The Mojave is the most beautiful of deserts on earth, IMHO. Every year, bro Chuck and I penetrate its wilderness and wonders. This year we hit some weather. The canyons, wildflowers, light, and critters went on with their clockwork.
You never know who you will run into in New Jersey. That’s Dancin’ Will with me. When we met on a trans- atlantic cruise from New York to Lisbon in 1998 I had no idea we both had Jersey Shore connections. You’ll get my drift. Aka Bill Rodgers, Will was a social host on that cruise and I was on travel assignment for VIA Magazine. So I stepped all over his toes. He still remembers it. The late Buddy Morrow (then 80 years old) and the Tommy Dorsey Big Band played on the high seas for us. Here you can read about that trip—now titled It takes Two to Tango. Do note it preceded my Tango life. Back then, I had no idea that one day I would forsake all those ballroom, Latin, and swing dances for Argentine Tango. But on this sudden trip to the Jersey Shore (to help Mom recover from surgery), I mostly did the former moves. After dancing with a certain to-remain-unnamed partner, I’m ready to incorporate a little quick step, Viennese Waltz, and West Coast Swing, oh and some rumba, some bolero, some salsa . . . hustle . . . back into my life. Apologies to the tango fundamentalists—but at least it’s still my Numero Uno.
I was taken prisoner for six nights and seven days by a Sierra Club Local from southern California. I am now suffering from Helsinki Syndrome. I fell in love with my captors.
They marched me up tall mountains, some more than 11,000 feet above sea level. They led me into an isolated northeast corner of Yosemite National Park. They did not need to blindfold me for the sun was blinding at those dizzying heights. My vision was filled with blue sky so deep it had the loft of velvet. Scintillating, light-reflecting lakes with diamonds bouncing off the surface finished (Finnish-ed )the job. For I was a captive audience. They didn’t need to lure me by appealing to other senses, say, like filling the air with a fragrance so divine – of pine and vanilla of wood baking in sun. But they did.
They insisted I stay between our Leader and someone called Sweep. I noticed that more than one of them was named Sweep. They were not very talkative, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions. In fact, they lacked a sense of humor. I mean no one laughed when I suggested the setting was perfect for a golf course, condo complex, spa, and pool.
We slept in a base camp in this far corner of utter wilderness where we saw almost no one else for the entire week, not even a black bear. We did see lots of deer and other 
wildlife. Mercifully, this Group had mules carry in our supplies for the tenure of our captivity. I was lured by color. Flowers bursting like songs from the high country where we were sequestered. My heart leapt with joy at the sights and sounds. Although it was later declared an infraction, I was able to pitch my tent not far from a creek, called Return, that sang louder by night than by day. Oh my, the color, the flowers. The lupine, paintbrush, groundsel, arnica, columbine, tiger lilies, penny royal, asters, and so much more.
Soon enough I forgot I was a prisoner and that one day my time would be up and I’d be set “free.” One afternoon, nine of us prisoners were led cross-country, which is code for “on a trail you will never find your way back to camp on alone if you try to escape.” Group meant group, they said.
I had no intentions of trying to escape. Except for a few brief moments as we traversed the brushy slope with many boulders jutting out like old bones, with low-growing willow, drainage ditches, grassy patches. And then voila our way opened upon a spreading field of shoulder-high delphinium more purple than the sky over Santa Fe. I nearly hid amid the nodding stems. Just to lie and die there was enough at that moment. But alas, I’d be missed – they took a head count every few feet and my head stuck out because it was the only one not covered in a hat – which I had lost on the trail in. And besides, I’d miss the big event of each day: Happy Hour.
