City Scene: Inside and Outside Confiteria Ideal

December 9, 2015 - Tourists are dancing...

On the afternoon of December 9, 2015, inside La Confitería Ideal, a legendary tango cafe in Buenos Aires (BBC film), things were idyllic, dilapidated - sometimes elegantly, sometimes grotesquely, - and often slippery. Some spots on the worn-out stone floor are as rough as sandpaper, and if you've decided to pivot on these patches, you are likely to reconsider your plans - and very quickly. In other spots, the floor is as slippery as a skating rink, because of the talcum or some such powder sprinkled on the floor by the thoughtful hosts. With every attempt to fall flat on my face or tail, of which I made at least three, fortunately, all of them unsuccessful, my appreciation for the skill of all those dancers, who performed at Confitería and managed not only to stay upright, but also look somewhat competent and even elegant, increased exponentially.

Both inside and just outside, it was tourists, tourists, and still more tourists...

...or staring...

Meanwhile a little further outside, things were heating up on the eve of the inauguration of the new president, Mauricio Macri, who was sworn in on December 10, amidst much hoopla, soap opera, pageantry, and very shrill screaming on TV. On the evening of the 9th, crowds started gathering in the streets. Who was in favor or against what, I did not have the time or patience to find out, as we tried to steer clear of the crowd's path, but there were clearly enough supporters and protesters of both the old and the new regimes and plenty of passion and energy on both sides. 

A thought crossed my mind, "Dancing tango to the sound of manifestations outside - what a quintessentially South American moment... They've done this before, many times, - and they are still at it."

...and the locals are marching down Avenida de Mayo. A huge meeting of supporters
of the outgoing president took place on Plaza de Mayo on the night of Dec. 9.

City Scene: Sunderland Club, Buenos Aires

Having grown up in the Soviet Union, I thought I have seen it all in terms of unorthodox approaches to solving everyday problems. But a recent trip to Buenos Aires disabused me from my imperial arrogance. The two photos above were taken at the legendary Sunderland Club, a neighborhood sports center where serious tango is danced on a seriously challenging floor of a basketball court (how it is possible to play basketball on that floor is another question). On the night that we visited, some 600 people packed into the hall to watch the final of an inter-milonga championship. To display a PowerPoint slide with the names of the finalist couples, the projector was suspended - extension cords, power strip and all - from a basketball net more or less above our heads. When I saw this, my heart hiccuped with nostalgia and I realized that we've been outplayed. Bow to the masters of temporary solutions, children!

Creative Mischief at the National Academy Museum

Tango steps sometimes lead in unexpected directions. Yesterday I spent a pleasant hour at the National Academy Museum and School on 5th Avenue and 89 Street, attending the Creative Mischief exhibition (see their Twitter feed and catalog in PDF). This is the fourth annual exhibition of the works contributed by over 170 students and faculty of the National Academy School. Since 2012, this exhibition has grown from a one-day, one-room show to an event that for nine days occupies the entire museum. And for a good reason: there is plenty of talent and originality on display and enough variety of media and genres to tease the eye and the mind. Kudos to the National Academy for cultivating a vibrant artistic community, to the selection committee for choosing a very entertaining set of bold and intriguing pieces, and to the authors for their fresh-off-the-easel works. Many thanks to Boris Svechinsky, a fellow tango student and one of the Creative Mischief's contributing authors, and Walter Perez, our tango teacher, for the invitation to this unexpectedly enjoyable and stimulating exhibition.

See photos of selected works under the cut.

Violentango at Argentinian Consulate

Violentango at the Argentinian Consulate, 5.5.15

On Monday night, at Valeria Solomonoff's consistently enjoyable Tango Playground Practica, I exhorted my partners to be present without ambivalence, misbehave and “milk it” - "it" being all the particularly delectable morsels of music and movement. I noticed that those born north of about 25-30° north latitude are often inhibited when it comes to this to-do list, and I myself, hailing all the way from 60° N, am no exception.

No such exhortations were needed on Tuesday evening at the Argentinian Consulate, where Violentango played a free concert. Whether or not their music has much to do with violence or with tango (although, at least according to Borges, tango has always something to do with fighting), these guys know how to go for it with a vengeance and not just play music, but play with the music of two generations before them – their grandfathers’ tango and rock music of their parents, plus a gamut of other voices and influences, – and make it all sound intriguing and contemporary. A little over a week ago, Astoria Tango Orchestra performed with Daniel Binelli, – and it was great to hear and dance to the traditional sound of orquesta tipica. The music of Violenango is not for keeping milongueros on their feet, but it is also traditional in the sense that it is made of the same ingredients: talent, skill, and inspiration of the players, with nothing canned or boxed other than some juice to amplify the sound of their instruments – two guitars, bandoneon, electric bass and percussion.

