If you’d have told me, on October 3rd 2006 (the night of my first ever tango lesson), that a fantastically positive review of my tango guide book Happy Tango would be appearing in the same classy UK dance magazine as Miguel Angel Zotto in January 2011, I would have said, Oh yeah riiiiiiiiiight! Ha bloody ha!
But, thanks to the twists and turns of my dancing life, and to the generosity of writer and photographer Carole Edrich and Dance Today magazine, Miguel Angel is on the cover, and I’ve got a whole page inside…
In the January 2011 edition of the mag, Happy Tango gets an absolutely top-notch review by Carole, Julie-Anne Cosgrove‘s stunning photograph of mine and C’s tango feet is featured, and YOU can write in to the magazine to win a signed copy of the book — if you haven’t yet splashed out on Happy Tango, here is your chance to WIN a copy, courtesy of Dance Today!
I haven’t actually touched the magazine review myself, as I never saw it before it was published, and it’s now in the UK with my sister and I’m in Buenos Aires. But, I couldn’t wait until I could link to the PDF (I will do so from this post, eventually, when I am able). For now, I am publishing a preview, courtesy of Skype webcam photos snapped on 1.1.11 — anyone who has read Happy Tango, or my blog Sallycat’s Adventures will know that the number 11 is my lucky number, thus Happy Tango features the fabulously empowering Sallycat’s 11 Rules for Happy Tango in Buenos Aires, as celebrated by Carole in her review.
I don’t think that 2011 could have started in a happier way for me professionally, and I am struck by the generosity of Carole and Dance Today in offering to write a review of the book for me. They were not put off by the fact that my book was published independently and had no big guns behind it; they gave my art a chance. I, in turn, took the risk of trusting in the quality of my book; they might not have liked it.
I know it’s not always easy to buy a guide book online, when you haven’t seen it, when it costs you your hard earned cash, and when you wonder if the author has actually managed to create something useful as well as beautiful, or perhaps whether she can write at all… I hope that this affirming review will pump confidence into the book’s journey, and into the minds of its target readership — tango dancers and tango travellers across the globe, that is, you. It sure has given me something to celebrate at the start of 2011. And I am grateful.
Added later – Click here to read the full review!
Why not treat yourself to a subscription of Dance Today in 2011, or request it from your newsagent? I certainly plan to.
Here’s wishing Carole Edrich, Nicola Rayner (the editor of Dance Today), Miguel Angel Zotto, and YOU, a very very Happy New dancing Year!
Sallycat.
