Yesterday we had a private lesson with Olga Besio. Sanhsara already had one, now we went together. Olga only speaks Spanish and can supply herself a little bit on French but not much. Sanhsara was translating. We always prepare a subject when we take private lessons so we know what focus to give the teacher and ourselves. Our subject for this lesson with Olga was musicality, "cadencia", interpretation of the music. As usual the class took place in an old building, the room with old painted (long time ago) panels and one fluorescent under the sealing tightening up the room. 3 chairs, Sanhsara, Olga and me.
We danced two dances with Olga watching from her chair, she gave absolutely no sign of her thoughts about our dance. She asked us what we felt, and from there she started talking. Sitting on our chairs we listened to her talk about music, the story told by the musicians, the questions the orchestra asks in the music and the answers it proposes. How to listen, what to search for in the music and how to use it in the dance. It is not about counting to 4, It is about the story, about opposites: slow-fast, soft-hard, rhythmic-lyric, romantic-pragmatic, long-short steps, staccato-legato, light-heavy and so on.
We listened to music, no talking, no dancing, just sit and listen. We played 'air violin' together. She talked about pauses; 'quebrada' how to get into a quebrada and how to move on from a quebrada.
We danced some more, she told us more, we danced. It was the most interesting private class ever. She showed me things in the music and the tango that has been right in front of me all the time but that I never saw. Not many people sees it, tango has lost some of its origins in the last 20 years, but Olga took us to the secret places. I could feel it in my dance that evening at Canning, Sanhsara could feel it, people watching it must have felt it.
We drank two bottles of champagne between the dances.
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