Queer as Tango

Click here to read Lexa's interview in Reportango magazine.

Lexa's Milonga

蕾克丝的舞会

article written about Lexa in China Press by Kaiyu.

The title Reads "LEXA'S MILONGA" (and after that, you're on your own :))

蕾克丝的舞会 【纽约】图/文 孙恺愉 　　蕾克丝 　　第一次见到蕾克丝，是在纽约每月一次的盛大探戈舞会上。那时候我还是个探戈新生，平常练习都颠颠簸簸，到了正式舞会更是全身僵硬，直冒冷汗。那晚完全是因为看到海报上说舞会里有占星师算命，为了满足好奇心才前往的。 　　我买了门票进场后就四处寻找那位占星师，好像跳舞根本不是主题。围着舞池边缘绕了一圈，才发现一块神秘的“地盘”。小圆桌上摆有一台笔记本电脑，旁边有个牌子写着“塔罗占卜”。 　　连塔罗都改电脑了？真是连巫师都不落伍。小圆桌旁坐着一位女士，我在她面前走来走去，犹豫半天，和自己斗争了很久，才上前小声地说：“请问这塔罗算命是免费的吗？”我以为，这是包括在门票里的额外服务。 　　“不，是要钱的。”蕾克丝回答。我突然觉得很不好意思，说声：“谢谢”就赶紧跑开了。 　　那天蕾克丝的衣着很普通，没有特地为跳舞做精致高雅的打扮，我完全不知道她是个杰出的舞者。而且她戴眼镜的样子很严肃，令我问过那个困窘的问题之后便紧张地离开了，不敢再和她说话。 　　记不起那天晚上究竟有没有跳舞，倒是这一窘事记忆犹新。 　　一晃就是两年，我开始穿梭于纽约大小探戈舞会，成了舞迷们说的，擅长夜间活动的“吸血鬼”。偶然瞥见蕾克丝，差点认不出来。我惊叹着哪里来的潇洒女子，领舞领得这般好。 　　蕾克丝如果是以舞者而不是占星师的身份参加舞会，定会西装笔挺，整整齐齐，从手帕领带到鞋，每个细节都不马虎。我从来不主动和她说话，也从来没有人介绍我们认识。于是，我遥望她遥望了两年，没想到过了两年半，我和蕾克丝成为了朋友。 　　前段日子，我和S君去观看纽约主办的第二届美国探戈大赛。蕾克丝一箭双雕，拿下社交组第三和表演组冠军。爱拍照的S君在颁奖后抢着和蕾克丝合影，顺便递给她餐馆的名片。不久后，蕾克丝就在S君的餐馆里办起舞会来，由她教授入门课，给大家讲解舞蹈音乐。 　　开幕那天，中秋节刚过两天，大家“马后炮”似的一起吃月饼。两个礼拜后是犹太新年第二天，大家又“马后炮”似的一起吃蜂蜜苹果片（犹太人的传统，象征“甜甜的一年”）。因为这种特别的气氛，使蕾克丝的舞会总是和别的地方不同。 　 　蕾克丝是个千面女郎，只见她一次是很难看出她的多样性的。第一次接触她时，觉得她很冷酷，有点高傲，甚至令人有些害怕。后来在一些细节中，逐渐认识到她 体贴的一面，了解到原来她懂得为别人着想。开幕那晚，她因为怕领舞的人不够，有些女孩会干坐一晚没人请，特地邀几个男生来帮忙。曾经有人怂恿蕾克丝把奖杯 带到舞会宣传一下，她没有这样做，因为有个帮忙陪舞的朋友连续两年和蕾克丝参加同一个比赛，却连连没有入围，蕾克丝不想让他心里难受。 　　蕾克丝既有阴柔之美，又有阳钢之俊，容貌无论如何打扮都潇洒，而且满腹文章，知识丰富，气质独特，真所谓“秀外慧中”。 　　逐渐认识蕾克丝后，才把她的精彩生活统统挖掘出来。除了做舞迷和探戈老师之外，她还是塔罗专家、作家、诗人和演员。 　 　蕾克丝的第一份工作是个蛇舞女郎，外号“蛇女诗人”（SnakePoet）。美国知名艺术家安迪·沃荷 （Andy Warhol, 1928-1987）在这个时期曾为蕾克丝摄影。蕾克丝曾经在中央公园，吊在Delacort剧院对面的一棵树上朗读爱伦 坡、莎士比亚、劳伦斯、柯尔律治，以及她自己的诗。1982年，纽约警察用枪口对着这位女诗人和她13英尺的宠物蟒蛇“莉莉”，把她们逐出公园，迫使蕾克 丝不得不在后来的几年间找一份“实在的”工作。 　　蕾克丝开始学习魔术和超自然艺术。这些年间，她传授占星术、塔罗占卜、犹太教的卡巴拉等 等，并且自己做占星师。她的著作有《超市女魔法师》（The Supermarket Sorceress）、《超市女巫的迷人夜 晚》（The Supermarket Sorceress's Enchanted Evenings）、《魔术烹调原料大 全》（The Encyclopedia of Magickal Ingredients）等等。她还为若干杂志写星座专栏。 　　蕾克丝写的几部话剧，包括《囚徒》（The Prisoner）、《游泳》（The Swim）等等，都曾在WOW咖啡屋上演。蕾克丝也在La Mama剧场、Dixon Place、PS122等地方演出她自己的作品。 　　蕾克丝的才华多得让人数不清，除了探戈，她还曾经学过爵士舞、芭蕾舞、踢踏舞。去年，她是第一位正式应邀参加布宜诺斯艾利斯Mundial探戈比赛的女性领舞者。 　　蕾克丝年长我许多，她年轻的时候，女性地位不高，挣扎了很久才获得今天较为稳定的生活。其实占卜只是类似心理辅导的工作，近来美国经济不景气，她笑说，她的生意倒是好了，大家都来找她。 　　蕾克丝从来不叫好朋友让她占卜，我们见面总是聊天跳舞，把工作抛在脑后。原来所谓女巫师，也只是比较有趣的凡人。现在早已没有烧女巫的做法和对巫术迷信的态度了。蕾克丝只是比别人有更细致的感受力和坚强的信念。这是艺术家需要的品质，难怪她拥有那么优美的舞姿。 下一篇4

