And this year, I chose last Wednesday for the occasion. On most Wednesdays, I spend my evenings at the Sand Lake Elementary School learning how to play taiko drums with middle-aged ladies. But last week was Spring Break for the school district... and thus, also spring break for this drummer. So I took advantage of a rarely open Wednesday to drop in on the local Argentine Tango class at Club Soraya.
I first caught a bit of the Argentine bug many years ago in a dance class in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. My teacher was Pampa, a South-American grandfatherly-looking sort who danced as well as his pot belly was round. He also had the kind of name that one always wanted to exclaim with clasped hands - Pampa!
Pampa does not live in Anchorage, but this city surprisingly does have a thriving Argentine Tango community. Really, it's more a local group of addicts. In my experience, there are two responses to Argentine Tango: (1) you find it perplexing, mysterious, too difficult/frustrating or (2) you become a hard-core addict, want to live/breathe/eat tango, and fly to Buenos Aires to dance until dawn.
Very few fall into (3). That's me - a dabbler. I am actually a former (2), but somewhere along the way, I never made it to Buenos Aires, and I couldn't make enough room in my life to live/breathe/eat tango. So now I just kind of pretend to do it, once a year. More specifically, for the past four years, I've shown up to take one tango class a year and to join the practica afterwards.
It's strange that there is a store of memory that can be built up with only one yearly dance. Many of the faces I saw on Wednesday night looked familiar - but in a very vague way, like someone I've seen once in a dream or people I might have known in a past life or something. Some looked like former newcomers, who had now lapped me in their tango devotion. The 82-year-old man who danced me like an old Buick years ago was also there - still alive! Probably now 86? The redheaded teacher was the same, although I must be getting mellow with age because after four years of resenting the fact that he was not Pampa, I've started noticing that our Anchorage teacher has his own qualities, too.
In addition to people memory, there is also dance memory. My handful of tango classes in San Francisco was hardly enough to build a very proper foundation. But in this one instance, it is fortunate that I am a woman. That is, all I really need to do an enjoyable Argentine tango is to glom onto an unsuspecting but decent lead. In his arms, I can have the dance of my life.
Perhaps more so than other partner dances, the Argentine Tango is highly dependent on the direction provided by the lead. The follower, typically female, spends the entire night walking backwards, not exactly a shining moment for women's lib. And yet, the communication between the leader and follower must also be subtle. Unlike salsa, where there is a lot of active hands-on manipulation of the follower, the finesse of Argentine Tango is spoken through very slight movements. A nudge. A slow soft push. A turn of the shoulders. A change in weight. A little extra pressure in the chest region.
That's right - a little extra pressure in the chest region. For all its subtlety, tango is also quite bold. A dance with a stranger is usually an encounter more intimate than most first dates. The "tango embrace," as it's called, goes way beyond mere hand-holding. Ideally, the chest regions of both dancers touch, leaning slight upon each other, creating a pressure point on which to pivot the entire dance.
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This is how the dancers stand across from each other. The teacher often tells us to lean in and then add the arms. This way of holding is aptly named as the "embrace" as it is so much more than just a "position." It is typical to see dancers who do not know each other dance cheek-to-cheek. There's no better way to know what you're partner wants you to do than to be all up in each other's business.
And all up each other's business you definitely are. In addition to the fused chest region, one partner's legs must step in between the other's. In fact, the lead gets the female follower to move simply by walking straight into her body. She has no choice but to move backward. Notes from my 2004 tango read, "take steps measured by the size ofyour partner, no smaller or bigger than where he is."
As much as I love dancing the tango, I sure would be hard pressed to live my life that way.
And perhaps that is why I only do the tango once a year. I like making these "cameo" appearances, incognito, dipping my toe in the brook as it bubbles past me. Others in the class look at me and return that same gaze of vague recognition. Many don't know exactly who I am but end up recognizing me after we've danced. It is that kind of dance memory that is the strongest.
Take Norm, for example. Other than the teacher, I only remembered his name. Why? Norm is the smoothest operator in the Anchorage tango scene. He appears to be a quiet man, somewhat heavy-set, and definitely has a Pampa-like pot-belly. But he dances like velvet, I kid you not. In fact, I should add Norm to the List:
- To Norm, for Most Velvety Argentine Tango (Club Soraya, Anchorage 2008).
I would have preferred having my identity be marked otherwise, but it was nice that both Norm and I remembered dancing with each other. In Argentine Tango, it is customary to dance an entire "set" with a particular partner. A "set" is usually comprised of three or four songs. So after Norm and I danced once, we also dance three more lovely times.
The down side of this custom, which I always forget, is that if some man with two left feet asks you to dance, you end up dancing with his two left feet four times. That's EIGHT LEFT FEET!
That's also another reason why I only go to tango once a year.
Between Norm and our redheaded tango teacher, however, I managed to capture a few moments worth the annual class. So thanks for my 2008 tango fix.
Here's to 2009....
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