Yes, the captors held this thing called Happy Hour every day at 5 pm. They brought out canned fish, nuts, cheese, crackers, olives, nuts, corn chips, and more victuals than you could shake a walking stick at. And they put out these big boxes filled with a potion that was intoxicating. The boxes were labeled FRANZIA, which I’ve come to believe is Latin for Truth Serum. Hey, they couldn’t fool me. One sip and I was fired up, found myself telling the truth—how much I loved being held captive in these mountains, how I didn’t miss electricity, lights, indoor plumbing, or my car. They nodded happy as a delphinium. I said how I wished they would never release me. They all just took in, nodded silently again, stalks of delphinium. I think that was because most of them had brought these sun showers while I was left to bathe daily in the icy creeks, imagining the baptism of renewal I was getting amid these peaks and trees. I wondered if any of them—the trees, that is—were virgins.
One night after Happy Hour, I even divulged my secret life back in the city: dancing tango. A hush went through the crowd. In concert, they all took a giant step backwards. At first I thought they were showing me how they knew step number one of the 8-count tango basic. But then I realized they were afraid I’d start in hugging them all. I must have had that hungry (for tango) look in my eyes. The next night I hummed Hernando’s Hideaway and grabbed a leader to dance torso to torso. He demurred – I have a wife. Oh, I was getting out of hand. After all, I was the captive, not he.
While leaning into another human was frowned upon, hugging trees was outright encouraged. There were many lodgepoles and some Jeffrey pines sending their vanilla fragrance into the sun-baked air. We saw at least one white-barked pine. In one of the slide show I hve linked to, you can see a photo of a leader demonstrating how to hug a tree. Notice that the tree is hugging him back. “Have you hugged a tree today?” might have been the logo on their T-shirts.
The daily marches were filled with terms of endearment, not for each other, but for the ridges, flowers, trees, the views around every turn in a trail, the tongues of talus and scree. I was never allowed to go out on the trail alone. That seemed to work OK for me until the last morning. But first, about the fly fishing.
We had arrived on a Sunday. On the following Friday, the sixth day of captivity, I got inspired to go on a hike with one of the captives who professed to be a fly fisherman. Makes sense, Friday was always fish day in my home. (Actually, there were two fisherman, but the other one said his fishing spot was a secret and he wouldn’t show it to me.) D— and I headed down Return Creek, a valley to inspire and move the imagination to paroxysms of grandiosity, not to mention loss of breath. In a vast length of valley, there were many downed trees, seemingly from a natural event such as heavy snow, avalanche, or high waters, about 20 or 30 years ago. The downed logs were all silvery, smooth, and in beautiful decay, spelling out some message we couldn’t not decipher. The power of elements always stuns and silences.
Just when I thought it safe to ask D to plot an escape with me, he revealed to me that he was one of “them.” He was training to be a leader and take other groups of captives into the backcountry and show them how to love trees and the wilderness. I should have guessed as much, as the day before he went on a field trip with Them, learning to use a compass and topo map to get his bearings and be able to go cross-country. I saw no downside to walking the paths and trails already worn over time by millions of feet, since who knows when. But this group was big on cross-country
jaunts.
So, I spent the whole day with D and I learned to cast a fly line: You hold it at one o’clock, then eleven o’clock, pause, then cast and let your line present itself on the water. I learned how to strip and mend as needed. I learned to tie a caddisfly and to moisten the knot with my saliva – the knot is called a clincher. No barbs on the hooks. If D had a hook with a barb, he cut off the barb with a pair of scissors. I learned to catch (got two) and release – and about all the strikes and ones that got away.
Late in the afternoon, D and I strolled back toward base camp, lamenting how the trail had been lengthened since the morning – at least it seemed. We made it back just in time for our last Happy Hour. It was a great last night and I slept well, eager to rise early, break camp, and be released like a trout back to its stream.
I wanted to get out the wilderness early enough to drive the length of I-395 in daylight, given my poor night vision. But the Captors were big on discouraging my walking out alone. Too late in the day, I learned that all I had to do was sign off the trip—to release them (from confining litigation fear). Or to make a bad pun, all I had to do was log off.
