Friday, July 11, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
French Tango
A classic writing assignment: Choose a picture and write a story about it. What is this lovely story? From ParisTango.
The Milonga Is Not the Place to Teach
A charming lead sent this excerpt last week to apologize for being a "DFT," dance floor teacher. Needless to say, when someone you have known for a year and have danced with a few times gives you a few pointers mid-milonga, that is a different thing than what is described here.
Click the link to read the full essay.
The Milonga Is Not the Place to Teach
http://tangothoughts.blogspot.com/
Tango possesses so many positive qualities, yet sometimes wrong conduct sabotages the possibility of these positive qualities coming together. "
. . .
"One reprehensible behavior is teaching anyone to dance after the start of or during the time of the milonga."
. . .
"The usual victim is the novice or inexperienced dancer at the milongas, eager to learn and enter into our marvelous world or, better yet, the occasional dancer, most likely a beginner, who has spent little time on the dance floor, who will acquiesce silently in order to avoid facing major troubles."
. . .
"At first the intention [of someone teaching during a milonga] would appear noble and generous, but this hides the true and unpleasant expression manifested by this behavior which is to assert oneself or make oneself appear to be an expert within the dance. "
. . .
"A second intention of he who attempts to teach or make corrections during the dance is to imprint an indelible message upon his partner that she lacks skill, is clumsy or is not capable."
Raul Cabral (translated by Dianne Castro)
Click the link to read the full essay.
The Milonga Is Not the Place to Teach
http://tangothoughts.blogspot.com/
Tango possesses so many positive qualities, yet sometimes wrong conduct sabotages the possibility of these positive qualities coming together. "
. . .
"One reprehensible behavior is teaching anyone to dance after the start of or during the time of the milonga."
. . .
"The usual victim is the novice or inexperienced dancer at the milongas, eager to learn and enter into our marvelous world or, better yet, the occasional dancer, most likely a beginner, who has spent little time on the dance floor, who will acquiesce silently in order to avoid facing major troubles."
. . .
"At first the intention [of someone teaching during a milonga] would appear noble and generous, but this hides the true and unpleasant expression manifested by this behavior which is to assert oneself or make oneself appear to be an expert within the dance. "
. . .
"A second intention of he who attempts to teach or make corrections during the dance is to imprint an indelible message upon his partner that she lacks skill, is clumsy or is not capable."
Raul Cabral (translated by Dianne Castro)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
My Body, My Self: One Story
There is a screen as big as a skyscraper. There are three blocks of color. The top half of the screen is blue and white, the bottom half is tan. The right third is filled with a big white curve—the left hip of a bikini-clad woman, swinging as she walks. With every swing, the size and shape and relation of every color block changes.
Thus another woman’s lifelong relationship with her body begins.
* * *
There is a beach-bunny movie. It is on at the drive-in theater.
Mom and Dad fold down the back seat of the station wagon, make up a bed big enough for three or four little girls, depending on how well they are getting along. Early on, when the novelty—the skyscraper screen and the metal speaker that hangs on Dad’s window (he drives from parking spot to parking spot to find one that works) and the girl whose orange-trimmed-in-white uniform gives her an air of supreme competence such that I would trust her with my life and sometimes do when I get lost trying to find my way back from the kiddie playground brings a Coke for everyone to share (because Dad feels he owes a little extra to the drive-in’s owner in return for packing seven people into one car on flat-rate night) along with the fruity drinks and snacks we have brought in a cooler--when everyone is too excited and hyped up to sleep, then four little girls pack into the middle seat and one gets the prize seat up front between Mom and Dad.
The best seat in the house is the least comfortable one. It’s the bed in the back. If you kneel up straight like a good girl in church, you can see right past all the obstacles—heads and dash and rearview mirror. Your legs get tired, and you had better have a pillow for your knees, and you can’t quite shake the saintly feel of it all, but there you are.
The cartoons are bright but pointless. This is the time to eat snacks, or wander among the cars pretending they are a maze, or say you are going to the bathroom but really hitch a last ride on the fire engine that circles the lot like a good-natured racehorse that in retirement has found its vocation.
