Tag: argentine tango

Blas Catrenau & Myriam Pincen

Myriam Pincen con Blas Catrenau dancing at “El Maipú Milonga”, January 2018

Myriam Pincen

“My classes aim to instruct and encourage the dance of Tango Salón Tradicional Argentino, a knowledge that I have acquired over more than 30 years of study with various teachers such as: Miguel Gutierrez, Eduardo Arquimbau, Mingo Pugliese, Pepito Avellaneda, J.C. Copez among others, with whom I not only learned to dance but also to teach dance, scene and choreography.
In my classes we work everything you need to dance tango on a dance floor: posture, musicality, balance, cadence, styles, different orchestras, lead and follow, adornments, codes, floor craft, etc.
The final goal is that all can access to enjoy a good tango dance and also to transcend our Buenos Aires’ culture for the next generations.”

Blas Catrenau

He started dancing tango in his early youth among other young men at the practice studio of Crisol and Verné. Later he attended several carnival balls organized at local clubs such as San Lorenzo de Almagro.

Since then he never stopped dancing and attending the most important clubs of his time, like Club Unidos de Pompeya, Club Huracán, Club Social y Sportivo Buenos Aires, Club Social Rivadavia, Palacio Rivadavia, Club Almagro, Chacarita, Premier, Editorial Haines, etc. In his youth he often danced at the main tango bars of Buenos Aires, such as Picadilly, Sans Souci, Montecarlo, and many more.

At the early ‘90s, he started organizing “milongas” himself. From 2003 to 2009 he leaded “La Milongüita”, one of the most famous “milongas” in Buenos Aires. In 2002 he won the First Metropolitan Tango Championship in Buenos Aires. In 2003 he obtained the Tango Teacher degree released by Buenos Aires City Government. He was then authorized to teach at the Centro Educativo del Tango de Buenos Aires (CETBA), created by Masters and Dancers Gloria and Rodolfo DINZEL.

His passion for dancing as well as the harmony he shares with his partner and the gracefulness of his movements, capture and celebrate the essence of traditional TANGO.

Carmencita & Cachafaz. Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires

Carmencita Calderón

See Carmencita Calderon and Juan Averna Homenaje al Cachafaz Glorias Argentinas de Mataderos

Carmencita Calderón

Dancer
(10 February 1905 – 31 October 2005)
The mythical partner of El Cachafaz.

In those early tango ambiences, with strong uncured brandy, with thick and cheap tobacco smoke, with tough quarrelsome rivalry, women scarcely showed their presence through foreign whores —mostly French— or girls from the interior popularly known as chinas.

The Buenos Aires dance was born bastard, macho and in the outskirts, so women had to wait for a long time before they were able to pass through those forbidden doors as well as the prudish society of the period. But tango waited for them and at its Customs granted safe-conducts to the dancing muses that came to bring light to the new dance floors in dancehalls and clubs that displaced the academias, bailongos and cabarutes.

For that it had to supress the impudence of its movements, transforming them into an intimate, sensual, in retreat, substance that encompassed a community whose feelings were untransferable and where men and women shared a common passion. One and the other created while dancing to the music beat, the man leading, marking bars and steps, the woman interpreting the way of answering and enjoying with her body what the male dancer was suggesting. Continue reading.

“Mi Dolor” by Héctor Varela y su Orquesta Típica, 1953.

Héctor Varela

Bandoneonist, leader, arranger and composer
(29 January 1914 – 30 January 1987)

Luis Adolfo Sierra tells us in his book Historia de la orquesta típica: «Héctor Varela, lead bandoneon and arranger of the Juan D’Arienzo Orchestra, for ten years, identified himself with the trends of a genuine traditional origin, and his orchestra boasted, as major attraction, the precision of a difficult technical performance, in the middle of a very personal hasty rhythmic beat». And Jorge Palacio (Faruk) added: «And that is, exactly, what Varela strove for during his tango career: to play with his orchestra for dancers».

He was born in Avellaneda where he spent all his childhood and youth. He graduated as accountant but he never worked as such. He had his first studies of bandoneon with the teachers of his neighborhood, he later attended the conservatory led by maestro Eladio Blanco with whom, time later, he would play at the bandoneon section of Juan D’Arienzo. Continue reading at www.todotango.com...

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Ricardo Tanturi. Argentine Tango music at Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires

“Pocas palabras” by Ricardo Tanturi y su Orquesta Típica with Alberto Castillo in vocals (1941)

Ricardo Tanturi: El caballero del Tango

Pianist, leader and composer
(January 27, 1905 – January 24, 1973)

The turn for records came in 1937 with an unforgettable piece recorded for Odeón, containing the instrumental version of “Tierrita” tango by Agustín Bardi, and “A la luz del candil”, with music written by the talented Carlos Vicente Geroni Flores, cruel lyrics by Julio Navarrine, and sang by Carlos Ortega.

But Tanturi’s great success would come in 1939 when he incorporated Alberto Castillo, a great attraction for the public. Castillo, with his perfect tune, master ability in the use of pitches and mezza voce, seduced the audience in many possible ways: with his exaggerated gestures, his masculine elegance, and neat hairstyle, his gynecologist degree (obtained in 1942), and that sometimes intimate sometimes lively mood, all of which made a show of every tango. Continue reading at www.todotango.com...

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José Gonzalez Castillo Argentine Tango lyricist portrait at the piano

“Sobre el pucho” by Juan D’Arienzo y su Orquesta Típica with Héctor Mauré in vocals, 1941.

José González Castillo

Poet and lyricist (25 January 1885 – 22 October 1937)

Lyrics for tango were born around 1914, based on those ones conceived by Pascual Contursi that year and the following years (“De vuelta al bulín”, “Ivette”, “Flor de fango”, “Mi noche triste (Lita)”), and they were growing strong very slowly.

So much so that in Carlos Gardel’s repertoire tangos were, until the next decade, a rare bird. There was not even a notion of how to sing a tango, a standard that Gardel was gradually establishing after 1922.

That was, precisely, the year José González Castillo truly disembarked in the genre with the lyrics of “Sobre el pucho”, after Sebastián Piana’s music, which was introduced at the talent contest organized by Tango cigarettes.

José Gobello (Crónica general del tango, Editorial Fraterna) stated about this work that, with it «some novelties broke into tango that the tango literary work of Homero Manzi would later turn into true constants. By the way, Pompeya («Un callejón en Pompeya/y un farolito plateando el fango…»); later, the description of the neighborhood and, soon, the enumeration as a descriptive procedure».

But in those lyrics there is something else, metaphor, that springs up in the memory that the malevo devotes to his lost love «…tu inconstancia loca/me arrebató de tu boca/como pucho que se tira/ cuando ya/ni sabor ni aroma da». It is clear that González Castillo was a forerunner, and also that other later lyricists were who deepened those trends.

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