Women Dance to Find the Flower

               I think for some women tango is a journey into themselves, to find and understand that part of them that attracts men. It must be a difficult voyage and I honestly can’t say what is going on with these tangueras. I’m fairly certain they couldn’t tell you either. I dance with these women all the time. Their skills are usually low but their passion is intense.

               Women are flowers. Some grow in the jungle where there are many and the competition is fierce. Some grow in the mountains, like my favorite, edelweiss, the mountain flower, where there are not many other flowers.

               I love edelweiss.

               When I was young, I lived in the mountains and took edelweiss for granted. As my children grew older and after my divorce, I found tango and went to the cities of Philadelphia and New York searching for ‘jungle’ flowers. I was surprised to find that I found few ‘jungle’ flowers fulfilling.

               I also found a lot of edelweiss.

               When I dance with these mountain flowers it is usually a struggle unless they have reached the end of their journey and discovered who they truly are: a beautiful bloom that just happens to grow above the tree line. As a responsible tanguero I believe it is incumbent upon me to assist these women on  their trek to ‘find’ themselves.

               I have to ask myself, “beyond offering my services as a dance partner, what more can I do?”

               Blogging is like psychoanalysis. Eight paragraphs into the post and I finally discovered what the real question is that I wanted to ask.

               I think a woman, when she first embarks on this journey, a trip to reaffirm that she is a flower and that she can still attract bees, is vulnerable. As a man I am tempted to seduce her but I know that would end up being a hassle and more. Besides, I am not like that anymore. I try to be the kind of man my daughters think I am: a noble person who does not take advantage of people when they are in dire need. Being older is great!

               I’ve tried explaining to these ladies what, to a man, is obvious: all men are just one bark away from becoming a hungry, uncontrollable wolf.  I feel stupid for even trying to console them. They are tangueras and they are special. They are smart enough to recognize pity and that is not what they are looking for, they’d rather have the ‘pass’.

               From my many conversations with tangueras I now know that the ‘pass’ is a sign of power. To have the ability to compel a man to risk an invitation to a possible relationship is truly intoxicating for a woman. As they grow older, the intoxicating effect increases as well, not like wine which mellows with age, it is more like a well-blended scotch: liquid fire!

               The pass is likely to be offered by a younger tanguero. It is a phenomenon I just noticed this past weekend. There were many young men attending our workshop. As I talked to the more experienced women in our group I was amazed to find that they couldn’t believe the college-aged males enjoyed dancing with them. I am often left speechless when I realize how little women know about us guys!

               Permit me to stray off course a little as I try to offer more data on this well-known fact: younger men dig older women; they represent the possibility of sex without commitment. Having been a young man once myself, I can tell you that having to constantly deal with our raging sex-drives is like wrestling a tiger almost every moment of the day. If we give up the struggle then society pays. We commit crimes of passion and eventually end up in jail or dead, sometimes even happily married…go figure:-) Just to be with a woman who represents the opportunity to get that tiger off our backs is intoxicating. The mere thought of such an encounter is liberating.

               Blah, blah, blah, I digress. I’m back on track. So, what can I do? The answer is: not much. She is on a journey that only she can say when it is over, that she has found the answer she is looking for. All I can do is be there for her, to dance with her and help her find her own balance. The rest is up to her.

 Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango

The Dark Secret of Tango

               The dance of tango is usually paired with danger but it is also associated with an individual suffering from a deep, personal pain. For some the traumatic experience lasts such a long time that they cannot imagine living without the constant hardship. It is a strange phenomenon of the human condition.

               I’ve heard of people who choose to stay with a soul-searing soreness rather than discard it because they are more afraid of the unknown, a life of freedom from their ‘monkey’ that is always on their back, digging into their flesh, their nerves and often into their very soul.

               Tango allows you to remember these aches, whether they are with you still or lost long ago in a vat of wine or along the path of a diligent effort to escape them. This is a phenomenon of the dance. The reason for this is the necessity of the dancers to connect to the music as well as to each other.  To make this connection, a dancer must be honest with himself and with the music. Tango music is often full of painful stories and to deny that you take comfort in this would be a lie…to yourself and to the music.

               It is this confrontation with the truth that sets you free yet keeps you coming back forever.


Note: Check out my new book on Amazon: Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure.

