Finn - Hold me tight and tango me home

MARIA FINN

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

For my mother, Beth Paula Finn
(May 26, 1942May 3, 2009)

Before it was an orgiastic deviltry;
today it is a way of walking.
JORGE LUIS BORGES, History of the Tango

WHILE WALKING ALONG the Central Park promenade one Saturday afternoon, I came across a group of people in the most unlikely pairings a Nubian beauty towered above a man with thick red sideburns, a woman with jet-black hair and the layered skirts and bangles of a gypsy fortune teller was in the arms of a kid in baggy hip-hop pants. A wiry Asian man in crisply pressed pants took the hand of a tiny elderly woman in a shamelessly age-inappropriate mini skirt. I tried to interpret their facial expressions. Focused, serious, wistful, content, melancholic. I stared in fascination. How could they do this? In public, no less.

Tango music scratched out of a boom box as each couple moved in perfect unison. The pairs formed a small circle, as if in orbit around an imaginary axis, stepping, pausing, cutting fractals as they danced, oblivious to the people passing by with curious glances or even those of us who stopped to gape. When the song ended, a man who had been dancing smoothed his hands over his black vest, flashed me a smile, and came over to chat.

Do you tango? he asked.

I laughed and said, No, never.

You should consider it, he answered. Its my great passion in life. He explained that initially he attended several lessons a week, then started going to socials every night.

I asked why hed started dancing.

My seven-year-old daughter wanted to know why her mother and I divorced. I didnt know. And I couldnt explain how you can love someone so much, then split so far apart. So I began tango to learn how to be with a woman without expecting anything. How to find balance with another person.

He offered a quick lesson and I accepted. First I had to lean against him I had to trust the lead entirely. I could smell the nape of his neck, feel the slight slope of his shoulders and the soft pulse of his heart. It quickly felt suffocating, and such closeness made me squeamish. He showed me how to step around him while my chest stayed aligned with his. But I was too uncomfortable to be so near someone I didnt know.

Yet I couldnt help but linger when he returned to the group. The tango songs were laments of heartbreak, but the dancers brought to mind the perfect state of bliss. I thought of the perfect completeness described in Aristophanes Speech from Platos Symposium: People were once whole, but because they didnt properly honor the gods, they were split apart and doomed to be forever searching for their other half. To find ones missing half is to once again experience harmony and happiness. Thats what the dancers in Central Park looked like finally reunited.

Maybe, I thought, I could learn tango if I were with a man I loved. But not with total strangers.

Id never been more wrong.

ON THE FIRST night I went to a tango lesson, an occasional breeze, redolent of brackish river water, drifted over the docks. I stood on the coarse wooden planks as the evening light softened and ships silently slipped by. The masts of old wooden schooners and their zig zagging rigging created a theatrical backdrop for the crowd gathering outside New Yorks South Street Seaport for tango lessons before the social dance started.

In the center of the group a poised man with slicked-back hair began speaking as if hed said this a thousand times yet still struggled to get his point across. As if it were perfectly natural and also a matter of life or death that we must first and foremost understand the embrace. A slim, dark-haired woman joined him. They were going to teach an introduction to tango to the random gang of New Yorkers scuffling around them. Tango, in its strictest definition, is a form of music and dance. In essence, though, it is a way of being and it lures you, maybe by a phone call or by an e-mail you werent meant to see; it pulls you from the job thats too staid; it beckons on a night when youre feeling lonely; it promises escape from the grind of daily life. Tango is a journey for those who want their lives to change course; and for others, like me, who believe that their lives have ended, its an attempt to start living again.

The tango is about connection. And the way you do this is with the embrace, our teacher began. There are two main points of connection: your arms and your hands. Through these, you will create and maintain your frame. His partner demonstrated by lifting her arm into the air and gracefully letting it settle on the nape of his neck. Despite the gentleness of her motion, her entire body participated in this single, simple gesture. The bending of her thin arms showed the grooves and ridges of her muscles, and beneath her billowing indigo skirt, her calf muscles flexed.

And followers, feel your back connect to your fingertips, she said. Respect the present, be engaged. Youre both an individual and part of a pair, contributing fifty percent of everything.

This is your second point of connection, the instructor said. Your hands here.

He held his hand open, inviting her to put her hand into his; then they pressed their palms together. The man must make the woman feel comfortable and protected.

Dont lean on the man, the woman added. You always carry your own weight. And the leader, always give her enough time. Dont hurry her. That way she paused and smiled slightly she feels beautiful.

Okay, everyone take a partner, he said.

As in musical chairs, people shifted, rotated, men approached women and held out their hands. The basis of their selections height, age, beauty, proximity, maybe uncritical eyes or an understanding smile was a mystery to me.

Some of the couples were clearly on dates. They bickered over who had the embrace right or wrong or who was pushing or pulling too tightly or too softly; others, unable to hold the distance between them, botched the embrace with sloppy kissing. Most of the people who gathered here, though, were strangers; mismatched partners, their styles, heights, and ages incongruous. They were not looking much at each other but standing straight, at attention, waiting for the next order.

I stood by myself. In the shuffle, I and a few other females hadnt moved fast enough, and there just werent enough men to go around. The old saying It takes two to tango is true, especially when it comes to the embrace, and I wasnt going to stand there and practice hugging the air. I went to the bar, ordered a margarita, and took a few sips, wanting numbness but getting a cold headache instead.

I watched the couples moving their shoulders by twisting their torsos, keeping their chests aligned and their legs rooted to the ground. I hated being there without a partner. In our first year of marriage, my husband and I had gone out almost every Saturday night to a club in our neighborhood and danced to Latin music. I had loved showing up with my dance partner, working up a sweat, and going home with my husband. My days of waiting, of hoping to be asked by men to dance salsa, had ended. And those weekly rituals were good for us dancing was a conversation that never became an argument. We stepped together, broke apart, then found our way back, moving in sync with each other while the crowd pulsed around us. Now I was alone again.

The sky darkened and red neon lights from the Watchtower Building across the water in Brooklyn bled onto the East River. More experienced dancers started to fill the docks, getting ready for the