The Real Thing
On Saturday I arranged to meet Miguel Angel Pla, the tango teacher who I know slightly from his visits to London. He was going to a dance that night out in the sticks at the Sunderland Club and put me in touch with a Canadian couple who were going too. The dance wouldn´t even open until eleven, so it was clearly going to be a late night. My attempts to talk to Michele´s friend Belen were laughable, thanks to the paucity of my Spanish and the thickness of her accent... must try harder!
Occasionally I looked at the TV to see whether the Pope had died yet and of course eventually he had. I have 80 channels on cable, half of them have had non-stop live broadcasts from Rome for the past few days and as they are all saying the same thing, I had some hope of working out what they are saying in Argentinian but it has been a bit forlorn. I´ve been able to understand it on the Spanish channel and the Italian one but the accent here is still very difficult to crack. People can understand my Spanish but their responses are largely mysterious, as so many of the consonants are changed to variations on ´zh´. I think my vocabulary is expanding though, from the TV subtitles and generally looking around at notices.
I went out wandering the streets much of the day. I came first to the internet cafe, intending to post the exciting news about the Confiteria Ideal, but it was shut. In fact the area just around my flat was pretty empty at the weekend as it is predominantly financial and business. So I headed off towards Avenida Corrientes, the Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway of Buenos Aires. My landlord, a musician, had said he was playing in a concert of tango music that afternoon and I thought it would be nice to catch it but when I found the theatre, it was all shut up. So I did a bit of bookshop browsing instead, bought a copy of "The Peron Novella" in the hope of improving myself, then went for a coffee and a cake at el Gato Negro - a lovely old fashioned coffee shop.
To my delight, I discovered that The Producers has just opened here... What better way to learn the language than to hear something I know very well translated? I found myself singing "quiero estar productora"... Must get a ticket for that!
After a siesta, I had a light supper and got myself changed for dancing. Dan and Judy came to collect me at the flat and we took a cab out to the Sunderland, arriving on the dot at eleven, at which point there were about three other people there, none of them dancing. Miguel had said that there was no point getting there early and another time I´ll believe him. He arrived long after midnight, by which time it was hotting up.
The Sunderland Club has been hosting tango events since 1921, it is the real thing. The venue is about as unlikely as its name suggests. With apologies to any Maccams who read this, the name doesn´t exacly conjure up a world of glamour and terpsichorean delights, does it? Although I know as well as anybody might that there is plenty of fun to be had in Sunderland - and so it proved. It is in fact a basketball hall, the size of a small hangar. (Well, if I knew about these things, I´d probably say it is the size of a basketball hall but there you go.) The walls have all the notices up for the teams and at the far end were those racks of benches that may be called bleachers. The floor is not one I´d want to be jumping about on, made as it is of those reconsituted marble floor tiles. Fine for dancing though! It had the atmosphere of a community hall and was laid out with trestle tables and plastic chairs. The tables filled up with family groups and there was much to-ing and fro-ing between them as people met and greeted. Some people ate, some drank, some just danced. Goodwill buzzed around the room: Dan said it was like the sort of community event which sometimes happens in his little Canadian island town, but in London I know of nothing like it. except possibly a wedding or a christening party. Maybe the Queen´s silver jubilee comes close.
For entertainment, there was a very flashy couple who came on and demonstrated two tangos. Legs all over the place and not really my cup of tea. Then the organiser picked out some punters to demonstrate and they were absolutely excellent - none of this vertical splits malarky or heels and knees flying around, just classic moves danced with skill, elegance and exquisite timing. Then there was a beautiful singer called Roxanne, who Miguel had introduced me to earlier, and who he later told me had been in London with Tango Por Dos. Well, that show was the first time I ever saw the tango and how thrilling that she was partly responsible for me being there at all. If only I´d had enough Spanish to elbow through her admirers and tell her that!
I danced a bit with Miguel, who was frequently distracted and waving over my shoulder at his many friends but, as ever, a joy to dance with. The friends of his who came to say hello between dances all smiled broadly and gave my big kisses on the cheek, without even being introduced - very friendly these Argentinians. As it was much more of a social event than just a dance, I didn´t do any of the looking around and staring so the only other people I danced with were a couple of Canadians at our table. It was a lovely evening and apparently would go on until five but we left some time after three to get back into town. Our cab barely seemed fit to reach the end of the road but somehow it kept going.
After rising late on Sunday, laughing at myself for even thinking I´d missed the Archers, I went off to the Feria de Mataderos, again out in the suburbs. It is a bit like a country fair and has loads of craft stalls, street food, live music and gauchos (cowboys). The gauchos had a street set aside where they had put down a load of sand to soften the tarmac and they had some sort of horseback competition to thunder along the road one by one, standing up in their saddles to insert a pencil in a ringsuspended from a ribbon over the road. There were mini-gauchos too; one seemed no older than my nephew Ben and his legs were not even long enough to allow his feet to dangle down the side of the pony. Easy to see how the John Wayne stance develops.
