Fishnets & Fedoras

The Blends of Tango

There's a nice little brief history of tango on the Star Lodge website.

Tango in Paris

tango in paris
Originally uploaded by ukdave_com.

Apology

Sorry for the brief hiatus on this blog - family issues have intruded. Normal posting should should return today or tomorrow.

How To Be A Great Follower

Royce shares her thoughts on the qualities of an ideal follower:

- She completely surrenders herself to the dance and the music, she lets her mind and spirit go so that nothing will bother her when she dances.

You can read the rest at her blog.

Internation Tango Congress in Paris

Booking has opened for the International Tango Congress in Paris, which takes place from 29th June to 2nd July 2006.

More details here.

Last Tango In Seoul

The end of an era in Korea:

For the past two years, the Korean-Argentinean duo Orientango has been spreading the spirit of tango to audiences here. But as of the end of this month they will be bidding farewell to Korean fans.

More here.

MidJan Tango

MidJanTango0012
Originally uploaded by krismartis.

Unusual angle on this one.

Tango Mood

Imagen_ 272
Originally uploaded by moonrover.

I'm so glad this shot of street tango dancers in Buenos Aires is in black and white. It really adds mood.

Book: A Passion For Tango

David Turner e-mailed Fishnets & Fedoras to mention that the book A Passion for Tango might suit Soffist's needs (see previous post).

You can find out more about it here, and pick it up from Amazon UK here or Amazon US here.

Blogging Tango: February 17 2006

Andrew in Chile is actually in Argentine, and finding the heart of tango:

Take the subte, the BA metro, to the plaza de mayo (pronouned masho here) and then walk up Defensa to San Telmo the authentic old barrio which is the epicentre of tango. The old barrio has just the right level of decrepitude to be really authentic and there are some fantastic antique shops and ferias up the street. Unfortunately they have not had time to clean up from the night before. Into San Telmo proper it gets very crowded with tourists. Find a decent restaurant called the Pergola in Plaza Dorrego. Tango dancers perform between the tables and performing artists are everywhere. Make a few antique jewellery purchases.

Soffist is struggling to find a good Tango book:

Does anyone, by the way, know a good book on the tango? I'd be especially into a book about gender roles - though I must admit our class assigned us an article on that too. It explained in equally flowery terms how tango is "a struggle for male supremacy waged between men but carried out through women." The only reason a woman would dance the tango is... uh, well, she wouldn't. Or if she did it wouldn't be worth looking at - let's just examine what the male leaders do for the next sixty pages.

Maybe The Topic is Tango could help with its review of The Tango Singer by Tomas Eloy Martinez.

Wawwen-san is enjoying the music behind the dance:

Before I drove home though I stopped at the Fry's in Anaheim, because that Fry's is MILLIONS OF TIMES BETTER than the Fry's down Sepulveda where I live. I got this Piazzolla CD I've been kind of looking for and bought because it was in a shiny box and 1. I like shiny and 2. I saw it, which is much better than buying online. Anyhow, it's The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night, it's tango and milonga music, and it's an original recording, so it has Astor Piazzolla playing bandoneon (think accordian) in the group.

That's not a statement the folks at Tango News would approve of, as this post proves:

How many times have you read that the bandoneón, tango's prime musical instrument, is "a type of accordion imported from Germany”? Do not repeat it. It's dead wrong. A bandonéón is NOT an accordion but a far more complex instrument, closer to the concertina than to any other instrument of the same kind.

Holly is just setting out in tango, and learns a valuable lesson:

Tango was fun today. We learned this supercool 5 step thingymajig. Just gotta get it into my head: front, side, back, side, front. repeat. To learn this we started in a big circle and then the circles separated like amoebas giving us smaller circles for us to try. The chick I danced with while learning this told me a verrry valuable tip: when you're doing any front step, you should be stepping in the direction that your belly button is pointing.

Remember to follow your belly buttons, folks...

Technorati Tags: tango, bandoneon, dance, argentina, piazzolla