Sep 21, 2014

A FLASHBACK: HOMAGE TO PUPI CASTELLO

This is a curious video (the quality is not very good, unfortunately): one of Buenos Aires tango teachers – Sergio Cortazzo, who we brought to teach at Viva Tango and Paradiso about 10 years ago – is doing a little parody on the dancing style of a great tango maestro Pupi Castello. Pupi (for those who don’t know) was a teacher of my teacher Graciela Gonzalez – and later made her his assistant and dance partner. They have developed an amazingly warm father-daughter relationship: Graciela has been watching over him when his health started to fail but he still attended milongas where he enjoyed a shot or two of his favourite gin (straight). In 2007 when Graciela and I were at the airport in Moscow waiting for her flight back to Buenos Aires after tango festivals in St. Petersburg and Moscow, she was talking about Pupi being very ill. She wrote to me from Buenos Aires a couple of weeks later letting me know that Pupi died (I knew him well, too) – she wrote “he died soon after I returned to Buenos Aires, as if he was waiting to see me to say good-bye”.

In this video Sergio captures Pupi’s unique dance style which is more “robust” than the dance styles of new generation of tango teachers and dancers: the style from before the tango became a precious money making commodity demanded by tango aficionados all over the world.

Here is a video of Graciela and Pupi dancing on a beautiful floor of Salon Canning in Buenos Aires:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcSfsBQDmjE&index=4&list=PLhX_nvwqJSv610TFSpe1UcfL71BmW0sY-

And here is Sergio doing his very talented parody:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=844330848919168&set=vb.100000267811244&type=2&theater



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