I didn't really know what tango was at first. I had a vague impression of promenades, snapping heads and roses held between teeth- a dance of intensity, passion, sex, desire. I couldn't have told you the difference between Argentine and any other kind of tango if my life depended on it, I wouldn't have known tango music if it leapt up and bit my ass. I did know that Sunday and his then girlfriend, Austin, took tango lessons every week in our college town. I, who, for reasons I still cannot understand, so envied their relationship (though it was hardly a relationship worth envying) and had always wanted to learn the art of partner dance, had wanted to get back into dance any way I could, found myself wanting to learn to tango.
And I had danced before, I began modern dance (or the watered down, little kid equivelent of modern) when I was in kindergarten and, dispite rather hating my teacher, and really wanting to take ballet instead (which my mother, convinced it did unhealthy things to the growing body, refused to allow), continued taking for five, impressionable years, then, finally, fed up with my teacher, quit. I took up acting and acting led me back to dance. In high school I studied jazz dancing most days of the week- I wanted to be a star, dancing in front of huge crowds, catching each and every one of them in my spell, I always had. And then both dance and acting stopped working for me and I quit altogether for a couple years but always craved going back to it- I particularly wanted to learn partner dance, but was nervous of dancing with strangers. I told myself when I had a boyfriend we would take dance classes together but, not so unpradictably, my first boyfriend shot that idea to hell and back. Seeing Sunday and Austin traipsing off to their dance lessons I suddenly realized how much time I was wasting sitting on my ass and not doing what I really wanted which was partially getting off my ass and learning to dance the incredible, sexy latin dances I was in love with and was probably also partially wanting to get a little something of what I thought they had that I so envied them for.
Returning home that summer, I swiftly moved through the levels of swing classes offered, dabbled in salsa, and then discovering an advertisement for Argentine Tango lessons, began my first forays into the dance that would consume my life.
That first class didn't exactly make me fall in love. Argentine Tango is one of the most complex and difficult dances to learn and the instructors here take what they do very seriously, insisting that their students learn the slow, traditional way: the beginning level classes here are primarily a practice in relearning to walk, for six weeks. I only got through the first series of classes here before I had to return to school and didn't have much of a sense of what tango was all about.
Then, back at school, flipping through my university's rec guide, I found it: our very own Argentine Tango club, the first meeting that weekend. There was a slew of other dance clubs and I planned on going to all of them but the tango club meeting was the first.
The day of, I dressed in one of my nicest skirts, flattering on me when I wasn't moving, magical when I danced. I put on the only pair of heels I had, dirty silver satin sandals that my mother, ever hateful of heals had bought at my pleading for some high school dance or another. They were not particularly elegant, nor particularly good for dancing but I was loathe to be seen in my jazz shoes. I trekked in my heals from my dorm to the gym, rushing up hills, down dusty paths, through tall dry grasses. I gave my money to the girl at the door of the dance studio and it began.
I don't remember what we learned that day, the instructors, Ben, a senior and Alicia a grad student had been tangoing three years and believed that the only way to keep the interest of college students, who had probably never danced tango before, was to teach them crazy moves and sequences which, if not succeeding in teaching them to dance, would at least leave them feeling like they could do something exciting.
The first hour beginning lesson whirled by, I was passed from boy to boy, some of whom knew what they were doing and some of whom had never danced a day of their lives. I flirted outrageously with all of them because that was what I did before dancing became my element and it began to feel natural to fall into a stranger's embrace.
The beginning lesson ended and Macy, the girl who had taken my money at the door told me I could stay for the intermediate lesson, and, nervously, I did, and found myself not so much more clueness than the others.
All too soon the intermediate lesson too came to an end.
"Anyone who's interested in the performance team can stay," Ben said, announcer voiced. "You don't need to be an advanced dancer to be on team, performance pieces are all choreography so anyone can learn them and all the extra hours of rehearsal will be the fastest way for you to improve your dancing."
The slow exactitude and perfectionism of my home town tango lessons had me convinced that I shouldn't be good enough for this but, oh, how I wanted to perform, how I wanted to excellerate my learning curve to the speed of light. I stayed.
I stayed for three hours, learning the choreography for a group number which required an assortment of advanced moves that I had never done before, let alone while standing on a chair which was exactly what we were meant to do. I stayed until the bitter end and then limped home, exhausted, hungry. But I already knew that I wanted to get really good at tango, I wanted to be amazing. All thoughts of other dance lessons, other clubs, were erased from my head, five hours and then some of dance a week was quite enough to be getting on with.
Within a week I'd been selected as one of the most promising new girls on team and was entrusted with a solo and from there my love, and involvement grew and grew. Knowing that I couldn't learn the dance as well or as quickly as I wanted to from club alone I began attending the same lessons Sunday and Austin had, I spent hours in rehearsal learning the routines, learning the rules of the dance and learning to tell a story through a dance. I got my first pair or tango shoes, my first real pair of heels, 3 inch black, stiletto t-straps. I started dressing more nicely, more sexily, I started wearing a lot of black. I started wearing make up again and taking time to do my hair, I discovered who I was as a woman, as a dancer. I began to feel sexy, hot, like I had this incredible secret super power of dance in my bones that would stun and dazzle my peers. I fell in love, fell madly and deeply in love with the dance, the life it gave me and the family of friends I gained in the process. And the way it makes me feel because I've found that through dance I can express myself more perfectly than I can through writing or the visual arts. When I dance a good dance, I feel whole, perfect, my partner and the music and I are one, we are inseperable from the dance and the deepest feelings inside that I could never truly name or fully describe flow between us, flow out of us, imbue our dance like ink spreading, coiling, dancing in water.