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下一篇4

2008 年 12 月 10 日　星期 三

放大 缩小 默认

We are the CHAMPIONS!

WINNERS OF 2008 U.S.A. TANGO CHAMPIONSHIP

STAGE CATEGORY
1ST PRIZE Gayle Madeira y Lexa Roséan USA/USA
2ND PRIZE Mayumi Fujio & David Chiu USA/USA
3RD PRIZE Natalia Atepaeva Vladimir Khorev RUSSIA/RUSSIA





SALON CATEGORY
1ST PRIZE Mariana Parma & Omar Lagos USA/USA
2ND PRIZE Mayumi Fujio & David Chiu
3RD PRIZE Gayle Madeira y Lexa Roséan USA/USA

Kai Cheung has some great pics on his website.

ABC News: American Couple Tangos to World Finals

Eso Eduardo y Cyrena for making it to the finals in Bs As!
Suerte!
ABC News: American Couple Tangos to World Finals

World Tango Championship finalists Eduardo Goitia and Cyrena Drusine. (ABC News)

By JOE GOLDMAN
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Aug. 24, 2007

Eduardo Goitia, 43, and Cyrena Drusine, 25, are unlikely finalists at the World Tango Championships being held in Buenos Aires.

Eduardo was born in the Bronx in a family of immigrants from Puerto Rico. He is an architect at the top New York design firm Mancini, Duffy and lives in midtown Manhattan. Cyrena is from a Russian émigré family that ended up in Manhattan. She is an NYU graduate student studying performance arts from an anthropological perspective.

Perhaps the most intriguing fact about this couple is that they have only known each other since this past April when they met at a milonga, or tango dance hall, in Buenos Aires.

In these contests, partner synchronization is considered one of the most important facets of the judging process.

Speaking about the night they met, Eduardo told ABC News, "We danced believing each that the other was Argentine. Not until we sat down and chatted did we realize we were two New Yorkers. So we exchanged phone numbers and started dancing as a couple in New York in May."

The rest is history.

In July the couple won the United States championships in New York, which carries among its prizes an invitation to the annual event in Buenos Aires, the birthplace of this exquisite dance.

