One (1)

One doesn't step into the line of dance without looking where one's going.

I sometimes step into the line of dance without looking where I'm going.

One always uses the mirada and the cabeceo to invite someone to dance

Though if she won't look in my direction I might have to go up and ask.

"The cabeceo wasn't working..."
She'll smile politely.

One is infinitely patient with one's partner, and convinces her she can do no wrong

On the other hand, I sometimes get cross with myself.

However, I have so far resisted the urge to tut.

So at least I've done the least I could do.

We often talk about what one could, should, or must do in a given situation.

One is obviously better than I am.

'One' is a gender-neutral, third-person singular pronoun.  'One' is generally someone else.

Two (2)

The nub of the matter.

It takes two to tango.

We probably heard this from the beginning.  We get told it many times.  We dance together.  If we don't dance together, we dance alone.  Dancing alone is not tango.  It might be something else, but it's not tango.

We have to go into each tanda knowing this.  Knowing it in our bones.  I hear a lot of people talking about this.  They all say the right words.  And then a surprising number of them go out onto the dance floor and perform for their partner, rather than dance with them.

It may be the leader, who takes his duty as the 'shaper' of the dance too far and claims all the music for himself, leaving his partner to hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

It may be the follower, who takes every opportunity the leader offers her to decorate, embellish, flick, kick (or stick her heel into an innocent passerby), with no reference to the music or to her partner's dance.

If you don't go into each dance feeling like you're a team, or at least feeling like you might become a team, then what actually is the point?  Who's it all for, if it's not for you two, together, at that moment, in that place?

We learn early on that if you don't commit to each step completely, things go wrong.  Why does it often take so much longer to learn that we need to commit ourselves to each dance in the same way?

Three (3)

There are three dimensions.  Three comprehensible ones, that is.  When we start to learn to dance tango we only use two of them.  In fact, right at the beginning, we probably only use one.  Forwards and backwards.  It's enough.  And then, we learn to turn and the possibilities expand thousandfold.  Our movements are now free in the X and the Y.  Floorcraft considerations permitting.  And maybe we stop there.  We can dance, in those two dimensions.  There are infinite possibilities already.  I think many people don't realise that a third dimension exists.  I think I'm only just becoming aware of the third dimension.  Like someone who's spend his life looking at the ground in front of his feet, and now has suddenly noticed the sky.

And I don't mean using the third dimension to bob up and down like a cork with every step.  And I don't mean using it to allow a couple to launch each other into the air or perform acrobatics.  I mean using it to modulate each step.  To provide extra information.  To change a sideward 'plonk' step into a smooth sinking into the floor, or to change a slow pivot into an edge-of-the-rollercoaster, edge-of-the-cliff, preparation to dive.

And here's an interesting confluence.  Interesting to me, anyway.  The ear has three canals responsible for telling us how we're oriented in our three-dimensional space.  And the ear is also responsible for allowing us to hear the music.  And this prompts me to ask myself a question: how three-dimensionally do I hear the music?  I'm told I have good musicality.  I feel that I have good musicality.  But perhaps I'm complacent, now, and lazy.  The music is deep.  Compared to the music, I dance shallowly.

Time to listen properly, again.  Time to scratch further into the surface.

Four (4)

Corazon.  Tangos speak often of the heart.  Usually about how it's broken, pained, sad, lonely.

And yet when we dance, our hearts are as close as they can be.  Sometimes we can feel the beat of each other's.  Each has its own rhythm.  Above and beyond (or maybe below and beneath) the compás of the music.  Between the rise and fall of the breathing.  Personal, but shared.

There are moments, at the top of the music, at the height of a breath, when it feels like your heart may just burst before it beats again.  And then it beats again, and a bandoneon sucks the air out of you, and you take a step.



The human heart has four chambers.

Five (5)

Sometimes there is the lightest of pressures between palms.

Sometimes the grip is firm and strong.

Some women squeeze their partner's hand when something goes wrong, or maybe when it goes especially right.

Sometimes the hand is flat and horizontal, sometimes it's cupped and vertical.

Occasionally it's painful.  More often than not it's another expression of personality.  Another level of communication.  Another way of being close.

The hand may move or flex or tighten or relax during the dance, or it may be constant and unchanging -- a rock to hold on to.

And as the last note of the music fades away, and we wake from our trance, we often don't release hands for just a few seconds longer.  We try to hold on to it.

The human hand has five digits.

Six (6)

"I'm from hither.  It's just South of thither."

"Oh, you must know X and Y!"

And it's true surprisingly often.  The travelling tanguero will enjoy the 'where are you from' question frequently, and will enjoy watching the most unexpected of connections reveal themselves as the conversation continues.

I enjoy returning home and being able to say to someone that they're known and remembered in a different town, county, country, continent.  Some people are hubs for these connections.  Some people seem to know everyone.  Or if they don't know everyone, everyone knows them.

And the world shrinks a little with each new connection.

Various studies have suggested that there are, on average, roughly six degrees of separation between every person on the planet and every other person on the planet.

Seven (7)

Feeling lucky?  One of those days when you arrive somewhere, you don't really know anybody, but you can't wait.  You invite somebody to dance who you haven't seen dancing.  If they accept, well, they're obviously feeling lucky (or desperate) themselves.  A complete leap of faith.  When you go somewhere new and alone, you depend on somebody feeling lucky.  Otherwise where would your chance be?  Your chance to let everyone see that you're not a stamper, stomper, cruncher, crasher or basher.

I try to take a chance on somebody new, when I get the opportunity.  They could be the best dancer in the country, but they still need someone to gamble on them for that first dance.

When the gamble pays off, winning the lottery has nothing on the feeling.  (I'm willing to be proven wrong on this one, if the universe insists).

Seven is considered a lucky number in many cultures.

Eight (8)

There's magic and joy and sharing in tango, but in order to experience that you need the base requirement of trust.  I sometimes wonder that any of you women out there manage to trust any of us men at all.  How do you let go and give yourself completely to the moment, as the best of you do with every single tanda?

I've seen some very untrustworthy men recently, whose behaviour prompted me to write a very long and angry post, which I've now deleted.  I rewrote it and deleted it again.  Suffice it to say that sometimes just taking a breath doesn't seem sufficient.

An Octopus has eight arms, matching the number of tentacles that some men appear to have while dancing.