To Tango
The beautiful Taiwanese stranger across the room turned to find my gaze, nodded ever so slightly, and rose from her chair to slowly walk towards me. As my feet touched the wooden floor, I let them take time to connect with it, feel it. We stood together now; the floor beneath me, the woman before me, and the music surrounding us. I let the rhythm begin to move me, ever so slightly. I stepped closer, until I could feel her, and raised my arm to offer the embrace. She placed her soft hand gently into mine. I encircling her body. We breathed together deeply, slowly, several times as we both embraced the floor, the music, and each other. At last, with one powerful step, we moved forward as one. This is the Tango.
A woman approached me during one of the daily workshops at this last week’s Chicago Tango Week. “I just have to tell you… I was so moved last night… it was just so beautiful… watching you and your wife dance…” I looked at her puzzled. “Your girlfriend..?” My head tilted to the side. “Your..? Wow… it was so beautiful.”
I still have no idea who she might have meant, because that is how incredible a tango connection can be. There are so many wonderful people and moving dances every night at a Tango festival. The daily stream of workshops were followed by dances stretching until 5:00 AM and as we immersed together in this world we grew ever more attuned to the music, the dance, and each other.
The peak experiences have many flavors. During one very quick style of Tango, called the Milonga, Galina Obushinskaya and I risked the breakneck pace and found a sudden exhilarating connection that took us shooting across the room. Later I had a slow, very simple, very connected dance that melted through each movement. At one point I somehow managed to dance with someone far more talented than I deserved and we hit a Nuevo Tango Tanda, a series of dances to modern interpretations of the music, and I had the chance to fly with creative improvisation. She was so incredibly responsive and equally playful that it was like suddenly finding myself doing tricks in an fighter jet. When it came to a close I could barely thank her I was so high and shaking and I swooned off the floor blushing, stumbling and giggling like a little girl for the next half hour, hugging my friends and grinning like an idiot. It was beautiful.
As with the Tango experiences, the dancers, too, came in many flavors. China. Bulgaria. France. Taiwan. Japan. Germany. Canada. Russia. So few people spoke English as their first language, and as Tango comes from Argentina, Spanish was the secret handshake of our underground society.
Ours was just one event taking place at the huge hotel, and as I passed one older man in the hallway, he asked me, “Como esta?” I grinned and replied, “bien, gracias”, knowing that we had just confirmed each other as part of the same tribe, the same enthusiastic group of people carrying bags of expensive shoes as we walked around the hotel in our socks. The same people who hadn’t slept for days and couldn’t wait to feel the floor again. The same people willing to fumble through awkward new movements until they became smooth. Lovers of the dance called Tango.
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