Camille Cusumano

A tango dancer from Istanbul writes,

Dear Camille,
If you were to list the things to do to become a real artistic tango dancer, what would your list look lile?
Where would you start? What would don’ts as well as dos will be?

Dear Tango Aficionado,

Your question really got me thinking—how to answer this succinctly, when really, it took my whole book to write about tango, the art and wonder of it!

I pondered your phrase “a real artistic tango dancer”—whether you meant dancing for exhibition or for your own pleasure. In the end, I think the answer would be about the same because in essence all tango dancers have received a venerable art form. And as artists they are sort of avatars.

I think the number one thing that makes a good tango dancer is to recognize the dance as greater than the sum of its parts. The two dancers, a leader and follower, the music, the wood floor, the prescribed shoes, the costume — all these can be measured, assessed, and judged by our finite minds. But the dance is beyond these elements. Call tango the Holy Grail, a sanctuary, a place of no words, a divine state, but recognize it as something you can experience and direct or conduct artistically, like solar energy, but cannot bottle, package, or hold onto for longer than the moments when the dance is happening.

So here then, I list ten things I hope will help guide you. Each one could be expanded into a long chapter.

1. Consider first and foremost that tango is your dance. Know and respect yourself. (You are the “goddess, or god, of the tango galaxy.”)

2. Respect all teachers of tango. It’s a major challenge to put the dance into words. Many teachers fall short in areas, but they are doing their best. Listen, absorb what you need from each one, and leave what doesn’t work for you.

3. I recommend sampling many teachers because all have some strength.

4. Give the dancers less skilled than you respect. If you know where your own center, or axis is—the one thing you can control—you can be generous and patient toward others, whom you might even help in this way, which in returns helps you. (I call this phenomenon “tango grace”).

5. Similarly, don’t take it personally if a seemingly “better” dancer turns his/her nose up at you. In a milonga, or any dance setting, you can never know why someone is not inviting you to dance. To attribute negative reasons to his indifference is to shackle your own energy and creative force (to cloud your solar energy). (See also #10 – “be content with what’s offered.”)

6. I recommend yoga as the best complementary discipline for deepening your understanding of tango. Tango is like yoga, a skillful “yoking” up of energies. It also gets you intimately acquainted with every square centimeter of your own body and its bio mechanics, hence strengthening the literal core or axis, and the mental one, too. Yoga bolsters our ability to be totally present, surrender ego (or the idea of a separate leader/follower. Real artistic tango is about the dance, not the individual units.) And, yoga teaches you about breath and breathing from and through your axis, something almost no tango teachers ever touch on.

7. Some accomplished tangueros prefer to have the same practice partners. I like to have several and on a rotating basis (kind of the way I eat, too—rotating diet is recommended by ortho-molecular nutritionists as the best one for longevity). I consider every dance a chance to practice something, to improve myself. So, I love going to milongas where I know there will likely be what I call “wild cards”—guys I’ve never danced with before, complete unknowns, but who take me out of my routine, out of my complacency, and thus sharpen my ability to be totally present. They tune up my body mechanics, which can get dull thru the same patterns. They keep me agile in mind and body.

8. Dive into to the milonga with an open heart. Everyone is there with the same desire and needs, so there is nothing to fear. We’re all kids in the candy shop. Allow that the dance, whose steps you now have in your muscle memory, is being reborn anew each time you step into the dance circle with another partner.

9. A corollary is to take care of yourself if the brooding state takes over (it happens to the best of us). Realize this is your own body/mind state—it’s not part of the dance, which is always pure and perfect. Keep the dance sacred. It arose when the most intimate, soft, ripe center of humans cried out for “connection” and completion with others in an artful way. Take time off from milongas, pick and choose the ones that suit you, but keep tango as a sanctified state.

10. With regard to the milonga, also, develop 3 or 4 precepts to guide a wholesome attitude. My Tango Precepts are 1. Just show up 2. remain present 3. Accept [or be content with] what’s offered 4. Be kind to self and other.

Finally, my favoritie saying is, “You Learn tango from feet up, but you dance it from heart down.” I think when you feel deep down inside that you know what this means, you have the real art of tango.

I’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM OTHERS WHAT ADVICE THEY MIGHT OFFER

CANCELED DUE TO ECONOMIC CRISIS AND SWINE FLU —CHECK BACK IN A FEW MONTHS

Contact Infusions Travel and get low consolidator airfare, better than Internet prices.

