Tango
Tango in Buenos Aires
Tango music appeals to me. I’m not sure I really know why; I just like it. I have a basic emotional response to the drama of the music and to the beauty of the melody. I occasionally buy tango recordings and go to see tango shows. And at past weddings or dances, my wife and I invariably pretended to tango, though we really had no idea what we were doing.
For a long time, tango, the music and the dance, remained a remote and undefined territory in the realm of my romantic imaginings. Until one day I thought, “Why just imagine it, why not really do it?” Amazing how that kind of clear thinking occasionally comes with such ease and simplicity. I continued, “why not take lessons and learn to do the dance? Better yet, why not go to Buenos Aires for a week and do nothing but take lessons and dance?” I’ve always wanted to go to South America ever since my Mother told me that it was one of my Father’s unrealized dreams.
Back at the beginning, a few months into the year of 2002, I had this determined notion that my wife and I were going to “get our life back.” (This in reference to the fact that we had all but given up our lives in the two previous years to familial problems.) And we were going to begin to travel again. Traveling had become something of a hobby for us: a way of keeping some adventure out there in front of us, like the proverbial carrot. Travel created things to dream about, plan for and enjoy. What better adventure than to go some place completely foreign for my wife’s birthday? Nothing. And almost immediately this idea about going to B.A. for a week of tango dancing popped into mind. Just dancing, for the whole week. It struck me as a very unique and wonderful idea.
But as good as the idea was, it was also immediately obvious that one couldn’t do this unless one knew how to dance tango. Which we manifestly didn’t. And so the solution to that was to arrange to take dance lessons prior to our going, which we did. I found a wonderful young dance teacher by the name of Beatriz Mejia and signed us up for 15 private lessons. Off we’d go every Wednesday night, into Manhattan, for our hour-long lesson. We really enjoyed this: it was a fun outing and a chance to be together without having to deal with the usual kinds of tensions.
We struggled with our lessons, though, not having the discipline, or the model really, to practice what we “learned” on our Wednesday night forays. Our tango technique remained very basic in concept and rather stiff in the execution. But I immediately took to the idea of it and the feel of it, as did Joey. The thing about the dance that intrigued me at first was the fact that while there are certain basic steps, there is no pattern that one follows. The dance is completely free formed and made up: an improvisation created anew according to the whims of the man and his interpretation of the music. The woman follows the man.
In fact, and this is central, the woman doesn’t move unless the man indicates to her through very subtle movement of the chest or pressure with the hands that she should move. The old tangueros say: “the man proposes, and the woman disposes.” For me personally, this is a neat summation of the entire male-female dynamic, let alone the dance. In the tango, the woman is almost always an eighth of a beat behind the man. Except for those moments when the man stops and suggests by his stillness that she take the stage and “play,” meaning to create ornamentation by swirling or turning her feet, pointing her toes, kicking or suggestively rubbing the man’s leg with her leg.
In our learning curve we remained way back at the start of the curve throughout our lessons with Beatriz, with me struggling mightily to think of what I might to do next, with me trying to find the beat and rhythm of the music, and with Joey trying to follow my stumblings. There were moments however, when in our total and complete ignorance, we thought we were actually dancing. And those moments were exhilarating and kept us excited and eager to learn more.
After about a half dozen lessons, I told Joey why we were taking them: we were going to Buenos Aires for her birthday, and we were going to spend the week dancing tango late into every night -- a pretty romantic idea. And a good birthday present, too. Or so I thought. She thought that it was ... nice. And a good idea, of course. But somehow the impact for which I hoped just wasn’t there. Maybe because the whole thing seemed so far-fetched. I think she just put the entire concept out of mind and concentrated on our lessons, which turned out to be as wonderful a little project as we’d ever undertaken. She even went to a specialty dance store and “invested” in a pair of tango shoes.
Now you might remember that the year of 2002 was the year of economic crisis and catastrophe in Argentina. The peso which had been officially set by the Government at one to one with the dollar for many many years, finally collapsed on January 1 under the weight of the Argentine Government’s non-payment of its International debt. The Argentine people rushed to withdraw their peso-dollars from their banks, but the Government froze all bank accounts and wouldn’t allow it. The value of the peso dropped to nearly four to one against the dollar and most of the people were impoverished over night.
There were riots in the streets. There were constant demonstrations against the banks. Crime rose in the cities, particularly kidnapping. The kidnappers were aware that everybody now kept their money at home and they would snatch somebody and hold them for a few hours, demanding as little as two or three hundred dollars as ransom.
