Wednesday, June 18, 2008

WARSAW Tango Festival and not much more

After being spoiled by our favourite european destinations, like Prague, it' s hard to be euphoric about Warsaw. Let us be positive and find some nice points in our visit to this rather unatractive city.



We had a summerly welcome. Cannot complain about the weather. The whole city is having a blitz race towards Europe. Sometimes too quick- the Old Town looks like a playground artificially prepared for the tourists. We all know it's a quite faithful reconstruction of its original version totally destroyed by the war. Now, it is a monument to the modern tourism, consumption and devastating prices. Cup of coffe there?! No thank you, in Champs Elisees it's cheaper!

Our only reason to visit Warsaw again was a Tango Festival.

Our protective gods want us to have a double luxury: a luxurious apartment in Narbutta/Lowicka street and, to have it complete, our festival location on the same street, 3 blocks away!
The three reasons we were interested in Warsaw Festival Viva Tango were:
first, because we like our Tango Trinity of Warsaw ( Piotr, his twin brother Marcin and Agnieszka, the organizers),
second, because one of the Aisha' s brother lives there and another one works in the Filipines leaving a luxurious apartement at artists' disposal.
The third reason, was to check how our fresh tango student and friend, Kinga Rusin is doing. Though considered a TV star in Poland, for us she is just a lovely girl who is passionate about tango.
We had great tango time in Buenos Aires while filming You Can Dance programme and Kinga promised to meet us and assist our performance in Warsaw. And she did! It was great chatting to her till 3 a.m ( she is a real night person, perfect for milongas), unfortunately her evaluation of Polish tango scene comparing to her Buenos Aires experience turned out to be very law... She has never danced tango since she was back in Poland. She keeps dreaming about catching up with her tango education in her divino Buenos Aires. Where else?!


Kinga danced tango only with Victor, her maestro. She refused all the other invitations. Paparazzis left her alone for this night. In this respect, tango in Warsaw was absolutely correct.

I was quite apprehensive about the time of her arrival and started our performance without being aware of 2 important persons to arrive: Kinga and my brother. Those two I wanted to dedicate our dance. After the performance when Kinga threw herself into our arms with greetings and congratulations, I only checked her: which dress I danced my first tango vals? ' White-she answered without winking her eye. She passed!
Victor, looking like a virtuoso. A real maestro!

Gladys knows the european mentality. That's why she brought her own ' food basket' to the milonga. After our performances, about 1 am she started taking out breads, hams, sousages and cheeses. As she rightly says- the Europeans never care about the artists. We do not eat before dancing, which means that our dinner is posponed to the late night hours. A question is we want sth to accompany wine on the table never comes. Gladys invited us to this little snack.

After the festival we kept our private lessons + dinner follow up schedule. THIS IS DEFINITELY OUR BEST PART of tango life in Warsaw. Our faithful neurotangueros ( neurologists crazy for tango) Beata and Jarek, not only progress in their tango, but also in the gastronomic issues. 10 points for their memory- our beloved salmon and sernik were not missing, neither was 'chlodnik' , Polish gazpacho and best of wines! We love these kind of students! Therefore we dedicated our guitar vals to this special couple. And we wait for them in Buenos Aires.

During the days ( finally siestas possible!) we could visit Old Town to see the all the countries, and Argentina among them, represented in... BEARS. Let's have a look at what we have seen...





There were some good ideas, and among our favourites were USA, Cuba, Ireland, Spain, Mexico...









But Argentina! What a disappointment! Victor looked at artist' s name with contempt!


Grotesque tango couple and a couple of pinguins and flamencos on pastel couloured surfice was all!



But this visit turned out NOT to be the last. After our performance Academy of Tomek Potocki approached and suggested organized our summer workshops. So, we will check on this city end of July again! I can always change my opinion ( about the city or about the idea of workshops)...

2 comments:

Hernán said...

Come on! The cty of Warsaw cannot be so nasty or disappointing! you are too rigourous my dear, too rigourous....

Aisha & Victor said...

That's right. Warsaw makes a lot of people energetically drained. It's anty chacra.