And then it is dark and the uniformed girl has returned you safe and sound to your mothership and you take the scolding because it’s a fair trade for a ride on a fire engine.
Now the grown-up movies begin. The sound from the window-speaker does not carry to the back of the car, but it doesn’t matter because adult conversation is unintelligible anyway.
To a four-year-old who has never met a teenager or a beach, this movie is a National Geographic special. There are the exotic setting, tan sand and blue skies, the teenagers who look just like grown-ups but don’t behave like any people you have ever seen. They smile and laugh all the time, but they don’t really play. They don’t have chores. The boys don’t wear shirts, and the girls wear bikinis.
There is one girl in particular. Her name is Ann-Margaret. She wears a white bikini, a big, old-fashioned one. There is a scene, an expanse of beach with teens lounging in the distance. Ann-Margaret walks into the scene from the right with her back to the camera, and she must be very close to the camera, because on that part of the screen all you can see are her hips in that big white bikini, and they are going la jumba, la jumba.
Soon I am fast asleep. I’ve had my snacks, my ride on the fire engine. Who cares about teenagers?
Who knows of what the little girl dreamed? Felix the Cat with his magic bag of tricks? Playing cops and robbers in the sand, a much better movie for the four-year-old mind? I was a chubby kid, maybe I dreamed of the snacks.
I suspect that I dreamed of Ann-Margaret. How else did this image so clearly endure? The shot lasted only a few passing seconds; I have not seen the movie again, I do not even know what movie it was. I do not know if the memory-image is accurate. It is what I remember. But we do not remember what we see; we remember what comes of it after we make it our own.
What does the four-year-old make of those hips? It is not the sexuality that adults are bound to see, but its precursor: the affinity for pure physicality that young children have.
When you’re a little kid, you enjoy your body in motion, the vigor, your little muscles and bones working away. The physical sensation is a wonder, you cannot get enough!
At four years old you have been an embodied being for only four years—and you have been self-propelled only part of that time. With every move you make, your muscles and bones create a miracle. You did that! You did that!
What did you do? You created relations.
What is motion but a relation? A relation of self to body and body to space. With every move, you stake a claim. You toss a line from self to body, from intent to effect. You create a new spatial relationship between your body and the space around it and the objects in the space.
When you are a baby you are not the boss of anything. People can pick you up and put you down where they please. But now … look at you go! You invade this space, you occupy it, and by occupation rearrange the relative positions of all it contains. You are the boss!
When you have been at this for a long time, you become blind to the wonder. But when you are a kid, you still notice. When you take up a new body language, like tango, you notice again.
What did little One Heart make of Ann-Margaret’s hips? Three blocks of color, blue and tan and white, two stationary and one flowing. Every swing of her hips was a kaleidoscope’s twist, shifting the shapes and sizes of each block, their relations. All the colors and shapes loose in their sockets, all dancing to La Jumba together.
The next day I walked like Ann Margaret. I liked using my muscles in a new way, the big, wide swing, the twist in my waist. I liked invading the space around me, on this side and that. This was my first foray into dance.
You look like a duck, Three-of-Six said. Stupid … retard … all the typical big-sister things.
Other things were said as well. Also yelled. If you want to know the truth, it was a shock. Not so much what was said as the out-of-the-blue, disproportionate-ness of the response. How are you supposed to be a good girl and stay out of trouble when merely walking across the dining room inspires such a storm?
I understand my mother’s concern: This is not appropriate behavior for a four-year-old. If it were my daughter, I would want her to stop. What might the neighbors suspect? What dangerous attention might she attract? And really, what kind of child draws attention to herself in such a way? Wouldn’t you say whatever was necessary to get her to stop?
At this late date, I would like to interject: I was not trying to draw attention; I was just being my weird, artsy, experiential, experimental, self-absorbed self.
Nevertheless.
It worked. All of it did. The wonder and the shaming.
I fell in love with my hips and my body power and remained defiantly, covertly, so. Even when the fashion models were sticks, even when the boys called me Hippy, even when I studied ballet, even when I got skinny, even though Levi's never fit right, even though I walked like a tin soldier, even though construction workers’ lewd comments shamed me all over again, even when, even though ….
Ask any woman: What is new under the sun?