‘Tis a season for conversions in my artistic tastes: never a big fan of new tango music, I went to the Consulate with a pragmatic purpose – to scout out the space for a future event, – and was pleasantly surprised to discover Violentango and their unadorned sound. They played their own compositions as well as a couple of pieces by Piazzolla and a few oldies but goodies, such as Milonga de mis amores, which lends itself well to instrumental inventiveness and embellishment. Musically, these guys know how to misbehave and milk it for what it’s worth, with improvisation, ingenious sounds and quotes from a variety of styles, from jazz to folkloric, thrown in with cleverness, virtuosity and humor. It occurred to me that, unlike traditional tango, this music has the momentum to go somewhere, as it allows itself to be discontented and seek a way to escape its own status quo or upset it, out of its own abundance, boredom, mischief, or subversion – or just for the heck of it.

There are plenty of Violentango videos and recordings online, but they do not give you a sense of energy that these guys whip up while playing live. It is, quite simply, great fun to watch them make noise in front of you. There is indeed power in doing – not with 1s and 0s, but with one’s body and mind, – and seeing and understanding how music is being made by five people is quite entertaining. Plus, to be honest, as my own biological usefulness dwindles, my appreciation for good XY chromosomes only grows – and there was plenty of that on display. I was happy to see that the audience at the Consulate reacted to the music of Violentango with enthusiasm that was not immediately predictable – because most of the people in the room were old enough to be these guys’ parents.

Violentango plays four more concerts in NYC: May 6 – Shrine, May 7 – Silvana, May 8 – The Parkside Lounge, May 9 – The West End. Find the details on Violentango website and go see these guys play live for a dose of good music and terrific energy.

Violentango: Adrián Ruggiero (bandoneón), Juan Manuel López (guitar), Santiago Córdoba (percussion), Ricardo Jusid (bass), Camilo Córdoba (guitar)

Program: Le Petit Rhone y la Cigale; Fuga y misterio; Menos sol; Escape porteño; Milonga de mis amores; Napoleon; Barceluna; Milonga del Angel; Libertango

Tango and Babushkas

Mariana Parma and Leonardo Sardella in 2013 production of Recuerdo Tango.
Photo from Mariela Franganillo Dance Company website. 

Yesterday I spent half a day attending a production of Recuerdo Tango, a show by the Mariela Franganillo Dance Company, this time performed at Kingsborough Community College, in far, far Brooklyn. In my graduate school years, I used to live in Sheepshead Bay and thought nothing of commuting every day to NYU, but now, after a decade spent living in Queens, that part of Brooklyn has become almost a different planet. And it is on that planet of Brighton Beach pensioners (and a few of their grandkids), Mariela & Co. have decided to perform their show, as a residency at On Stage At Kingsborough supported by the CUNY Dance Initiative. This production model has its upsides and downsides: without these residencies, the show would most likely have never been staged, but as a residency, it is performed only once (or very few times) and does not bring the performers any returns except for a chance to be on stage and receive public and media attention.

Last time Recuerdo Tango was performed in 2013 at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, which, besides being a much more accessible location, has long traditions, such as Inside the Actors Studio, a deliciously addictive and insightful series of interviews with well-known actors. You can watch Recuerdo Tango taped at Pace online: Act 1 and Act 2.

Yesterday’s production was performed by (almost) the same cast as in 2013: Leah Barsky, Hernan Brizuela, Carlos Cañedo, Ana Padron, Mariana Parma, Walter Perez, Leonardo Sardella, and Yaisuri Salamanca, with LA-based Marcos Questas stepping in as a guest artist to replace Diego Blanco. Four women and five men – and there lies the hook of the story, which features a series of vignettes about a love triangle unfolding over several decades against the backdrop of the New York City life. From office cubicles to a glitzy ballroom to a subway brawl, a bar fight or a domestic quarrel, to a shabby old café, a dark city street, or Central Park, the story flows with knowledge and humor through familiar city scenes. These scenes unfold both onstage and in video segments in the background, accentuated by the powerful performances of singer Sofia Tosello and accompanied by live music of piano, bandoneon, violin, and bass, which add another layer of complexity to the production.