I kept an eye on these developments as best I could from New York and considered canceling the trip more than once. But finally, by mid summer, things seemed to have settled down, the peso stabilized, the riots tapered off, and we had actually learned enough from Beatriz to make it through one whole dance number, so I figured we should go.
As departure week approached, I tried to get a hold of some Argentine pesos: first through American Express then through my bank. But that proved to be impossible. Nobody, not even the currency exchange booths at the airport, was handling Argentine pesos because of the daily volatility of the exchange rate. By September the peso was 3.65 to 1 and still yo-yoing. I started to worry about whether or not I’d even be able to exchange dollars in Argentina, but shouldn’t have. They were begging for dollars there. There was even a bank at the airport – before you pass through customs -- waiting to welcome you and your dollars.
Inevitably September 7th, our departure date, rolled around. And the timing of the trip seemed to me more and more appropriate: it was soon to be the first anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. I couldn’t think of any place I’d rather not be than New York on September 11. If only not to see and relive all of the grief and pain from the year before. (You just know that the TV stations are going to saturate you with it.) The attack had severely impacted the lives of all who live in our Metropolitan New York area.
I’m sure that the looming anniversary of the terrorist attack dampened our preparation for the trip. But before we knew, it seemed, we were at Kennedy boarding the very empty 11:00 PM flight to Buenos Aires. Able to stretch out over three seats we both managed to sleep for a few hours during the flight. I couldn’t wait to see South America, though, and prematurely got next to the window while it was still dark, lifted the shade and peered out into the Latin American night.
As it turned out, when the sun came up I couldn’t see anything. The whole Continent was covered with clouds. And they were clouds like I’ve never seen before. They were low clouds and knotted up in the tightest little puffs, just like a Berber rug. This for thousands and thousands of miles. Or so it seemed. I speculated that it might have something to do with the Amazon jungle that had to be below most of that Berber rug. But who knows? It was just an interesting little detail that made South America more mysterious.
When the cloud cover finally broke we were there. We had begun our descent into Pistarini, it was morning and the landscape looked a lot like Mexico City: flat, flat, flat, rural, brown, agricultural, adobe, one story everything, brown rivers, dust, dirt, and yet ... there was something wonderfully different about it, too.
Argentina is very European: about 80 percent of the population is of either Spanish or Italian heritage. There is also a significant German and English influence. And unlike much of the rest of Latin America there isn’t much of an indigent population left.
As the plane set down and the less than spiffy airport rolled by, the reality of being 5000 miles away began to set it, the whole idea seemed laughably preposterous to me. What the hell was I thinking? We couldn’t dance the tango. And even if we could, who could play that charade for a whole week? We had brought the golf clubs, thank goodness, and I had arranged a couple of games, just for relief you know, but what were we now going to do for a week? Shop? I don’t think so.
As I struggled with the problem of determining which of the five cab drivers to believe about a ride into town, I had one of those terrifyingly clear understandings of my inadequate thinking about this trip and all but complete lack of preparation. I just felt about as dumb as dumb can be. Well, nothing to do but push on: I stared at the drivers; all dressed smartly in suits and ties, all eager for my business.
I had done some cursory reading about Buenos Aires and how to get around a few weeks previous. I just couldn’t remember it because I was trying to babble my Freshman Spanish which was commingling with all the other “restaurant” languages I know, as in: Non, mercie... uh, No, grazie... I mean, Nien Danke...shein. Oh! “No, gracias!” it finally popped out and I simultaneously remembered a thing or two about getting the right car service... “Go to the transportation counter where the two biggest companies are located and arrange the ride there.” My research had also yielded the information that the ride would cost about $30 dollars. That was written back before the devaluation and when Argentine pesos were frequently referred to locally as dollars. The reality was that it now cost only 25 pesos, or less than $7. That was stunning. I didn’t know whether to be happy or apprehensive. “Gracias, muchos gracias,” I mumbled as the driver thanked me. “Te nada,” wasn’t a part of my vocabulary yet.
Of course I knew from booking the hotel room that the trip was going to be less expensive than I might have originally thought, but even still... I was shocked at the value. In the birthday spirit and all that, I had reserved a suite at the best Hotel in Buenos Aires, the Alvear Palace, a great old five-star. What a good decision that was! The Alvear Palace may be the best hotel in all of South America. It certainly was the best one at which we’ve ever stayed. Every person in that hotel was absolutely first rate from the cleaning staff to Security to the Wait Staff to the Concierges to the Doormen to the reception desk: they were all perfect. What a treat!
