Tango 2: The Ten Toes of REDEMPTION!!!

Not that I didn't have a great time at my first tango lesson (see below, it's down there somewhere) but it was a bit difficult and I felt somewhat out of place due to my age and inability to understand 99% of what was being said. At a party I went to a couple of weeks ago (damn, I forgot to blog this fantastic party!) I was given the name of one "Mimi" who comes highly recommended as a tango teacher and whose class is, supposedly, more of what I might be looking for.

I arrive at 86 Callao at the same time as a tallish, dyed-red-haired woman. She's smoking a cigarette and gives me a smile. She is hardly a senior citizen but I think, oh no, she's here for the tango class and she's perhaps the youngest member of the class besides myself. We both approach the elevator and I ask if she's here for the tango class. She gives me a warm smile and says she is. I solicit no further details from her but she goes on to tell me that this class is great, and really good for your health. Is it as good as, say, giving up smoking, I wonder, silently.

As it turns out, this fiery red smoker is Mimi herself. The teacher of the class. Perhaps I should have known, but I am gripped with language- and dancing-based twin anxieties and thus I suspect my powers of deduction temporarily disabled. Once in her studio I mention the Americans who referred me and she smiles even bigger than before. I am welcome and I must have no fear. I am not bereft of fear, but my spirit is lightened.

Inside there is a mix of students and I am most certainly NOT the youngest nor the oldest. There are men and women, including some apparent tourists. And there is even that most common of sights: the cute gal I fall for at first sight. (As I said, this is common, even if "she" is not. I am, after all, a single guy in a country chock full of beautiful latinas.) The class starts out similarly to my first in that we all move alone, practicing moving forward and back, stepping this way that that. Mimi expresses something that I can relate to: a technical philosphy. And it is that when we move, in Tango, it is as if we move on one foot, one pedestal, one body. Sure, we have two legs, two feet, but they are just parts of the whole, and it is a matter of what we do with these parts, how we distribute our weight, revolve around our center of gravities, this is what defines our dancing selves. Some might not care to think of dance, or anything, in these terms, but I do.

Eventually we pair up and my first steps are, like before, terrible. I apologize profusely to my partner, that she has to waste her time with the likes of me. But she kindly smiles and takes it in stride (pun intended). Mimi sees that I am like an elephant on ice and comes to my rescue. She takes hold of me, rattles of some words tht thankfully seem to make some sense to me and then somehow makes me understand what I need to do to become Señor Suave and dance properly. Yes, this is what it's all about. As boring as it might appear to an outside eye, these six steps repeated over and over again are marvelous.

We switch partners a few more times and then something odd happens. I wind up with someone that is both Argentinian AND unable to effortlessly dance the tango. I would have thought that this is just in everyone's collective subconscious, in their blood, whether they like it or not. But not so, apparently. And this woman is looking so flustered and just can't get it right. Of course I want to help but the woman's steps are a bit different, I don't know them, can hardly describe these things in Spanish, not to mention how absurd it would be for me to suggest that she do something other than what she's doing, which happens to be wrong time after time after time. Thankfully one of the teacher's assistants finally sees her missteps and comes to the rescue. She is somewhat embarassed, actually apologizes to me, but then we dance our hearts our for many minutes to come.

The funny thing is that for me, of course this is a taste of the exotic. I don't even dance, let alone dance the Argentine Tango. So for me, I lose myself in the image, the lore. I imagine myself in a bizarro world Argentine style, of sartorial otherness, perhaps wearing absurd cologne, images of Duval, Pacino, Fred Flintstone come to mind. I want to be not the geekydorkyjewboywithadoctorateinmusic but rather that guy who receives the rose from the femme fatale. But that poor woman was just thinking, "how can I remember my steps, like all my other portena friends who do it so effortlessly?" Poor dear.

I will be back on tuesday, and hopefully more after that as well.