Thus another woman’s lifelong relationship—fascinating and problematic as any lifelong relationship can be—with her body begins.
Thus another woman’s lifelong relationship with her body begins.
* * *
There is a beach-bunny movie. It is on at the drive-in theater.
Mom and Dad fold down the back seat of the station wagon, make up a bed big enough for three or four little girls, depending on how well they are getting along. Early on, when the novelty—the skyscraper screen and the metal speaker that hangs on Dad’s window (he drives from parking spot to parking spot to find one that works) and the girl whose orange-trimmed-in-white uniform gives her an air of supreme competence such that I would trust her with my life and sometimes do when I get lost trying to find my way back from the kiddie playground brings a Coke for everyone to share (because Dad feels he owes a little extra to the drive-in’s owner in return for packing seven people into one car on flat-rate night) along with the fruity drinks and snacks we have brought in a cooler--when everyone is too excited and hyped up to sleep, then four little girls pack into the middle seat and one gets the prize seat up front between Mom and Dad.
The best seat in the house is the least comfortable one. It’s the bed in the back. If you kneel up straight like a good girl in church, you can see right past all the obstacles—heads and dash and rearview mirror. Your legs get tired, and you had better have a pillow for your knees, and you can’t quite shake the saintly feel of it all, but there you are.
The cartoons are bright but pointless. This is the time to eat snacks, or wander among the cars pretending they are a maze, or say you are going to the bathroom but really hitch a last ride on the fire engine that circles the lot like a good-natured racehorse that in retirement has found its vocation.
And then it is dark and the uniformed girl has returned you safe and sound to your mothership and you take the scolding because it’s a fair trade for a ride on a fire engine.
Now the grown-up movies begin. The sound from the window-speaker does not carry to the back of the car, but it doesn’t matter because adult conversation is unintelligible anyway.
To a four-year-old who has never met a teenager or a beach, this movie is a National Geographic special. There are the exotic setting, tan sand and blue skies, the teenagers who look just like grown-ups but don’t behave like any people you have ever seen. They smile and laugh all the time, but they don’t really play. They don’t have chores. The boys don’t wear shirts, and the girls wear bikinis.
There is one girl in particular. Her name is Ann-Margaret. She wears a white bikini, a big, old-fashioned one. There is a scene, an expanse of beach with teens lounging in the distance. Ann-Margaret walks into the scene from the right with her back to the camera, and she must be very close to the camera, because on that part of the screen all you can see are her hips in that big white bikini, and they are going la jumba, la jumba.
Soon I am fast asleep. I’ve had my snacks, my ride on the fire engine. Who cares about teenagers?
Who knows of what the little girl dreamed? Felix the Cat with his magic bag of tricks? Playing cops and robbers in the sand, a much better movie for the four-year-old mind? I was a chubby kid, maybe I dreamed of the snacks.
I suspect that I dreamed of Ann-Margaret. How else did this image so clearly endure? The shot lasted only a few passing seconds; I have not seen the movie again, I do not even know what movie it was. I do not know if the memory-image is accurate. It is what I remember. But we do not remember what we see; we remember what comes of it after we make it our own.
What does the four-year-old make of those hips? It is not the sexuality that adults are bound to see, but its precursor: the affinity for pure physicality that young children have.
When you’re a little kid, you enjoy your body in motion, the vigor, your little muscles and bones working away. The physical sensation is a wonder, you cannot get enough!
At four years old you have been an embodied being for only four years—and you have been self-propelled only part of that time. With every move you make, your muscles and bones create a miracle. You did that! You did that!
What did you do? You created relations.
What is motion but a relation? A relation of self to body and body to space. With every move, you stake a claim. You toss a line from self to body, from intent to effect. You create a new spatial relationship between your body and the space around it and the objects in the space.
When you are a baby you are not the boss of anything. People can pick you up and put you down where they please. But now … look at you go! You invade this space, you occupy it, and by occupation rearrange the relative positions of all it contains. You are the boss!
When you have been at this for a long time, you become blind to the wonder. But when you are a kid, you still notice. When you take up a new body language, like tango, you notice again.