We had a beautiful suite with fresh flowers every morning, fresh fruit every afternoon, multiple TV’s (most important because of the Tango Channel that I watched continuously) and music systems, our own cell phone for use around town, and a lady butler who couldn’t do enough for us. This is the part of traveling that I like best: the fantasy. It’s all perfect for a few days. And the perfectness takes one completely away from reality.
That first afternoon we spent more than a few hours at a local crafts fair looking, talking, and buying stuff that was truly just stuff. We also walked through the famous cemetery: the Recoleta, where all of the Argentine Who’s Whos from way back are buried, including Eva Peron. The Recoleta is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the Country, and this because the Argentines celebrate a person’s death date even more than that person’s birth date. Every year on the anniversary of the death there is usually some kind of celebration for the venerated family founders and the Country’s generals, politicians, businessmen et al.
I only mention this because the Recoleta seemed particularly run down and in a very sad state of disrepair. There were many broken glass doors and windows that fronted the narrow, side-by-side, mausoleums, with cats living here and there. Many walkways were either torn up or under repair. And yet, many of the mausoleums showed signs of newly erected plaques, flowers, prayers and other tributes from grateful heirs, descendants and friends.
We met a young Argentine couple as we were looking for Evita’s tomb. The man had a heavy funereal air about him. The sight of his beloved cemetery in such a sad state perfectly reflected the state of the entire Country, he said. It was crushing the air right out of him. He struggled to breathe and struggled with a few English sentences: “If you think this is bad,” and he made a listless gesture at the surroundings, “the whole Country is like a funeral. The corrupt Government has made this... Where has my Argentina gone?” No amount of inane chatter from us could cheer him and finally we went on our way, wiser and sadder for the experience.
On another, less painful, subject, I noticed that virtually every apartment in every apartment building around us in the downtown area had steel shutters over the windows. This to prevent the early morning daylight from disturbing one’s sleep, you know. Now you read and read about how everything starts late in Buenos Aires, like dinner at ten and so forth, but call me a dumb tourist, I just didn’t believe it. So our plan that night for a late dinner and then still later dancing started with a 9:30 PM dinner at a very swanky restaurant below the hotel.
I’m usually in bed at 9:30, so to wait dinner until then is some feat. “You’re kidding,” I thought when standing in the entrance dressed for the evening, I discovered that the place didn’t even open until 10:00. They let us in anyway, and we sat chatting for a half an hour over cocktails in the bar and feeling a little foolish while the restaurant staff finished setting their tables and preparing the decorations. The wait staff was kind enough not to look at us and roll their eyes. Not incidentally, everything was fantastic: the food, the wine, and the service. And when I got the bill I just didn’t comprehend. So little? For so much? Wow, you begin to think about living there. Or buying a vacation home, you know? As in: “Maybe we could become polo enthusiasts!”
After dinner it was crunch time: nearly midnight and time to go dancing. I had been avoiding talking about, or even thinking about actually doing any tango. But here it was at last, time to go: the whole point of the trip. I had bravely consulted with the Concierge before dinner as to which particular tango club we might visit, and he suggested the Club Gricel, informing me that it was one of the older and more established clubs. The Club Gricel it was then, and off we went having absolutely no idea of what to expect.
Our driver – the hotel insisted that we take a private car and driver rather than try to call for cabs late into the night – made his way through the cranky, dimly lit streets for what seemed like too long a period of time, until, voila! (Or whatever the Spanish equivalent is.) He stopped at a pair of old wooden doors. We were at the Club Gricel. There were no signs, no lights, no billboards, no marquees, no nothing to identify the two wooden doors that looked just like every other pair of wooden doors on that block as a dance club. There weren’t any people around the entrance either. After all, it was only a little past midnight and the dancing didn’t begin until much later.
But we bravely stepped out of the car and into one of the great experiences of our lives. Behind the doors, there was a fellow taking a cover charge: six pesos for the two of us. I paid and we parted the heavy velour curtains and entered the “Club.” It was a large, rectangular social hall, nothing more. The lighting was simple and quiet with a lonely script “Club Gricel” in pink neon at the far end. There were a few people here and there engaged in conversation: a couple of customers and a waitress or two. A makeshift bar along one of the long sides and tables all around the large, and at this point, very empty, wooden dance floor completed the picture. That was it: bare, spare and simple.
