The 10th edition of Buenos Aires Festival de Tango will take place from August 15th to August 24th, 2008, with over 100 free shows and concerts.
The traditional Harrods Hall (Florida 877) will open its doors to host a daily program, from 12 to 9 pm, with tango shows, lessons and seminars, conferences, collector's meetings, exhibitions, and film screenings.
Most of the concerts in the festival will take place at Teatro Avenida (Av. de Mayo 1212), Teatro Ift (Boulogne Sur Mer 549), Centro Cultural Recoleta (Junín 1930), and Academia Nacional del Tango (Av. De Mayo 833).
Other venues around Buenos Aires where different concerts and activities will take place are: Centro Cultural Torquato Tasso (Defensa 1575), Centro Cultural Resurgimiento (Artigas 2262), Centro Cultural Julian Centeya (Av. San Juan 3255), Centro Cultural del Sur (Av. Caseros 1750), Niceto Club (Niceto Vega 5510), Escuela Orlando Goñi (Independencia 584), Casa del Tango (Guardia Vieja 4049) and the notable bars of the city like Esquina Homero Manzi (Av. San Juan 3601), Las Violetas (Av. Rivadavia 3899), Café de García (Sanabria 3302), 36 Billares (Av. De Mayo 1265), Confitería Hotel Castelar (Av. De Mayo 1148).
Tickets for the free concerts must be picked up in advance at Casa de la Cultura, Avenida de Mayo 575, from 11 am to 6 pm.
The inauguration of Buenos Aires 10º Festival de Tango will be on Friday, August 15th, 2008, 9 pm, at Teatro Avenida (Av. de Mayo 1212), with a concert by Master Leopoldo Federico. On Sunday, August 24th, 9pm, Ruben Juarez will be closing the festival in the same stage.
More information: Buenos Aires 10º Festival de Tango official website.

The 6th Tango Dance World Championship (6to Mundial de Baile de Tango) will take place from August 24th to September 1st, 2008, and will be organized into 3 phases: Classifying, Semifinal, and Final, and divided into two categories: Tango Salon, in which the social dancing prevails, and Tango Escenario, with a more choreographic approach.
This year more than 400 couples from Argentina and abroad will be participating, at the Obras Sanitarias Stadium and Luna Park Stadium.
On Sunday 24th, at Harrods, a show by Mora Godoy, followed by the World Championship's Opening Milonga, will welcome the local and regional champions, as well as the champions from 2007 Dance Championship.
From August 25th, at Obras Stadium, the classifying rounds and semifanals of Tango Salon and Tango Escenario. On Saturday, August 30th, 8 pm, also at Obras, the great Final of Tango Salon will take place, with the presence of Atilio Stampone's orchestra along with Adriana Varela and dancers Gloria y Eduardo.
The great Final of Tango Escenario will be on September 1st at Luna Park Stadium, whith Mariano Mores' Orchestra, and dancer Miguel Angel Zotto, with the coronation of the winning couple of the category .
Throughout the World Championship, the public will be able to enjoy "milongas", exhibitions, free thematic classes, and work in progress by the most prestigious dance companies.
More information: 6to Mundial de Baile de Tango official website.

Before its presentation along with Paloma Herrera at the Luna Park, the ballet of Teatro Colón, with the artistic direction of Olga Ferri, will offer two performances at Teatro Coliseo of "Les Sylphides", the pas-des-deux from "Don Quixote", and Maurice Ravel´s "Bolero". They will be accompanied by Teatro Colón´s Orchestra, directed by Mario Benzecry.

The first part will be dedicated to Les Sylphides, with choreography by Michael Fokin, on the original pieces for piano by Frederic Chopin. In this "romantic dream", conceived by Fokin in 1908, the poet is surrounded by the immaterial creatures, the "Sylphides". The main roles in this part will be performed by Maricel De Mitri, Juan Pablo Ledo ( Pas-de-deux), Silvina Perillo (waltz), Karina Olmedo (Mazurca, woman), Juan Pablo Ledo (Mazurka, man), Maricel De Mitra (Prelude), Maria Eugenia Padilla, Silvina Vaccarelli (Corifeas).

The second part will consist of two pas-de-deux: the one from Spartakus, with choreography by Atilio Labis and music by Aram Khachaturian, performed by Karina Olmedo and Vagran Ambartsoumian; and the one from Don Quixote, with choreography by Marius Petipa and music by Ludwig Minkus, performed by Gabriela Alberti and Juan Pablo Ledo.

The performance will end with "Bolero", by Maurice Ravel, with choreography by José Zartmann, with its roots on the Flemish and Spanish gypsies' dances. This version was presented at the Coreographyc Workshop of Teatro Colón in 1989 and incorparated into the ballet's repertoire in 1992. The performers will be Vagran Ambartsoumian, Julián Galván, Graciela Berttoti and Analía Sosa Guerrero.