And so it goes. I learned that I was free the whole time. The only prison bars was those of my own signature, my own making.
A spell comes over me as soon as I step into the warm envelope of tango’s embrace. No matter who my partner, no matter how skillful he is. I learned early on that tango is a language that defies our limited speech. Everyone who attempts tango eventually wanders through this portal into Big Space of Limitless Expression. Therein, each dancer finds her/his secret. This is what I mean by tango brujo. You know when have been bewitched beyond repair by the infectious “at-ease” that tango is. At first, you can’t hold it, this secret you know with your whole body—because speech is a fairly recent development in humans and it only serves to cover about 15 to 20 percent of that which we know deep inside of us, down to our marrow, in the smallest recesses of each cell. Tango stirs it up. And up and up. And then, you begin to understand tango in a way that no class, no teacher, no video, no book, or written word—not even this—can impart to you. You begin to grasp it and hold it for fleeting seconds. You begin to let go of asking questions about the footwork, or for a correct analysis of the embrace, the way the foot falls or the amount of contra-body movement—even the much exalted “technique” is forsaken in this moment of sudden, boundless awareness. And you get it: Something divinely, uniquely yours in the Big Space of Tango. Everyone has his or her own distinct tango secret. What is yours?
I love the irreverent sound of “street tango” because like most of us North Americans, I got my share of hot-house training in tango before I ventured into the realm where tango actually occurs, in the milonga, in a social setting with strangers. Like most, I wanted to know steps, patterns, and tricks. A class wasn’t worth my time and effort if I didn’t get exposed to some sequence of tricky moves. But then I left the hot house for the wild side of the street: the numerous milongas in Buenos Aires and environs. I let go of everything I had learned and gave myself over to the arms and twitching torsos of man after man in Argentina. I hardly had time to recall what the classroom had given me. I went into a reverie that expunged all knowledge. I became a blank slate. And tango was born anew in my body each time with each partner. It was exhilarating to just let it happen, not knowing, not worrying, each time I entered the dance. And becoming so eager to dance with every man sitting on the men’s side of the dance hall. My mind was torn down. My whole body was shaped and re-formed by this experience.
Now when I teach tango, I find myself giving a lot of “wiggle room” to each step or pattern I teach, because I know that when the students get out into the realm of social tango, each partner will have his or her own approach. If you are open and flexible you will get it. I am bemused by so many hot-house tango dancers who have their tenets and rules and regulations. All fine and dandy for now. But there is the Big Space of Limitless Expression to be had in tango. You will get to it, the tango brujo stage and then there is no going back. You will not want to.
Published at Open Salon.com – an Editor Pick, October 4, 2011
I lived in San Francisco throughout the 1970s, stalking the last of the Beats and other literati, trying hard to be a writer. In 1980, in order to take a real job, I moved to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, best known as the birthplace of Bethlehem Steel. I had followed the road to Emmaus, Bethlehem’s neighbor, to write for Rodale Press, publishers of organic and healthy living books and magazines since the 1940s. I didn’t expect to find a kindred spirit there or much to fuel my muse.
Sitting long hours in North Beach’s smoky cafes to philosophize with the poets had primed me to filter out the aesthetic merits of Pennsylvania Dutch country. Sleepy towns with biblical names, the need to plan ahead if I wanted wine on Sundays, and the janitor who asked me if he could “outten the lights” only fed my sense of alienation from the pulse of true art.
It took one afternoon, June 15, 1981, to prove me fatefully blindsided by my own self-absorption and to show me how useless it is to cling to ideas of art. My boss summoned me into his office and asked if I would drive an out-of-town
visitor who had some French-sounding name to Rodale’s famous organic farm. Looking out this window, I could not hear the crickets droning, but I could see the thickness of early summer gathering like phlegm.
