We’ve just spent five, sultry, tango-soaked days in Berlin; the experience reminded me of a Buenos Aires tango trip one January: heat and humidity, dozens of milonga choices every night of the week, swoon-worthy skill on every dance floor. Bonus, the flight costs a fraction of the price, last for less than two hours and the Germans have a humbling mastery of the English language.

We found the Berlin Tango Guide, a city map with all the milonga venues (as well as DJ and music genre details) indispensible. It’s free, available in English and can be picked up at dance schools/venues. On our first night, a Wednesday, the guide led us to an open-air milonga at the Strandbar next to the river, (15:00 – 20:00, 90% traditional music, 10% modern.)  Within walking distance is the Roter Salon (21:00 – 03:00, same music mix, but holiday closure the week we were there.)

The open-air Strandbar (a summer-only venue) has a great setting alongside the Spree river, facing the impressive edifice which is the Bode museum. While the  music turned out to be strictly traditional, the dancing was not – a floor  peppered with non-tango party-goers, drunk on the good beer and the exceptional weather. It made navigation difficult and I found the film of beach sand that had been kicked onto the dance floor a real grind when it came to pivots.  So we sat on the stairs and watched Berlin at play. Entertaining!

We’d come the city to participate in Korey and Adeline Ireland’s tango workshop, four days of tuition, dance and musicality.  This was based at the curiously named Tango Tanzen Macht Schön (TTMS - Tango dancing makes [you] Beautiful) It didn’t work; I’m still an Ugly sister and my prince is still a frog, but oh, the dancing was  beautiful!)

How come the average intermediate in Berlin seems to be so much more skilled than our lot, we wondered?
Points to ponder: 

·      the Germans are generally athletic (see sports results) and have been doing it longer

·      some renowned teachers are based there 

·      the city attracts more than it’s fair share of  Argentinians,

·      do Germans have more money to invest in tango? (Witness the plethora of tango clothing and shoe boutiques, tango courses, tango exercise classes, therapists offering various forms of relief to tango dancers, etc.)  

One of the itinerant porteños, that master of the Villa Urquiza style, Alejandro Hermida whom I bumped into at a TTMS milonga, tells me that Berlin is the European city he spends most time in. I’d take a class with Alejandro any day in any city and hope like hell the sound system fails. He has a fabulous voice and a vast Golden Age repertoire so can simultaneously serenade and teach.

In my opinion, Korey Ireland’s tuition is worth travelling for too. The quiet American, now married to German dancer and teacher, Adeline, is best known as a bandoneon player and tango composer. His instruction is personally-tailored, even in group classes, and his throwaway remarks about the nature of the dance are profund. They make me want to run for gold leaf and quill so I can inscribe them in an illustrated tango bible. A favourite this time was “Consider that connection occurs because of the couples’ separate axes being in close proximity”.  Sounds so simple, bland even, but when you really think about it most social dancers do exactly the opposite – use the connection to achieve axis. Makes for tango wobbles. 

We had four hours of group tuition a day, guided practicas and optional extra musicality sessions with Korey. He and Adeline met us at designated milongas every night.  Great value at 150 euros I thought, especially as the Irelands translated for us. The moves were perhaps challenging for mid-level dancers, comprising alterations, off–axis turns, pivots for him and her, dancing to alternate rhythms, but we wanted something  more than we could get at home and the moves were scaffolded with instruction in sound technique and superb musicality. Labelled an Intensive Summer Seminar, it sounded fiercer than it was, thanks to Adeline’s light but efficient touch.  She was also a mine of useful information about where to eat, to shop, to sightsee and at milongas, which tango Herrs to cabaceo.

Ahh, the milongas!  Often situated in characterful old buildings attached to restaurants or serving exceptional cake; always with a fully stocked bar;  no air-con and windows doors kept shut (the sweat-slicked look was de rigueur) and a delectable array of dance partners to exchange body fluids with. The approach is strictly cabaceo and the one tanda-rule doesn’t seem to apply.  I found myself happily dancing with the same man (or woman, so many good female leaders) for 15 to 20 minutes until our mutual melting forced one or other of us to cry  ‘Achtung, air needed!’  My husband tells me he was equally surprised by the staying power of his German partners; when his Fräuleins made no move to leave the floor during the cortinas, he did the gentlemanly thing and asked if they’d were willing to dance another tanda. He reports that to a woman, they looked puzzled and said versions of: “I’m still here, aren’t I?”  

He was thrilled to get as many compliments as he did on his dancing and on his TLC (Tango Loving Care.)  Apparently German men don’t routinely escort their partners back to their chairs or compliment them on their attire. Not my  personal experience in Berlin, but then I was wearing Hazel McNab’s  head-turning dancewear.