Dates:
Saturday 23rd, 8.30 pm
Sunday 24th, 5 pm
Location: Teatro Coliseo. Marcelo T. de Alvear 1125
Tickets: from AR$ 16 to AR$ 50, on sale at Teatro Colón ticket office, Tucumán 1171, from 9 am to 5 pm. On the day of the performances the remaining tickets will be on sale at Teatro Coliseo´s tickett office, Marcelo T. de Alvear 1125, from 2 pm

On Tuesday, August 26th, Ciudad Cultural Konex presents the tenth edition of Pecha Kucha Night, a “showcasing + networking” event created in Japan in 2003 by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, 12-15 creators from different disciplines have 6 minutes and 40 seconds each to show an idea or project, through 20 images screened for 20 seconds.


The participating artists confirmed for this edition are:

Marta Minujín (art)
Help Argentina (ONG)
Marcos Shayo (inventions)
Kioskerman (comics)
Julián de Dios (editorial)
SudacaPhotos (phootogrpahy)
Espacio Cabina (design)
Gabriel Vommaro (language)
Revista UR (architecture)
Alejandro Gangui (cosmos)
MySpace (internet)
Pablo Del Campo (advertising)

Once the presentations are finished, the guests gather to interchange their opinions, and the public is invited to enjoy some music and conversation.

“Pecha kucha” (which means chit-chat in Japanese), is presented in several cities around the world: Amsterdam, Atlanta, Auckland, Austin, Bangladore, Bangkok , Beijing, Belfast, Berlin, Bern, Bogotá , Budapest, Buenos Aires, Buffalo, Chicago, Cologne, Copenhagen, Costa Rica, Delhi, Dublin , Frankfurt, Glasgow, Gothenberg, Groningen, Hamburg, Harvard, Helsinki, Hobart, Lagos, Linz, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Manchester, Melbourne, Mexico city, Miami, New York, Newcastle, Oslo, Perth, Portland, Porto Alegre, Prague, Riga, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Santiago, Seattle, Seoul, Seville, Shanghai, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo, Toronto, Udine, Vienna, Washington DC.

Date: Tuesday, August 26th, 2008. 8 PM
Location: Ciudad Cultural Konex. Sarmiento 3131. Buenos Aires.
Tickets: AR$ 20. Ticketek Argentina or Ciudad Cultural Konex ticket office.
More information: www.pechakucha.com.ar

The most important event for Argentine fashion, BAFWeek brings together the most established brands in the fashion world and the independent designers, to launch their spring-summer 200/2009 collections.

BAFWeek will feature 3 runways for the daily fashion shows, and around 40 showrooms where designers will showcase their creations in an exclusive space.
This new edition will be inspired in the Argentine natural resources, with cotton as the main protagonist.
The designers and brands who will be presenting their collections are, among others: Rapsodia, Jazmín Chebar, Cook, Jet, Vicki Otero, Ricky Sarkany, Flavia Martini, Posse, Laurencio Adot, María Cher, Prüne, Kostüme, Levi´s, Wanama, Cora Groppo, Juana de Arco, Paula Cahen d´Anvers, Ona Sáez, S-Mode and Cómo quieres que te quiera, and the introduction of two new joung designers from University of Buenos Aires.

Dates: August 20th to 23rd, 2008
Location: La Rural Exhibition Center, Pabellón Azul. Av. Sarmiento 2704
Entry fee: AR $ 20. Tickets on sale at the venue 2 pm to 10 pm

BAFWeek official website

Galerias Pacifico is one of the most luxurious constructions in Buenos Aires. It occupies the square block limited by Florida, Viamonte, and San Martin Streets, and Cordoba Avenue.

In 1889, Francisco Seeber and Emilio Bunge decided to create "Au Bon Marché Argentino Grand Shops", similar to the Bon Marche stores in Paris. Architects Emilio Agrelo and Roland Le Vacher designed the building, inspired by the Vittorio Emmanuelle II galleries in Milan, as a covered passage with commercial shops. The building consisted of four identical sections, divided by two crossed central passages. But financial problems and the economic crisis of 1890 and 1908 made it necessary to sell parts of the building, and the stores were never opened.

On December 1896, the galleries turned into the first head office of the National Museum of Fine Arts; in 1908, the Ferrocarril Buenos Aires al Pacífico (railway administration) acquired part of the building for its offices, and it started to be known as "Edificio Pacífico" (Pacífico Building).

In the 1940's, Architects Jorge Aslan and Héctor Ezcurra redesigned the building. The lower level was turned into a commercial sector, separated from the office sector, and the passages were roofed.