Sure, I said, although I would have preferred to hunker down in my air-conditioned cubical working on my ever-in-progress novel. I found the stranger, Annie, waiting for me patiently and unobtrusively in Rodale’s cheery corridor. Slowly, it came to me—ah, yes, she had written some home dairy cookbook for Rodale. There she stood in stark contrast to the other authors I had met, all New Yorkers—Marion Gorman, Sheryl and Mel London—sophisticated palates we would meet and dine with in mid-town Manhattan.
This Annie fit the publisher’s folksy image, which in those days some of top management wanted desperately to change. I led her out into the muggy air to the car, my mind stuck on a pivotal scene in my novel. Oblivious to my distractedness, Annie was immediately congenial. I recall how she was dressed that swimmingly hot day, in a smock, which I learned had traveled with her 12 hours by train from Vermont to Lehigh Valley. Naturally, steeped in my inflated sense of superiority, I noticed it was a loose, unfashionable smock and that Annie, wearing thick and rimless glasses, had a head of tight permed curls over which she wore a pastel-colored babushka.
We drove the ten miles or so from the publishing headquarters through the back roads of Macungie toward Maxatawny, where someone had intoned the cowpokes are brawny. Annie did the talking. My own work possessed me less and less. She told of living in the backwoods of New England, where she’d been a gardener all her life. “Got 60 acres of a farmlet. We grow legumes, beans—noel beans, crimson and green limas.”
We passed the Velodrome in Trexlertown and my mind drifted again, to Bicycling, one of Rodale’s fitness magazines I aspired to write for.
“ . . . and free range chickens,” Annie was saying when I tuned back in. “Taste better, because they develop good muscle tissue through exercise. Grain-fattened and ready in six weeks. No fat tissue from just sittin’ around.”
All of which held little interest for an “urbane” writer feeling stuck in Podunk. Even so, the passionately green and lush rolling hills of the Lehigh Valley struck a chord and I was flooded with a terrible unnamable sense of loss that has haunted me through life. Perhaps it was because that humid landscape was something I had grown up with in New Jersey and missed in California. “Annie, this is beautiful country,” I announced.
“Too densely populated,” dismissed Annie, going on to explain how rural bartering helped her. “You can’t be self-sufficient alone. Cidering is our specialty.”
We neared Rodale’s 300-plus acres of organic farm. Annie said, “I don’t expect I’ll see any corn. Unecological; high feeder; no need to grow it; let the home gardener grow it.”
Two farm workers, greeted us, and the four of us trudged in the wet heat up the road to a patch they were working. Annie bent over and picked a roadside weed. She handed it to me. It was the color of chamomile.
“Crush it and sniff.”
“Hmmm, pineapple?” I said.
“Pineapple weed.”
A bee landed on Annie’s shin. She stopped and stared at it and just kept looking with aplomb. I wanted to swat it, but I felt Annie knew what she was doing. She began to give off that sort of vibe. The bee finally took flight. She was no longer a bumpkin. She was a bee whisperer. And, still, I was too obtuse to know what I was in the presence of, what I should have done, should have said.
“Oh, Chrysanthemums!” Annie exclaimed. “We ate them in Tokyo. And nasturtiums, variegated ones.” I had a hard time picturing her in that smock and kerchief in Japan.
In the greenhouse, we passed a rainbow of amaranth varieties, an ancient grain then fairly new to American cookery. Writing the grains chapter for a cookbook, I had eaten heaps of amaranth, the grains and the greens. I rather liked it minus the human blood the Aztecs added. I wish I had told Annie that. Had I only realized how darkly humorous this woman was.
I admired the way she could peel off Latin nomenclature as we strolled through gardens, farm rows, and greenhouses. I once thought I couldn’t be a real writer until I knew the names of everything—all flora, fauna, all land forms, all entities, and all phenomenon. A part of me still believes that. But then and there, I was stuck inside a narrow taxonomy, that of the narrative that makes artful fiction of real life, and this preoccupation ironically separated me from the moment or caring about Latin names.