All the milongas seem to be within walking distance of the city’s bleak but functional public transport system.  When the S – or U-bahn stops running at around 1.30 am, the night buses follow the same routes.  Most local tangueros seem to cycle to milongas; I felt perfectly safe walking the streets, even solo after 3am, when along Oranienstrase Turkish shisa bars are still attracting patrons.

Our favourite milonga venue was the Sunday afternoon/night one called Tangoloft. Not easy to find, but once there, step into an industrial–looking courtyard, climb the crumbling concrete and metal stairs one can imagine WW11snipers lurking on, and head towards the sound of tinkling tea cups and piano keys.  You’ll come to a huge loft space, light and springy-floored, with a grand piano, candelabra, fin de siècle furniture, real roses languishing in vases like exhausted debutantes in overblown ball gowns and an array of cakes to leave one’s dress size for.  

Curtained nooks off the dance floor allow for ample space to relax when one is taking a break, while the upright Louis Quinze-syle chairs frame to perfection, a tanguera looking for some dance action.  There is a gloriously-lit tango boutique I regret not having time to visit and the louche atmosphere belies the fact that children are welcome. I saw couples dancing with babies strapped to their chests or  backs.  It’s a jewel that Mona Isabelle and her business partner have created with loving attention to detail.  And her quirky tandas were inspriring.

My other Must-do is the Spiegelsaal at Clärchen Balhaus, a mirrored ballroom that predates WW1 and survived WW11 bombing. It opens only for special events, but the main ballroom downstairs features tango every Tuesday night.  

My Don’t-do, is Max and Moritz on Oranienstrasse. It’s the latest hot spot for  Berlin’s professional dancers, so while what’s happening on the cramped, dusty brown dance floor is good to watch, it’s an exclusive crowd so strangers are unlikely to receive favourable cabaceo.

Finally, there is guerrilla tango in Berlin, as the dancers get summer-giddy after eight months of winter incarceration.  For architectural ohh-ahhh it would be hard to beat the venues chosen by the Hit ‘n Run organiser. (Click here for Circus Tango images; same kind of impromptu urban tango event, I think, same  kind of  breathtaking backdrops.) Dancers gather in pre-arranged public spots moving on to the next before the police arrive to see them off. The night we joined the tango terrorists they occupied a stone platform overhanging the Spree river, then a colonnaded walk between the  museum buildings. The Star Wars theme blared out as the group moved, en masse, between venues. I was packing my sharpest stilettos in case I had to beat off batonned police, but not even a whisper of police siren interrupted the strains of  Di Sarli under the soaring columns.

If you want a wunderbar week of tango, I recommend Berlin.  Pick a hotel anywhere amid the underground routes (we stayed in Motel One, Prinzenstrasse near Moritzplatz -  stylish but affordable.) And check for milonga updates and Berlin tango news here: tangoberlin.de  or facebook.com/BerlinTango. Milonga entrance fees are between 4,50 – 6 euros.  

Auf wiedersehen, pet.

 Isadora Duncan,
 remember her, the scandalous dancer of the early 1900s, as renowned for her unconventional lifestyle as for her scantily–clad, mould-breaking dance form? At one stage in her dramatic and tragic life, (1887-1927) she was the lover of Paris Singer, the scion of the famous sewing machine empire. Paris Singer remodelled the family pile down in Devon... 
and that’s where this tango tale begins, and sadly, ends.

Bring on an unlikely new player, Fernando Guidi: five years ago, this young,  Argentine dancer teacher based in Exeter, organized the  first tango weekend in the grand but getting grungy surrounds of Oldway Mansion.  He called it Tango Feast, never imagining, I suspect, what a terpsichorean treat these long weekends would become. And not just for UK dancers.

Now when I say grand surroundings, please think Versailles – Singer modelled Oldway on the Sun King’s opulent palace. It features a double, sweeping alabaster staircase, painted ceilings, ornate mouldings and a balcony in the ballroom. A massive painting (or nowadays, copy thereof) above the staircases, shows the coronation of Napoleon’s empress, Josephine. The building’s eastern elevation with its rows of columns, is reminiscent of the Place de la Concorde.  There is also a rotunda with built-in pool where the Singers used to exercise their horses, parlours with impressive fireplaces and 20ft-high French window opening onto sweeping lawns, a knot garden, a grotto with waterfall, and a gallery resembling Versailles's Hall of Mirrors.

Ahh, that gallery! I have a cherished memory of being transported to tango heaven here by one of my tango gods, David Benitez, who happened to hear a tune he wanted to dance to just as I was passing.  Bliss in Bloch trainers. 

Tango Feast is that kind of place. The usual hierarchy of don’t–even-think-about-cabaceo-ing-me-cos-I’m a-professional, doesn’t seem to apply. In fact, the difference in level between professionals and punters is not enormous here, as almost everyone is an experienced dancer.  Better still, they all have a lot of heart. Tango Feast dancers are generous, on and off the floor. It’s the only place I’ve been to where people sit down and talk to one another, forming relationships which are cemented at every event, until Feastueros, as Fernando calls us, feel like family. 

