Roy and Ania

Day trip to Uruguay and other happenings

royandania — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:50:00 GMT

In order to renew our visas so that we can stay in Argentina a few more weeks, Roy and I took the ferry from Buenos Aires to Uruguay and the little port town Colonia. It was such a pleasant surprise to after only one hour on the boat find ourselves in a small, quiet town where the old part was just by the sea with charming restaurants, beautiful old buildings (many of them not occupied and left to decay. We found this amazing building and started to dream of turning it into a luxury hotel with a restaurant...) There where many small stone houses with gardens filled with flowers (which reminded me a little of Visby on the Swedish island Gotland), old cobbled streets with cafes where they left old cars for view for the tourists (see photos album), and the seafront was gorgeous. I was so exited to be in a tranquil small town with trees and grass. Roy and i eat an expensive meal (we shared a main course and the price was as if we would have had two courses in Argentina, crazy) and Roy got happily drunk on sangria. Than we lay down on the little beach and had an afternoon nap in the sun to the sound of the waves and wind. It was a beautiful day trip and to be quite honest we where not happy to return to the noisy city of Buenos Aires at all...but we have committed to stay a few more weeks, so here we are.

Talking about leaving, we have had a nightmare changing the dates for our flight tickets(the whole of the year is affected by the change) to fit with our plan of staying here a few more weeks. Roy was trying to communicate with the airlines in different countries over the phone, since none of the airlines we are flying with have got an office in Buenos Aires. The customers service for Virgin is based in Mumbai, India, and Roy had difficulty communicating whit them, having to repeat the same thing many many times, doubting the intelligence of the people he was talking to. Then somebody said that they might have problems understanding his accent, and that might be at the root of some of the difficulties...The date changes we wanted to make made it impossible for us to go to what was going to be our next destination, the island Tonga. All of the flights where full. The result of a lot of research time and hours on the phone (Roy's hard work), and finally asking our travel agent in England to do it for us (which he did, he is a wonderful man), is that we fly out of Buenos Aires on the 4th of December, and via Los Angeles, US we then fly to the Cook Island, another exotic country in the pacific ocean consisting 15 paradise island with white beaches, crystal clear water and palm trees. Not bad. Right now we are working on finding a place to stay there and as we look at the pictures of the hostels and hotels there are many "oooh" and "aahhh" to be heard. Lets say we are looking forward to, and ready for, a change of environment very very soon.

But our life in Buenos Aires is all right. In the past week we have worked hard on the tango again. We had a break for the Patagonia trip and the illness and then we started to gently get back into our tango. We have enjoyed private lessons with a wonderful female teacher who, unfortunately for us, left for France to tour with a tango show yesterday. Paula Rubin was an extremely gifted teacher and she uncovered many of the secrets about the dance that no one has been able to explain for me so far. I ca really say that my dancing, as well as Roy and mine together, improved a lot by just working a few hours with her. Now i am mourning her leaving and i am hoping to find someone in her caliber for our last 2,5 weeks. Parallel to Paula, Roy has been working with the couple that we where working with before the Patagonia trip. He is doing 2 hours private with them per day (pew) and i am glad to see that he always comes back inspired and with shiny eyes. Both Edit and Enzo are being hard on him and he seems to love it! We are also doing a few milongas per week. Our tango is moving on slowly but surely, i would say.

Last week we went dancing to a more traditional milonga with our Swedish friend Hannah. The milonga was full with people that are a bit older, and me and Hanna (young blonds) got to dance a lot. Hannah asked one of the gentlemen she was dancing with how long he has been dancing tango and he said 50 years. He then asked her how long she has been dancing and she said 3 months...

Roy has set up sessions with an Alexander technique teacher here in Buenos Aires. Alexander Technique is a method for improving the way of moving the body and posture and is based around relaxing the body for more efficient use. He is doing sessions everyday, i think he is one week into it now and he really enjoys it. A part of the practice is to lye on the floor with a book under the head for about 20 minutes per day. He has jut had his floor session and now, as he walks through the room, his posture is amazing. He looks 10 years younger, at least! Wow!

And now some bad news. My ipod was stolen on the bus the other day. I was sitting with my bag in my lap and as i was to get of the bus, there was a bit of turbulence with a lot of people moving around to let other people got off. It was tight. I thought i held my bag in a safe way, but next morning when i was reaching for the ipdo it was gone. I am not entirely sure that it happened on the bus, it might have been when I was walking along the street, but what i do know is that is is gone. Nowhere to be found. We had to cancel our tango lesson that day and go to a police station. They sent us to another police station (specific for tourists). On the way there there was a rain storm so strong that it was raining horizontally and the drains on the streets could not cope with the masses of water and where acting like fountains instead. We and the people on the streets got soaking wet despite of the umbrellas that where useless, and we had to hide away for nearly half an hour until it stopped pouring down so strongly... That is Argentinean summer for you. When we finally got to the police station, a very helpful man made it all easy for us and we left a little bit later with a police report in our hands. We shall see if we can get the insurance to cover the lost ipod for us.

Another thing is that my camera broke too. It was when i was horseback riding in Patagonia in the rain. The camera could not handle it and it died. We shall see it the cannon cetnre here can fix it.

Things come and go, don't they.

love
ania x x

Small things in life...

royandania — Wed, 4 Nov 2009 14:13:00 GMT

Yoga on the terrace this morning. In the sun. My body awaking and energy start flowing through it. My racing brain relaxes and I feel more like human being with a brain AND a body. Beautiful.

