El sueño tango

Cabezada is the 'eye-contact-and-nod' way of asking someone to dance here. It has the advantage of being a mutual way to ask. Being a pretty shy and retiring kind of guy, it's one of the most gruelling experiences of my life. There is of course the fear of rejection, although one of the advantages cabezada has over the just-go-up-and-ask method is that if you're rejected, only two people in the room know, and one of them is you. The more nerve-wracking possibility is that of accidentally asking two people to dance at once.

When there's a group of only women at a table (as there usually are in the traditional milongas) and they all want to dance, the chance that more than one of them is looking at you when you raise your eyebrow enticingly is quite high. Unfortunately, it seems to be almost certain that it's the other one who stands up first when you head towards that table. When this first happened to me, at Confiteria Ideal, I of course danced with the lady who was standing - it would be much more humiliating for her to sit down again, than for my actual quarry to simply remain seated. However, I suspect that this is cold comfort for the lady who thought she had a dance lined up, only for it to slip through her fingers at the final moment. The lady at Ideal never looked at me again.

Tonight at El Beso I was angling for a dance with a lady who I'd danced with in the class beforehand. She was, of course, sitting with a lady friend at a far-away table. One strategy is to approach the table while cabezada-ing, to get a clearer shot, but to walk coolly by in the event of rejection, pretending to be heading for the toilet or the bar. Unfortunately, I was leaning on the bar and the toilet was behind me, so this wasn't an option. I just had to wait until she was looking while her friend was not.

This took quite a long time (a couple of tandas), and when it finally did happen, she looked away again. I thought maybe she couldn't see me properly, or wasn't actually looking at me, so nursing my preparing-to-be-bruised ego, I persisted looking in her direction, but looking away when here friend (infuriatingly frequently) turned towards me. A couple more possible rejections later, she was reaching for her sweater and her hand bag, and I decided that perhaps she couldn't tell whether it was her I was looking at. The only thing for it was to get closer.

I started towards the table, knowing full well that if she didn't look at me before I got there I'd have to ask her verbally. Forcing a woman to dance with you like this is, of course, the height of rudeness (and the chance of verbal and quite embarassing rejection is correspondingly high), so of course there was no way I could do this. I had no idea what I might do if I got as far as her table without an accepting nod.

Ignoring the danger, I strode on, staring right at her, ready to nod and put out an inviting hand at the first flicker of attention, still with no plan B.

Fortunately, she did turn, she did smile, and she did nod. And her friend didn't.

Unfortunately, with two paces to go, another woman stepped into my path. She was right in front of me and she was ready. So of course I had no choice but to keep the shocked expression off my face, and go dance with her.

By the time I got over the surprise of this sudden turn of events, we were on the dancefloor, and the second shock was that she was quite improbably beautiful. Jet black hair in a bob, black mini-dress with sparkles in it, and another tiny sparkle from the jewelled pearcing below her welcoming smile.

I had collected myself again by the time we began to dance, and the first tango was divine. She was a lovely follower, always there and ready, reading my mind. She wasn't just passively following - she was adding plenty of herself into the dance, but never over-doing it. It was fabulous.

And then as the last chord of the tango struck, I remembered to be anxious about the language barrier that was imminently going to ruin everything. I had a tiny hope that she could speak English, but this was immediately dashed when she sweetly asked "¿Vives aquí en Buenos Aires?" (I had to get her to repeat this, because the first time I couldn't hear over the sound of my heart sinking). I said yes, and confessed to having terrible Spanish. She said she was from Spain, and only staying for 5 days, and it was when she said "cinco días" that I heard the charming lisp of Spanish Spanish.

As we danced the next tango, I realised that I'd found her "cinco", her sparkles, and her fabulous dancing all little too charming. I have inwardly scoffed at men who say they've fallen in love on the dancefloor (I should know by now that it's not 'pride' that comes before a fall, it's 'inwardly scoffing'). But the '3-minute romance' was finally happening to me, for the first time. And it was all a little bit much to believe.

Of course I wasn't going to let this implausibility to get in the way of dancing, and we danced the remaining two tangos blissfully. The only terrible thing that happened was that she apoligised for my mistakes, but even then, I danced on.