We came upon a purplish flower in the herb garden. “Pyrethrum,” said Annie with her botanical certainty. I listened raptly at first as she told me that she had been thinking about a wonderful 1930s mystery where someone gets killed by pyrethrum. This man had bunches of it hanging upside down in his home in a room. Someone locked him in and the fumes killed him. I lost the thread and can’t recall if she were writing that story or had read it. Stupid of me not to get that straight.
She said she wrote fiction at night and, “All my fiction revolves around the outdoors.”
There my memory fades. But this Annie made an impression. What would I do for a jolt in Emmaus without people like Annie coming through . . . ? I wrote in my journal that evening, still ignorant that I had been in the company of a future acclaimed novelist and winner of the Pulitzer, PEN/Faulkner, and National Book awards. Had I known, I might have made sure we at least became pen pals.
The next time I met Annie—Annie Proulx—was 28 years later in July, 2009, during a book fair in Buenos Aires where I was living. I sat in the audience with a few hundred adoring Argentine fans at MALBA, the city’s Museum of Modern Art. I might have guessed they were eager to meet the woman behind El Secreto de la Montaña, the most romantic short story I have ever read, also released as a novela and the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain.
Perhaps the author’s changed demeanor (less folksy) was a figment of my humbled imagination. She seemed much taller than I recalled. She wore smart slacks and looked younger (no more perm), probably because I was now twelve years older than she was when we met. It struck me that she felt no need to attempt even one word in Spanish. An interpreter kept pace with her. She seemed travel weary, impatient at times, and determined to speak mainly, not on the art of writing, but on writers’ rights, addressing the then-escalating problem of electronic book sales. When pushed, she did offer advice. If you want to write, read, read, read. Not really necessary advice in this Latin City that tallies many more bookstores than churches..
I raised my hand and started to remind her of our day out at Rodale’s organic farm. By some miracle, I had reported the day—the farm tour, the way she dressed, and the dialogue verbatim—perhaps for a future story, in my journal. But before I was even through my sentence, she was shrugging it off as a too-distant memory. Next question.
Since our day at the farm, I had left the Lehigh Valley, moved back to San Francisco, published my novel, and written or edited a few other books with modest print runs. If they weren’t “true art” they had a healthy shelf life. And, well, maybe, all that some of them lacked was a big-name endorsement.
At the wine and hors d’oeuvres at MALBA, I approached Annie amid the swarm of Argentines with a complimentary copy of my latest book, a memoir, Tango, an Argentine Love Story (Seal Press). She flatly said, “I have no time to read it.”
Not even the free-flowing Malbec could temper the sting. I held close to my friend Ed and we faded into the crowd, then left. As we walked back to my apartment I told Ed about the other Annie I had once met in the Lehigh Valley, the crushed pineapple weed, pyrethrum, and the murder mystery. I consoled myself that at the very least, I had a narrative with an arc, one that I had helped shape, with the fullness of time: an inauspicious beginning, a mind-awakening middle, and an open, then shut, ending.
Tango is like no other partner dance for many reasons, two of which are its ready punctuation by silence and pauses. So much happens in the stillness, that the movement becomes a segue to the next silent pause with our partners. Tango is a dance done with with no words but full of dialogue and conversation between two bodies, mainly the torsos, but also wherever there is contact—between the palms, arms, backs, face, head. It is rich. It can be dense as a chocolate truffle and light as puff pastry. It can be ground deeply into the earth and so airy it’s not there. Tango is creative conflict with peaceful resolution—or revolutions. It channels the most naked meaning of the human condition—the urge to connect and be intimate with ourselves and other—like no other dance on this planet.
Notice the last frame— how the solitary milonguero sits, alone, alone, waiting, waiting for the resounding silence that fills him. In tango, waiting is a virtue.