We made our way to the side opposite the bar and picked a table next to the wall and sat down. I was anxious to order something: beer, perhaps. Certainly water. Now there’s no rush to do anything in Argentina. Life is to be savored. Slowly. So despite my looks, contortions, waves and various other entreaties, no waitress came to our table to take an order. Little did I know that you were supposed to sit and relax and talk: spending money is not the number one priority. It takes some time to adjust to these strange customs.
Eventually, I just went over to the bar and came back with a couple of one-liter beers and two half-liter bottles of water: another eight pesos. I’m adding up the cost of the night out as I make my way back to the table: limo for the whole night; drinks, dinner and a top of the list wine at the best place in town; cover charge and drinks at Gricel ... I’m up to almost 50 bucks! The culture shock is reaching numbing proportions.
What followed was priceless. The Club Gricel catered to an older and fairly elegant tango crowd. (The Concierge knew it because his parents and Grandparents danced there!) Most everybody in the club that night was over 40 and they all appeared to be couples: no singles. In fact, I only spotted one small group of lone men who must have made their way in by mistake, so totally a couples club was this. And this older crowd knew how to dance. They came to the Club to dance. And to socialize. The whole evening was spent dancing and talking and dancing some more. It wasn’t like a nightclub, as we know it, where people came to see entertainment. Here, they came to entertain themselves.
The music was all recorded, and played in sets of four dances. Each set had a theme or particular style: traditional, new, romantic, jazzy, up-tempo, milonga, or valtz. And the protocol in tango is to dance the four dances of the set once you’ve taken the floor. There are a few moments between the end of one number and the beginning of the next that are spent just standing on the floor catching one’s breath or feeling the rush of exhilaration from a particularly good turn, or talking about whatever. Then the music starts for the next dance. Nobody moves. All listen for the mood and feel the rhythm for about eight bars, then all at once everybody starts to move again. It’s almost magical, like a carousel starting. The general pattern is to dance counterclockwise around the floor.
The first few times around for us were a blur to me. I concentrated on not bumping into anyone. And breathing, too. I was having a lot of trouble breathing. And it was pretty mechanical in terms of the footwork and flourishes. But after a few sets, we began to relax and enjoy, and I started to whirl and twirl and tango with my woman like the rank amateur that I was. Nobody seemed to mind or pay attention, and Joey didn’t seem to mind my elementary plodding. We were tangoing in Argentina. It was fantastically unreal.
Everybody’s personal tango style and technique is different and individual. And much of the fun of sitting out a set comes from watching the various couples as they pass before you. The dancing was so beautiful that I felt immediately like I had to learn everything about this so that I could do what they were doing. It looked so graceful and sexy, so powerful and smooth, so effortless and sensual. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
And the thing that I realized that night is that it makes such a strong statement about the couple. It is the two of you: the man leading, the woman following and adding the flourishes. The pair of you creates this statement about who you are as a couple. It’s really beautiful. The statement we made was that we knew how to do four basic steps and we were going to do them until we dropped. But to see people who really know how to dance, and have been together for years do this is ... well, just awesome. It’s like a reaffirmation of their union.
We loved it. All of it. It was everything I had hoped for, and so much more. That night our world expanded and we felt incredibly lucky for it.
Sunday is “flea market” day in the old neighborhood of San Telmo. San Telmo is the artsy, antiquey, tourist center of Buenos Aires. A visit to San Telmo is a must, just like the Recoleta. The flea market is like any other junk show in the world, but the residents of San Telmo are unlike people anywhere else. They are characters of the highest order: strange, sad, entertaining, intriguing, provocative, theatrical to a fault and endlessly fascinating. Joey couldn’t stop taking pictures. I couldn’t stop gawking.
In a little open-air park next to the flea market we saw a street side tango show that was even better than the tango we saw the night before. The man was tall and handsome and perfectly matched with his appealing partner. After their big number, they literally passed the hat for coins. This man had incredible charisma and it was clear to me that the audience members were somewhat in awe of him. They were more than generous with their coins and with their praise. I felt the same way. And seeing the professionals dance up close like this made me aware of just how intricate, precise and demanding it is. I think I realized that my own expectations would have to be altered to fit the painful reality that I was never going to dance like that fellow.
Later that afternoon, we were off to our first tango lesson. I had prepared a list of dance studios and my search for the right one began when I had the Concierge call the studio that was closest to the hotel: Moira Godoy. She was a famous professional dancer and teacher who had a terrific studio about 2 miles from the hotel. When they said they could provide a private English-speaking teacher at an incredibly reasonable rate my search ended.