The World Championships brings together close to 500 couples from 154 cities to compete in the main event during an 11-day spectacle replete with dance shows, tango orchestra performances, specialized classes, seminars and other happenings revolving around the tango.

"It's a thrill to dance in this competition with all the historical significance of Buenos Aires," said Eduardo, in a short break while waiting for the semi-finals to begin. Eduardo and Cyrena are vying for top honors in ballroom, one of the two categories of tango dance style at the championship (the other category is stage).

Stage is the more stylized and choreographed version, while the ballroom category is the more traditional, neighborhood-style tango that developed in Buenos Aires in the early part of the 20th century.

"We actually danced in both categories at the New York festival. We came in first in ballroom and third in stage. But here we decided to concentrate on ballroom dancing. It's more traditional, especially here in Argentina."

In the ballroom semi-finals, the contestants go in groups of 10 couples and are asked to dance in counter-clockwise circles while a panel of five judges rates each of the couples. Three recorded tango tunes are played for each grouping of 10 couples. The music is not prearranged, so the couples cannot plan their dancing according to any specific composition.

The judges look at factors including how the couple first walks out onto the dance floor, their general appearance and ambience, their elasticity, their rhythm and dancing in harmony with the music, and even to how they relate to each other.

A crowd of about 3,000 people also attended the semi-finals, with rooting sections for local participants as well as the many Colombian couples vying for honors.

The New Yorkers danced with energy and flair, and that combination of rigidity and elasticity that marks tango. They stood out in their group and were selected one of three dozen finalists for the competition that ends on Sunday night.

"We're excited but also confident," said a tired Eduardo on Friday night after the finalists were announced.

Tangoing Cheek to Cheek for 3 Minutes in the Park - New York Times

Tangoing Cheek to Cheek for 3 Minutes in the Park - New York Times

Summer Rituals | It Takes Two

By GLENN COLLINS

Published: August 25, 2007

It was a sultry 6 p.m. in Central Park, and over by the 1872 Shakespeare statue at Literary Walk, melancholy rhythms spilled from two speakers propped up on park benches.

Courtenay Nugent rose. He asked Fran Beaumont to dance. There they were: the two it took to tango.

They moved sensually across the asphalt pavers, counterclockwise around the monument, under a coquettish breeze and what was to become a limitless starry sky and an oblong moon. As dozens of onlookers watched over the next three hours, about 50 couples swayed to the steps of the dance that has been called a three-minute love affair.

Christian Hansen for The New York Times

Dancing the tango by the Shakespeare statue

at Literary Walk in Central Park.

“I’m first to get up because I’m not shy,” said Mr. Nugent, 59, a translator and teacher who lives in St. Albans, Queens.

For more than a decade, free tango in Central Park, Saturdays from June through September, has been the emblem of one of the city’s most fermenting — make that obsessed — subcultures. Acolytes ritually gather in a wholly accessible yet somehow intimate domain surrounding the Bard, who, at that hour, was still dappled in sunlight, and seemingly amused.

As she danced, Ms. Beaumont flourished lipstick and nail polish of Tango Red. Her black lace gloves matched her tight black chemise with its see-through sleeves, and her floral red and black skirt was slit high to accommodate the most vertiginous dips, spins, kicks and drops. Her feet, of course, were wrapped in strappy black tango shoes.

By 6:15, two other couples had joined in. The disc jockey, Hernan Brizuela, 33, was playing sets, or tandas, of Argentine tangos: fast, medium, then slow.

“What happens on the tango floor stays on the tango floor,” said William Lawrence Parker III, 50, who is known as Trey and has been one of two organizers of the Central Park dance practically since it began.

Rick Castro, 48, the other longtime organizer, explained that it takes one tango “to meet your partner, the second to get used to your partner, and the third to just enjoy.”

Mr. Castro estimated that 75 percent of the dancers — young or old, skilled or neophyte — “are non-couples.” Even the regulars “don’t normally see each other during the week,” he added, “but I guess you could call them a family, scattered though it is.”

Christian Hansen for The New York Times

Couples continued to tango as night fell.

The makeshift dance floor in the park is one facet of a teeming city sub-universe: There are dozens of Argentine tango milongas, or gatherings, in New York, most of them charging a modest fee, and many of them listed on a Web site, newyorktango.com.