Listening to The Great Freedom Teaching makes me even more relaxed and happy. I am so grateful.

Both me and Roy are keen dental tourists now. It started when Roy broke a tooth and found this great clinic with an English-speaking young, beautiful Venezuelan female dentist, Ruby, who owns the dentist clinic with her sister who does the bookings and admin. We are there so often that these two girls are now like our friends. Yesterday Ruby said that my mouth was so small that working on my teeth was more like surgery then dentist work. I could not stop laughing and we had to take a pause.

My Swedish friend Hannah has recently moved in to a fancy flat with two friends that arrived from Sweden not long ago. The last few days I have spent some time in the flat, happy and amazed to find a spot of genuine swedishness, something that has not been present in my life for a long long time. We talk about life, the universe and everything I am so enjoying the Swedish slang, way of using the language and the humour. These people are from Stockholm, my town of origin, they are the same age as me, and in a way it feels like I have always known them. It is so homely somehow, and I am happy I have found them.

It has been raining quite heavily here for the past few days, and apart from that the roof is leaking in the common room of our hostel (it is a roof that you can open on a sunny day), the rain has reminded me of one thing I will not miss when I leave this city. It is the dog shit that is never picked up form the pavements and gets nicely dissolved in the rain and makes you almost slip as you step on it. Not nice at all.

And now a moment of confession. It is quite embarrassing really but is has to be said. It is about the Spanish language. I remember writing in a blog entry as we arrived in Buenos Aires that learning the language is a matter of priority for me. Well, is has not proven to be that after all. I have not learned a thing. I am mute as a fish, getting buy with a handful of verbs, smiles and nods and relaying heavily on body language. Just as in the beginning, 2.5 months ago. To be fair, I can say that I have learned to understand quite a bit, especially when dealing with small everyday conversations, in restaurants and in shops etc., but it is nothing like actually improving and advancing in the language. I am telling myself that I could learn it if I wanted, that I am not stupid, but I just do not find the motivation. That is the way it is. So, now I have said it. And this goes for both me and Roy (he is still better than me, he can form a few sentences at least, and he understands more than I do). We will be coming back after nearly 3.5 months in Argentina not having actually learned any Spanish. I am working on accepting that...

That is all for now.

Love

Ania

Roy is the king of negotiation and I have a new studio!

royandania — Sun, 1 Nov 2009 01:22:00 GMT

After we have returned back to Buenos Aires both me and Roy have been ill. For Roy we are talking one of these nasty stomach illnesses, with effects that are not worth mentioning here. I got it too, but my version of it was not so bad on the stomach, but it still knocked me out for a few days. We are both still regaining our strength.

As I came out of our dark room after the few days of illness, I was stunned by what had happened to the weather in Buenos Aires. All of a sudden it was boiling hot and humid. So this is how it gets here during Argentine summer...

One of the sick days, however, we had to deal with changing our tickets so that it would not get too close to the date they where set for. We aimed at getting 3 more weeks here in Argentina, and one of the reasons to make the change was to be able to make it to our next destination, the island Tonga in the Pacific Ocean that now have a travel warning out since there has been a tsunami. Our hope was that in adding another few weeks it might be enough time for the warning to lift so that we could go there safely.

On shaky legs (at least mine where) we went into the office of Delta Airlines. They said the changes could be made, put the penalty for the change was 290 dollars per ticket (£175 and 2000 Swedish kroner)! That is a lot of money for us travellers and since the tsunami is not our fault, we where wondering if they would be able to lift the charge for us. The girl behind the counter was not, but she gave us a phone number and Roy called the customers service. For half an hour he was negotiating with the person on the other end on the phone. I heard it was an intense conversation and I sat next to him, tense, biting my nails. Every now and then Roy got silent when they where negotiating on the other end of the line. Our Delta flight is not taking us to Tonga, see, it is taking us back to Los Angeles, USA, and from there we are flying to to Tonga, so the only thing Roy could do was to ask Delta to help us out of good will, not out of obligation. After a long time of it looking quite hopeless, and Roy talking and negotiating, taking new angles on the matter, pleading the case and being nice and polite (not getting upset or aggressive), all of a sudden they guy on phone the said OK. We did not have to pay $580! Roy is my hero and I am so proud of him!

This means that we are now booked on a plane from Buenos Aires to LA on the 4^th of December. Great!

One of the days when I had some hours out of bed and enough energy to deal with the heat, I was looking for a studio to paint in. I found a little room in a private house of this bachelor guy. I know him thorough an artist organisation where we have rented a room for dancing before. My new studio is small, not renovated for years and smells of damp, but I like it! He has never rented it out before and asked how much I wanted to pay...that tells me he is not much of a business man, which is fine by me. The house he owns is one of those Argentinian houses where all the rooms have doors to an open courtyard with no roof and with stairs up to the second floor with a terrace. My little studio is in one of the top floor rooms and it is nice! I am so happy and will start spending time there next week.

Love

ania

Back in Buenos Aires

royandania — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:13:00 GMT

Now, here are some pictures from both my very wet and cold horse riding experience and some images from the painting retreat in the picturesque cottage in Patagonia. Please see the photo gallery.

