Le Tango around the World!

ok, we are now the Thursday after the festival, and it is only now that everybody has left.

In my previous posting I mentioned that I had decided not to worry too much about how much I would dance, and especially I did not want to worry too much about with whome I would dance because the level was so high, and the politics and power games so important…. I have been lucky to get to know some people who are part of the ” best dancers group” in the previous years, and have become friends with most of them… so, the first night of the festival it was all: ” so nice to see you again”, ” I did not know you would be here”, ” I have’t seen you in a while, what’s happening with you” etc etc….big hugs, big laughs, lots of chatting around with people…. I love the first day of a festival, it is always so much fun. and then the dancing started…. well, I pretty much did not stop dancing this year…. long sets with my friends and with new people. Fabulous dances, great embraces, lots of rythm…. and the whole time on the beach, in a great city… sorry don’t want to make you feel bad telling you all that!

Some friends from the States were here as well. those who have been in Sitges before usually promote it a lot because it is such a unique place to dance and have the festival. We have the beach, Barcelona is very close, lots of dancing, group of friends, but when you come here for the first time and don’t know anybody … it is really difficult. Some followers took on the job of asking the men to dance as they would not have been asked otherwise, and some decided to wait to be invited…. the first option is a lot of work, but at least they got to dance (after all, the men have to do that all the time). And I have also talked to some leaders from the States who also had a more difficult time to dance here!

So, I have had many conversation with many people about that. It had already started in the States as I have had complaints about that division of dancers at the marathon.
Well, I’ll share some thoughts.

For us follows, we feel that the men (the good leaders we want to dance with) play a big power game, that they only want to dance with the young and pretty, good dancers or not, and of course those amazing dancers. We complain when the best leaders don’t ask us to dance, we say no to some of the not so good leaders who would actually ask us to dance… and sometimes we give out bad vibes when we are sitting down!

For the leaders I talked to, it is a different story. Of course they want to dance with the good follows and the pretty ones, but also, they feel the pressure of having to dance a lot with many people. they feel that when they arrive on the dancefloor, they see many women looking at them and that they are kind of trap into dancing, that women come to them, try to start a conversation in the hopes to dance etc etc and they feel uncomfortable! They love to dance but want also to be able to choose who they are dancing with. The ones i know spend a lot of time on the dancefloor and dance with many people, but what you have to understand as well, is that if you dance so much, you don’t have the time to look around and see who else is there you don’t know and want to dance with. On a floor with 300 dancers, if you don’t take the time to stop and look, you cannot see those who might be good and who are not dancing.
It is a tough game for both sides, and the way I understand it now, is that it takes time to know people, it takes time to get in the round of dancing, and also, the better you get and the best energy you give out, the more you will dance.
I guess Leaders are from Mars and Followers from Venus! or something like that! But at the end, it should still be a dance we do for fun, because we like it, because we want to dance. And we should give the best with any leaders or followers we dance with.
I know, for me, I rarely say no to somebody who ask me to dance. It is sometime a risk as I don’t know how good the dancer is, but I have to say that I have had mainly great surprises and not that many bad dances. And if the dances are bad, i don’t have to continue dancing with that person. I have danced with people who were total beginners and when i meet them later, they became some of my favorite leaders. Had I say no at the time because I only wanted to dance with the ones I considered the best, i would have missed a lot!

So, to tell you a little more about the Sitges thing… well, the festival started on Wednesday with the “official milonga” meaning the ones organized by the festival. Then at 3am we all went to the Paseo, which is the boardwalk, and there danced until 8 in the morning. On Thursday we spent the day at the beach and at 7.00pm, the dancing at the beach started… yes on the sand, in swim suits and shorts and tee shirt, and sometime in the water! Can’t have high level dancing there, but it is so much fun (not for the knees ufortunately!). then, the official milonga, then the paseo from 3.00 to …. well 9.00 or 9.30, then a swin in the sea, and we were going to breakfast, meaning that the usual bedtime was 10.00am!…. and we kept doing that until Sunday.
You could see the people getting really tired for lack of sleep and too much dancing, you could see the energy of the dancing growing as people were having more and more fun dancing and getting around the crowd…. and you also have to realize that even at 7.00am… we were about 200 people still dancing! It really is an amazing thing. there were so many people dancing this year that between 3.00 and 6.00 am the dancefloor was so crowded that it was difficult to dance at time. Some were going to sleep and coming down to dance at 6.00am… all fresh and full of energy until the end of the milonga…
Monday, many people left but we still had the dance on the paseo, and finished… again… at 9.00am or later! If you want to see pictures of it, go to http://www.unmomento.net Fredi has been taking many pictures that are online already, you’ll have a good idea of how many people there were…. when it is light and you see people dancing… it means it was after 6.00am!