Until recently I had been convinced that tango does not lend itself to a longer form than a ten-minute tanda or a three-minute exhibition. Too much of a good thing is not great, I thought, especially considering all those tropes and clichés with which stage tango has overgrown like an old ship with barnacles. But after seeing a recent production of “milonga” at the New York City Center, a wonderfully imaginative dance show based on tango choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and then Recuerdo Tango, I converted, noting with surprise that an hour-and-a half tango show can indeed successfully and pleasantly hold my attention.

Yesterday’s performance was thoroughly enjoyable, although it felt a touch more measured and calculated than the 2013 production, which was performed with delightful abandon. One big difference between the two shows was the audience: in the 2013 video, you can hear the audience at Pace applaud at appropriate moments, but good luck getting the Brighton Beach retirees to clap mid-show! On my way out of the theater I heard a couple of them say to each other, “Very pretty dancing, but I didn’t understand anything!” Oh well. Elderly Russian-speaking Jews are perhaps the most receptive audience for the guts-on-the-floor emotions of tango, but a dance trio on a subway train may be a little outside of their comfort zone. The babushkas were pleased though, judging by the vigorous applause after the show.

For me, this was yet another occasion to remind myself of the great good luck of having access to the concentration of talent and professionalism that the New York City tango performers and teachers have to offer. I wonder why this city cannot take them up on this offer more frequently and enjoy more of such shows and performances. It is also always fascinating to observe a transformation that occurs onstage to people you know: Yaisuri was the person who taught me my very first tango steps, Walter and Leonardo are my current teachers, Ana and Diego host the practica that I used to frequent, Mariela is a long-time host of another old haunt, and a few friends study or studied with Mariana, Hernan and Carlos.

On the bus on the way back, I overheard a creaky voice of an old woman speaking Russian: “We old folks ought to kiss every pebble here. I haven’t done anything for this country, but it gives me so much: SSI, cheap apartment, food stamps, Medicare, everything I need!” Wow, I thought, on Brighton Beach this is decidedly a minority view. I also doubt that anybody from my generation is in any danger of ever receiving the goodies from that bus philosopher's list. And I also reflected on my lean, yet somewhat structured existence as an office worker compared to the complete unpredictability and lack of security of a life as a dance performer. Perhaps it was not by accident that as I left my building on my way to the show, I saw on the ground a book with a missing cover and a title: Among the Brave. To brave folks then – and to the good memories of New York City!

Pre-show sidewalk oracle near my building.

Credits:

Recuerdo Tango, The Mariela Franganillo Company, May 2, 2015

Directors: Mariela Franganillo and Bob McAndrew

Assistant Choreographer: Cecilia Saia

Music Director: Pedro Giraudo

Musicians: Emilio Teubal (piano), Juan Pablo Jofre (bandoneon), Nick Danielson (violin)

Vocalist: Sofia Tosello

Dancers: Leah Barsky, Hernan Brizuela, Carlos Cañedo, Ana Padron, Mariana Parma, Walter Perez, Leonardo Sardella, Yaisuri Salamanca 

Guest Artist: Marcos Questas

Design: Barry Steele
Lighting: Jimmi Lawlor

Production Manager: Calvin Anderson

NYC Scene: Campo del Cielo Meteorite

Fragment of Campo del Cielo meteorite
Astro Gallery of Gems, 5th Ave. at 38 St.

If you find a chunk of ore

Take it to a New York store.

Here the price is always right -

They will sell your meteorite.

Leviathan: Hallucinations, Health, and Power

William Blake. Behemoth and Leviathan, 
from Illustrations to the Book of Job (1826).
Image from Encyclopedia Mythica.

Yesterday I made an attempt to see Andrey Zvyagintsev's new film, Leviathan, praised by the critics and already collecting various prizes and accolades. I wanted to form my own opinion about it, but knew enough about the movie to expect that it might be difficult to sit through, so I planted myself in an aisle seat of the penultimate row at the Film Forum.