We arrived early at the studio excited and ready to work and met Oliver, our teacher. Oliver spoke English because he was born, and lived for a time, in New York. His story was similar to one of the Hotel’s doormen. This fellow whose name was Pablo spoke such perfect English that I asked him where he was from, and he replied, “New Jersey.” Ho-ho-kus, New Jersey to be precise, about 14 miles up the Parkway from our Montclair. It’s a very small world. Both fellows had moved to B.A. as children when their fathers moved for business reasons. For the rest of the week I took tango lessons from Oliver and Spanish lessons from Pablo.
Oliver had studied to be a technocrat and began his career with some Corporation or other as an information and data manager, until he discovered tango. Then at the age of 24, he became a tanguero overnight. I understood his motive perfectly when his face lit up as he extolled the virtues of “holding a woman in a close embrace and moving in such a beautiful way.” He was as completely full of passion for tango as anybody I’ve ever seen. He positively overflowed with it.
That first hour with Oliver was exhilarating. From the first moments, it was clear to me that we could do a week of dancing, easily. In fact, I had the first vibes that a week was too short a period of time! Oliver’s enthusiasm and instruction was first rate. He made us believe that we were tango dancers.
At his invitation, we joined a group lesson he was teaching for a second hour. It was a beginning class, but in it we were introduced to the milonga. This dance is a kind of country version of tango that uses a basic six-step pattern and is danced to a fairly upbeat tempo. You are reminded of a Cuban rumba or some such thing, holding your partner at arm’s length, as you look each other in the eye. But this milonga requires a very still upper body with all of the expression and movement from the waist down. It’s really fun and always saved by the instructor for the end of the class. We left the studio on a real high.
I had the mistaken impression that the dance clubs wouldn’t be open on Sunday, and so later that night we went to a tango show. As it turns out, there are dance clubs open every night, and most days as well. I was upset that we missed the chance to dance, but this show was a treat. It was an old-fashioned supper club. We sat in a ringside banquette, had dinner, had our picture taken under the watchful eye of Carlos Gardel, the patron saint of all Tango, and watched a pretty spectacular show. The nightclub was built on the site of Gardel’s favorite neighborhood bar.
Monday, being the official birth date of my companion, had been set aside for shopping for the official birthday present. We took a cab to what the tour guides described as one of the best leather stores in the city: Casa Lopez. The goods were nothing short of fabulous and all made in-house. I contented myself with sitting and watching as Joey and the sales lady blitzed the racks. After trying on and examining basically everything, they decided on a beautiful coat. A question about matching the color of the coat with something else subsequently produced the owner who took over and came up with a perfectly matching long skirt. We walked out of Casa Lopez feeling great: like we were ready for anything, especially more tango.
After our lesson with Oliver I picked up a copy of the tango magazine “El Tangauta” which had the names and addresses of all the Buenos Aires dance halls, also called “milongas” – just like the dance itself. And after a nap and another great late dinner, we were ready to go dancing.
The venue this Monday evening was Parakultural (accent on the last syllable): another social hall, but one that was even less formally decorated than the Club Gricel. In fact, Parakultural wasn’t decorated at all. It looked a little like the old Church Hall in which my Boy Scout meetings were held, only three times the size. The clientele was different, too. This was a crowd of all ages from young to very old, and there were many singles as well. It was something of a shock to see very old men dancing with very young women. My first impression was that the motives of the older guys were more than a little suspect, but after a while I began to see that the dance itself was probably the motive for both partners. Anyway, we never saw young men dancing with much older women, and I’ll just leave it at that for now.
One of the more interesting aspects of tango in Argentina is the behavior of the men. The come from a very macho tradition and have this inflated vision of themselves and their machismo. It’s as if they’re all minor gods of some sort, gracing the milonga with their magnificence and willing to dispense a little godhead when, and if, they find an agreeable partner.
Given this state of mind, it’s no wonder that the men absolutely will not, under any circumstances, ask a woman to dance. And that’s because if the woman declined the man’s invitation, and he were rejected in front of all the other men, he would have to leave in shame.
Once I understood this, it reminded me of the first dance I went to as a sophomore back in High School. It was a “mixer” at St. Rose School for Girls. I was painfully shy, and spent the whole night on the edge of the crowd identifying potential dance partners and then staring at them. I guess I was hoping that they would get the idea of dancing with me and smile or maybe even approach me. But, and this is pretty embarrassing to admit, I never actually asked any one of them to dance that night. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I went home after standing around the edge of the dance floor all night feeling pretty stupid. But, I had my pride, such as it was, intact.
