outta my head

I am a champion over-thinker of things, a black belt worrier. I tend to look up, down, sideways and backwards at a situation many more times than could ever be necessary. I can make a complicated algorthym out of a simple equation and imagine sinister Byzantine motivations were none exist. Perhaps it's the fiction writer in me, the fabulist, the wild imagination but often I just can't turn it off.

Sometimes it's more than a good book or some bad television can fix. Tennis can work: watch the ball, watch the ball. Dancing can work: getting lost in good music and the arms of an adept partner is more soothing for me than meditation could ever be. Even straight up working out can do the trick although being alone in the gym can be dangerous and often as not I get lulled into pontification by the thwack-thwack of my jumprope. I recently discovered the Nike Training Club app and this works better: no room to think when you're trying to figure out how the hell to do a spinning-frog-lump-lunge and listening to the voice of the robot trainer lady over the aggressive pop music that I can't stand in real life but love when I'm exercising.

Where do you go when you need to get away from yourself?

you always remember your first

                                                           tango singers making tango face


Oh Flavio. I'm glad it was you. You were commanding yet gentle; firm but kind. I was afraid but you showed me what to do. We had a moment you and I. We laughed. We cried. Well, I cried on the inside anyway for my disastrous amateur tango. Yes, tango. What did you think I was talking about?

The milonga was not quite what I had pictured. I had been lead to believe that it would be full of older, mercifully slow-moving, heavily aftershaved men who would communicate via some subtle code of lingering glances and eyebrow raises. But in fact, the milonga that Nina and I ventured out to last night was full of attractive, hip looking young people who were all gliding around the floor like they'd come out of the womb doing the tango.

Up until then I'd been feeling pretty good about my progress in tango. I had killed it in class that afternoon; I was nailing my ochos, my camina was on point. I had taken a private lesson earlier in the week and I was able to follow the instructor perfectly. I kept glancing at myself in the mirrors and thinking 'hey! Look at that- I'm totally doing the tango!' 'Muy bien!' my instructors said, 'you must do other dances as well'. 'Why yes,' I said, 'I salsa,' and I beamed.

All that misplaced confidence lasted about five seconds once I did get asked to dance last night. Some tall, rather handsome porteno came over to ask me and I was so nervous that I was shaking a little bit. I danced with my eyes closed not so that I could feel the music but so I wouldn't have to see the snickers I was imagining on the faces of the many, many people watching. When you dance with someone in a milonga, you stay with them for four songs. Four songs! Do you know how long that is? What a commitment that is? Poor Flavio. But he was so nice, 'you have the idea' he said. The idea maybe; the steps, the posture and the rhythm not so much.

He graciously stayed with me for all four songs and then returned me to my seat. 'Was it as bad as I thought?' I asked Nina. 'I thought you looked pretty good for a beginner.' Reader, she was being kind. By 'good' I'm pretty sure she meant 'you didn't actually fall down, there's that.' Then a little while later, like a gift from God a set of salsa music came on. Flavio came to collect me and we tore up the mostly empty dance floor. I felt a little bit redeemed in the eyes of the crowd who had just watched me stumble through the world's most awkward tango; I'm also pretty sure I might've flashed them a couple of times since I was not wearing a dress appropriate for salsa but I'm at peace with that.

The important thing is that I have now danced the tango in an Argentine milonga and I had a blast. Watching the other dancers gave me a lot to aspire to.

Tell me about your first time.

Tango

The Tango doesn't exactly look easy but it can look simple in some ways to a novice's eye. The dancers can appear to not be doing very much at times. I'm used to dancing salsa which involves constant movement. There is none of this in tango, the back is always straight and any movement above the waist must be subtle and precise as anything. All dances need good communication between partners but none as much as tango.

My dance classes here are a mix of people typical to what I see in the US, that is to say a group of people who would not likely be found in a room together for any other reason. I love to speculate about what brings people to join these classes, are they trying to breath life back into a marriage? Meet someone? Get some exercise? Did they OD on Dancing with the Stars? Or do they just have a list of things they always wanted to do and this happens to be the moment. So in this way my classes have a comfortable familiarity; the students are all ages, all nationalities with all kinds of different lives outside of the classroom. There are still those men I know well by now, the ones who have NO idea what they're doing but don't hesitate to instruct you or let you know when they think you've made a mistake.

Even though I have had to break myself a little bit of some of my salsa training, having some dance training at all is incredibly helpful. Both Tango and Salsa can be said to be sexy dances but in exactly opposite ways. Salsa is cheerful and quick, a dance of happiness and parties; the connection is light and flirtatious--kind of like the best first date ever. Tango is a dance full of longing and romantic desperation; a dance of people who have either missed their chance to be together or know they will never get one at all. You don't know the meaning of dancing together 'as one' until you've done tango; you must be close enough to the man to know what he will do before he does it. Salsa is like a public makeout in the street between two people too enamored of each other to care and Tango is an embrace in a dark alley between two people who are being separated by forces beyond their control; a dance of mistresses (well, originally of prostitutes).

I admit that I don't like to be a novice at anything. It's why I don't dabble in things, I either plunge in or give it up right away. Tonight Nina and I are going to the milonga for the first time. I'm terrified naturally but I have to stop and ask myself of what am I terrified exactly? Of looking stupid? Am I really afraid of that? It is the same with speaking spanish, am I afraid I won't be understood? That I will say something stupid or offensive?

And if I'm not here to face these fears than why AM I here?