Today I’ll be going to Barcelona and dance at one of the local milongas. I am quite exited about that as Barcelona might be the city where I’ll live and I want to see what the community is like.

More of the plans and the rest of the travel in the next post!

anso

I have been here in Sitges since July 8th… and we are the 21st (just realized the national day of Belgium… happy 21st of July to all belgians reading this!! ….

So, Sitges. For those who don’t want it is a small beach city about 40 mins from Barcelona, I have been coming here 3 years in a row now, and had been here once earlier already. So, I know the place quite well, feel very comfortable walking around, know where I want to have my breakfast, where is the best shopping etc. Know the spot on the beach that I like (yeah… all those important things in life!)…. I was never too sure how it would be to go to the same vacation spot year after year… and frankly if it wasn’t for the tango festival here, I probably wouldn’t be coming back. but here I am yet again.

I am really lucky to have a friend who lives here and with whom I can stay…. Freddi, who is Djing often at the Tango marathon, has a great appartment here, about 5 min from the beach! How good is that!
I arrived on a sunday night, and after having spent about 2 weeks in the grey, cold and rain of Belgium (as you read in the previous posts), I was quite happy to be able to be laying on the beach in the sun and having nothing else to do! Not to make anybody jealous, but my schedule has been quite nice: waking up around 10:30, having breakfast with the other house guests, and then either go to the beach or to Barcelona, cooking dinner and then go out for drinks…. and then on wednesday the festival here in Sitges started.

the great thing about the tango festival in Sitges, is that you have people from all over the place coming here to take vacation and dance. where I am staying, Anke and Julio from Bremen were staying as well at the beginning. They are tango/salsa dancers who have been coming here for quite a while. We spent a lot of time together, hang out, went to Barcelona salsa dancing. Then, the group staying at the house changed, and it became very scandinavian; 2 guys and a woman from sweden, a woman from danemark, an Australian living in Berlin, Fredi, Marina his girlfriend from New York and myself! quite a great house. It seems quite a lot of people to fit in a small place, but somehow it works!
As the festival has started (and more of that in a later post), the schedule has changed, just a bit! Instead of waking up at 10.30, we are waking up later (yeah, when we come back home at 10.00am, it is quite difficult to wake up at 10.30 he eh eh ).

I have decided to take it easy this year. Sitges is very well known for the very high level of dancers coming: both leaders and follows.. and as usual, there are more good follows than leads, so most of the time, many ladies, even great dancers are sitting down a lot… especially when you don’t know many people. That was my experience for the previous Sitges and other festivals I went to. Of course I understand what was happening… we are having exactly the same thing in the states, but that time I was on the other side of the experience. It is good dancers who come to the festival to meet their friends, dance with them and having a good time. there is very little time to try to go around and meet new people. (which is quite an interesting concept as we are dancing about 8 hours a day for 5 days, and still there is not enough time!) So, I had been taking it with a good attitude, working on knowing people and making friends and not being frustrated if I was not dancing every single tandas of the night. the fact of having so many new people in the appartement will be a good thing of course, especially because the guys staying here are fabulous dancers….
more soon.

anso

I left Johannesburg’s this morning at 8.40 to go to Pemba Mozambique. Another 5 hours of flying or so! I wish the plane had arrived about 30 min earlier yesterday, I might not have to overnight at the hotel… oh well. I did not really want to visit Jo’burg by myself, it is not a safe place for a single woman! So, instead I stay in my room at the hotel, at least I had internet connection!

