Just a moment - London life, a dash of tango and a spoon full of sounds

London life, a dash of tango and a spoon full of sounds

On tango, concerts, music discoveries, shows and life in London.
And maybe also about sailing, dancing tango, concerts, tall ships, football and rugby, jazz, adventures, the saxophone, social medias, art exhibitions, wooden floors, cooking and markets, clean and green tech, high tech and geekdom, city cycling, mountains, knots... I am just curious!

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May 27, 2009

Florence Rooftops

... and chilling out in a Tuscan villa after all this hard work.

Click here to download:

Florence_Rooftops_tags_holiday.zip (2337 KB)

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Filed under // holidays polaroids reportage photo

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May 26, 2009

Arcaxon in the 16th century

In the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence there is a room called the Stanza del Guardaroba, a hall full of geographical maps. There are 53 maps painted on the cabinets in the 16th century and to my surprise on the map of France you can clearly mark out the town of "Arcaxon" in Guyenne (notice also Dax, Souillac and a few others...). Arcachon is the town in the South West of France were I have spent most of my childhood's summers: it's pretty amazing to find it on a 16th century map in Tuscany.

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Filed under // maps

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May 26, 2009

Antiquity Dance Off

Running through some photos from a long weekend in Tuscany and stumbled upon some clear evidence that the Romans too knew some crazy dance moves. These sculptures from the Uffizi gallery would definitely support this theory:

Some very early work on the robot moves.
You better stop in the name of love.
Evidently spelling the C out of the YMCA.
Simply staying alive.
Jump Around: she is getting ready to jump up, jump up and get down.

Click here to download:

Antiquity_Dance_Off.zip (1580 KB)

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Filed under // reportage photo

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May 22, 2009

In Florence...

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May 14, 2009

Vintage Runwell bicycle

via gumtree.com

This is a british 1930s vintage bike with a lovely basket sitting on the front wheel and a cool saddle position slightly in front of the seat tube of the frame, a la Runwell apparently. Check out this entire restoration project of a Runwell bicycle on the Old Bike Blog (great cycling blog by the way), complete with historical notes on the Runwell Bicycle company.

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Filed under // cycle chic

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May 13, 2009

Rimbaud in London

{{fr|Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) en 1872. Photo...

Image via Wikipedia

Arthur Rimbaud is one of the most celebrated French poets of 19th century and a favourite of mine since I spent a whole year studying him in Lycee. His work only spans a few years in his late teens and twenties after which he departed to Africa and left poetry to one side. What interest me is that during his creative years he stayed twice in London (at least. he may have come again in 1874).

In September 1872, he arrives in London from Belgium with Verlaine, another great poet with whom he had a tumultuous relationship. This is right after the war of 1870 between France and Prussia, and after the Commune de Paris to which both Rimbaud and Verlaine are linked with. Rimbaud and Verlaine get in touch with some fellow refugees from the Commune and find a place to stay in Soho on 34 Howland Street (see the link to see what it looks like today). In late 1872 Rimbaud comes back to Charleville in Northern France, the region he is originally from. His second stay is from July 1873, where he comes back to stay with Verlaine on 8 Great College Street (link to see what it looks like today ), in Westminster a few feet away from the Houses of Parliament. They both got rejected then by the Commune community perhaps because of their immorality. Apparently there is plenty of reports filed by the Metropolitan police on the life and whereabouts of the Rimbaud-Verlaine couple. It seems that they lived there fairly isolated and always the foreigner in a strange and brutal city.

Rimbaud wrote about London in the poem "Ville" in the Illuminations, 1875. Further readings about this poem in French and in English (mostly).

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Filed under // Genius stays in London

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May 8, 2009

Closed and open embrace

I really love the playfulness of this song and this couple.

And this illustrate the tension in neotango between closed and open embrace. When you see them at first there is a lot of energy and torsion building up between them. When they open up their embrace, the dance becomes more fluid and the joyous stream of the music is more clearly embodied.

This is Alejandro y Marisol dancing to "Araca la cana".

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Filed under // dance video tango

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May 7, 2009

Depression era cycle chic with a Rudge-Whitworth

via gumtree.com

This is a vintage bike for the cyclist looking to make a timely reference to the Depression era. Rudge-Whitworth was a british bicycle (and motorcycle) manufacturer who switched in the 1940s to producing radars for the war effort. Their fantastic motto was "Rudge it, do not trudge it".

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Filed under // cycle chic

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May 5, 2009