 Note: For an in-depth look into the mind of the Kayak Hombre, read his book, available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369366756&sr=1-1&keywords=River+tango

Repost with new introduction: The Secret History of Russian Women and Tango

I am reposting this because of an improved appreciation for Russian culture after our Daniela Arcuri workshop in Durango. This comes after I listened to an NPR story about the director of the Bolshoi being attacked. Until this week I never full appreciated how much the Russian tangueras I danced with loved to dance. They come from a culture that reveres dancers just as much as Americans worship singers.

Sunday night, after the workshop, we dined with our master teacher from Buenos Aires and she related her world-wide travels and her impressions of the different peoples she met. It was through her words that I was inspired to let go of my distrust, instilled in me during childhood. I grew up in Cold War America. We were taught to be suspicious of Russians through teachings in our schools and via our TV shows, like the cartoons featuring Rocky and Bullwinkle, a flying squirrel and a bipedal moose.

Tango for me has been not just an education in the dance but also enlightenment for me to people of other cultures. It has always been a struggle for me to resist the bigotry our culture tries to imbue in us; I guess that's what makes me an American. We are a bipolar people, despising the immigrant whilst simultaneously loving the immigrant culture.

A Russian tanguera once told me how sad she was that the United States government depicted Russians as a group of unhappy people. At the time I thought she should just get over it. After all, Serbians are still mad at the Turks for an invasion that occurred over 700 years ago. I was tempted to tell her that it took America 100 years to grant African-Americans civil rights after we fought a war over whether or not they were people or property and that it would take us at least as many years to forget the Cold War. Fortunately for me I kept my mouth shut: I learned that from tango:-)

I am not claiming to be enlightened but I am saying that I can see the light and that I strive for it.

So here is my repost of the Secret History of Russian Women and Tango. Enjoy:-)

                I would be remiss in my duties as a writer if I did not mention the prevalence of Russian women in the American tango community. I have always felt I was ready to write about them but I sensed that I needed to do more research. The more I learned, the more I realized that they are so diverse, complex and fascinating, I am sure I could study them forever. At some point, I had to make a decision to comment about them and that time might as well be now.

               This dance is so multicultural, on so many levels, that finding an ethnic group represented is not unusual. However, when you consider that this is a Latin phenomenon and there are 196 countries in the world, then the high concentration of northern Eurasian females doing it, does seem a bit odd.

               I suspected I would be writing this piece soon, so I began to throw some thoughts out at the Russian tangueras I ran into at tango events. One lady’s husband, who is Russian, said Eastern European women are very competitive. She disagreed, saying they are only competitive in Eastern Europe. I talked to a dear friend, a Russian, and she said there is no competition for her…and I knew she was right; when she walks into the room, the men follow her around, hoping to make eye contact.

               When I considered the two statements, I knew I was on to something. Let me see if I can’t try and capture it. It is fleeting, like a spark from a flint when someone is trying to build a fire.

               There are many similarities between Russian society and Argentine society. The economies of these nations are always struggling. They are both very sexist cultures. My friend said she grew up with tango music and that it was played all the time in schools. So, too, in Argentina! Both are very well-received in America.

               Russian women have to be very adaptable in order to survive; so, too, for Argentine ladies. Russian women are very passionate and are driven to learn tango but they’ve got nothing on Argentine tangueras who I imagine packing pistols in their purses to ensure their boyfriends behave.

               The answer is obvious: Russian women are cosmically displaced Argentine tangueras with suppressed memories of an emigration from a southern Italian province in this life or a previous one. Quite a leap, I know, but I am not bound by any rules here: this is a blog. This would explain my fraternal feelings for a Russian tanguera in my practica group; she thinks she’s from Russia, from somewhere around the Volga River, but, according to my cosmic-memory-suppressing formula, she is really an Italiana from Mutignano. We could be cousins because my dad is from Abruzzo. 

                Italians were one of the largest groups to emigrate to Argentina. Most came from the southern part of the peninsula, from provinces like Calabria, Campania, Apulia, etc. It is hard to imagine how my displaced Italiana friends ended up in Russia, but I will try because I love them all so much!

