Each week I am going to bring you a fact which will help to lay out Argentina’s big environmental issues, and also what you can do to improve the situation…

Fact #01: Wasted Water

It is calculated that each person on the planet needs between 20 and 50 litres of water per day, for drinking, food and hygiene. But in the sprawling cities of the world, around 250 litres of water is used per person, per day. This figure is high, but pales in comparison to the Buenos Aires statistic: according to Fundación Ciudad, each person uses a shocking 630 litres of water per day, more than double the average for European cities.

The reason for this huge level of water consumption can largely be blamed on three things:

• Public behaviour
• Lack of maintainance of installations
• Problems in the water network

Ok, so you probably can’t do much about the last one, but the first two leave room for improvement on a public level…

Dripping water tap (Photo: Randy Robertson)

Some ideas:

• Stop dripping taps! (a dripping tap can leak four litres per hour, which totals 35,000 litres a year)
• Fix a toilet that is leaking (it can waste 80 litres per hour)
• Don’t leave taps running uselessly: Use a plug when washing up (60 litres can be lost in the 15 minutes it takes to wash the dishes, and a plug will cost you around $2 a most ferreterias); and turn the tap off when brushing your teeth (three litres can be lost in a minute)
• Fill your washing machine before using it - each cycle uses some 100 litres of water
• Don’t use a hose to wash your car - it takes on average 500 litres of water. Go back to the old school bucket and sponge technique!
• Talk to your portero about how the pavement is cleaned - each ‘wash down’ uses an average of 250 litres of water. A new bill passed in Buenos Aires in January which will eventually limit porteros using water to clean the pavement to just three days a week - Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with the eventual idea of phasing out the use of water altogether.

Green extreme: Speak up! Tell people off if you see them let their dogs crap on the pavements and not clean it up: if they clean up after their pooping pups, your building porter will have less of a reason to ‘wash’ the pavements down. Same goes for people who throw litter in the streets - I always find calling the cheeky yet innocent sounding ‘Señor/a, se le cayo algo‘ works quite well. Expect baffled expressions and/or angry glares in response. If you want to go further, pick up what they just dropped, chase after them and offer it back to them, along with your ‘innocent’ phrase. Public humiliation guaranteed. Public spaces belong to us and as a result we should all respect and care for them - if we all treated them like we do for our own homes, there would be no need to ‘wash’ the pavements each morning.

Let me know how it goes - and by all means share your comments and suggestions below! Or write to me at kristie@ambientateargentina.com

Chataka Tap (Photo: Lautaro Aránguiz)

Every third Friday of the month at the Buenos Aires Club, in the chic and bohemian neighbourhood of San Telmo, a tap dance group under the name of Chakatá provide an electrifying late-night alternative to this city’s stereotypical staple of Tango in an authentic setting.

The atmosphere is incredibly relaxed, even to the extent that the dancers prefer to call their show a “jam session”, where different musicians and dancers can come together and express themselves freely in an informal setting. Nothing about Chakatá’s jam sessions is dressed up to be more than it is, as Rosario Ruete, one of the four dancers in the troupe tells me “Argentina is not a place for improvisation”.

The tap sessions are comprised of short segments called bloques which provide the audience with short, powerful bursts of spontaneous dance, in between which there are numerous opportunities to make a quick dash to the bar. This structure of the show also helps dispel any ideas that you are going to be stuck for two hours watching the same routine of tap.

The rhythms and routines that the four dancers produced were spellbinding to say the least and given the fact that the jam sessions are 100% improvised, the unison with which they performed was just short of telepathic. Solo dances were performed with confidence and dance-offs were also incorporated into the performance to help the energy and heat between the women materialise. In short, Chakatá have managed to keep every quality of tap faithful to improvisation whilst maintaining a professional finish.

Chataka Tap (Photo: Lautaro Aránguiz)

Every creative effort has been made to bring something lively and fresh to the jam sessions. Rosario told me that the group is “trying to make every tap session different by giving each tap session a theme”. In the past, the theme of the tap session has ranged from clowns, allowing the dancers to experiment with costume to folkloric Argentine music bringing an unmistakable Argentine flavour to the North-American dance form. The theme of the night that I went to was electronic music, which gave the dance a 21st century aesthetic that showed the audience the versatile, ever-evolving nature of tap. Rosario believes that the idea behind the sessions is “to release yourself from the classical stereotype of tap dance so that you can dance with any rhythm or musical genre.”

As is poor custom in big productions, musicians seem to get forgotten in the background until the final bow when actors and dancers cue applause for them. This was not the case with Chakatá. Musicians were just as involved in the spectacle for the audience as the dancers, making the jam session as much about the music as it was about the tap, inciting a real sense of camaraderie. The band included a great mix of trumpeters, saxophonists, guitarists, percussionist, vocalists and keyboardists that in my view held the key to unlocking this new dimension for tap troupes. The ensemble all performed harmoniously together and musicians got their own chance at solos as the dancers came to jam beside them, often providing the percussion with their lightning-quick feet.

The Buenos Aires Club is a perfectly comfortable venue that has a sort of rough and ready appeal to it. The only negative point that comes to mind is that the air conditioning is very much cranked up to full, offering a bit too much of a cooling respite to the heated atmosphere created by the dancers. The bar staff are friendly and efficient, pricing for alcoholic as well as soft beverages is reasonable and everyone endeavours to make sure that you enjoy your time with Chakatá. Highly recommended.