So - all is well in Buenos Aires. It seems I have spent much of today typing, so I shall sign off now without so much as a read through to check my spelling and get something to eat before I go to find this class.
Hasta la vista!
Occasionally I looked at the TV to see whether the Pope had died yet and of course eventually he had. I have 80 channels on cable, half of them have had non-stop live broadcasts from Rome for the past few days and as they are all saying the same thing, I had some hope of working out what they are saying in Argentinian but it has been a bit forlorn. I´ve been able to understand it on the Spanish channel and the Italian one but the accent here is still very difficult to crack. People can understand my Spanish but their responses are largely mysterious, as so many of the consonants are changed to variations on ´zh´. I think my vocabulary is expanding though, from the TV subtitles and generally looking around at notices.
I went out wandering the streets much of the day. I came first to the internet cafe, intending to post the exciting news about the Confiteria Ideal, but it was shut. In fact the area just around my flat was pretty empty at the weekend as it is predominantly financial and business. So I headed off towards Avenida Corrientes, the Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway of Buenos Aires. My landlord, a musician, had said he was playing in a concert of tango music that afternoon and I thought it would be nice to catch it but when I found the theatre, it was all shut up. So I did a bit of bookshop browsing instead, bought a copy of "The Peron Novella" in the hope of improving myself, then went for a coffee and a cake at el Gato Negro - a lovely old fashioned coffee shop.
To my delight, I discovered that The Producers has just opened here... What better way to learn the language than to hear something I know very well translated? I found myself singing "quiero estar productora"... Must get a ticket for that!
After a siesta, I had a light supper and got myself changed for dancing. Dan and Judy came to collect me at the flat and we took a cab out to the Sunderland, arriving on the dot at eleven, at which point there were about three other people there, none of them dancing. Miguel had said that there was no point getting there early and another time I´ll believe him. He arrived long after midnight, by which time it was hotting up.
The Sunderland Club has been hosting tango events since 1921, it is the real thing. The venue is about as unlikely as its name suggests. With apologies to any Maccams who read this, the name doesn´t exacly conjure up a world of glamour and terpsichorean delights, does it? Although I know as well as anybody might that there is plenty of fun to be had in Sunderland - and so it proved. It is in fact a basketball hall, the size of a small hangar. (Well, if I knew about these things, I´d probably say it is the size of a basketball hall but there you go.) The walls have all the notices up for the teams and at the far end were those racks of benches that may be called bleachers. The floor is not one I´d want to be jumping about on, made as it is of those reconsituted marble floor tiles. Fine for dancing though! It had the atmosphere of a community hall and was laid out with trestle tables and plastic chairs. The tables filled up with family groups and there was much to-ing and fro-ing between them as people met and greeted. Some people ate, some drank, some just danced. Goodwill buzzed around the room: Dan said it was like the sort of community event which sometimes happens in his little Canadian island town, but in London I know of nothing like it. except possibly a wedding or a christening party. Maybe the Queen´s silver jubilee comes close.
For entertainment, there was a very flashy couple who came on and demonstrated two tangos. Legs all over the place and not really my cup of tea. Then the organiser picked out some punters to demonstrate and they were absolutely excellent - none of this vertical splits malarky or heels and knees flying around, just classic moves danced with skill, elegance and exquisite timing. Then there was a beautiful singer called Roxanne, who Miguel had introduced me to earlier, and who he later told me had been in London with Tango Por Dos. Well, that show was the first time I ever saw the tango and how thrilling that she was partly responsible for me being there at all. If only I´d had enough Spanish to elbow through her admirers and tell her that!
I danced a bit with Miguel, who was frequently distracted and waving over my shoulder at his many friends but, as ever, a joy to dance with. The friends of his who came to say hello between dances all smiled broadly and gave my big kisses on the cheek, without even being introduced - very friendly these Argentinians. As it was much more of a social event than just a dance, I didn´t do any of the looking around and staring so the only other people I danced with were a couple of Canadians at our table. It was a lovely evening and apparently would go on until five but we left some time after three to get back into town. Our cab barely seemed fit to reach the end of the road but somehow it kept going.
After rising late on Sunday, laughing at myself for even thinking I´d missed the Archers, I went off to the Feria de Mataderos, again out in the suburbs. It is a bit like a country fair and has loads of craft stalls, street food, live music and gauchos (cowboys). The gauchos had a street set aside where they had put down a load of sand to soften the tarmac and they had some sort of horseback competition to thunder along the road one by one, standing up in their saddles to insert a pencil in a ringsuspended from a ribbon over the road. There were mini-gauchos too; one seemed no older than my nephew Ben and his legs were not even long enough to allow his feet to dangle down the side of the pony. Easy to see how the John Wayne stance develops.
So - all is well in Buenos Aires. It seems I have spent much of today typing, so I shall sign off now without so much as a read through to check my spelling and get something to eat before I go to find this class.
Hasta la vista!
posted by Rachel in Buenos Aires at 7:31 pm
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