There’s no more inspiring way to practice travel writing than to immerse yourself in a foreign culture. You find yourself crafting image-rich journal entries or lyrical postcards and emails. But how do you fashion prose with style and substance — that give your words broader appeal, longer shelf life, and publishing opportunities?

Learn how in a workshop, “Substance and Style in Travel Writing” from July 25 to August 1, 2009 while immersing yourself in the vibrant Argentine culture of Mendoza, the lovely wine country, located at the base of the Andes Mountains. Camille Cusumano, author of “Tango, an Argentine Love Story,” will lead the workshop, which is sponsored by the Mendoza Intercultural Association (MIA), a non-profit association whose purpose is to promote intercultural exchange between Argentina, the U.S. and other world cultures.

VIEW THE WEEK’S SCHEDULE HERE

Your lodging and the workshop is at Posada de Rosas, a boutique inn in Mendoza, perfectly situated for exploring the lively city that is sure to inspire many story ideas. Your lodging hosts are American writer Ellen Hoffman and her artist partner, Riccardo Accurso. (Scroll down for more details on lodging, costs, instructor, workshop.)

HERE’S WHAT YOU GET

The workshop with an award-winning writer and editor promises a winning combination of intense instruction with practical exercises in the class and in the field, as well as exposure to quintessential Argentine culture—tasting world class wines (lookout Napa and Sonoma!), savoring the country’s cuisine, including the unparalleled Argentine barbecue (think grass-fed beef and other meats as well as small-farm produce) and, of course, tango, tango, tango—a demonstration and a few lessons (now, that’s something to write the home paper about).

In the first group session, participants will set a personal goal to accomplish during the workshop. In subsequent sessions, Camille will guide participants through topics including: the art of reporting and researching, how to pitch your article or book to an editor, how to find your own voice as a writer, self-editing, and more.

Class sessions will alternate with a series of activities including visits to local wineries, a full-day excursion into the Andes mountains, and an opportunity to meet with local Mendoza writers. Camille will be available for individual consultations. Here’s your chance to go deeper into your own work and the art and craft of writing.

We hope you’ll join us for a week—and if you like, an additional three days that includes private consultations with Camille. The classes and the beautiful setting are sure to push your creativity and writing to new heights. With a small group of fellow writers, you’ll learn the six key topics that lead to successful writing, while you enjoy wonderful food, wine landscapes, and heady exchanges with local writers.

WORKSHOP DATES: July 25- August 1, 2009
PROGRAM COST: $1,495.00 U.S., double occupancy; $350.00 U.S. single supplement. (Fee covers lodging, tuition and excursions, most lunches and some dinners, but not airfare).
TO REGISTER AND FOR MORE INFORMATION ON COST, LODGING, MENDOZA: contact Ellen Hoffman at
ellen@mdz-intercultural.org or 304.876.2243 in the U.S.

For no extra fee, you can also sign up at the one-stop agency, Infusions Travel.

INFORMATION ON THE WRITING WORKSHOP: Contact Camille at ocaramia@earthlink.net.

ABOUT THE LODGING
The Posada de Rosas (see TripAdvisor), a centrally located boutique inn is operated by American writer Ellen Hoffman and her artist partner, Riccardo Accurso. More than two dozen TripAdvisor readers have given the inn consistent five-star reviews, (detailing the outstanding personal service, large clean rooms, architectural elegance, great food, and more). Guests describe the inn as perfect for everything from a honeymoon or romantic hideaway to girlfriend getaway or family stay with young children or teenagers. Read also what Fodor’s says. Ellen and Riccardo are the founders of the MIA with their partner, Pablo Falconi. A lifelong resident of Mendoza, Falconi has extensive experience traveling in other cultures and in educating executives on doing business in world cultures.

ABOUT MENDOZA
Mendoza, less than five hours’ drive from Buenos Aires is culturally a mini version of that city (more human scale). Set at the base of the Andes in western Argentina, it is a European-style city known for its parks and sidewalk cafes, its lively restaurant scene and vibrant cultural life. One of only nine wine capitals of the world, Mendoza is famous for its Malbec and other fine wines. Excursions into the nearby countryside offer views of vineyards silhouetted against the continent’s tallest mountains–including Aconcagua, the highest mountain in Latin America-at 22,841 feet. Read more about Mendoza.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Camille Cusumano is an American writer and editor who divides her time between San Francisco and Buenos Aires. In addition to her book, “Tango,” her published works include cookbooks, travel anthologies, essays and travel and food articles for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yoga Journal, and Islands magazine. She was an editor at VIA Magazine for 17 years. Her short story, “Plot Theory,” won third prize in the annual Kurt Vonnegut short fiction contest in 2007.