I am back in Buenos Aires finally, after a 20 hour bus ride. Pew. But the buses are amazing here. So luxurious, so really I have nothing to complain about. I left a very cold, windy and rainy-snowy Bariloche and arrived in a beautiful, warm, sunny springiny Buenos Aires. What a gift. I took all the extra layers of clothing off and went up on the terrace that is on the roof of our hostel and sat in the sun. It was so warm!

It was great to see Roy again, and although he has been down with a cold for a few days (he is much better now), he and I just went for a slow Sunday walk and had ice cream with all the other porteños (people who live in Buenos Aires).

It has done me very good to get out of the city for about 2 weeks. I can feel how I am calmer and I just pray that I will be able to keep this feeling although the city is intense and I need to be on guard here. More than I ever have in my life, actually.

At the moment me and Roy are looking into changing the dates for our tickets and we will try to stay here for another 6 weeks if we can (which is 3 weeks longer than the initial plan). Our next stop on the trip was going to be Tonga, an island in the Pacific Ocean, but since there has been a tsunami there recently, there is a travel warning not to go there unless completely necessary. In the next few days we will try to get hold of the people at our insurance company to see what can be done about it... We will see how it all goes.

I am curious how this next period of city life will be...I will write soon and report.

Love

ania

Sad good bye and rainy horse riding experience.

royandania — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:06:00 GMT

Today Ingrid and Nicklas left for Peru and the Inca trail and I am let in Bariloche on my own for a couple of days. Right now it feels a bit funny to be alone, I have spent more or less 3 weeks with them now, and since Roy is back in Buenos Aires, I feel kind of lonely. But I guess that is ok and it will pass, just like everything else…

We had a lovely time in the last week in the little cottage that we rented with the amazing view over a big lake and the mountains with snow on their top (I will put up pictures soon). It was idyllic for our little painting retreat, and it was really nice to get back into my creativity again. So far in the trip, except for a bit in the US, I have not been active with my painting, but these few days reminded me of how much I love it. I am grateful to Ingrid who helped me remember this joy and how fun it is to be creative together! But now she is gone and I am left with my own motivation to keep it up. We shall see if can manage on my own. I hope so.

This morning I went for a horseback riding day in the Patagonian mountains. The group was meant to be out for 4 hours with a lunch break in the middle, but the weather was so bad that we only did the first two hours and by the end of that time I was so cold and soaking wet that I did not give a damn about the stunning views. We could not see much of them anyway, there where all covered in mist and clouds and the little opening that was left of my rain hood did not allow me to look around much. When we finally came back to the house and the big open fire, I squeezed a lot of water out of my gloves and socks. It was so great to get warm again!

As we sat down to eat our lunch we were asked if it was ok with us to be filmed for an advertisement for the horse riding centre, a film that would be shown on internet on their web site. I was not really in the mood, but I agreed anyway and they had us repeat toasting scenes about 4 times since the horse on the lawn outside the window would move in the wrong direction and walk out of the picture all of the time… I am glad I sat sort of with my back to the camera and that the American couple (who as visiting Argentina for their wedding anniversary) did all of the smiling and acting.

Then the taxi arrived and I went home and had a long nap. Oh god, it is hard work to be on vacation ;-).

I am soon on my way back to Buenos Aires. I am missing my Roy!

Loveania

White water rafting!

royandania — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:42:00 GMT

Just a short note:

Roy is just on his way to the bus to go back to Buenos Aires. I am going to stay here in Bariloche, Patagonia for another few days with Indrid and Niklas. Before Roy leaves i just want to post some images to share our great adventure from a few days ago:

The other day all four of us went white water rafring and it was an amazing experience! We had it all documented and i have made like a picure story of it (please see the photo gallery). Unfortunaltly the order of the images is random so my story is not really linear, but the imgages are nice and they give a good picture of the experience. The 2 (quite cold) hours on the river took us to Chile and we went through some quite extreem rapids where we all had to work hard together and listen to the instrucutor to get out of them safe! It was not a childs game, that is for sure! It was beautiful, fun and adrenalising!

Please see the images!

must go now...

love

ania

Adventure in Patagonia!

royandania — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:47:00 GMT

So, now the four of us, Ingrid, Niklas, Roy and myself have left Buenos Aires on a bus that took us 20 hours (!) south west to the northern edge of Patagonia and a town located by the feet of the Andes called Bariloche. The long trip on the bus was an experience of its own kind. The style was more like an aircraft and thanks to the “super camas” (super beds) that we booked we had a lot of space for our legs and our things and we could actually sleep quite well! The beds had a clever design that went back almost all the way back to full faltness and they where even quite conformable. They also fed us OK although the food was Argentinian (a lot of heavy food and sweets) on Argentinian hours (late).

As we arrived we where welcomed by VERY cold wind and some snow flakes dancing in the sun. We went to buy hats and gloves straight away, put our long john's (langkalsonger in Swedish) and spent the rest of that day studying the weather forecast on the internet over and over again and wondering if we really made a good decision when swapping the nicely warm Buenos Aires spring for this freezing climate. After we had explored the little town, had something to eat and found out what fantastic experiences and adventures could be had in this area, we decided to give it a day or two to see what it is like.

