Some of the designs below are invitations for the tango events I hosted, others are for "Bread and Words" - an odd cross between a potluck, a dance party, and an open-mic event.
Many of the images here are the works of Jess Beyler . I am grateful for her permission, as well as her support and friendship.
A past collection of my tango and poetry musings can be found at the old tango@verde page.
Melih Sener
(email: allostery [at] gmail)
(Click on images to enlarge.)
Spring 2012, tango@krannert:
Feb. 4th ,
Mar. 3rd ,
Apr. 12th .
Dance the orange.
Who can forget it, drowning in itself, how it struggles
against its own sweetness. You have possessed it.
Deliciously it has converted to you.
Dance the orange.
A few notes of music, a tapping, a faint hum.
Dance the taste of the fruit you have known!
Create your own kinship with the supple, gently reluctant rind
and the juice that fills it with succulent joy.
Rainer Maria Rilke
(Featuring live music by Tangotta; design credit Krannert.)
Oct. 27th, 2011, Thu.
At the foot of a rock
Bamboo and orchids
Small furled flowers that hold themselves aloof from the mist that is everywhere
You have left newspapers
Indolent quarrels over Sunday-morning coffee
To come to the museum with your lover
And admire these swirls swept onto paper by an old monk
In less than ten minutes six hundred years ago
Depicting the Orchid, which signifies the virtues of the noble man:
Reticence, calm, clarity of mind
Katha Pollitt, "Wild Orchids"
Sep. 8th, 2011, Thu.
Featuring music by Tangotta (Dorothy Martirano, Armand Beaudoin, George Turner, Chris Reyman).
I am the pen
With which you write your poems
Across the floor
Fleeting ephemeral lines
Like sacred Tibetan sand paintings
Meticulously crafted by worshipful monks
And brushed away
When they are complete
Sharon deCelle, from "Tango #22"
May 22, 2011, Sun.
Bread&Words - The Rapture Edition -
celebrating that we are still here after
repeated premonitions to the contrary.
"It's the end of the World as we know it.
And I feel fine."
R.E.M.
"The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end
of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.
... This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment."
William Blake
Apr. 1-3, 2011, Fri-Sun.
"I have a hunger to find, to finish, to explore, to do essentially what babies do when they begin to move."
Steve Paxton
The Big Bubbly Contact&Tango Weekend.
A continued exploration of the intersection between Contact Improv and Tango, featuring live music by Tangotta, two milongas, and two contact-tango jams.
Feb 26th, 2011, Sat.
"The loss of one man's dream, one family's home, one people's rights, one woman's life, is the loss of all our freedoms: of every life, every home, every hope. Each tragedy belongs to itself and at the same time to everyone else. What diminishes any of us diminishes us all."
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar The Clown
A benefit event at IndiGo Gallery for R.A.C.E.S.
(Rape Advocacy, Counseling, and Educational Services)
of Urbana.
Feb. 4th, 2011, Friday.
"This is a dream, a pure manifestation of my will;
and now that my powers are limitless,
I am going to cause a tiger."
Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers.
A weekend of tango and contact improv - exploring connection from the embrace to confrontation.
Nov. 4th, 2010, Thursday.
"And what is the greatest marvel?"
"Each day, death strikes and we live as though we were immortal."
The Mahabharata (Peter Brook script, excerpt)
Celebrating the Day of the Dead. Music by Tangotta (Dorothy Martirano, Armand
Beaudoin, George Turner, Chris Reyman).
Oct. 14th, 2010, Thursday.
"It is his eyes above all that are terrible. They are like black holes burned by torches, like the black caverns where the dragons live, like black lakes troubled by fantastic moons. How wasted he is! He is like a thin ivory statue. He is like an image of silver. I am sure he is chaste, as the moon is. He is like a moonbeam, like a shaft of silver. His flesh must be very cold, cold as ivory.
I would look closer at him."
Oscar Wilde Salome (excerpt)
Celebrating Oscar Wilde's bithday at Krannert,
again with Dorothy, Armand, George, and Chris.