Photos by Arthur Fraser and Dan Taaffe

These poses were struck in anticipation of publication of a short article I wrote for Yoga Journal, which appears in the March 2009 issue in a section called OM.

Here’s the article as it appeared:

My yoga practice is old. Which maybe is why I feel young-well, much younger than 57. My practice goes back to a book by Yogi Vithaldas, which fell into my hands from a remainder pile in San Francisco more than 30 years ago. As they say, when the student is ready, a teacher appears.

I always trusted in my own divinity, probably the legacy of my Catholic upbringing. But yoga was my bridge from the monotheistic split of body and soul to the experience of body and soul as one. Yoga helped me locate the divine in my own body, in a place beyond word or thought. Over the years, under the guidance of many teachers, I gradually awakened to my one little body as being the universe with all its finite and infinite boundaries. To use a Zen metaphor, I was like the tiny dewdrop that reflects the entire moon.

My yoga and meditation practices prepared me in a way that no other disciplines could have for a passion for Argentine tango, which I discovered much later in life under similarly fortuitous circumstances. My well-oiled joints, limber spine, and oft-massaged internal organs were solid physical grounding for a dance that I have come to consider part of my yoga practice. And yoga’s spiritual centering prepared me for tango’s demand for total presence and surrender of ego.

Tango was born among nineteenth-century immigrants of a desire for intimacy, or “connection” with other, the way yoga was born of an urge to connect with the energy of the cosmos. In tango, the leader and follower must be fully present, surrender their egos, and not think. They move heart to heart in linear or circular motion, sharing a fluid balance that emanates from the spine or axis. Etiquette dictates that we not talk while dancing tango: “Connection,” in the form of this non-verbal dialogue, is the ultimate measure of a tanguero’s mastery. When I lean torso to torso with my partner and we step in sync to the music, I leave artificial time behind. My breath is deep, boundless, and effortless; my heart chakra blossoms like a thousand-petal lotus. We connect, human props for each other, in a rapturous yogic flow.

In Buenos Aires I assisted a teacher who admonished his students, “Not two, one!” His command for dancers to let go of the idea of a separate self echoed Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi, whose instruction, “Not two, not one” was similarly intended to teach us to not count the world inside and outside ourselves as separate phenomenon; in fact, not to count at all.

If it was on the mat that I first learned these lessons, experiencing this union on the dance floor has taught me to be open to finding the divine everywhere. People think I’ve got something special, but I tell them that everybody’s got

tango. Tango is simply a metaphor for anything, whether it’s as humble as peeling potatoes or as lofty as walking tightropes, that takes you deep into the yogic union. It’s the relationship you have with whatever consumes you, takes you out of this world to an inexplicable place of connection and then delivers you back, renewed. In these moments, I think you discover the true meaning of yoga.

I love walking up to the street dancers in La Boca and asking if they’ll dance with me. I’ve never been disappointed. They are so kind and willing and bravely accept the challenge. My friend Robert Levering (the best-selling author) was visiting the city and I wanted to show him how it works, how you can walk up to a total stranger and talk tango. We scouted out El Caminito and the tanguero in my video on my Home Page was not to be found. But I found my perfect stranger in Gustavo—seen in the two videos below. Gustavo was a darling and without knowing a thing about me, wholeheartedly accepted my invitation–and invited me for a second dance. I was the reticent one, because his dancing platform is actually a raised stage in front of the audience of diners at the street cafe (we’re next to La Perla). I was a little nervous at first and I note with chagrin, that at times, my “collection” (home base for your feet) is not tidy. Also, seasoned tangueros, you might note that at first in video one, I began, out of habit, in the close milonguero style. But I felt Gustavo convey through the dance that he preferred more open style, so I gladly accommodated him and pulled my head away. Many kudos and bravos to Gustavo for keeping us safely in a tight line of dance space.

La Boca, literally “the mouth” (of the Rio de la Plata) is a not-to-be-missed barrio. Yes, there are many tourists there – but there’s a good reason. El Caminito is full of Argentine-style energy, street artists and performers. You can’t not feel good there. Here are a few of the vivid scenes — the photos only hint at the joie de vivre there. I like to rest at La Perla, a “bare notable” – historic cafe bar with traditional and cheap Argentine fare and photos of soccer players, tango lyricists, and many Argentines of renown. Even Nicole Kidman visits La Boca—there’s a photo of her in La Perla.