Today Niklas, Ingrid and I went on our first adventure. Roy needed some time and space on his own so he stayed at the hostel. The rest of us rented mountain bikes and did what the locals call the “small loop”. I don't really know what they are talking about. We where on these bikes for 4,5 hours, cycling in the Andes, constantly either very up or very down for nearly 30 km! By the end I could hardly sit on the saddle and my thigh muscles where aching. But, oh God, was it worth it! It was so beautiful and the views that came as rewards after climbing the steepest hills where spectacular! (see pictures). For me this was a blessed break from the constant noise and traffic of Buenos Aires and I actually think I got an overdose of clean air and exercise today, but I was loving it. And the silence! And the nature! And grass! I have not seen grass for about 6 weeks. Oh dear, I get all emotional... And we still have a few more days left here. Despite of the cold, I am really happy we are here.

Love

ania

Ania: new Home, new Tango, new Guests!

royandania — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:33:00 GMT

Hola!

There has been some changes in our life here in Buenos Aires in the last couple of weeks. One of them is that we have moved to a different barrio (neighbourhood), Palermo, which is known to be more trendy, expensive and a lot of fancy restaurants and clubs. Our new hostel (see photo album) is located in the very edge of Palermo, so the trendiness is not that apparent in the direct area where we live, and to be honest I am quite happy about that. It is slightly more relaxed still. But a 10 minute walk takes us to the fancy cafés and shops as well as to many of the tango venues where the milongas are held. We are excited to get a different view of the city this way.

Our new hostel is owned by a family with 4 quite young brothers and the weekends are definitely party time (2 of the brothers live here and their friends come over a lot). The other weekend they invited us to a typical Argentinian barbecue, and ASADO. It is an our door experience where the meat is prepared on a specially build grill. They put A LOT of meat and chicken on the grill (yes, I ate chicken, I admit....it is hard to remain a strict vegetarian in these circumstances. They have not heard about soy sausages here really...), and around half past midnight (local dinner time) 15 of us ate a big meal on the terrace. That was a proper Argentine dinner!

A few days after we had moved to our new place we received fine quest from Sweden: Ingrid and Nikals (see photos). It was so amazing to have the two worlds meet and to be able to share this exotic big city experience with people that know me from home.

We had arranged for Ingo and Niklas to stay in our hostel, which is great. They are staying in Argentina for 3 weeks and then they will be travelling in Peru and Brazil and will not be going back to Sweden until Christmas time. (Here is the address to their travel blog in Swedish: http://www.resedagbok.se/ingridnicklas).

Their first week of their 3 month long journey are spending with me and Roy here in BA and then we will be travelling to see more of rural Argentina for about 7-10 days. I am looking forward to that trip a lot.

Another one of the changes in our life is on the subject of tango. We have changed the path from the tango noevo style to the more traditional tango style called tango salon, or tango muilongero. This means that we have left our beloved tango school, and it feels a bit strange since DNI more of less became our second home for more than 6 weeks. But our new temporary teachers, Enzo and Edit (that I found on a milonga and asked if they did private classes) are guiding us well towards the more traditional tango and in that process mainly Roy, but me too to some extent, have reconnected with the love for tango and remembered the reason why we love the dance in the first place. We have currently come to the conclusion that the tango noevo style is more like salsa, focused on figures and fancy moves, whereas the milonguero style is more about the connection between the dancers, which is what we are more interested in. More like a hug in motion and the qualities of connection and movement are much more what we want to explore. The fact that most of the people around the world dance traditional tango also supports our choice of wanting to focus on this aspect of the dance. Someone once said that you should learn the basics of tango in the traditional style and then add the more modern tango noevo style, and I am starting to think that maybe they where right.

So, this week we have had 2 hours of private lessons daily with Edit and Enzo and in 12 hours we have made great progress in changing the style of our dancing as well as connecting with each other in the dance. These lessons are about working on me and Roy as a dancing couple and this has felt completely different than any of the work we have done at DNI (our old tango school) . It is starting to feel like we are learning dancing REAL tango now and we are so exited about being able to dance with each other, something that has actually been a struggle for us up-until now.

The other day we both bought new tango shoes. Just to celebrate. Take a look at the photos, the shoes are gougers!

Yesterday we and our Swedish guests went to a tango class completely new to all of us: Tango Zen. It was a walking meditation class where we where walking both individually and in couples to nice chilled music and in the end to tango music. The walking exercises where quite simple and the experience was very calming and beautiful. All of us enjoyed it. The teacher also does classes where he focuses more on the tango technique then on meditation and maybe we will try that when we have returned from out trip. Here is the web address if you want to check it out: http://www.tangozen.com/workshops_new_en.htm .

Next time I will be reporting from Barilcohe, the Argentine lake district south from Buenos Aires.

Love

ania x x x

Ania: Tango Tango Tango...

royandania — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:24:00 GMT

While Roy is at the dentist (i am not joking)I will take the chance to sit on the sunny terrace and write about my Buenos Aires life. The traffic noise is so loud that I can barley hear my own thoughts and actually that is the reason we are thinking of leaving this beautiful old building and moving somewhere else. It is impossible to rest here, the traffic only calms down for a few hours between midnight and 5 or 6 in the morning and if we are going out dancing, which we where last night, and get home at 3 or 4 in the morning then sleeping in the morning is a problem. So, we are looking into moving back to San Telmo, the barrio (part of the city) of artists, cosy cafés and restaurants, street tango and Sunday markets. We might have found something, but I am not going to say what until it is all set...