Sep. 16th, 2010, Thursday.
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy
A milonga at the Krannert Art Museum,
featuring live music by Tangotta (Dorothy Martirano, Armand
Beaudoin, George Turner, Chris Reyman).
Aug. 27th, 2010, Fri.
Whatever it is, I'm against it.
Groucho Marx
The Watermelonga: a Watermelon Melonga.
An outdoor, end-of-summer celebration of dance - and watermelons!
July 11th, 2010, Sun.
You must be mad, or you wouldn't come here.
The Cheshire Cat, to Alice
May 8th, 2010, Sat.
Tell whoso hath sorrow
Grief never shall last:
E'en as joy hath no morrow
So woe shall go past.
Sherezade, Arabian Nights
A benefit event for the Safe Haven project
for the homeless community of Champaign-Urbana
Mar. 13th, 2010, Saturday.
The subtle life, the countless forms
Of living things, the wondrous tones
Of man and beast are full of strange
Astonishment and boundless change.
Tennyson
Uniting dancers and art lovers,
this milonga at the Noel Gallery of the Krannert Art Museum
features live music by Tangotta (Dorothy Martirano, Armand
Beaudoin, George Turner).
Dec. 6th, 2009, Sunday.
When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
Oct. 16th, 2009, Friday.
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.
Anais Nin, Risk
A celebration of motion at the Indigo Gallery,
this milonga accompanies the works of Jess Beyler
& Carrie Ramig.
July 26th, 2009. (The Lunar Edition)
Exuberance is beauty. William Blake
What greater drama could there be than that of falling. Doris
Humphrey
Apr. 26th, 2009.
This universe, which I with my astonishing observations and clear demonstrations had enlarged a hundred, nay, a thousandfold beyond the limits commonly seen by wise men of all centuries past, is now for me so diminished and reduced, it has shrunk to the meager confines of my body.
Galielo (to Elio Diodati in 1638 upon turning blind)
Mar. 21st, 2009. (The Equinox Edition)
My dream was to follow in the steps of Hemingway, Elliot Paul and Gertrude Stein, I wanted to stuff myself with baguettes and snails, fill my pillow with rejection slips and find a French girl named Mimi who believed that I was the greatest writer in the world.
Art Buchwald (on his move to Paris)
March 2nd, 2009.
Folks, I'm telling you,
Birthing is hard
And Dying is mean
So get yourself
Some loving in between.
Langston Hughes
Dec 6th, 2008.
Vogon poetry is widely accepted as the
third worst in the Universe. ...
The absolute worst poetry was written by
Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex.
Luckily it was destroyed when the earth was.
Douglas Adams
Nov. 8th, 2008.
Rusted brandy in a diamond glass
everything is made from dreams
time is made from honey slow and sweet
only the fools know what it means
Tom Waits
Sept. 14th, 2008.
Her way of moving was no mortal thing
but of angelic form: and her speech
rang higher than a mere human voice.
A celestial spirit, a living sun
was what I saw
Francesco Petrarca
Aug. 2nd, 2008.
(Dancing under the stars: this night was somewhat zanier than usual.)
July 20th, 2008.
"What is essential is invisible to the eye,"
the little prince repeated,
so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose
that makes your rose so important.
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose---"
said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox.
"But you must not forget it. You become responsible,
forever, for what you have tamed.
You are responsible for your rose ... "
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated,
so that he would be sure to remember.
Antoine de Saint Exupery
June 27th, 2008.
I stood and stared; the sky was lit,
The sky was stars all over it,
I stood, I knew not why,
Without a wish, without a will,
I stood upon that silent hill
And stared into the sky until
My eyes were blind with stars and still
I stared into the sky.
Ralph Hodgson
March 15th, 2008.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G. K. Chesterton
March 2nd, 2008.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every
thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things thro' narow chinks of his cavern.
William Blake
Jan 1st, 2008.
If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.
Vera Pavlova
March 10th, 2007.
Fiction needs to be credible. Reality has no such obligation.
Isabel Allende