It’s catnip for the muse of a writer to get lost in this level of life, sans mots. An artist acquaintance introduced me to wabi sabi (see below) and it inspired me to see with new eyes. Every writer needs new eyes, oh say once a year. My annual trip to the magnificent Sierra Nevada Mountain Range always renews me from the inside out.
From Wikipedia: A comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”.[1] It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印 sanbōin?), specifically impermanence (無常 mujō?), the other two being suffering (dukkha) and emptiness or absence of self-nature (sunyata).
It has happened for the first time on November 19, 2011. [See video of that evening's highlights.]
And now we’re ready for the second TANGO ON THE MOUNTAIN. Please read carefully:
Dust off your hiking boots and line them up next to your tango shoes. Step back in time with us.
TANGO ON THE MOUNTAIN is an overnight milonga in a stunning natural setting, Saturday, May 19, 2012 at the 100+ year old West Point Inn on Mount Tamalpais in Mill Valley, Calif. (Please read about this historic non-profit inn once served by a railroad.)
Live acoustic music will be provided by Ville & Maho. Electricity is not available to the public at the Inn. We dance under gas lights. The Inn also has an 80-year-old hand-cranked Victrola that plays 78 RPM records – and we have a few tango 78’s to play between live sets. The event, a fundraiser for the West Point Inn Association (WPIA), is being sponsored by three of us who are longtime WPIA members as well as tango aficionados, Mark Northcross, Antoinetta DiMeo, and Camille Cusumano.
TANGO ON THE MOUNTAIN is by invitation but not meant to be exclusive. You are among the tangueros we think would enjoy and appreciate this unusual blend of glamorous tango and rugged (not for everyone) lodging. There is an option to attend without having to sleep over – read on. Before we list all the fun stuff, we’d like you to note that overnight guests bring their own linens OR sleeping bag and pillow case. If you know another tanguero you’d like to invite – just let us know, we’ll extend the invitation. The milonga capacity is limited to 40 persons, the overnight option to 30.
Here is all of what is included in the overnight option $95:
• Beginner tango lesson for newbies – at 6 to 7p.m. (open to all). The inn has a lovely, large wooden floor. Last time, the class was taught by revered Bay Area teachers Jonathan Yamauchi and Olivia Levitt. This time, Camille and smooth partner, Rob, will teach a beginners class, appropriate for all levels.
• Delicious buffet dinner, including wine and soft beverages, prepared by professional chef, Antoinetta – served at 7:30 pm.
• Milonga, 9 p.m. to midnight; includes three sets of live acoustic tango music (Ville & Maho), interspersed with old tango music on 78 rpms on the old Victrola (if you have any 78s, bring them). Note: Electric or amplified music is strictly not allowed at the inn.
• Lodging in a room in the inn or in one of the detached cabins; please read about the accommodations at the WPI website.
• Breakfast on Sunday morning (8 a.m. to 10 a.m.) Checkout time is 11 a.m. but you can arrange to hike the mountain and leave your gear at the inn.
• A shuttle between your parked car and the inn; many people opt to hike to the inn on the one-and three-quarter-mile fire road from Pan Toll or Bootjack (paid) parking areas. Note that all roads on Mt. Tamalpais other than Panoramic Highway are closed at sundown.
*NOTE: There is a piano at the inn – if you can play.
$55 option (no overnight) includes all of the above, up to midnight.We will shuttle you back to your car around midnight. There will also be a guided walk out back to the parking lot at Pantoll.
LODGING NOTE: The inn has 7 “hotel” (nothing fancy) rooms and five cabins (spectacular views from their deck area), with three beds in each.
ARRIVAL – SHUTTLE DETAILS
• Whether you are hiking in or shuttling, everyone should be at the inn by 5 p.m. Meeting time for the shuttle at PAN TOLL OR BOOT CAMP will be around 4:30 p.m. We will confirm the time before May 19. • If you park at Pan Toll or Boot Camp, be sure to follow instructions on the signs for payment.
