tango

On Wednesday I went to my first tango class. I receive two free tango classes with my program, and I was excited to check it out, though I was unsure of what to expect. I had imagined a clean, small, white room with tile floors, like all of the ballet studios I´ve ever seen. I´d pictured a small group of people my age, all there to learn the basics, just like me.

What I got was a brightly lit, colorful, jam-packed room in what I concluded must be a restaurant or café during the day. I arrived a little early, and watched as some boys practiced break dancing and two girls rehearsed some funk-type dance moves. While I watched, people slowly trickled in to the studio, in small groups, in pairs, alone. Men and women, old and young, Argentine and American. The Argentines started strapping on shiny high heels with fancy straps and warming up on the old wooden floor. I started to get the sense that this was not going to be the quiet, serious little lesson I had imagined.

At 7:30 on the dot a tall man with slicked-back black hair and tight pants put on loud music, glided onto the dance floor, instructed everyone to get behind him, and started doing tango moves. I counted almost forty people dancing behind him, trying not to step on each others´toes. We danced in a group for a while, going over some ¨basic¨ steps, then he broke us down into four lines, and we danced across the floor that way. Then we were split into two groups - beginners and advanced - and learned a few new moves, which we practiced in pairs.

And oh, my dancing partners throughout the evening! That was the best part. Advanced dancers so serious about getting the steps right they wouldn´t even look at me. Young men who smiled shyly and held me delicately. A teenage boy who was clearly nervous and his sweating made the smell of his cologne even stronger, yet he moved me across the dance floor with sure hands and admirable concentration. And, my favorite, a boy who couldn´t have been more than eight or nine years old who walked right up to me and took my right fingers and left hip in his hands and led me around the room with the confidence of a grown man, not some scrawny kid four and a half feet tall.

And speaking of little kids, there was a group of girls around eleven or twelve years old who were there together, and they were amazing. They all had those fancy tango shoes on and knew every step and danced with the grace of grown women. No wonder Argentine women are so sexy, when they start dancing and moving like that before they even need bras.

It was fantastic. The room was full of energy, of women being twirled around, of loud tango music and shouted reminders to keep your legs long! your back straight! step in a straight line! put that toe right there! pause! turn! go!

I will be back next week, and for many weeks after. I found out that the cost of the class is only $15 pesos, or about $4USD. An hour and a half dance class for $4? I´m there. I will never be a tango-fessional, that´s for sure, but it´s fun and full of life and I get to be put to shame by ten-year-olds and dance with sweating teenage boys. Talk about a great Wednesday night.