               In 1294, though it is not recorded in the annals of history, Marco Polo’s uncle Maffeo, led a company of Venetian outcasts from the town of Pescara, in the Abruzzo region of Italy, to Russia. They were a ragtag band of gypsy dancers who made a living running pizzarias on the islands of Venice. One day, a homely ‘Pescarina’, nicknamed ‘Mama Luigi’ because of her thick mustache, kidnapped Tuboletto “little pipe” Borgia, Lucretia Borgia’s gay cousin, and kept him in a cage as a pet until the authorities caught up with her and exiled their whole tribe.

               They finally settled in a small town outside of Moscow, known as Pizzollya, where they lived and danced, happily making pizzas and singing songs about Mama Luigi. They were displaced by Stalin during the 1930’s for writing subversive messages on their pizzas using olives and pepperoni slices. Part of the town was relocated to the Siberian hamlet of Blagoveshchensk. Pizzollyans from the renowned ‘West End’ of town were relocated to Nikolskiy, a small village in Kazakhstan. A third portion was removed to St. Petersburg.

                The final group managed to avoid deportation because their women were just too pretty to allow this to happen. When the soldiers came to take them away, they merely asked, with eyes wide, “You want to take us away?”

“Yes.” The soldier replied.

“No,” they would respond, “you don’t want to take us away.”

Mesmerized, the soldiers would answer, “No, we don’t want to take you away.” 

"Okay, you can leave now," the girl would tell them and they would leave. This same script was repeated for each of the houses on the northern side of Pizzollya.

               The name of the town was later changed to ‘Piazzollya’ meaning ‘without Pizzollyans’. Eventually, young Astorovich Piazzollya would make the trek from exile to the homeland his heart knew existed, in Argentina, and begin composing the most beautiful of all tango ballads under the name ‘Astor Piazzolla’.

               I talked to another Russian tanguera last night at practica. I told her Russian women are very self-disciplined. She corrected me and said, “No, it is passion. I do this dance because I am very passionate about it!” Water welled in her eyes as she swallowed hard to choke down the tears.

               ‘Self-discipline’, ‘passion’, I don’t care what you call it, all I know is I love Russian tangueras for it. It is very pleasurable to dance with someone who works as hard as I do to master various concepts of this dance, like ‘barrida’ or ‘volcada’ or ‘boleo’. Last night, after four years of trying, I successfully led contra boleos with ease! Garazh bukhat(I’m trying to convey a Russian expression but it might be Klingon)!

               A key ingredient to enjoying tango fully is to know what it means to struggle. People who have lived in the Tropics all their lives cannot truly appreciate what a joy it is to be warm. Sit in an igloo for an hour in your underwear and you’ll have a greater appreciation for Eskimo women;-) I grew up in a drafty house with a coal stove. When I embrace a Russian woman in tango, I can tell they are happy to be in the arms of a warm-blooded man and that, they too, know what is like to be cold.

               And now my task is done. I have written the secret history of the emigration of Pescarinos to Russia and their contribution to tango music. It was not easy and it is not free….I’ll take my fee in dances, please:-)


Note: Check out my new book on Amazon: Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure.

Durango Tango Amorio 2013: A Success!!!!

               Our event was a total success! I was surprised at how many people were necessary to host a tango workshop weekend featuring a world renowned master teacher from Buenos Aires and a milonga employing a live tango orchestra. The following post is a summary of the preparations that took place and my thoughts about this endeavor which I offer in the hope that others can use this information for their own tango affair.

               The first thing we needed to do was to decide to host the event. After nearly a year of practicas and twelve well-attended workshops I felt that we had all the ingredients necessary to reach for something more. I also had a strong desire to hear the Qtango orchestra play again and had a warm thought when I imagined them performing at a venue in my beloved city of Durango. So the decision was made based partly on logic and partly on desire.

               Now we needed to contact Qtango and a top-level instructor, as well as get both to agree on a date. Approaching the Argentine-born master teacher from Buenos Aires, Daniela Arcuri, was a no-brainer for me. I had taken several of her workshops in the past and, if you read my blogposts, you will know I look to her for direction whenever I feel I am ready to make improvements in my dance. Both artists readily accepted our invitation and agreed on a date.

               With commitments from the artists we began to hammer out what each would accept as compensation. Qtango required a retainer fee to be paid in advance as well as accommodations to be provided for the night of their performance. Daniela requested a plane ticket and lodging from Friday to Monday.