So we have finally started to go out more to evening milongas and that is quite interesting. The dancing venues do not open until 11 pm (right after, or during, the Argentinian dinner time) and we find ourselves taking a taxi to whatever milonga around midnight. It is a bit crazy really and I am trying to find a way to be functioning in the days as well as going out in the nights, it is a bit challenging for a person that cannot really sleep in the mornings, traffic noise or not. So far at the milongas we mainly dance with people we know, we have a little group that go out together since it is hard to get dances with the locals. You need to show up for some time and slowly get to know some of them to be able to get in to their crowd. Also, every dance is a proof of how good you are to the people watching.

The other night we went to a traditional tango place, El Beso, and it was so interesting to see all the women in one part of the room, sitting by the tables facing the dance floor waiting for the men to invite them to dance from the tables at the other end of the dance floor. The question “do you want to dance?” is made by eye contact and the agreement is made without words. This makes it easy to avoid the people you don't want to dance with, but it is tricky to be a newcomer since no one know you. I was just sitting by the bar watching the spectacle from the outside.

A new fried of ours, Chris,who is a musician from the US invited us to a tango concert (with no dancing) a few nights ago. It was the first time that I have just solely focused on the tango music itself and I had an amazing experience. When I dance I am so immersed in the movements and the connection with my partner (as well as trying to get everything I learnt work inside my body, like posture, how to make the movements etc) so I do not get to really HEAR the music. At the concert however, I closed my eyes and was astonished by the musical journey of the songs (and this is without understanding the Spanish lyrics). Each song was like a human life time, all the human aspects of living where represented there, the joys, the passions, the sadness, the longing, the love, the sensuality, the beauty, the fears.... I shivered to the beats of the piano and cried with the weeping violin. Wow! I will make sure I get the chance to experience this aspect of the tango culture again.

Apart from the nights out our life consists of tango classes. Endless tango classes. Private and group classes many hours per day. The more I dance the more I understand how complex and hard this dance actually is, how many layers are there and how much time I would have to dedicate to really become a good dancer. But I am experiencing a lot of progress lately. Judging by the approving nods and from the teachers I am not a hopeless case. I feel so privileged to have so much private attention by the teachers that are excellent dancers and are well in tune with the secretes of tango.

At DNI, the school where we study the style of tango is modern and quite different from the other styles of tango (take a look at it if you are interested: http://www.dni-tango.com/es). The teachers are so young (our youngest teacher is 19 years old and her teaching style is amazingly mature. She has been dancing for about 7 years now). At this very moment in time, a bit more than one third into our stay in BA, I am wondering how this style is comparable with the more traditional tango style (tango milonguero) which is the most common style everywhere where tango is danced. We will be leaving this place dancing in other parts of the world after all, and it would be nice to fit in anywhere. But we still have time to explore this, and many other aspects of tango and the city of Buenos Aires.

Now I am off to a tango class.

Love

ania

So now I'm a dental tourist!

royandania — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:32:00 GMT

So there we were, sitting in an all you can eat for 30 Pasos (about 5 quid) Parilla when crunch, I break a tooth off down to the root, ouch, well not so much at the time but really sensitive so, I have had to find a dentist here. The travel insurance helpline, wasn't, I still can't work out what there role is and I did ask, but anyway, I have found an english speaking dentist.

So, Off I popped and got her to look at the problems, the tooth I had just broke and the filling that broke in the USA that was starting to bug me more, (yes I did get all this checked before we left)

The upshot, filling, no problem, large astectic (white) filling at the back 120 pasos, about £20, yep £20! but the other, well that needed a root canal filling and a crown.

So now I've had my first root canal filling, well actually my second but I'll come to that in a moment, now that's an experience in itself, an hour and a half in the chair while the dentist rives away removing all signs of life in the tooth and back filling to stop infection. Not the most fun I've had in a while but a good chance to practice my meditative breathing, came out quite calm really.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that this is an ideal chance to get all my dental work done to a high standard at a reasonable cost and get rid of all those old mercury fillings, so now I'm a dental tourist! Also Ania is booked in next wednesday to see if there is anything she needs doing.

The Tango is progressing but very slowly and that's a whole different story so I'll up on that another time as, yes, I'm off to the dentist in a bit.

Love

Roy

Buenos Aries, the home of Tango and Steak!

royandania — Sun, 6 Sep 2009 18:46:00 GMT

So, here we are in Argentina, Buenos Aries no less and here’s me making my first addition to our blog and making apologies for not sending out the link before.

Earth Dance was certainly an interesting place and I may add some retrospective thoughts at a later date but for now we are in the home of Tango.

We’ve been here for about a week now and for me anyway, only now just about set up.

Finding a place we were happy with for a reasonable price has been difficult and although we had help from a number of contacts, ultimately, we had to sort it out more or less ourselves.

However, we are here now, in a family run Hostel with a nice room, a clean bathroom and access to a good kitchen. That last one is going to be a god send. Eating out here is not that expensive, at least relative to the UK, but it soon mounts up. The main thing though is the food on offer. Coming from a mainly vegetarian time at earth dance to here is a bit of a shock to the system even for me, it is truly a carnivores paradise.

