change.

Check out Lita y Jorge Mendez in 1951.

And here's something from 1924!!! There is no sound, and although it's not a stellar performance, I'm pretty sure most of us could follow this man's lead. The tango is towards the beginning of the video.

Curses, Foilded Again!

I'm really bummed. I had envisioned tonight being my maiden tango outing, but instead, my gorgeous outfit hangs forlornly in the closet.

For the past 7 months I've been tortured by insufferable hot flashes, and in addition to the discomfort of turning radioactive in my partner's arms, I am beyond fatigued due to lack of sleep. I am but a faint shadow of my former beauty, looking a lot more like Uncle Fester these days than a sexy tanguera. It would seem that until we get these suckers under control, all I can really do is gaze at the ensemble now and then and dream of el abrazo.

Laughing at Dancing

Here's the thing about tango: We get so darn dramatic about it, and take ourselves so seriously that all sorts of trouble ensues. I love it when tangueros have a sense of humor about dancing. I always wanted to do a comedic tango. These guys beat me to it [my blogger keeps rearranging the order of these videos!! Watch the bottom one first]:



Of course, Capussi & Flores beat them to it:

I'm Going to Hang Up My Dancing Shoes...

From the Bird Lovers Only blog:
"Snowball is a medium sulfur crested Eleanora cockatoo and he loves to dance and sing. He loves the Back Street Boys. No one taught Snowball to dance...he just heard this song and suddenly felt like dancing. We're all jealous because he can outdance each one of us...nobody likes a show off! When he's really in the mood, he dances and sings. And at the end of the performance he takes a bow or two or twenty!! Enjoy the show."

The Dress Has Been Bought

I attended a luncheon today - part bazaar, part fundraiser, part honoring my onc - at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Yes, fab hotel, home of the famed Polo Lounge. That hotel. I had actually not thought I'd be buying anything, since I'm rather strapped for cash these days (having spent an ungodly sum on a wide variety of head coverings...). But as I descended into the meeting area outside the ballroom where we'd later have lunch, I saw a veritable sea, an ocean really, of wonderful and sparkly goodies.

Since I already have my FABULOUS earrings, I put on my mental blinders, lowered my gaze while passing cases of deliciously gaudy baubles, and concentrated on clothings.

The first rack. The first dress. I pull out this STUNNING black (what else), SEXY dress. Cut down to THERE (can you say J Lo?), with a pin over the bellybutton. This "pin" is the EXACT replica of my FABULOUS earrings. It was kismet. Destiny. Serendipity. All rolled into one. I set it aside and trolled the other racks, but the dress was clearly destined to go home with me.

Not wanting to experience any of the clothes spinning, top shifting angst some of my fellow "blogueras" (not my word, but seriously inspired nonetheless) have experienced, I'll be diminishing the depth of the neckline plunge somewhat, and then stapling it to my chest, just for good measure.

The pictures should be divine.

What has yet to be determined is just when, exactly, this Grand Return to Tango will take place. However, it is imminent, dear readers. Continue to stay tuned...

The Book Club is Coming! The Book Club is Coming!

Just a gentle reminder, dear readers, that the Tango Book Club will commence, um, clubbing (?) in just two short weeks over at tangobaby's blog, and the first book for this soon-to-be illustrious club will be The Tao of Tango (by yours truly)!

Tangobaby will be moderating, and I will be interjecting and answering questions as they are posed. It will be a raucous and enlightening experiment, so make sure to join the fun. of course, the more the merrier, so please alert your friends to this exciting happening.

You can order the book from Amazon, or directly from the publisher.

Looking forward to putting a little mystic in your tango!

Zeroing In on My Tango Re-Debut Ensemble

Ok. Although the Lana Turner led by a nose (and a pug one at that), the poll was inconclusive. Thanks a lot folks :-)

But you have inspired me. I was trying to choose the head gear first and build an ensemble around it (silly me). But I've been advised by someone with impecable taste (you know who you are) that I must wear stunning, drop-dead-gorgeous earrings, and so I decided to choose those first and back my way into the rest of the outfit.

Well, I got the earrings. They are stunning. And sparkly and rather Vegas-y in a Tango sort of way... Feeling very inspired, I also bought a pair of incredible shoes. Ok, two pairs.

And a couple - ok, several - options for the head.

I'm not sure what kind of dress will pull these two ends of my body together, but my entrance will certainly be memorable. Good thing I still have a couple of more weeks to decide before I sashay forth. At the rate I'm going my hair will probably be long enough that I don't NEED a head covering...

Stay tuned for photos....

My Love/Hate Relationship with "Performance" Tango

Last night I went to a local Tango festival featuring four singers and 4 local professional couples. In all fairness, I did not see all four couples perform, but of the ones I did see, I felt my familiar love/hate towards their efforts.

Let me say up front that I have never liked pyrotechnical Tango. I can appreciate the skill involved in doing it well, but if I wanted to see gymnastics I'd tune into gymnastics. Or Dancing with the Stars.

Let me also add that after 11+ years of servitude to my Tango master, I have become very discriminating. Ok, snobbish. Whatever. In that time I've gone from thinking everyone on the dance floor is"fantastic", to sitting on the sidelines bemoaning the fact that nobody can dance anymore. Ok, a few can :-)

Those disclaimers aside, for me performance Tango is the polar opposite of the Tango that sucked me into its lifelong addiction. "My" tango is private, intimate, sensual, surprising, improvisational, sultry, inspiring, and very personal. I don't know if anyone is watching me, and I don't care if they are.