*********
Keep in mind the spirit of this “Tango in the Wild” event:
If you have been anywhere near West Point Inn or on top of Mt. Tamalpais by day or night, you know the stunning views you get from that vantage, especially as the light changes, the sun sets, the moon rises, the coyote howls. You might be familiar with the facilities—perhaps you’ve stopped at the inn during a hike to rest, or for lemonade, water, or a snack, which the inn sells to hikers on an honor system. So come in the spirit of open-minded adventure—this is not your typical milonga. You can head out to the inn’s veranda and watch a quarter moon through the pine boughs and wake up to sunrise and fog rolling in or out—with the folks you danced with the night before.
Tango Samadhi
Exploring Tango as a contemplative dance
With Sonja Riket & Camille Cusumano
Saturday, October 1, 2011, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
San Francisco Zen Conference Center
300 Page Street, San Francisco (near Laguna)
Pre-registration – $75 ($85 at the door) -
Mail registration: Send checks or money orders to:
Transformation Tango, c/o Camille Cusumano, P.O. Box 475099, SF, CA 94147
Class size is limited, early registration is recommended
OPEN TO: Everyone, from pre-beginner to experienced levels – No dance experience necessary – No partner needed
WEAR: socks or soft-soled shoes (suede bottom), loose, comfortable clothing
BRING: your embrace and an open mind; a bag lunch – Beverages available on site – Cafes are in the area.
More information: Contact Camille at ocaramia@mac.com; or 415-425-6515; or Sonja Riket, intimate_embrace_tango@earthlink.net, (415) 661-1852.
Sonja Riket is a Somatic Movement Therapist, Certified Feldenkrais and Body-Mind Centering Teacher, and a faculty member at the SF Community Music Center. Her 30-year professional dance career combined with decades of meditative practices inform her unique approach to teaching Argentine tango. Sonja is the founder of the San Francisco Somatic Wellness Program at the Women’s Building and the Tango Revolution Orchestra in residence at Caffe Trieste, downtown San Francisco. www.IntimateEmbraceTango.com.
Camille Cusumano is the author of Tango, an Argentine Love Story; she teaches tango to seniors around the Bay Area.
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
This workshop for non-dancers and dancers alike is full of surprises and spontaneous creativity. Tango (“it takes two”) is a metaphor for life because it is a dance of improvisation born of a most primal human urge: to connect, or be intimate with self and other. The workshop includes learning to “tango walk” in embrace, sharing, writing, discussion, and more. Camille will chat briefly about the writing of her book and living and dancing in Buenos Aires.
From Sonja Riket: “Argentine tango is a way of walking. The movement explorations allow us to find stillness within and listen and respond to another’s presence. We will learn the basic steps as the music ‘dances’ us into a greater place of freedom. True partnership emerges in the interchange between the roles of lead and follow. These skills can easily transfer to our daily life and relationships. As we move into the heart of tango a joyous creativity and spontaneity emerge in the spirit of improvisation. Within the tango embrace, a non-verbal communication of heart, body, and soul, we find common ground in our humanity. It is an antidote against isolation, separation, and fearful existence we are led to believe is necessary. What better way to come home to ourselves and to connect with each other across our differences than the non-verbal power of a musical and dance embrace, listening and moving together as one?”
FREE TANGO CLASS AND PRACTICAThis may be the best tango deal in town. Maestro Ivan Shvarts trained in Buenos Aires with several excellent tango teachers. I am assisting him and we’re having a ball. Although his class is promoted as tango for seniors, the classes have great talent in ages ranging from 30s to early 90s. You will never guess who’s over 80. Ivan brings in fantastic talent almost every week. Occasionally, we have a beautiful Argentine singer Roberto Traina, 80, sing original tangos to us each week after class. Kate Bernier accompanies him on piano.
Come join us – drop in – no need to have danced before. We’ll have you up and moving in one class.