The central dome, with 450 square meters, was embellished with painted murals by some of the most outstanding artists of that moment: Lino Eneas Spilimbergo, Antonio Berni, Juan Carlos Castagnino, Manuel Colmeiro, and Demetrio Urruchúa. The twelve painted panels constitute one of the most important mural groups in Buenos Aires, especially the fresco by Antonio Berni.
After years of neglect, the building was declared as a National Historical Monument in 1989, and a year later a concession was granted to a private group to build a shopping center. The galleries were redesigned and reopened in 1990. Four murals by artists Rómulo Macció, Josefina Robirosa, Guillermo Roux, and Carlos Alonso were added.

Hairspray, the award winning Broadway musical, opens in Buenos Aires on July 16th, at Teatro Astral.
Enrique Pinti, the great Argentine actor who starred on the Argentine version of The Producers, will perform the leading role of this musical comedy of John Waters. He will be Edna, the protective mother of a "big girl with a big hair and even bigger heart", whose only passion is to dance. The play takes place in the complicated context of the racial fights in Baltimore in 1962.

The role of Tracy Turnblad will be played by Vanesa Paz Butera, who was the winner of the reality show "Yo quiero ser la protagonista de Hairspray" (I want to be the protagonist of Hairspray). The play is in Spanish with a local adaptation.

Location: Teatro Astral. Avenida Corrientes 1639

On Friday, August 14th, 8.30 pm, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, with the direction of Enrique Arturo Diemecke and the participation of mezzo soprano Virginia Correa Dupuy as soloist, will present a program consisting of a post-romantic poem by Richard Strauss, and two works by XX century Argentine composers: a symphony by Alberto Ginastera, in the 90th anniversary of his birth, and a work by Osvaldo Golijov, who has an outstanding international career.
The concert will start with the "Three Songs" by Golijov, based on poems written by women: "Lullaby", by Sally Potter; "Lúa descolorida", by Rosalía Castro; and "How slow the wind" based on two short poems by Emily Dickinson. Mezzo soprano Virginia Correa Dupuy will be the soloist in this work.
The first part of the concert will end with "Variaciones Concertantes", by Alberto Ginastera.
The second part will be dedicated to Richard Strauss' symphonic poem "A hero's life", Op. 40, the biography of the same Richard Strauss, premiered in 1899.

Location: Teatro Opera. Avenida Corrientes 860.
Tickets from AR $ 26 to AR $ 150, on sale at Teatro Colon's ticket office: Tucuman 1171, Monday to Friday 9 am to 5 pm.
The day of the performance tickets can only be aquired in cash at Teatro Opera, from 5 pm.

The monument dedicated to General José de San Martín, located in Plaza San Martín in Retiro neighborhood, was inaugurated in 1862, being the first equestrian monument in Buenos Aires at the time. It was the work of French sculptor Louis Joseph Daumas, who designed it in the Napoleonic style (the figure of San Martín pointing at the road to freedom with his right arm), and it became a model for other similar monuments in squares all over the country.





This is the city´s most important monument, and, according to the protocol, all foreign dignataries visiting Buenos Aires must pay a visit and deposit a wreath at its feet.

General José de San Martín is the father of the Argentine Nation, who set Argentina, Chile and Peru free from the Spanish rule. The spot that nowadays the monument occupies was where the headquarters of his regiment Granaderos a Caballo (cavalry men) were found. In 1910, for the celebration of the centennial of the Argentine independence, the monument was moved from its original position, and a marble basement with allegoric groups by German sculptor Gustav Eberlein was added to the original bronze statue.

A similar monument was commissioned to the same sculptor for Santiago de Chile, that´s why both monuments are very similar. And there´s a smaller size replica of this monument in the Central Park, in New York.

Among the events for the celebration of its 100 years of existence, Teatro Colón has inaugurated a historical and artistic exhibition, destined to showcasing the countless technical elements from props, scenography, scale models, costumes, wigs and shoes, used for the performances over the years.

The opening hours of the exhibition are Monday to Friday, 10 am to 4 pm. Entrance on Teatro Colon's Carriage Passage (Pasaje de los Carruajes), Tucumán 1171.
Entrance: AR $ 10

Another exhibition, "El Colón Fuera del Colón" (The Colon outside the Colon), featured 70 photographs of the centenary building, by Arnaldo Colombaroli, as well as historical costume elements.
This exhibition, with fee entrance, took place at the "Leopoldo Lugones" and "Juan L. Ortiz" rooms of the National Library, Agüero 2502, until Sunday, June 29th.

www.teatrocolon.org.ar

The National Museum of Fine Arts has reopened to the public, after 70 years, the rooms for the Guerrico Collection, which include ivory pieces, vases, silver pieces, and a group of European sculptures and paintings from the 19th century, which from now on are an integral part of the permanent collection of the museum

