Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home (19 page)

BOOK: Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home
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A while later Katherine’s sister-in-law approached me, a little concerned because Siobhan wasn’t dancing. I checked on her. She needed water. She was getting tired. A few others seemed to be fading, plopping down at the tables, waving off the waiters serving wine. But then we heard live drumming and people were instantly revitalized.

An Afro-Uruguayan candombe band headed for the party,
led by two black beauties wearing nothing but tasseled pasties covering their nipples, a G-string, and high heels. And they had bodies — not skinny little bodies but curves that didn’t stop: thin waists leading to mounded butts, and large, full breasts so firm they didn’t jiggle despite the rapid hip and shoulder shakes. I spotted a boy watching them with his mouth literally open, eyes wide and unblinking. The dancers were followed by a procession of drummers tapping, hitting, beating, stroking different sizes of instruments; some drums gave off mellow tones, others boomed. The crowd followed them in a conga line, men and women trying to swivel their hips and keep the beat. Katherine’s mom nudged me. “C’mon, you can move your hips like that. I’ve seen you.”

I tried, but keeping up with those dancers gave me a cramp. I knew who could: my ex-husband. He would have been the one to watch during the drumming. I hadn’t thought about him much that day, even though it was his birthday. I tried not to imagine him celebrating with his new girlfriend, his new family, but suddenly I felt my good mood drain from me. My eyes started to sting as I fought back tears.

Just then Katherine grabbed me and pulled me into the dancing crowd. Both of us shook our hips in time to the music, and soon I was laughing. The group around us felt like a hive buzzing — we had become a single entity. The candombe dancers were the queen bees, leading us in the language of the drummers. I didn’t know if it was because of an undercurrent of African culture, or the way dancing puts you into your body and lets you transcend
it at the same time, but the Afro-Uruguayan music started to feel like a prayer. In the history of the world, an awful lot of prayers have gone unanswered, yet people don’t stop praying. If it is done with enough passion and enough faith, the prayer starts to become the answer to itself. As we all danced, I felt a crackling charge emanating from the crowd, and in place of sadness, I was filled with the spirit of joy.

CHAPTER 12
La Arrastrada
, The Sweep

W
HEN
I
RETURNED
home from Buenos Aires, I opened the envelope from my lawyer and read over the black-and-white photocopy of my divorce decree. I would now have to check the “divorced” box on customs forms when I traveled abroad. Although belonging to this category might cause me pain, or shame or sadness, the vintage term
divorcée
implied a lasciviousness that made me smile. I decided to embrace it and referred to myself as “A Divorcée.”

I redecorated my bedroom, divorcée style. I painted it lavender, then added two bedside tables, each with a lamp with red paper shades. I shifted my bureau between the two windows and placed on it an off-white ceramic pitcher with a dozen red roses. I painted my old wooden armoire eggshell; I covered the old, smoky mirrors with muted turquoise fabric and tacked peacock feathers onto them. As a finishing touch I framed the photos
of tango-dancing couples and hung them on the wall opposite my bed. At night I would admire the sensual glow of red light against the lavender walls, the shabby-chic touches. Before I clicked off the lights, I’d look at the tango pictures and think about my learning curve.

I’m sure I went through the stages of grief, though not necessarily in an orderly way. There was no “there goes denial, here comes anger, then bargaining, depression, and acceptance.” Rather, they had all merged into the tango stages. The first was infatuation with the dance and music. This passed quickly, into the unfortunate stage of humiliation — nobody wanted to dance with me because I was new. Then trying to recover what little pride wasn’t crushed, I pushed myself to more and more classes until I could let go of worrying, just a little. Then, instead of thinking about my dancing, I let myself feel sadness and loss. Strangely, grief is how we connect with each other and how we learn compassion; sorrow is what takes us deeply into the human experience. Innocence is lost, but something better, more complex, can come from experience. But I wanted more than just a tough-love lesson. I wanted to be better than before my breakup. I had a hunch that tango could lead me to that place as well.