Alas, this home of the Tango Feast is no more (Fernando has another two venues he uses regularly.) The Torbay district council has sold the spectacular mansion and its grounds for development into retirement flats. The mansion itself is to become a luxury hotel.  Records show that the Singer family sold it to the council for the knockdown price of  £45 000 in 1946, on the understanding that it would be for public use.  Does an expensive hotel and spa constitute public use? Perhaps, but I doubt the new proprietors will rent out this grandiose facility at a plebian price. Certainly not at one the tango community  could afford.   

Oldway Mansion is (was, SOB !) my favourite place to dance in the UK. I have felt decadent gliding around it in broad daylight; I have felt glamorous at night under the chandeliers, clandestine on the moonlit terrace, the soft air of the English Rivera wafting around my shoulders like Isadora’s silk scarf.  (This fatally long accessory caused her death by catching in the open spoke wheel of the sports car she was in.  It wrapped around the rear axle and broke her neck.)

Traspie-ing in Isadora’s Duncan’s footsteps at Oldway Mansion has been a dream, but it was real and I have pictures to prove it, courtesy of David Prime.  I also have David to thank for the fact that my feet still haven’t forgiven me for dancing them to death. Every time my soles shrieked for rest, this merciless DJ played another irresistible tanda.

So, adios Oldway. My gratitude for the extraordinary memories go to Fernando Guidi and his team of helpers and guest teachers. Fortunately Vida de Tango uses other venues for other Feasts - these take place quarterly, so one needn't go too long without a Feastueros family reunion. Nevertheless, we shall miss Oldway; it was the stuff that tango dreams are made of.    

Reflection on the Tango Zen workshop suite

It is not usual to go through a 3-day tango workshop with dancers of all abilities,  literally from absolute beginner to experienced, in which one constantly swaps partners as well as lead and follow roles, without once feeling frustrated or disempowered. It is even more unusual to end the long weekend feeling buoyed, rather than exhausted, to feel a buzz, as if one has been to a spa where mind and body have been aligned and gently plugged into some greater energy source.

This is my feeling about the Tango Zen workshop series offered by Korean-born Chan Park, Zen enthusiast, meditator, documentary film maker and adopted tango son of some of the famous milongueros of Buenos Aires.

The weekend began with a showing of Chan Park’s documentary, ‘Tango Your Life ‘ which alerted participants to the fact that these classes would be about feeling, not flashy moves. We would be walking towards surrendering ourselves to our partners and to the music, just as the wise milongueros in the movie exhorted us to.

And indeed, the first workshop was designed to show participants that they could walk to music; any music, in full-time, half-time, even one-eighth time. The next workshop demonstrated the ease with which one could do this alongside a partner. Lead and follow roles where swapped, with everyone taking several  turns to experience being led via hand, forearm, shoulder, back, mostly with eyes closed. Throughout, Park said little, giving his students space and time to make the discoveries about trust and connection, for themselves.

The next day, participants stood face to face and through a series of what educationalists would call constructively aligned learning activities (that is, activities whose learning outcome matches that of the learning objective for the whole course) discovered the importance of committing one’s weight 100% to the left or right foot. I was leading at this stage, and for me it was a revelation to see how smooth the following became when I grounded myself instantly on my left or right leg, instead of hedging my bets between the two. If there is only one thing I’m able to retain from this workshop, I hope it will be that. The energy generated by a fully grounded supporting leg permeates the entire body, lifting the hearts of the couple. I’ve never grasped that before.

Was that what Park and his mentors meant by dancing with the heart, I wondered?  It turns out that Park’s hypothesis is more prosaic than that. He had us tune into our pulse rate and attempt to walk in time to our individual  heartbeats.  He may be able to do it, but I’m a long way from mastering it.

Only in the very last workshop of the weekend series did this tutor ask us to execute anything even remotely similar to what one might call a tango figure, or sequence. Normally, figures or sequences of figures are the staple teaching fodder of visiting tango teachers.  I suppose they think students will not believe they’ve had their money’s worth from a guest tutor’s class unless they’ve been shown a complicated routine. Pointless, in my opinion. One has little chance of  remembering it all and even less of mastering it, as a social dancer. 

Park however, kept the step simple and practical. He showed a cross and demonstrated how it could be used for navigation in a crowded milonga. Eventually even beginners were doing giros, molinetes and rebotes to get out of trouble, without fear, unhampered by the intimidating knowledge that these steps require good technique.  Clever.

‘No, just the power of Beginner’s Mind,’ said Park, referring to a Zen idea about the potential for success when one has no expectations.  Then he quotes his teacher,  Shunryu Suzuki: ‘In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.’

