Tango in Buenos Aires - Video
“Tango in Buenos Aires” was the very first dance poem I wrote. I’ve recited this tango and other dance and music poems in public quite often, at times with piano accompaniment and even with modern ballet dancers. Here are two versions, one of me solo and another with keyboard accompaniment and dancers on stage.
I’ve also recorded the poem at Telepoem Booth Iowa, http://www.telepoembooth.com
“Tango in Buenos Aires” was the first of three South American Dances I wrote. The two others are “Carnival in Rio!” and “Calypso in Port of Spain, Trinidad.” Each of them is totally different in character and tone from the other two. The Tango is mostly exotic and humorous. “Carnival in Rio,” with powerful, driving rhythms is quite dramatic and intense, descriptive of recurring emotions of the dancers’ ancestors. The Calypso is the most innocuous of the three, almost folksy and tongue-in-cheek.
Of other dance poems I wrote, “Olé, Bolero” is theatrical and very “Spanish” with lots of Spanish words throughout the poem. Then there is “My Creole Belle”, a naughty cakewalk, focussed on eating and sexy women. All these poems appear in the second chapter, “Dances, Music, Magic”of this book. The chapter ends with an epic “Fire Dance” depicting a Tribal Invocation of the Light, taking place in a mythic time and place. I’ve found that the “Tango in Buenos Aires” is the most popular of all the dances I’ve written.