What did little One Heart make of Ann-Margaret’s hips? Three blocks of color, blue and tan and white, two stationary and one flowing. Every swing of her hips was a kaleidoscope’s twist, shifting the shapes and sizes of each block, their relations. All the colors and shapes loose in their sockets, all dancing to La Jumba together.
The next day I walked like Ann Margaret. I liked using my muscles in a new way, the big, wide swing, the twist in my waist. I liked invading the space around me, on this side and that. This was my first foray into dance.
You look like a duck, Three-of-Six said. Stupid … retard … all the typical big-sister things.
Other things were said as well. Also yelled. If you want to know the truth, it was a shock. Not so much what was said as the out-of-the-blue, disproportionate-ness of the response. How are you supposed to be a good girl and stay out of trouble when merely walking across the dining room inspires such a storm?
I understand my mother’s concern: This is not appropriate behavior for a four-year-old. If it were my daughter, I would want her to stop. What might the neighbors suspect? What dangerous attention might she attract? And really, what kind of child draws attention to herself in such a way? Wouldn’t you say whatever was necessary to get her to stop?
At this late date, I would like to interject: I was not trying to draw attention; I was just being my weird, artsy, experiential, experimental, self-absorbed self.
Nevertheless.
It worked. All of it did. The wonder and the shaming.
I fell in love with my hips and my body power and remained defiantly, covertly, so. Even when the fashion models were sticks, even when the boys called me Hippy, even when I studied ballet, even when I got skinny, even though Levi's never fit right, even though I walked like a tin soldier, even though construction workers’ lewd comments shamed me all over again, even when, even though ….
Ask any woman: What is new under the sun?
Thus another woman’s lifelong relationship—fascinating and problematic as any lifelong relationship can be—with her body begins.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Liberty Lies in the Heart
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it…
What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women?
It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow.
A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith.
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right;
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women;
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias;
The spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded;
The spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten:
That ... the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.
Blessings, my friends. May we all live up to the ideals of the liberty we cherish. With love, One Heart Dancing
What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women?
It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow.
A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith.
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right;
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women;
The spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias;
The spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded;
The spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten:
That ... the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.
Judge Learned Hand, 1944
Blessings, my friends. May we all live up to the ideals of the liberty we cherish. With love, One Heart Dancing
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Argentine Tango Music Legends Make Beautiful Music Still
Argentine tango veterans revive glory days
By Jack Chang McClatchy Newspapers
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — As a sold-out crowd in Buenos Aires' historic opera house erupted in applause, veteran tango singer Virginia Luque took the stage backed by some of her country's greatest musicians.
The applause trailed off, and a few flirtatious whistles rang out. The 78-year-old was used to such attention, having starred in nearly two dozen tango-themed movies since the 1940s.
Nonetheless, Luque looked moved by the response and purred back to her invisible admirers, "Todavia, puedo." "I still can." She and the rest of the band went on to prove just that during an epic rendition of the tango classic "Buenos Aires Song."
Since forming five years ago, this super-group of tango legends called the Cafe de los Maestros has shown the world that its musical powers remain as potent as ever as its members passionately play the long-lost hits of tango's golden era.
Several of the maestros, such as Luque, came out of retirement to join the project, which culminated in the August 2006 performance at the Teatro Colon. With some members already in their 90s, a few of the maestros have died since joining the group.
Their work is featured in an award-winning double album and a just-released documentary that's won accolades at film festivals around the world. Many have compared the project to the veteran Cuban salsa group the Buena Vista Social Club, which also was the subject of an album and a documentary.
Musician Gustavo Mozzi, who helped produce the Argentine record, said the Cafe de los Maestros wasn't just about "rescuing" the genre's classic voices but also about showing off its continued vitality. About a dozen of the maestros did just that last month at a well-received performance in the historic Salle Pleyel theater in Paris.
"This wasn't a melancholic or nostalgic project," Mozzi said. "It's a vital work that's about this music's roots but is also thinking about the future of the genre."
For violinist Fernando Suarez Paz and the other maestros, however, the project was a bittersweet affair. Many of them hadn't seen each other in decades and were conscious that this could be their last time working together, they said.
