I went to La Viruta last night to check out the opening act of Milongueros del Mundo. It's a place I normally avoid (bad navigation and no ambience), but I must say I enjoyed the milonga last night (independently of the campeonato)--I should try going there more often on "off" nights.
While registration was supposed to be 1/2 hour before the event, which supposedly was at 11 pm, it was certainly going to be later since the pre-milonga classes at La Viruta don't end till 11 pm (and in fact went on till 11:30 or so). Indeed, he registrations started about 11:15 pm, and were being accepted all the way till the start of the competition at about 12:30 am. There were 27 couples altogether, all dressed in "competition attire" (suits for the men--somewhat of an anomaly in La Viruta, women all made up and coiffed). They divided the contestants into 3 rounds of 10+10+7 couples. They announced the countries of origin in 2 of the rounds (forgot for one of the rounds). It did not appear that many people came just for the campeonato They included couples from: Italy (at least 3), Turkey, Greece, Uruguay, Colombia, México, Portugal, Korea (at least 2), Japan (at least 4) and Chile. I would say 1/3 of he couples had one Argentine (and if I'm not mistaken it was the man in all cases). Anglophones seemed entirely absent from the contestants and in fact after not getting any reaction to his English greeting, the emcee asked permission of the audience (in Spanish) to continue in Spanish only, and after not getting much reaction to that either, he proceeded to do so for the rest of the event. The judges were Marta Anton (of Canyengue fame), Carlos Buceta of the "Asociación de Maestros, Bailarines y Coreógrafos de Tango Argentino," and Marcela Hourquebie (dancer and choreographer)--I only recognized Marta Anton. The couple in all 3 rounds danced to the same three numbers each: El Aguacero of Lucio DeMare, Cachirulo of Anibal Troilo and Pata Ancha of Osvaldo Pugliese. I played judge privately as well and divided the 28 couple into three categories: Excellent, Good, Eliminate. I have to say that almost all couples did indeed dance a nice closed salon style, with minimal attempts to put in flashy figures or do "crazy stuff." There was no evidence at all of anything that anyone would remotely call nuevo. I had 4 couples categorized as Excellent (fluid and clean motions, excellent partner connection, making everything look simple and graceful, a pleasure to watch), 11 as Good and 12 as Eliminate. The judges advanced 6 of the 27 into the finals for Sunday: 2 of my Excellents, 3 of my Goods and even 1 of my rejects!! And my two favourites of all were both rejected by the judges--oh well, we had *some* criteria in common, anyway ... After the competition, which took about 1 hour altogether, the milonga continued. As an aside, the Orquesta Mariano Bujacich (a.k.a. Orquesta Bujacich Dominguez) was really excellent, VERY danceable, even their milongas which few other contemporary orchestras seem to be able to play like the classic milongas. The fun continues tonight at Salon Canning (I'll be there) and tomorrow night at Sunderland (I won't be there--enough is enough!) with two more qualifying rounds (they are parallel qualifying rounds--you can participate in any one of them), with the final at El Pial on Sunday. If you want to participate, just show up with your passport or "cédula" (national ID card)--photocopies not accepted. Shahrukh _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