At 6:30 pm the screening began with five or ten minutes of previews. At 7:25 pm I was at West 4 subway station, waiting for the F train and reading Oliver Sacks' Hallucinations. This means that I lasted only about 30-40 minutes of the film, after which I sprang to my feet and ran out of the movie theater with the lightness and speed of a gazelle. Half hour of looking at the well familiar doom and gloom, drunkenness, self-loathing and self-destruction, hostility, rudeness, corruption, hopelessness, and denial of dignity was all I could endure. After that I decided that for the sake of my mental hygiene I needed to spare myself from seeing the rest of this film. I am sure that if this were a Japanese tale of woe, I would have had no troubles watching it, but Russians are adept at inventing and building their own circles of hell, the sights, sounds, and smells of which have an immediate effect on me and make me very, very light on my feet. 

But Hallucinations provided little respite... Before my F train reached Queens, Leviathan was in front of me again, on the pages of Sacks' book, in a different, though not entirely unrelated context. 

In chapter 5, Sacks compares visual hallucinations in patients with classical Parkinson's disease and patients with Lewy body dementia. As an example of a person whose intellectual capacity and creativity were well preserved despite severe motor impairments brought about by Parkinson's disease, the author mentions Thomas Hobbes (1588-1689), the founding father of political philosophy, whose book Leviathan (1651), an early treatise on the theory of social contract, explored the relationship between an individual and state. Hobbes started showing signs of "shaking palsy" at about the age of sixty, while completing the work on Leviathan, and although his condition worsened over time and eventually led to nearly complete immobility, he remained mentally lucid until his death at the age of 91. 

In Leviathan, Hobbes argues that political order is a necessary alternative to chaos, a state of war of all against all, into which humans would be inevitably thrust if they were to follow their nature without restrictions. He dispensed with the idea of the greatest good, but argued that there is the greatest evil, or the fear of meeting a violent end. Hobbes favored absolute monarchy as a safeguard against anarchy, which was perhaps not surprising considering that the book was written during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651). Leviathan, which appeared with a frontispiece that resembles a Tarot card and depicts a giant whose body is formed from hundreds of human figures, immediately stirred up a great deal of controversy and won no favors of the clergy for the author. 

The frontispiece Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes;
engraving by Abraham Bosse. Image from Wikipedia.

In matters of health, Hobbes was an exemplary patient: according to John Aubrey's biosketch (full text of Aubrey's Brief Lives), Hobbes was a man of strong stature, regular habits, moderate in his diet, and mentally and physically active. He would rise at seven in the morning and take a long walk, during which he would think and contemplate and jot down his thoughts with a pen and inkwell concealed in his cane. He also played tennis (until the age of 75) and received regular massages. He spent the rest of the morning in contemplation, had dinner at eleven, smoked a pipe, took a nap, and wrote down his thoughts in the afternoon. Apparently, he was methodical and organized in his meditations, which he undertook "always with this rule that he very much and deeply considered one thing at a time." An eccentric and a wit, "[h]e was never idle; his thoughts were always working." He sang before bedtime (behind closed doors and when nobody could hear him), because he thought it to be good for his health, and composed verse shortly before his death. He loved to argue, he courted controversy, he was a friend of Galileo and playwright Benjamin Johnson, and he was often in trouble with the church. In addition to his works on morality, politics, and law, he translated classics into English and wrote on optics, motion, and geometry. 

Going back to the source of the Leviathan synchronicity, I came across Oliver Sacks' writings in a roundabout way, even though I first learned about him over a decade ago. Recently, after the death of Robin Williams, I watched the comedian's old stand-up routines, movies, and interviews, in some of which he spoke about his work on Awakenings, a 1990 film based on Sacks' book of the same title, about his experience of treating survivors of encephalitis lethargica, who had been frozen for decades in catatonic state. Sacks, who, according to Williams, is a combination of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Albert Schweizer, and Santa Claus [and who speaks about hallucinating the color indigo with a fascinating Yiddish-British accent], spent a long time with Williams and Robert De Niro, helping them to prepare for their respective roles of the doctor and patient. Sadly, in the aftermath of Robin Williams' suicide, it became known that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and struggled with depression, anxiety, paranoia, and sleep disorder, and postmortem showed that he suffered from diffuse Lewy body dementia.

In his tribute published in New Yorker, The Man Who Could Be Anyone, Sacks described Robin Williams as "that adorable genius", a phrase once spoken about psychologist William James, and wrote warmly about their friendship that began when Sacks was helping Williams to become Sacks on the set of Awakenings.