Considered as the first Argentine collector, Manuel José de Guerrico (1800-1876) started to build his art collection at his home in Paris, which he brought to Argentina in 1848. It was later enriched by his son José Prudencio (1837-102), who donated 22 pieces with the purpose of contributing to the creation of the National Museum of Fine Arts in 1859. In 1938 the whole of the collection, that is now on exhibition, was donated to the museum by the descendants of both collectors. It was composed of 627 pieces: paintings, sculptures, miniatures, porcelains, boxes, fans, lacquers, ivories, crystals, wood carvings, silver pieces. On that year the collection was in exhibition for a while and then put away in the deposit. Today the pieces of this collection are exhibited again in a room especially built to recreate the way in which art collections were displayed at the end of the 19th century, with dim lights and dark walls.





Some of the outstanding pieces of the collection are: works from the Barbizon School; "The sacrifice of Melquisedec"; scenes from the Flemish genre; religious Italian and Spanish paintings; "Monk praying", by Francisco Zurbarán; "Diana Surprised" (picture), by Joseph Lefebvre; "The murder of Dr Manuel Vicente Mazza", by Prilidiano Pueyrredón, "Portrait of André Gil" and "Rocks", by Gustave Courbet; "Ville d`Avray", by Camille Corot, among others. There are also some works from previous centuries, like "Hebrews picking up Manna in the desert", by Giovanni Tiépolo (1692-1769).

Among the sculptures, a dozen of anonymous bronzes from the 17th and 18th centuries; some pieces by artists like Gustave Doré and Antonio Tantardini; and the work "La defense" by Auguste Rodin, along with Japanese carvings, or silver Argentine "mates" from the colonial times.

Galería Güemes is one of the most beautiful hidden gems of Buenos Aires. Thousands of people walk by it every day, since it is located in the busiest pedestrian street in Buenos Aires, but most of them are unaware of the beauty this building offers inside, since the entrance on Calle Florida 165 is completely unappealing. Its back entrance on San Martín 170, however, still retains its original glory.

Galería Güemes is considered to be the first skyscraper built in Buenos Aires, with its 14 floors and 87 meters high. It was inaugurated in 1915, featuring technical advances for the time, almost futuristic, and comprising a variety of functions in its interior: a theater, a cabaret, and a restaurant underground; apartments over Calle Florida; offices over San Martin; another restaurant with an observation deck on the 14th floor; and a 116 meter long commercial gallery on the ground floor, which connects both streets, inspired in the great covered passages and commercial galleries of the time, especially the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele in Milan. Its apartments were home to some outstanding personalities, like French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of "The Little Prince", and Argentine writer Julio Cortazar.

The architecture is a mix of Art Nouveau, Gothic, and Neoclassical, and was the creation of Italian architect Francisco Gianotti. Galeria Güemes is considered as one of the most representative examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Buenos Aires, with its beautiful marble columns and stairs, bronzes, glass domes, and ornate elevator banks.

The building suffered the neglect and lack of maintenance for decades, but a recent restoration brought the building back to its magnificent splendor, including the recovery of the original glass domes, the repairing of Italian marbles brought for its construction in 1914; the conditioning of the numerous hand made bronze pieces, with a special polishing to regain their original shine. These restoration works have won a Special Mention for the restoration of the Glass Domes at the 2006 Ibero-American Prize for the Best Intervention in the Built Patrimony.

The Art Nouveau underground theater was closed for nearly 40 years, but was also recently restored and today houses the Piazzolla Tango show, one of the most beautiful Tango palaces in Buenos Aires.

There are guided visits to the observation deck on the 14th floor every Thursday at 4 pm.
Galería Güemes official website

This is in my opinion one of the most beautiful monuments in Buenos Aires, not only for its magnificence, but also for its location, in the intersection of two wide boulevards: Avenue del Libertador and Avenue Sarmiento in Palermo.

Its real name is "Magna Carta and the Four Argentine Regions", but everybody knows it as "El monumento de los Españoles" (The Monument to the Spaniards). It was donated in 1910 by the Spanish community for the centenary of the May Revolution. But the construction suffered several problems. The first sculptor and winner of the design contest, Agustin Querol, died in 1909, and his creation had to be continued by another artist, Cipriano Folgueras, who also died shortly after. The work was even more delayed when the Spanish ship which brought the bronze pieces sunk on March, 1916 in the Brazilian coast, and replicas had to be ordered to Spain, which were finished in 1918. The monument was finally inaugurated on May 25, 1927.


The monument is made on a 24.5 meters high Carrara marble column, and symbolizes those things Argentina has in common with Spain (language, religion, work and lineaje). It is crowned by an enormous statue that represents the Republic or the Constitution, and raised over a fountain surrounded by groups of sculptures that represent Labour, and the regions of The Andes, The Plata, The Pampa, and Chaco.