The big thing here is the parellia, a charcoal grill on which most of the meat is cooked and I have to say that it’s brilliantly done, both stakes and chicken are nicely caramelised on the outside while being juicy in the middle, I’m getting hungry just thinking about it! Vegetables and salads are another thing though. Usually on the menu they are very much of an also ran, unless you order carefully and are very specific. Other good things to have here are the fruit juices, freshly squeezed and very tasty. So It’s not necessarily an unhealthy diet, if you can manage to leave out the carbs (they serve bread rolls and spready cheese with each meal, and potatoes, usually fried in some way) what you have is your basic Atkins diet, mind you I’ve just done a quick web search and maybe the Atkins diet ain’t so good!

Whether it’s good for you or not, I had possibly the best steak of my life the other night and it cost under a tenner, two of us had a good meal in a posh place with silver service and it came to under 150 pasos, that’s about £25.00.

Anyway enough on the delights of the parllia, there’s a link below to the website of our hostel and maybe next time we will explore the joys of empanadas and I can give you a few impressions of the Tango World championships which are going on right now, or maybe not!

Cheers,

http://www.residencialezica.com.ar/ingles/instalaciones_in.html

2 weeks in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Ania

royandania — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:27:00 GMT

Buenos Aires, Argentina: So, we have been here two weeks now and things are slowly coming together for us.

The city is quite a character to get to know. Rough and not so charming and beautiful as i might have hoped for. Grand, old style buildings are put next to modern cheap houses that have not been looked after for a long time. There are many poor people trying to survive in all kinds of more or less creative ways so everywhere we go people want something from us and the atmosphere is quite edgy and a little aggressive. People are selling everything from socks to CDs or singing or juggling or begging in subways on the streets and even in the traffic as cars wait for green light. In the evenings we have seen lots of people go through piles of bin bags with garbage to find things to eat or keep or sell. I would imagine this is only the beginning of what we might encounter as we travel, but it is making an impact on me.

Two girls (one of them Swedish) that we met in our hostel have been robbed on separate occasions, one of them (the Swedish girl)was robbed twice during a period of under 24 hours and one of the times 3 guys came in to our hostel (this was before we where there) and pointed a gun to her head...This made me much more careful and suspicious in this city. The local Buenos Aires people tell us not to trust anyone on the streets, not taxi drivers, not people in shops.... It is like a film.

But the people we meet and engage with are very nice and what the city maybe is lacking on the surface, it certainly has on a deeper level. Very generous people with good hears and a passionate attitude to life. I hope to be experiencing more of that during our time here.

We have found a place to stay for the 3 months we are here. We are staying in a family home, a big old beautiful building that we think was built to be a hotel. The Argentinean couple that we live with rent out rooms on an ongoing basis and they have got 6 daughters which are all grown up. They come and go and we actually do not know who lives here and who does not. We have only been here for 3 days and since they only speak Spanish our conversations are very limited. Roy is doing quite well and manages to arrange many things in his simple Spanish and i am on the level of saying one word and hoping that my body language will convey the rest. Studying Spanish is high on my list of priorities, that is for sure.

We are trying to fit around the Argentinean life style that involves eating dinner at 10 or 11 in the evening and the dinners usually consist of the largest steaks that i have ever seen, served with nothing but bread (ok, sometimes they come with potatoes). This is not an ideal place for a vegetarian, and i end up eating a lot of pasta and bread. But Roy is happy. Although after two weeks of eating out we are now looking forward to cooking at home and eating some more simple foods and salads.

Our tango studio, DNI, has turned out to be a fantastic place filled with young enthusiastic tango people who love to teach us this modern (and for us slightly unusual) form of tango. We have taken maybe 4 private lessons so far, Roy with female teachers and me with male teachers, and we are in the middle of the process of re-learning everything we knew about the basics of tango. It is very challenging to build new habits but it is fun! This style of tango has more movements with the hips and has larger moves in general. It is quite a grounded form (as in low level), which is different to the form that i have been taught before in which the hips are still and the core of the movements come from the cheats rather than the hip. The teachers have prepared a plan of private lessons for us and next week we are starting to join the group classes as well. As it looks now we could do up to 3 classes per day (about 5 hours). We shall see how much we can cope with daily. We are here for 3 moths after all and there is no rush....

Ania in New Mexico

royandania — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:36:00 GMT

Ania's memories from two weeks in New Mexico, USA:

I left Massachusetts and Roy in early august to go to New Mexico, and the town Santa Fe for a two week Action Theatre workshop, taught by the founder of this theatre form Ruth Zaporah. She is now 72 years old and I was so excited to be able to learn the form from her.

I have been very interested in Action Theatre for the last 5 years or so, I wrote my final essay on this subject in collage in England about a year ago. But writing about it is very different from engaging in it practically. Action theatre is an experience based practice.

The workshop was held on a ranch (farm) about 30 minutes outside of Santa Fe, located in the middle of the high desert and surrounded by hills with funny little round bushes on them, and farther away there where mountains and over it all a vast sky . The days were very hot (up to 35 degrees Celsius) and our 3 hour siesta was well needed, the only thing we could to in the heat was to take a nap or sit indoors talking. In the night the sky would be crowded with stars and the coyotes (wild dog-like animals) would howl and scream, sounding like children playing. We soon got use to them but they never stopped to amuse me.

We where warned about the rattle snakes (in Swedish: skaller ormar) and poisonous black widow spiders and that kept me from taking walks in the wild desert landscape near the ranch and it took me a few days to relax in the safe environment of the ranch. None in the group actually saw a snake or a poisonous spider, but we did see some lizards and some other unusual large insects...