Performance/Pyrotechnical Tango has always been done solely for the purpose of impressing. In other words: external, boastful, technical, public, choreographed. Everything a performance should be.

But unless we are incredibly talented, choreography looks, well, choreographed. It's stiff and impersonal, and the steps are rather mechanical, as though they are marking them, not dancing. Plus, there is an enormous amount of concentration placed on doing incredibly complicated and furiously fast movements which further distances the dancers because they're thinking and not feeling. As with acting, we have to rehearse ourselves to the brink of dementia so the body can auto-pilot the steps and we can get to relating to each other emotionally on stage. This is not an easy thing to accomplish, as witnessed by the many performance dancers who fail to achieve this state.

Sadly, I don't know if "my" Tango can make for good performance Tango. Improvising on stage in front of an audience has its own set of challenges, and many improvised performances are either very boring because suddenly the 1,001 steps the lead knew went flying out the memory bank, or flawed because of trying to do complicated steps that are not yet fluid to either partner. Or their movements are so small and intimate (but gorgeous) that anyone not sitting in the front row will not see them. But this is a topic for a whole other post...

The love/hate part comes from knowing that the vast majority of people who come to see this kind of dancing don't know the first thing about "my" kind of tango and, fairly or not, assume that this is how all Tango is done. It can and does intimidate most people to the point where they simply wouldn't ever think of trying it. I hate that.

But I love that it draws people out to see it, and that, for better or worse, is an invitation into our mysterious world that a few brave souls will accept.

Those that do come in of course discover "our" Tango, and their voices are joined to our chorus of protestations about how "show" Tango is NOT "our" Tango. And those who don't will always think of "our" Tango as indistinguishable from Ballroom Tango. Head-shakes and all.

Getting Technical, and Not About Tango....

[posted yesterday, amended with new information found today]

I have recently decided that using my brain to keep track of all the comments I was leaving all over the blogsphere was hopelessly inefficient. I've figured out how to keep track of the blogs I like, but not the comments. I'm a little computer-literate, but not a total technophile. I asked several other bloggers if they had any suggestions but we all seem to be in the same blog-boat.

I finally landed on some Blog Help site and posted a question. Right away I got an answer and just had to post it to help all my new friends.

There is a site called CoComment, which solves this problem very nicely. And very easily. You can even add it to your comments page for your visitor's convenience! (I'm not THAT literate, so I'm just sending you there in hopes you can then tell me how to do it :-)

Now I don't have to spend any more precious time tracking down my, er, YOUR, words of wisdom.

PS - Rose Desrochers actually has a helpful "how to" blog about blogging, and mentions THREE sites that help you keep track of your comments:

• coComment is a comment tracking site that works with Blogger and several other systems. coComment keeps track of all the online conversations you’re following in one convenient place, and informs you whenever something is added.

• co.mments - Co.mments a competitor to CoComment allows you to track comments you left. When you read a post you want to follow, simply click on the co.mments favorite/bookmark. The co.mments server will then follow up and find new comments for you.

• Commentful, like coComment and co.mments, is a tool that allows its users to keep track of discussion on blogs and other various sites.

Taking it Off the Dance Floor

Much blog space has been dedicated to the conundrum of that zap-to-the-heart connection while dancing, and speculating whether taking it into the sunlight might wither it AND destroy the best dance partnership we've ever had.

While it may certainly be different in Buenos Aires, where there are all sorts of codigos regarding how, where, when and why men and women at milongas can speak to each other (or not), those of us Stateside are not similarly restricted.

Peoples! Where is it written that you must go forth uninformed??? Why, pray tell, can you not get to know your potential life-mate a little better AT the milonga, before committing to latte "out there"??? I mean, really. We're not talking about that sleaze-ball person pestering you to the brink of catatonia with inane questions. We're talking about your potential Tango/Life Soulmate!! Can you not garner even a little information during a casual conversation at the snack table/water cooler/shoe-changing corner/ sidelines-while-catching-your-breath-after-a-whirlwind-tanda moment?

Plenty of time during any of those opportunities to GET A CLUE!

A Little Off Topic...

Friends, I had an amazing experience yesterday which I wrote about on my other blog. I was so moved by the philosophy and generosity of Brighton Accessories that I want to help spread the word about them.

Plus, you'll get another chance to see me "au naturelle"!!!

The Hair-Cover Poll Is Now Open!

To see photos of the contenders, click on the following links:

1. Orange Chiffon Fantasy
2. Lana Combo Turban
3. Head Wrap
4. Two Tone Turban
5. Silk Cord Cloche
6. Short Fringe Flapper Hat (with dark or colorful cap under it)
   
7. Hair Turban or Page
8. Fatima Wraparound (in black, of course)

Then answer the poll which appears in the column on the right. These options best combine my need for absorbency, and non-slippage. Beads, while desirable and gorgeous, are scratchy :-(

Keep in mind that without hair, anything very close to the head looks rather, um, flat, and small, and pin-heady, and--- well, you get the picture.

Go forth and VOTE!