Christmas is in full swing here but I hardly feel it due to the sunshine and heat. Christmas is very strange in the middle of summer. Christmas day was spent by a swimming pool. The 24th and 25th are dance free days back on the piste later on tonight. Last month I started taking yoga classes. It is several years since I stretched myself so intensively. Then it was done to help with my Aikido. This time to help with Tango. It is not just for flexibility but also to learn which muscles do what in a more conscious fashion. For the last few months I have been studying with Matias and Kara and their teachers Pablo Villarraza and Dana Frígoli. This way of Tango is amazing to me particularly the use of disociation to generate the energy/impulse from one step to the next yet maintain both a close embrace and a very smooth motion. The hardest thing about this new way of Tango is unlearning some of the habitual way of what I have already learned and not allowing it to be automatic. Matias and Kara offer two classes a week one which is technical the second follows through from the first with slightly more empathis on the footwork. I have also started taking private lessons with them. Here I am not only learning technique and steps but a way to communicate this to others.
Next month I head down to Ushuia for 10 days at last I move out of Buenos Aires and see some of the rest of Argentina I hope to get to see the water falls at Iguazu in Feb. or March. I will be posting some pics and a report on my return. On the music front I've added nearly 100 albums to the music library. Almost 3000 songs in total, nearly 2500 Tangos and more than 200 each of Milongas and Valses. It is tricky finding new material I hardly buy CD's any more so many of them are compilations and many of the tracks crossover with other CD's I have allready. So I have started to buy LP's so far 20 have been bought. I have been very lucky with some of them as they are in very good condition. Two favourites of mine in particularly good nick Orgullo Criollo by Pedro Laurenz and two by Hugo Diáz famous for his Harmonica playing. I am able to record these to my laptop and get rid of most of the crackles and noise. The best trick to making this process sucessful is in cleaning as much of the dirt off the LP's in the first place. Many of these LP's were printed in the late 70's early 80's. The info on the slieves can be interesting also many of them including the actual recording date of each song. Cassettes are also comming under my scrutiny with a dozen having been bought. They can be very cheap anything from $3 pesos, I take more chances with names I don't know, the majority turn out to be not up to much though.