Claire and I signed up for a four-hour followers workshop with a tanguera who was visiting from Buenos Aires. She was known as “La Leona” (the Lion). Most professional tango dancers are bone-thin, and many are beautiful or at least striking. To my surprise, La Leona was short and thick-waisted. She had probably never been classically pretty — her face was almost
masculine, with thick lips and puffy eyelids. Her hair hung around her face in a jagged shag cut. She sat on a stool, slightly slouched over, and pulled the edge of her T-shirt down as she spoke to the crowd of women who had gathered.

“I will tell you when you have permission to videotape the lesson,” she said. “Please don’t do it before then. Now, get in partners. This is what I want you to do.” She demonstrated on her assistant, hooking one hand up between the woman’s breasts and grabbing her by the bra. With her other hand she pulled up the top of the woman’s underpants, right above the pubic mound, and tightened her grip.

“Now,” she said. “One of you, grab the other like this and walk in the line of dance.”

There was a very awkward moment, when we had to decide which one of us would grasp the other by her undergarments, and twist them and yank them up in this rather barbaric manner. I faced my partner, a small Japanese woman, and she smiled.

“You can lead first,” she said.

So I bunched up her bra and underwear. The music started and I led her around the room. I actually enjoyed leading — there’s more creativity involved than in following — and it seemed easy to give her pleasure, make her smile. And I was always right — she had to follow me no matter what fool thing I did. Ahh, the world from a man’s perspective. The navigating was tricky, though. I had to watch out for other couples awkwardly making their way around the room. After one song we switched, and the followers now grabbed the leaders by the bra and panties.
I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to feel like or what the lesson was about, so I just focused on the lead. She was soft but strong, and we wove through the crowd, laughing occasionally as we almost bumped other couples.

Claire was dancing with Marcel’s girlfriend, and as they passed, Claire said, “I bet you never pictured this when you signed up.”

The song ended and we gathered around La Leona, who was perched on her stool.

“So I want to know what you thought about, your legs or your tits?” she asked.

Women in the class murmured responses.

“The point is that it feels so awkward that you don’t think about your legs, but rather your chest,” she said. “That’s where you dance from, that’s where you find your power.” She demonstrated how to prepare your core to dance. “Breathe in, like the air is water filling you up from your vagina, up the rib cage, to your chest,” she said. As we worked on this, she walked around the room and told us to put our hands on her torso while she inhaled.

I placed my hands on her fleshy mid-section and felt the transformation, as if she elongated inches, and her core transformed into an animated force.

“This will help you all find your inner Lion, your own Leona,” she said. “In Buenos Aires the women find their lion before they leave their house. As they dress, they are preparing their attitude. Your Leona helps you protect your territory. Your legs belong
to your leader — but you must maintain a balanced core and a sense of self.”

We moved on to learning embellishments, the taps, dragged feet, and quick swivels a woman can do between steps. La Leona told us that we could turn on our video cameras and record her. She held on to the back of a folding chair and demonstrated possible embellishments that could happen during a forward ocho. Suddenly this squat, homely woman was transformed into a dancer so graceful and articulate that she became beautiful. The fluidity and strength of her movements were stunning as she swung a muscular leg behind her in a circle, whipped it forward, then let it land on the floor as if it were weightless.

Before class ended, she gave us tips for social dancing. “Watch the leaders to see who you want to dance with. Don’t judge on appearances,” she said. “One of my favorite dancers used to be a little old man; he must have been over seventy years old. He made me feel like I was falling in love. But — and this is important — you need to love yourself enough to say no to bad dancers.”

The following Sunday Claire and I went to Dario’s class.

Marcel teased us as we walked in. “
Las Leonas
are here,” he said.

Jokingly, I hissed at him and formed my hands into claws.

Dario hushed us and started teaching the lapiz.

For the lapiz, or pencil, you drag your foot in a circle, as if you were drawing in the sand; the foot never leaves the ground. The lapiz is a motion that can be gentle, reminiscent of a finger tracing a cheek, or it can be done with aggression, more like a
bull pawing the ground before charging. The follower can do it by herself during a pause, but when both dancers in the couple make a slow circle together, keeping their bodies still and just moving their feet in concentric circles along the floor, it can be very sensual — a suspended state of seduction.

