In Strangers' Arms

September 10, 2015

I like to take advantage of Buenos Aires’ innumerable intellectual offerings. Signs all over the city announce tempting seminars for people with a wide variety of interests. The city publishes a weekly Agenda Cultural which one finds in paper and online formats. In addition, it is common to find leaflets advertising psychoanalytic seminars or musical offering by cashiers at bakery stores or beauty shops.

Today I am interested in the seminar “Tango and Society” taught by Alejandro Molinari and Roberto Martinez who have published three books on the subject.

The format of this seminar is “very tango.” The two presenters and the invited guest Hernán Lucero interact in an unhurried manner – for 2 hours – on the topic The times of Gardel. They present historical and cultural information without reading; they converse. When the guitar player positions his guitar, the other two stop their conversation. Lucero doesn’t just play and sing; he adds details of interest about the piece he is about to play and tells how it relates to the topic that Molinari and Martinez are discussing.

At the very end I approach Lucero to find out how much the three of them had to rehearse for such smooth presentation. “We do not rehearse. We improvise.”

Improvise. Conversation. That is what I mean by “very tango.”