There was 14 of us doing the workshop and apart from myself and two Swiss ladies all the participants where American. I was amazed by how the group came together quickly and how we all seem to like each other so much. It was really a blessing to be a part of this constellation of people who came from all walks of life and where there for so many different reasons.

5 hours per day we would be in the studio working with Ruth, the first 3 hours where physically active and later in the afternoon, after the siesta, we would focus on more still work, like narrative (something like story telling). Action Theatre could best be described as a training in improvisational physical theatre, focusing on developing skills appropriate both for public performances as well as for the lives we "perform" as human beings.

The exercises we would engage in would isolate particular aspects of movement and performance (time, shape, space, energy etc.) and i was fascinated how my habits of movement, behaviour and problem solving became visible to me (quite often not so flattering).
Over the course of the two weeks we practiced exercising and opening our imagination, learn to communicate with our eyes, get used to shifts between different theatrical "worlds" so quickly that the intellect and thought could not keep up, and sense the difference between embodied creativity and imagination verses concept of ideas being "executed" by the body. For me personally the most beautiful lesson of the whole workshop was to get numerous glimpses of the embodied creativity and the way that if i really let go in letting my body have an influence in the story that was emerging, rather than only being a container for an idea that came from the head, i would be continuously surprised by the material that was formed in me, though me. In these moments i had a very clear connection to how this practice can be liked to spiritual practices like Buddhism. Through non attachment there is an opening to a realm much larger than i could ever experience otherwise.

In one of her books Ruth puts it like this: "Acting with a sense of playful exploration, students are encouraged to venture into transpersonal realms, accessing intelligence more encompassing and boundless that known in their personal experience."

The Action Theatre practice was for me more difficult than i had anticipated. It was a great challenge for me to experience that and realise that to get anywhere within this form i would have to practice for oh, so many years. I found it quite daunting and noticed how the "quitter" in me was quietly suggesting to give it up all together. I had the opportunity to see that pattern (that keeps reoccurring) in my life, served on a silver plate, and after a few days i could also see that i have a choice whether to listen to the "quitter" and run away, or to stay with the difficulty, allow myself to be a struggling beginner and humbly learn from this situation. I chose to stay.

In summary, the two weeks where a great experience and important step on my path of exploring personal devotement and creativity and, i was also so grateful by the opportunity to be in the landscape of New Mexico, so wild, naked beautiful and direct. Embracing life and death in a way that i had never experienced before.

Next: Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Ania: More from Earthdance

royandania — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:17:00 GMT

Ania's final reflections from the last month at Earthdance. (The text contains bits from different dates.)

So, July the 4th jam has started and i have to say i find it hard to engage since i am still a bit exhausted after the SEEDS festival that just ended. I just long for some time and space to be introvert and not have to engage with people all the time.

As a preparation for our stay in Buenos Aires in a months time, Roy, myself and tow girls that we know from Earthdance have started to take Spanish lessons with a local friend of the Earthdance community. In the first lesson she spoke Spanish to us for 2 hours and i got quite enthusiastic to learn the language. But i found a strange thing. When trying to get another language into my head, all the other languages somehow come up to the surface and fight for attention like jealous wifes. All of a sudden my Polish, Swedish and English are all present and the Spanish has to carefully negotiate with the current residents of my brain to find a place alongside them.
Another thing that i found interesting and slightly difficult is to learn a foreign language form the base of a language that is not my mother tongue. All the pronunciations are explained from an English point of view and for a person that has got Swedish as a foundation, that is quite confusing.

A few days later:
Today the contact improvisation festival, the july 4^th jam, ended. A bunch of us celebrated by going swimming in the lake nearby, and it was great. It has been an intense week of about 75-90 people, children included, sharing the Earthdance space for dancing singing and playing. I was amazed by what a fantastic community it was, how lovely people where, how open and friendly.

During the jam Roy and i put together a tango class and Roy was teaching and i was assisting. It went fine, i think some of the people that came got a flavour of what tango can be about and some even got this shiny light in their eyes which was wonderful to see. So that was great, but there is still a lot to learn about how to structure a tango class for beginners and if i was to do it again i would change a few things. Still, i am glad to have been a part of this experience and very proud of Roy as a teacher. One of the feedback comments we got was that his passion for tango was very inspiriting and he was a clear and good communicator of that. Hurray!

During the contact jam I found myself not participating in many of the jamming sessions of contact improvisation because of some mental blocks of mine. Many of the dancers are very good and i felt a bit intimidated, not really daring to take part. As if i did not really allow myself to be at the level i am, believing i must be something i am not. But luckily i still got to experience some very precious moments of non-self-conscious joy and playfulness, and i has some beautiful dances.

In my processes in and around contact improvisation i have come to see (again and again) that this form, dealing with the subjects of self and relationship, is a wonderful mirror for reflecting back patterns of thought and behaviour in life and it gives me a very honest image of all my internal and external issues. It is great. And scary.

Some days later
Me and Roy and all of the staff members on Earthdance have just been on a full day Healing Racism Training and it was an interesting experience. It gave me a lot of insight to the culture of racism history in this country and it was eye-opening to understand the "white privilege", what it means to be a white persons and that i get to enjoy privileges that i am not even aware off, for example the privilege of not being scared that people might move to another seat on the bus when i sit next to them because of my skin colour...And that is just a mild example.

