Animal Eye

Tango Lesson

48 Tango lesson The point is not to give yourself away but to connect as closely as you are able to your partner’s will in the embrace, so that intent slides seamlessly through two sets of veins, one chest following the movement of the next without break, heads fused delicately at the temple till the other’s perspiration trickles down your face. Observers think the dance is all improvisation but they’re wrong: each step must trace its pattern: only empathy and good timing in the sacada keep you from getting kicked or trod on. The follower must mime back her leader’s embellishments in slick gestures that articulate each pause. She should wear black if possible, and master every subtle twist of knee or leg since hips won’t do here, pleasure, for once, being located in the ankle. Some complain about the rules. If that’s you, learn how the music in each milonga changes; school yourself to understand a tune’s interplay of discipline and form; follow along as Gardel’s 1920s rigid eights slip in the ’60s with Solare, to hear how a single note might soar 49 above the beat that locks a couple into step, loosening the bond between dance and dancer so that imagination, for the moment, can enter the feet. So many tanguero novices freeze in place because they can’t keep track of any difference in beat. You see their terrified clutches in dance halls all across the city, the leaden feet and sagging bellies of those who lose their axis and lean too heavily on a partner. By the end, they barely can recall the steps for their part. Tin-eared, they stand or shuffle in boxes, moony, four-legged, with two separate hearts. ...