“I go every night,” said Natalie Rogers, a psychotherapist in Manhattan who said she prescribes tango to some of her patients struggling with performance anxiety. “I tell women that it’s a great way to meet men.”

Mr. Castro said the Central Park tango has produced many relationships and occasionally the syncopation of wedding bells, though most people just dance with tango friends or even strangers.

Lucille Krasne, a Manhattan artist recognized by everyone as the founding mother of Central Park tango, said it all began in the summer of 1995, when she and a handful of dancers took a boom box into Central Park at the Bethesda Fountain. “I called it Hit and Run Tango, because we had no permit and if the police came we’d run,” she recalled.

The next summer, the dance became more regularized. “The tourists loved us, the strollers loved us and the dogs loved us,” Ms. Krasne said.

Mr. Parker chimed in, “It became Hit and Stay Tango.”

Mr. Castro said the group was driven from the fountain by a Saturday night drumming ensemble that drowned out the tango vibe, so the dancers segued south to Shakespeare about seven years ago. Payment for the speakers, D.J. and park permits is fronted by Mr. Parker and Mr. Castro, who pass the hat to defer expenses.

Thanks to word of mouth and the site online, the weekly event has prospered, and even spread, to the South Street Seaport, where a free Sunday milonga has been flourishing since 1999, Mr. Castro said.

Through the years, joggers, cyclists and carriage passengers have been drawn into the tango vortex. Many times bridal parties venturing into the park have stumbled upon the tango worshipers “and just joined in,” Mr. Castro said.

The Olympic torch bearer, he added, suddenly turned up one night on the run through Central Park, “and we all stopped and applauded.”

Then there are the sporadic visitations by rain showers that have sent the tango revelers fleeing to the roofed-over refuge of the Dairy.

“Of course, some people keep dancing like crazy in the rain,” Ms. Krasne said.

Central Park tango has drawn its share of celebrities, including Kofi Annan, Robert Duvall (who wrote, directed and starred in the 2003 film “Assassination Tango”) and the actress Bernadette Peters, who has jetted to Buenos Aires to tango the night away.

“When celebrities come by, they just hang out,” Mr. Castro said. “We don’t bother them. Tango people are not grovelers.”

Tango is a leveler of age differences too. Alexander Turney, 89, a Central Park regular, said he learned to tango at 67, “and it gave me a new lease on life.”

There are even regular onlookers. Every summer Saturday for the last three years, George Rodriguez has propelled his lumbering Home Depot shopping cart full of belongings to the periphery of the dance. Mr. Rodriguez, who said he is not homeless since he stays with a friend on West 82nd Street, said he has never once danced. He just sits there, transfixed.

“This is the best place,” he said, “and tango is the best dance.”

For the most part, “men always ask the women to dance,” said Peggy Chen, 27, a neuropsychologist who started dancing in Central Park this summer. But while the men lead, she added: “We are improvising together. It is very creative.”

Ms. Rogers said she asks men to dance, adding, “Especially the very good dancers.”

Anthony Blackwell, 36, a Central Park dancer for the last eight years, said he loves “the synchronicity of it, the fact that you can suddenly connect with people.” Mr. Blackwell, who arranges housing for the homeless and mentally ill in Manhattan, added, “It’s a lot more fun than going to the gym, where you feel like a hamster.”

At 7:30 p.m., more than 60 newbies gathered for a free tango lesson near the Ann Reinking London plane tree (nearly everything in Central Park is a naming opportunity).

“For beginners, tango is about patience and discipline,” explained Jak Karako, 40, the instructor. Later, after the lesson, he said: “Argentine tango is like a Lego game with very tiny pieces. And you are building your own very intricate structure.”

The dancers dragged their soles in a cornstarch-and-talcum powder mixture sprinkled on the asphalt by Mr. Parker — the better to slide and pivot. Dark descended, and dancers cast eerie shadows from the park lamps. During breaks they caught their breath, hobbed, nobbed and gossiped on the surrounding E. B. White bench, Lee Salk bench and David Niven bench.

The last tango in Central Park ceased throbbing at 9:21 p.m. Mr. Castro began collecting trash as Mr. Parker helped pack up the sound system.

They would be back in a week. “It is,” Mr. Parker said, “greater than we are.”