“Tango Curiosity, developed by Ivan Shvarts, is the first program of its kind specializing in tango for Bay Area Seniors. Dedicated to teaching authentic Argentine tango for all skill levels and ages, Tango Curiosity currently offers classes in San Francisco, Emeryville and Redwood City.”
4321 Salem St, Emeryville, CA 94608, – Every Friday
1:00 – 2:15 Class all Levels and ages
2:15 – 3:30 Practica, No partners needed
home made lunch $3 at 12:00 for members, membership is Free
Emeryville Senior Center
4321 Salem St.
Between San Pablo & Adeline
of 43 rd. St.
Emeryville, CA
Art deco veterans building,
original hardwood floor 3000sq.f
tangocuriosity@gmail.com
www.tangocuriosity.org
$15 per book, shipping and handling included. Please email your mailing address to me after you have paid: ocaramia@me.com. Allow seven to ten days for delivery. Special, overnight delivery is available upon request, for added cost. Email your request: ocaramia@me.com.
You may also pay by check. Mail to: Camille Cusumano, P.O. Box 475099, San Francisco, CA 94147. Be sure to include your mailing address, specify how many copies of each book, and to whom you wish the books dedicated.
At a cocktail reception and award ceremony with Mike Rayburn entertaining.
Wells Fargo recognized me and three other Californians for doing something different and impressive—for following our passions—after age 50.
Who says quitting your day job is not advisable? I did so in 2005 when I fell head over stiletto heels in love with tango and went to live in Buenos Aires. Now I’m being rewarded by WF with a sum of cash and a party for 100 of my friends and family.
We are called Second-Half Champions.
The event took place on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 in Walnut Creek, CA at:
Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Drive
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Whether you are just getting started and want to take the plunge (into the inkwell) or need encouragement and confidence, I offer workshops to suit your and your writing group’s
needs. Here is a list of several workshops I teach. Contact me for details and rates – ocaramia@earthlink.net or ocaramia@mac.com:
1. A Thousand and One Words - Find your Writing Setpoint – Just as with body weight, we all have a writing setpoint—a natural length that suits our message and determines our ideal genre. 1,000 words is the mean, from which you assess your need to unpack and flesh out or shrink wrap and tighten. It is the naturally manageable increment to bite off and chew, whether you’re writing a short story/feature or a saga. We’ll meet four goals in this class: embracing your personal setpoint; understanding when to unpack or shrink; preserving the narrative arc, no matter what length; and writing with full confidence. All levels writers welcome.
2. Travel Memoir Writing - With the travel-writing market evolved beyond the go-here/see-this approach, personal experience and artful story in travel is more and more in demand. As a magazine editor, I successfully moved from the traditional how-to travel writing to publishing my personal experience travel stories in books and as essays in publications. I’ll help participants understand how they can do this, too. Even if you are still writing for the traditional travel outlets you can infuse your story with sparkle – snap, crackle, and pop. We’ll look at how you can satisfy the reader’s needs and still craft a story with your personal style. All levels welcome.
3. Tap into your Autonomic Writing System - Much can be said about the Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind approach to unlocking the writer within. Now is the time to circle back to the discipline and the practice of craft—without killing the golden goose. This class is designed to tap into the autonomic system of writing—where words begin to flow and to arrive on schedule, like breath. All the while, we consider craft. The goal of this workshop is to have participants leave inspired, enthused, excited, perturbed, riled up, having tapped into their own autonomic writing system; and ready to face the empty white page, armed with their own art and skill. All levels.
4. Writing about & from loss - Many of my students found me through my memoir, TANGO, which is my writing about my own loss (and finds) through tango and Zen practice. I’ve worked with aspiring writers who were ready to face the blank page as a place of refuge after tremendous losses and grieving. When we sit down to write about our lives, pain, grief as well as bliss and contentment rise to the surface. Putting down the words gives a sense of meaning to life in dark times.