At the end, as I led her back towards her table, I glanced at the table where my intended partner had been sitting, but she had gone. I felt a pang of guilt, and resolved to dance with her on Friday at Canning, if she'll look at me.

So I accidentally had a blissful tanda in Buenos Aires with a sultry Spanish beauty, barely speaking to her, and never to see her again. I have scoffed at the self-delusion of the 'Tango dream', but now I've lived it.

Perhaps that means I can go home now...

Off Piste

The 'circuit' here is a good way to get to know people and get reliable dances - the same people go to the same milongas in different locations throughout the week. There are alot of tourists on the circuit, as well as argentines. But it's a bit of a trap too.

Tonight I went to a milonga that nobody I know had heard of. I'd been invited with a group of other foreign dancers (from Minnesota, it turns out) - Club Bohemios in La Boca. It reminded me alot of Sin Rumbo - predominantly older people, dressed up to the nines (the nines of some previous epoch), everybody dancing purely for the pleasure of it, lots of smiles and laughter. The music was mainly tango, but there was also salsa and merengue, chacarera, and also Spanish music called something. Everybody seemed to be friends with everybody else, but not in the exclusive way of the 'circuit' milongas - you're presence there made you a friend of there's too. Everyone was very welcoming and friendly. Local dancers - both men and women - made a point of coming up and dancing with the Minnesota tourists (and the lone New Zealander). They gave us all a gift (the flag of the Club Bohemios, which is a sports club, and only a milonga on Saturday nights).

The dancing generally was very simple, nothing fancy, though often fairly quirky - there were some things I saw that you'd never learn in a class. The floor was fairly crowded, but there was enough room to actually dance to the music, rather than each tango being three-minutes of mere collision-avoidance, and the other couples were generally obliging.

These off-circuit milongas always seem to have one dancer who most exemplifies the jovial nature of the place - always an execellent but idiosynchratic dancer, with a permanent smile, who furrows their brow and sweats profusely when they dance. It's as if all the geniality of the atmosphere concentrates in (or maybe emanated from) one person.

The one drawback is that, while they're welcoming to newcomer, and very friendly to foreigners, they're generally 'partner' milongas - they generally dance with the same people throughout the night. If you were to becine a regular, you'd have to bring your own partner.

But when 'circuit' fatigue kicks in, it's good to go somewhere else, to remind yourself that not all milongas are created equal. The contrast emphasises how much like a shark tank the tourist circuit can be.

La pesadilla tango

Milongas are both fascinating and nauseating places.

A milonga can seem like an awful kind of mutual-prostitution-auction. Between each tanda there's about a minute of bidding-time, when men and women cast their bodies or eyes about looking for someone to bid on them. The signal is slight, and easy to miss or mistake - a raise eyebrow, an upturned palm, a hopeful stare. Then quite quickly the bidding closes off. The successful transactions take to the floor to discover if they got what they bargained for, if the other can come up with the goods. The rejected resign themselves to another 15 minutes of sitting mezmerized by the dancefloor (in the case of women), or circumnavigating it as if they're looking for the bathroom (in the case of men).

As a result, the non-dancefloor areas of the milonga are filled with women who appear to be waiting for that dream dance from someone who hasn't arrived yet, and might not arrive tonight, but who will surely turn up one of these nights. Someone who's definitely not one of those patrolling the tables glancing fruitlessly left and right.

Meanwhile the dancefloor is filled with the women who got sick of waiting for the dream and decided to try settling for one of the lesser patrollers. Some of the ladies have a visage of determined bliss, as though by shear force of will, this will be the dance they've been waiting for all their lives. Some of the men dance with a swagger, to express a shaky conviction that they are the partner she's been hoping for all this time. They came to fulfil someone's fantasy, and in turn fulfil their own.

After four tangos, it's thankyous and goodbyes, and the bidding opens again, some more desperate than last time, some more resigned. All still clutching their Cinderella tango fantasy to their hearts - a tall dark stranger and a willowy damsel come together on an exotic dancefloor, barely a word is spoken but they communicate with their bodies through the music, and despite the pressing throng on all sides, share a long moment of mutual discovery and touching intimacy, and then... they part, never to see each other again.

Sometimes I think maybe we should all just grow up.