Tango

Tango is probably one of the parts of Argentina that is most associated with the country. A lot of the exchange student I´ve talked to mention it when asked why they chose to come to Argentina. It was also a factor in my putting Argentina on the top of the Rotary list, so I got a little worried when I read in Yasmin´s blog (yasmininpatagonia.blogsopt.com if I remember correctly) that people were telling here that tango is mostly done in Buenos Aires and I was even more worried when my seatmate on the plane mentioned that tango was for tourists and there was a ¨real tango¨that Actual Argentinians dance. I figured that no one would encourage me to find a place to learn to tango!
I was very wrong. Ana Lia of Rotary actually wanted us ALL to take lessons, so with her blessing, I ended up in La Peña, a small building across from Colegio Nacional, at 8 p.m. this past Monday.
When we walked in (Elie, Eugenia and I had taken the bus there) the dance floor was filled with elemenraty school aged kids, partnered up and doing a bang up job on a tango combination. When they finished, we payed the entrance fee (22 pesos for a month of lessons, roughly $7.33) and were introduced to Martín, tango efficionado, and a few other people who were there to dance and instruct.
I wouldn´t call what we did a dance lesson (just learning steps), nor would I call it a contra dance lesson (jumping into a line with some good dancers and figuring it out as you go along) but it was somewhere in between. A lady taught us three basic moves: the Basic, which consists of 8 steps with a turnish part on the 5th that I still need to practice; a six step figure that doesn´t have the trunish part, it reminded me of something that you would see a 50s footprint chart of; and the Ocho, a step turn that the ladies do right after the 5th step of the Basic.
After that, we were sent off to practice the steps and every once in a while one of the 4 male instructors would come by to dance with us. It was a fun way to learn, but tango is really hard for me. As I said, I kept on getting mixed up with how my weight was supposed to be in the 5th step Basic, and most of the time I would get a toe stepped on of get corrected mid dance. It was a little frustrating because contra dance is so easy and so effortless and so fun and because of that I have it in my head that I can dance anything, but there I was, in the arms of a gorgeous Argentinian dancer and I KEPT MESSING UP.
But even so, there was one instrucor who knew how to lead so that I could follow and the couple dances I had with him were just incredible. To compare it to contras, there are some people who know how to move you just right. Those are the few dancers with whom you can do a triple twirl on every turn and, to add to it, you can give them a twirl as well. They´re the ones who you keep dancing with when you´re out at the end of the set because the calls just don´t have enough swinging for the two of you, and even if they´re not your close friends, they´re the people you know you´ll have a dance with every time you see them because you simply love how they move. That was what it was like, and it was absolutely impossible not to feel completely confident and beautiful with this new dance.
So, needless to say, I am looking forward to going back on Thursday and working on that darn 5th step, and maybe learning something to bring back to the Grange halls.