ColorTango

Last night (Wednesday) ColorTango played at "La Garufa" milonga in Konex, close to the Abasto shopping mall. I have heard people rave about them and I thought they were very good indeed. It was really nice to dance to a live orchestra. There are a handful of photos over at Flickr. It was a nice bonus to bump into Sonya, an Australian girl I met here in December. We danced a couple of tandas and she said my dancing has improved.

I went to La Garufa with Isabelle after a we pigged out at a restaurant in Palermo. Isabelle had bife de chorizo and a huge salad, I had bife de lomo and a mountain of chips. The food was plentiful but nothing special. We talked mostly in Spanish which I thought would be good practice for tonight's Spanglish event. She's flying home on Saturday - volcano permitting. Her Spanish is far better than mine and I was pleased to understand and be understood. I didn't expect it to be so easy tonight.

Spanglish? More of a shambles really and very few native Spanish speakers. I didn't bother to stay. Maybe I'll look in again next week, maybe I won't.

My private lesson this afternoon with Maya was much more productive. The list of technique things for me to practice and improve is getting longer. It's a good job I'm here for a while!

Earlier in the week, on Monday afternoon I did a couple of touristy things: visited El Ateneo and the Galerias Santa Fe shopping centre. El Ateneo is a bookshop which was originally a theatre. It's a rather more interesting building to look at than most bookshops as you can see in the photos over at Flickr. The attraction at Galerias Santa Fe is not the shopping (it's only a small mall with nondescript shops) but the ceilings. There are a few photos in my Flickr steam (the colour has been enhanced a bit because the flash on the camera wasn't powerful enough to illuminate the ceiling properly). You could sit in the comfy chairs in El Ateneo, or in the cafe section and soak up the surroundings for half an hour quite easily. Galerias Sante Fe might hold your attention for 5 minutes.

Monday night at Salon Canning was disappointing. It may not be the "best" milonga for me but it's very convenient - only a 10-15 minute walk along Scalabrini Ortiz from where I'm staying. If you're interested in what it looks like, there's a picture of it early in the night, before the floor gets crowded in the Flickr photostream. Vals is not my favourite form but I was determined to try. Unfortunately I made the mistake of starting the night with a vals and compounded it by dancing with a rather short Argentinian girl. It certainly wasn't a good first dance but it wasn't that bad. Her assessment was less favourable; she thanked me after the first track of the tanda and walked off.

It's a good job I'm not a local; I'd have had to fall on my sword. Confidence dented I sat out for a bit and the floor got busier. I carefully avoided the vals and milonga tandas for the rest of the night. I danced some tango tandas with other people later which went better.

On Tuesday night after Maya's group class at Caseron Porteno I went to Practica X (pictures at Flickr). It was rather less crowded than on my visit in December. Although all the dancers were a really high standard, they seemed not quite as good as on my previous visit. Maybe they'd gone somewhere else this week.

Tonight it's not too late to go dancing. Perhaps Nino Bien. And for the weekend, well more dancing obviously!

Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend. If you've been affected by the travel disruption caused by the Icelandic volcano and you're travelling this weekend then I hope it goes smoothly for you. If you're dancing somewhere, have fun :-) And if you have something special planned and want to share the details, I'd love to hear them.

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