First shot ... Again!

When I purchased my large format camera I was planning to use it with Polaroid film, as I posted in the original post about it. But since, I found out the Polaroid film is being discontinued, so I dusted off my old Jobo rotary film processor, ordered a 50 sheet box of Efke 100 film (this is an eastern european film made using an old film recipe, which I prefer over the modern emulsions). In order to test the process (and see if the chemicals which were stored in the garage for the last 3-4 years are still good) I made a test shot. Turns out, they are fine even though the shelf live it's supposed to be about a year.

Why festivals are great and awful at the same time ....

Last week I went to the Tango Marathon in DC. I had a great time. By Sunday afternoon I was moving incredibly well, and it seemed I reached another stage in my tango career. A week later, at the LongaMilonga, all of it was gone. I was (barely) back at my usual level.

I guess at a festival, after dancing for days/hours, one reaches the "sweet spot", all warmed up but before exhaustion hits, when they are at their absolute best. As awesome as that feels, it gets equally depressing once I get home and revert to my usual self. Kind of like drinking, fells good when you're drinking, but the headache next day is proportional with the "fun" one had. Yet I can't wait for the Yale festival next week... Nuts!

Busy weekend

The weekend started early when I left work at 3PM to drive to Yale, for the Leap Year Milonga (on Feb 29th). We made it there around 6PM, had some dinner (pretty yummy pulled pork from the cafeteria) and since a practica/exchange was going on we started dancing.

We were expecting a lot more people from NYC to show up but there was a snow storm going on and the turnout was less then expected. It was a fine evening though, I had some fun dances, even though I was kind of tired and not very perky.

Around midnight Deb wasn't feeling well, and although we had someone to host us for the night, we decided to drive back home. In hindsight that was a bad idea, as I was tired, it was snowing, the road was covered in slush and despite the 4x4 being on, the Jeep was sliding all over the place. Once we got home around 3AM we crashed just to be woken up an hour later by a call from the office about some systems not working as they should... Grrrr

Saturday afternoon Korey & Mila had some workshops at MIT, one of them on single axis turns sounded interesting so we went. I liked the workshop very much. Korey & Mila are working a lot on the technique elements of movement ( and not that much on figures or sequences) and they build it up with exercises and games. I have to say, it was definitely worth going and I highly recommend their workshops. We also went to one of the workshops on Sunday called "Small & beautiful" which concentrated on fun things done with weight changes. One of the best thing about the workshops is that they were fun and useful for everyone despite the wide range of skill levels.

Saturday night we went to "Tango Paradiso" milonga. Sadly this milonga like most other milongas in Boston lately was sparsely attended. Mila & Korey were there though and I had one amazingly fun tanda with Mila (well, it was amazingly fun for me anyway ;) which made my evening. During that tanda, at some point she slowed me down and sort of took over the lead for a couple of steps, which was awesome! I'd like to believe she did that because she thought I can handle it but maybe she was just bored ;)

Sunday at the workshop Korey lead me for a little bit to show me something. Hmmm ... so that's how leading should/could feel like ... Crap, I have a looong way to go and I'm grateful to great dancers (like Mila and many others) for putting up with my shortcomings as I figure stuff out.