A few weeks later Earthdance was partly hosting and partly holding an event for young black people from poor urban communities. Two groups of them came out to Earthdance and some of them had never left the city before. They where amazed by the nature and the clean air. I got to sit in on their sessions, lead by a very passionate black couple, encouraging them to start thinking critically about their situations and their lives, and not just accept the reality they were in. They also shared their creative skills with us and with each other, like dancing, signing and playing and is was so touching to see them unfold and start expressing themselves. They did exercises if envisioning their futures and where encouraged to express their dreams about how they wanted their lives to become as they grew older. One girl said that she had never been asked this question before in her life. This was a very eye opening experience for me and i felt so grateful for being a part of it.

Earthdance reflections

royandania — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:00:00 GMT

Ania reflects:

So, we have been here a bit more than 3 weeks now.

Today is my first day off in a period of about 10 days since we have been organising and hosting a festival on art and ecology and it ended yesterday. It was really great, workshops and jams in different aspects of contact improvisation, permaculture etc, and in the 2^nd week we had 12 artist here in residency doing work. We cooked for them and on my free time I was lucky enough to take part in a few different projects. I was a dancing clown in a video, helped developed a fire ritual with burning birds and sang when two dances where interacting with the trees in the woods next to Earthdance. I did some Swedish cattle calling (kulning) to attract the audience who was walking towards us, and then as the end of the piece I improvised a lullaby. It was all a great experience and people offered some positive feedback.

During the last few weeks I have reconnected with a childhood friend, Nadja, who I have not seen for 15 years. She came to visit me here and we were both part of the fire bird ceremony project and when we were not cooking, cleaning or working with the artists we went for walks filling in the gaps of the many years we have not seen each other. We where amazed by how alike we are and how easy it was to reconnect.

I have bought two canvases and i have started to paint again, soooo wonderful! There has not been much time in the last week to go back to my pink beauty that i started just before the festival, but I am hoping to prioritise it from now on and get on with my creativity in a more structured way.

The honeymoon of arriving here at Earthdance is over now and a more reality based image is starting to unfold. I still very much appreciate the community and the open people that chose to come here, but I am noticing a feeling of isolation for the rest of the world and a little restlessness that comes with that. We are stuck here in the woods and since we do not have a car I cannot chose to leave when I feel like it. Or maybe I am just tired after a very intense period...maybe it is not so bad after all. I guess what I miss is some open space, some fields. Here the woods are quite wild and embracing the houses from all directions. There are not even proper walking paths that make a nice loop, the paths just vanish after a while and the woods take over. In December apparently there was an ice-storm here, which is a weather condition when cold rain falls and freezes as it reaches the ground. On trees it becomes like a heavy layer of ice that make them break. Now the broken trees and branches are covering the floor of the woods and it will take a long time to clear. I had never heard of such a storm before.

I am realising that being at Earthdance does not give us a fair image of this huge country at all. The people we meet here have alternative life styles very particular interest in movement and spirituality. As soon as we leave this place the Real America becomes more obvious. I am noticing that although we are in a different country, so far away from home, i still feel i can relate to what i see and experience. But everything is like in a film. The empty roads, the big trucks, the gas stations (road movies), the accent of the people we meet , their names etc, i know all of this form all the American movies i have seen. It is so strange and real at the same time.

And everything is so big. The cars, the scoops of ice cream, the bottles of deodorant, the portions of food we get at restaurants...everything. Even the trees are big, and the deer I met at 6 in the morning on my way to make breakfast for all the people of the festival. It was at least 2 times larger than a Swedish deer.

Ok, that is it for now. Tomorrow the next festival starts. It is a 5 day contact improvisation jam with 75 guests....

Earthdance

royandania — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:15:00 GMT

We are now at the movement centre Earthdance in Massachusetts (http://www.earthdance.net). We arrived a week ago today and we are slowly starting to land, arrive and become a part of this wonderful community of movers and dancers. We are in the middle of the woods. No busses and a 30 minute drive to the nearest town...it is pretty isolated, but it does not feel like it since the place, although small, is alive and has quite a large community of people from the local surrounding coming to take part in movement sessions and support the retreat.
Roy and i are working 5 hours per day in return for food and board and the work we do vary from assisting in the kitchen to cleaning and raking leaves etc. The other day i was given the official title the Washing Goddess and from now on i am responsible for the washing of the entire place. I feel important. Roy is taking on practical tasks on the grounds.

We are slowly getting in to the movement side of our stay here. On the Sunday there was a contact jam (a gathering for the dance form Contact Improvisation which is the primary focus of Earthdance) and we were stunned by the large group of people that assembled to move, play and have fun for hours to improvised live music. The vibe was great as nearly 34 people were playing. Wonderful!
This morning we had a smaller gathering and did some Authentic Movement when half the group was witnessing as the other half was moving in the pace with closed eyes, expressing with their bodies whatever was present for them. A deep and meditative practice that enables the mover to follow the flow of material that appears internally and to get surprise by the directions it takes.
We like this place!

still at home

royandania — Sat, 30 May 2009 08:00:00 GMT

We are still at home.

Little hung over form the goodbye dinner last night, little frustrated over that things do not go as smoothly as they could, little sad to have spend most of this lovely warm first summers day indoors by the computer and on the phone, little worried to get all the details sorted, little exited about the whole thing...and a bit nervous.

Where does the preparation end and the journey start?