So, off I go to Mozambique and no problem until Maputo. But now, here I am sitting at the business class lounge at the airport ☺ because we had to disembarke, the plane having some mechanical problems! Ah ah ah …. If my mom was here she would say “ Anne-Sophie it is never easy to travel with you…. There is always something happening!” I guess it is sometimes true, but frankly with the amount of traveling I do, of course things are going to go wrong! And after all I am in Africa as well!
Ok now, I am back in the plane! They had told us that it would take 35 min to fix what needed to be fixed, and 10 min later… all is good at least I hope.
If all goes well, I am now off to Pemba and will continue this later. You’ll see, I’ll post pictures too!

So, now I am continuing my post, while in Mozambique.
The rest of the trip was great, no problem at all. I arrived in Pemba (north of Mozambique, close to the border with Tanzania, on the Indian Ocean), but my luggage did not!!! aaarrhghh…. I go them only on Saturday afternoon. I had to go to one of the local stores here and find something i could wear! It was funny to have to shop in Pemba! Definetely not the same choice of clothes as in Europe eh eh eh… I wouldn’t find any funky outfit there!

So, then the meeting started. I was in Mozambique for my last meeting that I organized for the World Bank. The delegates arrived on Saturday and Sunday and the meeting was from Monday through Wednesday.

Now let me tell you a little about the place. Pemba is a small town in the North of Mozambique, on the Idian Ocean. You can see the hotel where we were staying on one of the pictures below. But when at the hotel, you did not have the feeling of being in Africa. So, of course I had to visit the town a little bit and walk around.
You can see on some of the pictures how people live in that part of the world, but also, look at the faces of the children and how big a smile on their faces they have. It is just amazing and makes you think more than one about our ways of life where we have way too much and it is difficult for us to smile and be happy with what we have! Well, for sure I have decided to go for the less than the more!! Because I won’t have a place to see that I can call my own for the next year or so…. I guess I’ll see how I can keep the smile on my face !

So, more about Pemba. The food was just wonderful. Fresh fish and fresh seefood. My dinners were usually Crayfish/lobster tail on the grill with some rice and veggies!! Then one night we went to a local restaurant where they served fresh fish, and again… crayfish/lobster tails, and crabs, and fresh grilled calamari, caperinias…. for about $15!!! what a treat.
One of the things I tried to do is to wake up early and watch the sunrise over the ocean. I usually don’t like to wake up early, and for me sunrises usually happen when I come back from milongas after dancing all night not having to actually wake up an leave my bed to watch it! but I thought that it would be something nice and it was. The thing is that the sun rises at 5.00am there, and sets at 5.30am. We were very close to the equator, and so, if you don’t wake up early to do something, after 440, the light is almost gone and you can’t do much anymore.
Then I left on the Thursday to get back in DC on Friday… my last official day at the world Bank. More on that later!

Thanks to all of you who are wishing me well in my new adventures.  It is great to hear all the support for what it can seem at first a crazy decision!  But it seems that there is something in the air at the moment.  I have come accross many who are thinking about the same thing… maybe not as drastic as leaving everything and living from a suitcase, but change.  Going back to what is important and makes us happy!  I have met some of you who did the same thing a few years ago and told me that’s the best thing they could have done.  Some of you are doing it now, left their jobs, moved to another place and many of you will do it soon I am sure. 

When I saw what I had in my place after 12 years of being here in the states, I was wondering why I was keeping all that stuff.  The thing is that many things have a sentimental value that’s difficult to part from.  I brought little things from all my trips around the world and that makes it special…  I love my clothes and especially my tango shoes!! eh eh eh … some of you were asking me how many pairs of Comme il Faut I have… well, let’s just say that it is enough to fill out a big (big) suitcase!  But all of this has a story that is dear to me… I have been thinking how can I part with the material thing and still hold the memory…. So, because for me the visual will trigger more detailed memory, I have decided to take pictures of some of the things and will keep those pics… so when I look at them I’ll have the same trigger without having to keep the actual piece… and I’ll just have to travel with my small external harddrive! ….

I am off to Belgium now to spend a week with my family. They are quite happy I’ll be closer to them now.  12 years away was difficult for them, but they knew I needed to do it.  I’ll be closer to my little nieces and will be able to participate to more family parties, which are always good…  food, wine, laugh… I miss that.

be happy!

 Anso