I‘ll try to remember that, along with the serenity I felt when dancing with Chan Park.

Gracias, maestro.

Tango and Zen

I asked Chan Park what led to him making a connection between Tango and the Buddhist meditation technique of Zen. It turns out it was the expression he saw on the faces of the dancers he sat watching in milongas for years before he even took a tango step.

'After witnessing women dancing with eyes closed, I started asking about the phenomenon. I finally found the answer in Zen.' 

In his book, Tango Zen: Walking Dance Meditation, Park points out the correlation between good tango and good Zen meditation practice, namely: ‘balance, calmness, groundedness, centering, and harmony in mind and body.’ (2004: 9)

That reads like my dancing wish list.

But can one meditate while moving around rather than sitting down? Apparently walking mediation has been practiced by Buddhists since Buddha himself initiated it. Zen meditation in motion is found in sports and performing arts, so why not in the walking dance, Tango?  Buddha is quoted as saying: ‘I tried it and it worked. I want you to try it for yourself.’ (Park, 2004: 58)

Mmmm, don't mind if I do.

You’ve probably seen what you believe to be Argentine tango on TV, lately in the UK’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ or its US-manifestation, ‘Dancing with the Stars’. Perhaps even before that, in a stage show or a silent movie?  (Remember the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ where tango-dancing Rudolph Valentino is dressed like a gaucho – muy confusing.) Argentine cowboys did not dance the tango. This dance is urban, having developed in the cosmopolitan melting pot of Buenos Aires during the previous century.

You’ve probably ‘cor-blimeyed’ or ‘gee-whizzed’ at the intricacy of the footwork, at the high flying legs of the tanguera, at the dazzling lifts and drops.  That is Fantasia, or show tango, and as the label implies, it is choreographed to be seen, to be admired, by an audience. However, it is not the social dance which less than one percent of the 14-million strong population of Buenos Aires devote themselves to perfecting.

This other tango, sometimes referred to as salon, is not choreographed, you will seldom see a lifted leg in it, and from an outsider’s point-of-view, there is little to applaud. Why then do people from all walks of life, from nations around the world give up their culture, career, home and sometimes even their non-tango dancing partners to move to Buenos Aires to immerse themselves in the restricted world of a milonguero, that is, someone whose life centres around attending milongas where this social form of tango is danced every night.

It’s not something easily explained in words, though there are many worthy  books on the subject: Christine Denniston’s The Meaning of Tango ,  Beatriz Dujovne’s In a Stranger’s Arms,  Julie Taylor’s Paper Tangos to name but a few. And then there are the tango movies you may have seen, Hollywood blockbusters like ‘Scent of a Woman’ in which Al Pacino makes a good stab at  showing that tango is about feeling, not flashy moves.

Currently touring tango clubs around the UK, is a documentary called ‘Tango Your Life’, filmed, directed and produced by Chan Park, a tango devotee. In it he interviews milongueros, some of whom have been dancing for 70 years, about what it is they gain from the dance. They speak of embrace, of intimate emotional conversations with partners, sometimes complete strangers, which are eloquent but wordless.  They relish sharing their emotions, accumulating satisfying moments while dancing. These will sustain them for the day or the week ahead. They say they leave the problems of daily living outside the room ‘on the other side of the curtain’. (Not for nothing a curtain, ‘cortina’, hangs across the threshold of traditional milonga venues in Buenos Aires.)

Without using Zen terminology they discuss the meditative state dancing tango can induce – an abdication of ego, a calmness in body and mind. Several times these dancers talk about tango making them feel better, or well, even ‘very, very well.’

For me, this takes tango into the realm of a healing ritual similar in some respects to those I’ve come to associate with aboriginal people like the San.  I think that whenever a community comes together and individual members willingly surrender themselves to music, to a rhythm, a chant; when they are prepared to open themselves to an energy mutually generated and unstintingly shared, the result will be a feeling of well-being.

It is these echoes between tango and Zen, the latter a philosophy Korean-born Chan Park has been enthusiastic about for many years, which lead him to develop a methodology for teaching the feeling of tango.

He offers dancers of all levels, from absolute beginners to the more experienced, a suite of workshops designed to soothe, smooth and seduce them into surrendering to the power of this extraordinary dance. This seemingly simple counter-clockwise perambulation around a dance floor delivers human connection at an unobtrusive but profound level.

Again, I find an African echo here, this time in Ubuntu, an indigenous philosophy which Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu, explains thus: ‘…Ubuntu speaks particularly about … our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity ….‘ (Ubuntu Women Institute USA. Retrieved 2011-04-20)

Recognising the precious but flawed humanity of one’s dance partner as being akin to one’s own, results in mutual respect and connectedness on the dance floor. This is the point of real tango.  For me, it’s Ubuntu, meditation and healing ... in heels.