Update March 7, 2015: In mid-February, Oliver Sacks announced that his ocular melanoma that had been successfully treated nine years ago metastasized in his liver and his time in this world is probably measured in months.

Update August 30, 2015: Oliver Sacks died (NYT obituary). Radiolab posted this wonderful program in his memory, based on their last conversations with Sacks, a friend of the program over many years.

Killer Heels

At the “Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoes” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Arts (until March 1), one item is accompanied by a quote from an 18-century Dutch comparative anatomist Peter Camper (1722-1789):

"The wealthy women walk... by reason of the height of their heels, on the fore-ends of their feet, and consequently, very badly; they walk... like the majority of quadrupeds - on their toes only."

(Dissertation on the Best Form of the Shoe, 1781)

Yeah baby! Finally someone said the truth!

Fukushima Shoes

Another exhibit in my collection of art inspired by the Fukushima nuclear disaster is a work titled “Healing Fukushima (Nanohana Heels)", currently displayed as a part of “Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (until March 1, see the video intro on the museum page and my report).

These shoes were co-created in 2012 by an artist and designer working under the pseudonym Sputniko! (I thought that this was a plucky Yoko-Ono-like grandma, but it turned out to be a 30-year-old assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, Hiromi Ozaki) and a shoe designer Masaya Kushino, a person with the most Baroque imagination when it comes to creating shoes.

Masaya Kushino. Stairway to Heaven (2013).
Heaven? Nah. If I were Hermes, this would be
my footwear of choice for trips to Hades.

The Fukushima shoes are decorated with the flowers of nanohana, a kind of rapeseed, a plant that absorbs from the soil caesium-137 and strontium-90 and stores them in its stalks, but not its seeds. The idea is that the wearer of the shoes walks on the ground and the seeds, which are stored in a drum on each shoe, are deposited through the heel into the soil at every step. The plants grow and absorb the radioactive elements, and the contamination is cleared. A short movie displayed alongside the shoes demonstrates how the shoe is supposed to work.

Nanohana Heels in action (movie screenshot)

What to do about the fact that both caesium and strontium have 30-year half-life is still unclear, but then who said that art needs to be practical. In terms of audacity, originality, impracticality, and quixotry, this opus has no serious rivals at this exhibition. 

Children's Books at the Grolier Club

The Grolier Club, the oldest active bibliophilic club in the US, was founded in 1884 by a small group of book lovers headed by Robert Hoe III, a manufacturer of printing press machinery and an avid book collector, and was named after Jean Grolier, a statesman, diplomat, and book lover in 16th-century France.

The club regularly mounts exhibitions on literary and bookmaking topics. The current offerings are One Hundred Books Famous in Children’s Literature (until February 7) displayed in the ground floor hall and Quotations of Chairman Mao (until January 10) in the second floor rare book room (free admission).

Grolier Club entrance.

Since 1917 the club occupies a small building on East 60^th Street between Madison and Park Avenues, designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, who was also the author of the iconic California Tower in Balboa Park in San Diego. Currently a large-scale construction is going on next door, where a 51-story building is being constructed, using air rights acquired from the Groiler Club and a neighboring church. The facade of No. 47 is also obscured by scaffolding.

One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature.
Groiler Club, ground floor hall

The place is charming and the exhibitions are attractive and well attended. The children’s books exhibit is the sixth in the series of “the Grolier Hundreds”, after previous exhibitions focused on English literature (1903), American literature (1946), science (1958), medicine (1994), and fine printed books (1999). The selection of the “most famous 100” can be debated, but the most significant works are represented by delectable old editions going as far back as 17th century. Many of these books come from the Morgan Library and large university libraries. The oldest book on display appears to be Johann Amos Comenius’ Orbis Sensualium Pictus (Visible World in Pictures), an illustrated encyclopedia published in London in 1659, an influential early book in children’s education. Curiously, a number of older books on display are really tiny, as if made for the children’s small hands rather than for their parents’ and grandparents’ presbyopic eyes.

A first edition of Charles Perrault's Histoires ou Contes du tempts passe (left) published in 1697 was illustrated with engravings by Antoine Clouzier (from the Princeton University collection). The French edition is open on the first page of Puss in Boots and the English translation lists The Little Red Riding Hood as the very first tale in the table of contents. 

Another famous forest-roaming Hood - Robin Hood - is represented by the 1883 collection of stories, retold for children and illustrated by Howard Pyle (UCLA collection).