"This is paying homage to these people not when they've already died but while they're still here," said Suarez Paz, 67, who's played with luminaries such as tango composers Astor Piazzolla and Jose Libertella. "We want to enjoy them in the last years of their lives."
The group was the brainchild of Gustavo Santaolalla, the California-based, Argentine-born musician who's found international success since leaving his home country in 1978. He's won two best soundtrack Academy Awards and has produced the albums of some of Latin America's biggest stars.
In starting the Cafe de los Maestros, Santaolalla wanted to capture the allure of tango during the mythical 1940s and 1950s, when Juan Peron was the president and the music was the country's most popular genre.
Santaolalla recruited Buenos Aires-based Mozzi to help out, and the two went looking for the musicians behind those classic songs, in Argentina and in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo across the River Plate.
They found a hall of fame of tango stars, such as legendary player Leopoldo Federico, who wrote some of tango's greatest songs but hadn't performed regularly onstage in decades.
To honor the music's African roots, Mozzi and Santaolalla invited Uruguayan singer Lagrima Rios into the studio, a black musician who sings to tango and to the percussive, Uruguayan genre candombe.
"We wanted to rescue the voices that were the founders of tango and were fundamental to the story of this genre," Mozzi said.
The pair also sought to revive the genre's most beloved tunes, many of which were long lost and available only on scratchy vinyl recordings.
They asked conductor and piano player Osvaldo Requena to transcribe nearly two dozen songs from the old records, a task that consumed endless hours.
"Some of this music hadn't been played in a long time," Requena said. "It was like remembering a system of life that's not there anymore and friends who are no longer with us."
Even as the Cafe de los Maestros worked to rescue the history, more of it was disappearing.
Rios and two other maestros passed away after the group finished recording in 2004. The Teatro Colon, one of the world's greatest opera houses, closed indefinitely for renovations shortly after the group performed there.
That sense of loss, however, seemed to feed the musicians, Suarez Paz said.
"Tango isn't happy music," he said. "It comes from melancholy."
For the film's director, Miguel Kohan, watching the maestros at work conjured images of a lost world unknown to most Argentines — including himself — of tango orchestras broadcast by radio across Buenos Aires and of giant tango clubs crowded with dancing couples.
The film, which doesn't yet have a U.S. release date but is scheduled to open in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Brazil and elsewhere, depicts that world through old photos and clips and tales told by the maestros as they walk the streets of the Argentine capital. And, of course, the songs live there, with their tales of doomed tango dancers, Carnaval revelers and cafe intrigues.
"Tango has its own cultural system, with its own codes and its own universe," Kohan aid. "It was a discovery, or a rediscovery for me, and I feel privileged to have been there."
By Jack Chang McClatchy Newspapers
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — As a sold-out crowd in Buenos Aires' historic opera house erupted in applause, veteran tango singer Virginia Luque took the stage backed by some of her country's greatest musicians.
The applause trailed off, and a few flirtatious whistles rang out. The 78-year-old was used to such attention, having starred in nearly two dozen tango-themed movies since the 1940s.
Nonetheless, Luque looked moved by the response and purred back to her invisible admirers, "Todavia, puedo." "I still can." She and the rest of the band went on to prove just that during an epic rendition of the tango classic "Buenos Aires Song."
Since forming five years ago, this super-group of tango legends called the Cafe de los Maestros has shown the world that its musical powers remain as potent as ever as its members passionately play the long-lost hits of tango's golden era.
Several of the maestros, such as Luque, came out of retirement to join the project, which culminated in the August 2006 performance at the Teatro Colon. With some members already in their 90s, a few of the maestros have died since joining the group.
Their work is featured in an award-winning double album and a just-released documentary that's won accolades at film festivals around the world. Many have compared the project to the veteran Cuban salsa group the Buena Vista Social Club, which also was the subject of an album and a documentary.
Musician Gustavo Mozzi, who helped produce the Argentine record, said the Cafe de los Maestros wasn't just about "rescuing" the genre's classic voices but also about showing off its continued vitality. About a dozen of the maestros did just that last month at a well-received performance in the historic Salle Pleyel theater in Paris.
"This wasn't a melancholic or nostalgic project," Mozzi said. "It's a vital work that's about this music's roots but is also thinking about the future of the genre."