When the man stops a woman’s foot with his, then slowly brings it back across the floor with his foot, it’s known as
la arrastrada
, or “the drag or sweep.” It’s hard to pinpoint the sensuality of this step. It might be in the feigned resistance of the follower: The leader pushes the follower’s foot across the floor, never losing contact. But the essence could also be found in the possible reciprocation as the follower, in an unaccustomed show of willfulness, drags her foot back. This, like almost all steps, is supposed to be led; but some followers initiate the sweep back, and some men like the forthright gesture. It’s daring, a little provocative, and even sexual in its undertones.

We rotated around the circle — leaders moving forward by one place each time — and practiced our sweeps. The class, a typical cross section of young and old, male and female, practiced dragging their partner’s feet across the floor. Some concentrated on the steps, others cracked jokes, and Dario walked among the couples commenting “
Eso es
” or “
No, como así
.”

A few leads didn’t like it if I back-led a little, but they pretended to be fine with it, wearing a tight smile that betrayed irkedness. Perhaps they’d had trouble with willful women before; maybe that’s why they danced tango — they got to be fully in charge. Maybe their masculinity was threatened. Still others
couldn’t abide this back-leading at all and would retort, “You have to wait to be led.” But some men liked it when I did it a little. At that moment the dance steps felt like flirtation — both of us were participating equally. Domination and submission were not part of it; it felt, well, like dancing. There is no telling beforehand which man is okay with a proactive woman — age, size, and nationality don’t provide clues.

The dynamics of the lead-and-follow relationship changed during tango’s revival in the 1980s. This is often credited to a couple, Juan Carlos Copes and María Nieves Rego. Dance partners from Buenos Aires, they married, then divorced but kept dancing together. Copes and Nieves produced the show
Tango Argentino
, which opened in Paris in 1983, when the social dance had faded to all but an ember. Night after night the seats sold out and crowds filled the aisles. Other European cities — Venice, Milan, Rome — wanted the show.

In 1985 they came to New York City, and
Tango Argentino
opened on Broadway to rave reviews and an extended run. New Yorkers weren’t used to seeing middle-aged dancers. The play showed that sensuality, pathos, and the exhilaration of tango weren’t rooted in youth but in experience. This tango was different from the Old World style, with faster, fancier footwork as well as more attitude and more input by the follower. It has been said that María Nieves Rego reinvented the woman’s role by subverting the idea that following implies submissiveness. Rather, the woman’s personality and will created the dynamic and spark between partners. When beginning the dance, I assumed that
every aspect, not just the steps but also the timing, the embrace, and the emotion, was set by the leaders, but I was starting to learn that tango at its very best is an equal relationship.

As we rotated dance partners, Dario walked around the room giving us suggestions. At times he’d stop in front of a student, then lift his eyebrows, smile, and exclaim, “Good.” Other times he’d stop and say “No, this way.
Como así
. You must be like, how do you say, a compass, you and your partner’s feet pulling together.”

When we were pushing each other’s feet back and forth, tango felt less like a dance and more like a conversation that borders on a coquettish disagreement. And while tango should flow like pleasant conversation, it can also be power play between the genders and become an insoluble argument. I pushed Allen’s foot back with mine, then stepped across him without waiting for a lead so he had to improvise. He smiled, then swept my foot behind my ankle, and I was stuck.

“Help,” I said. We both laughed and had to stop dancing to disentangle ourselves. Despite the strict gender delineations and the lead’s control over the follower, it really does take two to tango.

As part of my makeover, I decided I was going to stop apologizing when I made a mistake. If I had to say something, I would just exclaim, “Shoot,” or for a real mess-up, “Well, crap!” “I’m sorry” was too much of a conditioned response, too little-girlish. I was A Divorcée now — it was time to find my power.

Money had given Josh a sense of power, and that’s what I
needed. I had to change my life so that I would not be so close to financial disaster all the time. I had been willing to live the hand-to-mouth life of a freelancer in exchange for having no commitments and having full control over my time. It was too late for me to try and join the corporate world, and I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it. Teaching was so poorly paid that, for me, it just became demoralizing. I found myself reading more and more about entrepreneurs, and I liked their creative spirit.

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