Tango and Chaos (rebuilt)

“ Traccion a Sangre ”—The Andes ! When I began to train for bike racing 25 years ago I started keeping a training diary, and although there's no longer any real reason to do it, I still keep a daily record of my physical activity. Here's the the entry for Oct. 22, 2003:  "Mend oza centro > base Andes—3.1 med +  ”  It records a bicycle ride of 3 hours and 6 minutes from downtown Mendoza to the base of the Andes and back at a medium pace. The “+” means there were a few hard pulls on the hills. That pretty much tells the story: cruising along, enjoying the sights and smells of a completely new piece of real estate. Rolling south out of the busy center of town I pass a few locals on old bikes, who would probably think anyone that could afford a car must be crazy to be riding a bicycle. I also pass a few carts that are using  traccion a sangre . “ Traccion a sangre ” means “blood traction”, or “blood power”, and it is Argentina’s great way...

Back in the U.S.A. October 18, 2003:  We walked off the dance floor at the Portland Tango Fest last week and ran into our friend Steve from Port Townsend, Washington. We hadn’t seen him for a while, and he looked at our smiling, sweaty faces and said, “So, you like this tango thing? Think you might stick with it for awhile?” (Funny guy) Alejandra and I are at a great place in tango right now, and it must show. It’s a place where the music and the dancing seem almost endlessly deep. The more I learn, the more there is to learn, and the more interesting tango becomes. It seems infinitely perfectible, and the future looks challenging and fun. It seems to me that at a certain level, tango becomes a number of different dances. The music begins to separate into very different things, and the ways of moving to the different types of music become clearer. At first you may notice that dancing to the old marching/walking tangos is a very different thing t...

Without Fear “Sin miedo, amigos!” xxxxxxx -Tete August 13, 2003:  There is a movie that I like called  Sweet and Lowdown . In it Sean Penn plays a nutty character named Emmet Ray, who is a jazz guitarist in the '30s. Ray was so overwhelmed by the talent of the great guitarist from Europe, Django Rinehardt, that he would faint dead away whenever he came near him. It's a very funny movie, and I instantly identified with Ray because he liked to drink a lot and take his dates to the railroad yard to watch freight trains. Famous people don't normally have much affect on me one way or another, but I was very excited about my first encounter with Tete. He's by far the most interesting person in tango. Everybody knows him, everyone watches him, and everyone seems to have an opinion. Like the old  compadritos , he lives on the edge of the edge. He is at the fringe of the tango world of Buenos Aires... which in a funny way puts him right at it...

La Noche de las Milongueras August 7, 2003:  Last night I almost didn't take the camera along to  Sin Rumbo , thinking that there wouldn't be anything to film, but it turns out that it was  La Noche de las Milongueras . They had invited the 20 most famous living milongueras to be honored and to dance. All of them were there, with two notable exceptions—Carmencita Calderon, who must be more than 95 years old, and Maria Nieves—but I didn't mind because I have already seen both of them dance. And there were other photographers there, so I was able to film out on the floor, and I got some very good shots of their different styles. Margaret, the best known, was introduced as the “Milonguera of the century”, and she danced a lot. She was featured and interviewed in the documentary  Obsession  and she's also been in others. Portalea was also there—he’s one of the great old milongueros who danced in  Tango, Baile Nuestro . In...