For violinist Fernando Suarez Paz and the other maestros, however, the project was a bittersweet affair. Many of them hadn't seen each other in decades and were conscious that this could be their last time working together, they said.
"This is paying homage to these people not when they've already died but while they're still here," said Suarez Paz, 67, who's played with luminaries such as tango composers Astor Piazzolla and Jose Libertella. "We want to enjoy them in the last years of their lives."
The group was the brainchild of Gustavo Santaolalla, the California-based, Argentine-born musician who's found international success since leaving his home country in 1978. He's won two best soundtrack Academy Awards and has produced the albums of some of Latin America's biggest stars.
In starting the Cafe de los Maestros, Santaolalla wanted to capture the allure of tango during the mythical 1940s and 1950s, when Juan Peron was the president and the music was the country's most popular genre.
Santaolalla recruited Buenos Aires-based Mozzi to help out, and the two went looking for the musicians behind those classic songs, in Argentina and in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo across the River Plate.
They found a hall of fame of tango stars, such as legendary player Leopoldo Federico, who wrote some of tango's greatest songs but hadn't performed regularly onstage in decades.
To honor the music's African roots, Mozzi and Santaolalla invited Uruguayan singer Lagrima Rios into the studio, a black musician who sings to tango and to the percussive, Uruguayan genre candombe.
"We wanted to rescue the voices that were the founders of tango and were fundamental to the story of this genre," Mozzi said.
The pair also sought to revive the genre's most beloved tunes, many of which were long lost and available only on scratchy vinyl recordings.
They asked conductor and piano player Osvaldo Requena to transcribe nearly two dozen songs from the old records, a task that consumed endless hours.
"Some of this music hadn't been played in a long time," Requena said. "It was like remembering a system of life that's not there anymore and friends who are no longer with us."
Even as the Cafe de los Maestros worked to rescue the history, more of it was disappearing.
Rios and two other maestros passed away after the group finished recording in 2004. The Teatro Colon, one of the world's greatest opera houses, closed indefinitely for renovations shortly after the group performed there.
That sense of loss, however, seemed to feed the musicians, Suarez Paz said.
"Tango isn't happy music," he said. "It comes from melancholy."
For the film's director, Miguel Kohan, watching the maestros at work conjured images of a lost world unknown to most Argentines — including himself — of tango orchestras broadcast by radio across Buenos Aires and of giant tango clubs crowded with dancing couples.
The film, which doesn't yet have a U.S. release date but is scheduled to open in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Brazil and elsewhere, depicts that world through old photos and clips and tales told by the maestros as they walk the streets of the Argentine capital. And, of course, the songs live there, with their tales of doomed tango dancers, Carnaval revelers and cafe intrigues.
"Tango has its own cultural system, with its own codes and its own universe," Kohan aid. "It was a discovery, or a rediscovery for me, and I feel privileged to have been there."
Men Are Easy
I am working on musicality. Never mind with whom.
Slip into a character, the lead says.
I consider the options. I am a ham; I love to perform for myself. Also, I am a writer; I have centuries of characters to choose from.
The music begins. I can't decide.
Audrey, I say, who do you like? Answer quick! Before I finish the thought...
Audrey tilts her head in the direction of her alter ego.
Really? I say. Are you sure?
Do it! she says. She sounds like Julio Balmaceda, her eye twinkles like his.
OK, I say.
The music grows fulsome.
I channel my inner Sophia Loren.
Mmmmm, my partner murmurs.
You poor, sweet thing. You never stand a chance against us.
La jumba!
Slip into a character, the lead says.
I consider the options. I am a ham; I love to perform for myself. Also, I am a writer; I have centuries of characters to choose from.
The music begins. I can't decide.
Audrey, I say, who do you like? Answer quick! Before I finish the thought...
Audrey tilts her head in the direction of her alter ego.
Really? I say. Are you sure?
Do it! she says. She sounds like Julio Balmaceda, her eye twinkles like his.
OK, I say.
The music grows fulsome.
I channel my inner Sophia Loren.
Mmmmm, my partner murmurs.
You poor, sweet thing. You never stand a chance against us.
La jumba!
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