               This is the point where someone has to commit money, which I did. Unfortunately my girls needed some financial assistance the initial week of the commitment which caused me a lot of stress and I found it overwhelming. To be honest, I would have backed out if my significant other wasn’t there to offer encouragement as well as some of her own hard-earned dineros.

               I’m a nervous person. Recently my daughters were overseas, mostly in East Africa, and I found myself online for four months constantly looking for signs of life and their safety. They are back in the United States now but I found it difficult to withdraw from cyberspace completely. This venture gave me a reason to stay in the digital realm and now I must say it: I AM A CYBERHOLIC.

               There I said it and the workshop is over, now I can start walking down the road to recovery.

               Now that the subject of my digital-abuse is out of the way where were we? Oh yeah, we were wondering where we would dance and sing; good, let's continue.

               Our next task was to find a place to hold the workshop and then put together a flyer. My girlfriend’s friend owns a dance studio and she offered to let us use her space. I was reluctant until I saw the space and was sold as soon as I opened the door!

               Daniela, Qtango, my girlfriend and I worked on the flyer. This took almost two weeks. It is a very important process because it determines what others are told is being offered. I probably wasted the most money getting flyers printed but I also gained the most experience and I will definitely save a lot of money, time and effort the next time we produce an event. For those of you undertaking the task at this time, I suggest you forgo using Microsoft Paint to assemble your flyer as it greatly decreases pixel concentration which shows up only when a document is printed.

               As we began to distribute flyers, online and in the real world, we realized how much we needed the help of others. For a two week period we were constantly reminded how important it is to have a community from which to draw support and not just for marketing efforts but also for preparation and execution of the event. We needed chairs, registration sheets, flowers, food, rides to studio, a prize for the drawing, a sign, etc., etc., etc.

               The last two weeks I was extremely busy at work and my girlfriend caught the flu. Fortunately we had prepared well and the final weeks saw the progression of our efforts carried out independently by the dedicated members of the Durango Tango Amorio planning committee.

               Friday was very stressful as this was the night of our free lesson at Four Leaves Winery and Daniela was stuck at the airport. She spent the whole day, starting at 6 a.m., at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport waiting for space on a flight to Denver. It wasn’t until I received a text from her that she was on her way and would be touching down at Durango/La Plata Airport at 8:50 p.m., that I finally breathed a sigh of relief.

               At the winery I put my faith in tango music, gave a brief description of how tango should be danced and hit ‘play’ on my laptop's media player. I guess I was never really alone in my endeavors as long as I let tango guide me. I offered everyone their money back for the free lesson and trusted our individual members to assist newbies in moving to the tango music.

               They done me proud! I think most of our group advanced to another level that night. No longer were they beginner students of the dance, they became experienced guides to aspiring tango neophytes moving about a room filled with wine in fragile glasses. Like bulls in a china shop, glasses were broken and wine was spilled....yet it was a total success!

               The owner was so happy she gave us an extra hour to practice which was just enough time for Daniela, whose flight was delayed another forty minutes, to arrive and give a brief performance with the author of this post, the hillbilly tanguero from Pennsylvania, Kayak Hombre.

               The rest of the weekend was also a complete success. At no point in this process did I ever doubt that the artists selected would perform to the utmost satisfaction of everyone in attendance. It was a lot of work but well worth it. Many people sought me out to express their sincere gratitude for bringing Daniela Arcuri and Qtango to Durango.

               This made me feel very good. Even today, four days later, I experience elation when I recount their remarks. If I had to summarize how I feel after this weekend’s events I would have to say I feel complete. I feel like I am one of the early settlers of the West who sends back East for things that will make his life more bearable out here in the wilderness. Now I have all I need.

               I hope this post is of use to anyone attempting a similar endeavor. If a person is willing to listen to advice that I would give in retrospect I would offer this: don’t wait until you’re ready, begin when you have a community of people who are interested in the dance of tango and trust that tango will help you do the rest.

peace, love, tango

kayak hombre

p.s. I'd like to thank, once again, Judith Harrison for hosting Daniela for the length of her stay as well as for opening her home to other dancers who took their private lessons with Daniela in Judith's living room.

(For a more in-depth looking into the mind of the Kayak Hombre and his thoughts on tango, buy his book: River Tango, now available on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/River-Tango-perri-iezzoni/dp/1453865527 )