The poetics of space
I haven’t seen Sally Potter’s “The Tango Lesson” since I saw it when it first came out. Today, on revisiting a clip from the film (above) since starting tango a year and five months ago, and having just come back from Buenos Aires, I was surprised to find that I actually recognize most of the milongueros dancing with her.
:-D
But more than anything, I miss those spaces.
“In the theater of the past that is constituted by memory, the stage setting maintains the characters in their dominant rôles. At times we think we know ourselves in time, when all we know is a sequence of fixations in the spaces of the being’s stability — a being who does not want to melt away, and who, even in the past, when he sets out in search of things past, wants time to “suspend” its flight. In its countless alveoli space contains compressed time. That is what space is for.” – Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Going out to a milonga taking place at a dance studio, and going out to a milonga in a palatial 19th century café-mansion, with french windows opening onto stone balconies, feels so different. For me, even a basketball court would be nicer than a dance studio. It all comes down to what you’re used to, I guess.
My favorite milongas here in New York seem to take place in dance studios. One of them is very pretty, albeit tiny, with a real mural painting along one wall, and a decadent silk kimono hanging in the bathroom — the others are pretty sterile, sometimes smelling of a week’s worth of sweat and lysol. Countless times, I have wished that these milongas took place in a more beautiful space.
Then it’d be (almost) perfect…
I miss the spaces as well, the timeless grace…
elizabeth
25 September 2008 at 3:38 pm
I have never been to the tango scene in NYC, but a friend of mine who now lives there has talked to me about TriANgulO in similar terms… do you go there? If so, you might know him, how sweet it feels to be thinking that… ;-) He is a very special man and a special dancer too! As I feel you are too.
talonsrouges
25 September 2008 at 4:02 pm
When I was taking private lessons with a taxi dancer, I had the weirdest sense of deja vu before remembering that in the movie, Sally took lessons at the same school. Run by Tete, incidentally.
caroline
25 September 2008 at 5:15 pm
Interesting – I also haven’t seen that movie for a long time – I rented it shortly after I started dancing tango. Watching it again, the thing that screams at me now is how obvious it is that they’re not dancing to *that* music. Or rather, I’m sure they filmed to that music, but because of the nature of editing, any given step isn’t matched up with the relevant bit of the music – and the clip feels so… monotonous, so souless, because the musicality of those dancers has been stripped out, and what they’re doing doesn’t make sense with the music any more.
Psyche
25 September 2008 at 11:02 pm
talonrouges – yes, the pretty dance studio i mentioned in the post is triangulo. i love that place… a little gem of a milonga. i wonder who your friend is? i don’t go to triangulo that often, i usually save it for those times when i want to feel pampered and special. :-)
caroline – i remember reading about those lessons! i want to read your stories again!!
psyche – i’ve learned to not expect too much from films, when it’s about another artform. when an artform is embedded in another artform, one usually doesn’t do justice to the other, sadly. in the case of the clip above, i enjoy it for the mood and nostalgic looking-backwards to a city i’ve grown to love…
La Nuit Blanche
26 September 2008 at 11:29 am
I had a feeling it was that… how odd to find out, time and time again, that our world is so small. I guess it is even smaller in tango!
talonsrouges
26 September 2008 at 12:13 pm
The Tango Lesson clip in Confiteria Ideal to the tango “El Flete” by Juan D’Arienzo has the best dancing in the movie.
Sally Potter dances first with David Derman, Gustavo Naveira, Oscar Lorenzo aka Cacho Dante, Carlos Fabian Salas, Omar Vega, and Carlos Gomez (Copello). Pedro Monteleone appears in last second of the scene. All of them went regularly to the milongas 10-12 years ago. Today, three of them are dead, and the others are into performance tango with the exception of Cacho.
jantango
11 October 2008 at 5:17 pm