Tango Lessons: A Memoir by Meghan Flaherty

Author:Meghan Flaherty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Published: 2018-06-19T07:00:00+00:00

Open embrace, at first, felt ostentatious. I was embarrassed by it, dancing two feet from my partner, all my movements naked and exposed. After an initial evaluation of ginger little figure eights and molinetes, stark and shaky, Marty diagnosed my skills as weak. He said this with a keen glint in his eye, as though I were a new, rewarding project. And he was right: My movements were feeble out there, floating on their own. My pivots weren’t grounded as they should be—firmly, like a pestle into stone. My turns were not centripetal enough; if I wasn’t held fast to a leader, I’d fly off into space instead of gravitating, turning ever into the embrace. And finally, devastatingly, for all the work I’d done, my balance wasn’t very good. I wobbled when I shouldn’t, foot to core, and leaned when I ought to have been standing cattails-tall. It seemed I’d made the other error followers so often make, mistaking close embrace for oversharing equilibrium. Which is to say, in learning to be held, I’d gone a bit too far: relying on the leader for my bearings as I shut my eyes and let the ballroom whistle past. No wonder I had felt so thin and friable with Enzo. So relieved to have my weight accepted, my embrace and footing honored, I’d given far too much away.

The old milongueros didn’t say only “la baila,” as in “dance her;” they also said “la lleva como dormida”: “carry her as if she were asleep.” I had been letting myself be danced como dormida, letting the leader carry me instead of moving on my own. But Marty didn’t want a sleepwalker; he wanted a practice partner. So he swung me out—arms’ length—and made me open up. This new technique required a different kind of standing on two feet: self-sufficient and unwavering. Learning to own the movement rather than let myself be swept along. I remembered exercises I’d glossed over from Mariela’s classes with a pang of recognition, and started running through a checklist for my dancing posture like the guidelines of a golf swing. I felt first for my foot placement, pressing each of three points into the ground—metatarsal, metatarsal, heel. In each step, I collected at my ankles, making a tidy passing V. I honored the lanes and tracks of legs, careful to space my feet at distances and angles that would align our movements in the proper, pleasing triangles. I used my heel—for power and control. And I listened for the lead, as carefully as if I’d had my eyes closed and the lead were Braille. With my eyes open, heeding my own unaided axis, I found I listened even harder. Each weight transfer from foot to foot was a buoy in the blind channel through my leader’s mind—a way of understanding, without speaking, how I needed to move next. I began to claim my balance everywhere I could. Active in my every muscle in the dance.

We tested my progress by dancing extra-slow.

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