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October 27, 2006
The Tango Lesson
This is my favorite scene in the whole film. It is so well edited. And these little snippets of dancing from each of the men still give a real flavor of their dance personality, their way of hearing the music, their movement vocabulary, their "style". This scene was a huge influence on me when the film came out. I was just starting to dance tango then. I couldn't begin to do what Pablo Veron does in this film. But these moves of Cacho Dante, Omar Vega, David Derman, and Gustavo Naveira became things that absorbed me for months and months. Well, years, really. In fact, I'm still studying what they do here.
David Derman, the man who invites Sally with a stirring motion, died in 2002.
Janis Kenyon wrote about him on tango-l
(http://pythia.uoregon.edu/~llynch/Tango-L/2001/msg02406.html
To: TANGO-L @MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: [TANGO-L] a friend of tango
From: Janis Kenyon
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 14:32:00 -0300
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Reply-To: Janis Kenyon
Sender: Discussion of Any Aspect of the Argentine Tango
During my second visit to Buenos Aires in March 1997, I went to Club Almagro
one night where a stout gentleman invited me to dance a tanda of Pugliese.
Afterwards, he escorted me to my table and asked me to write my name on a
piece of paper for him. He in turn gave me a small scrap of paper with a
number on it. No, it wasn't his telephone number. It was a number given to
me as dancer No. 6,458. I asked the woman with whom I was seated about the
significance of this number. She told me that he is an accountant by
profession and is keeping a record of all his partner in the milongas.
It was about a year ago that this man, David Derman, gave me one of the
special cards he had printed to give to his partners. The card indicates
the date, city, number and and name of the dancer. It has David's photo with
his address and telephone number.
And with this message: ya para siempre te
registre en mi corazon para mi no seras solo un nombre ni seras solo un
numero, tendras de mi este recuerdo de quien te agradece profundamente haber
compartido estos minutos de danza en la cuales nos evadimos del mundo
material y nos introdujimos a puntillas de pie en el rieno de la emocion y
la alegria que nos depara el tango. Gracias por bailar conmigo.
David Derman turned 69 on April 9. His partner for the past 11 years,
Susana, told me that he was parked in his car in front of El Beso the night
of September 4, when he passed. His dance partners numbered around 7,600.
He loved all kinds of music, but especially tango and jazz. He was known
and loved by everyone in tango.
Pichi de Buenos Aires
Sergio Suppe translated the text of David Derman's card:
Ya para siempre te registre en mi corazon para mi no seras solo un nombre ni
seras solo un
numero, tendras de mi este recuerdo de quien te agradece profundamente haber
compartido estos minutos de danza en la cuales nos evadimos del mundo
material y nos introdujimos a puntillas de pie en el rieno de la emocion y
la alegria que nos depara el tango. Gracias por bailar conmigo.
You are now registered in my heart for ever. You will not be for me just a
name or a number.
You will have this souvenir from somebody who is deeply grateful for the
dance we shared, a few minutes where we escaped from the world to enter tip
toe in the kingdom of emotion and happiness that is our tango .
Thank you for dancing with me.
Posted by joegrohens at October 27, 2006 04:18 PM
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