SOLO WHALE

I asked my friend Juan to translate my little poem into Spanish.

ALONE

Why have you become the solo whale?
The adventure is now closer to shore where the
     water runs warmer
Head off to the deep when the music stops
When you must find your own quiet space
But today the frolic and dance continue

 Karen Lucey  -2013


ON APRIL 5th it arrived via email

A spanish version for your great poem

Hugs for both of you.   Juan

Soledad

¿Porque te has convertido en la ballena solitaria?

La aventura ocurre ahora bien cerca de la costa

donde el agua es más cálida

Regresa a lo profundo cuando la música pare 

cuando debas encontrar tu propio espacio, más calmo

Pero ahora la diversión y el baile continúan

IT GOT BETTER

Just when I think I can't absorb another tango ANYTHING, it got better.
Today we had a lesson with the master Rodolfo Dinzel. Our teacher at the Galerias, Amanda Gris, said we must persue a lesson with Sr. Dinzel to explore the possibilities of more communication between us.
OK. I sent an email- no response. I called and left a message- no response. Mike and I said let's just get on a bus and go his studio (Jufre 160) to see if we can get a lesson.  He was there in a more than interesting studio. It was a new approach to the dance. We stepped out for empanadas and returned in an hour for our lesson. First he wanted our attitudes changed- more attitude.
After another dance he wanted longer and slower walking.
Next he gave us exercises to practice before our lesson next week.
I hold Mike's shoulders and lead the back ochos for myself.
One hand (right or left) goes to Mike's or my chest and we move with eyes closed to the music. Next both hands, palm touching lead the dance in a circular or back and forth movement to the music.
We need to do these exercises 5 minutes every day to start to feel the circular communication of the dance. LOVED this lesson.

From the Sunday NY Times- March 2014

In the large-scale Nurses’ Health Study of more than 60,000 postmenopausal women, those who walked briskly at least four times per week were at much lower risk of hip fractures (an indirect but practical indicator of bone health) than the women who walked less often, more slowly, or not at all.

Had the walkers occasionally jigged backwards and sideways, all the better. So-called odd impacts, created when you move in a direction other than straight ahead, can initiate remodeling throughout the hipbone and spine in older people, a few recent studies suggest.

Now what dance does that bring to mind?

This post is for ME-What I have learned.

1. Silvina Valz: Go with my body, Go with ease, Look out at or above eye level (this organizes my body), Walk on the beat, Caress the floor, Move leg from my diaphragm, go at the last minute (tension and release)
2. Cecelia Gonzalez: Use more disassociation, Use the torso and back in the molinete, Keep my hips facing the man.
3. Amanda Gris: Improvise and interpret on my own, Keep body soft (ice to water)
4. Johana Copes: Don't go up and down, Make a definite step, Use the standing leg for power, Don't collapse my left side. In forward ocho- torso, hip, leg and then the foot, In the back ocho- hip first.
5. Maria Angeles Rodriguez: Weight over front foot in forward ochos
6. Marcela Duran: Long leg back in the ocho before the weight goes down( cross the leg a little), Ice-cream cone theory- enjoy every part of every step.
7. Augusto Balizano: Dance the pivot into the floor, Posture erect, Take my time- slow it down, Follow through with the right arm.
8. Olga Besio: Find the pause in the tango, Dance to the floor and the music.
9. Daniela Arcuri: Don't collapse my left side, Don't collapse my right side.
10. Carina Mele: Lift torso, Lighten my upper body
11. Eliana Sanchez Arteaga: Follow the man's left arm
12. Marissa Quiroga: Feet on the floor, Beauty in the foot.
13. Pablo Veron: Put the back heel down, Look over the mans shoulder and up a bit (posture up, head up)
14. Sonia Peralta: Move like a methodical cat, Don't go up and down.
15. Pablo Alvarez: Keep hip level in the side step
16. Noelia Barsi: Open the hip on the back step, deeper cruzada
17. Aurora Lubiz: Free leg totally free, small beautiful adornos but seldom
18. Gabriel Misse: Use the diaphragm for balance forward and back, Use the back muscles for lateral balance, lag the back leg
19. Oscar Gauna: Breathe together.
20. Silvana Nunez: Vary the speed between fast and slow
21. Me: Perservere, Keep a blog about all this, Thank all the above and all the below in some way.
22. Privates and group lessons with instructors who nudged me with some of the above ideas. Junior Cervila, Jesus Velazquez, Natalia Rojo, Miguel Zotto, Alberto Paz, and more to come.
ADD ONS from April 2014- Of course, Rodolfo Dinzel
 Beto Barsellini and Lis Dorin: Complete the pivots, relax the ankles, knees and hips, lift the chest at a slight diagonal, push the floor on every step. More disassociation.

WATER to ICE - ICE to WATER

About 70% of the human body mass is water Amanda Gris tells us at our Thursday tango lesson. It is easy for a couple in a tanda to realize that one or both has a great deal of tension in his or her embrace or frame- ICE. If the woman has the tension, the man tries to soften her body by breathing with her and relaxing his own body back to WATER before the first step of the dance.  If the man has the tension- ICE, the woman can do her best to relax her own body and dance to the floor. The goal is to get out of the ICE and turn it back into the flowing WATER- in Spanish- being tranquila y relahada.
The goal of the lesson was to work with improvisation. The improv part of the lesson was clever and new. After the side step, I go. Mike goes. I go. Mike goes, etc. Doing this back and forth for a three minute piece of tango music was fun and funny. In the real dance if he is going to give me a chance to improvise, he opens the embrace and allows me to play until he is ready to move again. We can't wait to try this at our Wednesday pracitcas this summer in the TENT.

Copes- THE COPES

Karen Lucey

We are living in BsAs because we saw you dance in the movie TANGO. We dance tango because we saw you dance tango. Thank
you SO MUCH. Karen and Mike Lucey on Calle Florida

1:35pm

Juan Carlos Copes

I miss you so much , I will see you in the Ladys Tango.

Reagars. Copes.