Too bad I didn’t know how the Argentinean men did it. They use the cabezazo, or “signal.” The man makes eye contact with the desired woman then makes a quick small tilt of the head and raises his eyebrows. It’s a facial gesture that means, “Would you like to dance with me?” If the woman either nods or smiles, that means, “yes.” They then walk to the floor, meet, exchange a greeting and dance.
Now if the woman pretends not to have noticed the cabezazo and looks away, or stares right through the man, that’s a rejection of the invitation and nobody but the man signaling will know it. Subsequently, he hasn’t lost any of his dignity and can afford to stay and try to signal some other woman.
It’s serious business, of course, and like I say, I have a personal and experiential basis for understanding the subtext of these moments, but it’s still amusing to scan the room and see the men signaling. I empathized. Usually when there’s no positive response to the cabezazo, the man blandly continues his scan of the room as if nothing at all had happened. I empathized with that part, too.
All of this slowly unfolded for me as I tried to understand why for the first hour or so we were at Parakultural, I couldn’t seem to make eye contact with anybody. I wanted to talk to people, share my enthusiasm, etc., but couldn’t get much going. On the other hand, I was seeing people walk towards each other and meet on the dance floor for no apparent reason. It was clear that they weren’t at the dance together, and that they didn’t know each other before dancing. I wondered: how do they know to do that? Then I saw the signals, and shortly thereafter it was confirmed when my wife, upon returning from the bathroom, revealed to me that every man in the place was trying to make eye contact with her.
Now, along with being pretty classy and a very hot looker, she’s a friendly, out-going sort of girl, and I’m sure that she inadvertently returned a few smiles before she understood what was happening. I didn’t see the results, but I’m guessing there were more than a few fellows who started towards her for a dance and then seeing her proceed to me, just kept on walking across the floor as if that’s what they had planned to do all along.
A couple of other interesting tidbits that we learned that night involving the hidden codes and rules of behavior at the milonga had to do with the entrance one makes into the hall itself and the seating arrangements. If you come to the dance with a partner and plan to dance only with your partner, you make the entrance together and sit together. The other men will see this and understand that your partner is not available. If, however, you signal some other woman and dance with her, then your partner immediately becomes available and the other men will start the semaphore process with her. Additionally, people who come to the dance by themselves and who want to dance always sit as close to the floor as possible. This to facilitate the cabezazo process. Needless to say, we were in the back row of tables with a great over view of the proceedings.
Now during the dance itself, the dancers wear hard expressions. This is serious business: the man has to follow the music, has to lead, has to make room for the woman’s flourishes, has to steer clear of the other dancers, and finally has to buff his godhead by imbuing the dance with his own sense of style and grace. Which is to say that there’s no talking or smiling during the dance. All the communication is done with the bodies. Smiling and chatting is saved for the few moments between dances when you can afford the time.
Everything we learned that night enchanted me. (I only wished I knew about the cabezazo when I was 14! I might have gotten over my monumental shyness so much sooner.) I felt like I was beginning to understand not only my own attraction to the tango, but also why somebody like Oliver could give up his life to it. The satisfaction one gets from an excellent performance is akin to a successful romantic interlude. It has the capacity to lift you to exhilarating heights or plunge you to the depths. You’re trying to attain a physical and esthetic perfection that can never be fully realized. Yet the beauty of the movement and the passion it creates in your soul remove you from the worldly and take you into an unknown dimension where a profound satisfaction is seemingly within reach.
Tuesday brought more fun and surprises. Before our lesson with Oliver, we went shopping for wine and tango shoes. Now Joey had already purchased a beautiful pair in New York, but who could pass up the opportunity to buy some in Buenos Aires? Certainly, not us.
We again followed the recommendation in the guidebook and made our way to “Delie” in San Telmo. “Calzados Especiales” is the store’s slogan, which I think that means “tango shoes.” Anyway, that’s what this store was all about: tango shoes, and nothing but. Joey bought a gorgeous pair of “spectators” and then convinced me to buy a pair as well. I hesitated because of the one-inch high heels all tango shoes have. Until I put them on and realized that not only were they incredible soft and comfortable, but they restored the one inch of body height that I’ve lost over the years. (That from carrying around the weight of what I know, presumably).
Since buying the shoes, I’ve always been a little self conscious about wearing them. I was afraid that it made too strong a statement about my commitment to, and subsequently my lack of proficiency in, the dance. And also because I don’t actually put them on until inside the dance hall where it’s usually crowded and therefore a clumsy process. That is until the night in New York recently when a lady sitting next to us commented on them and asked me where I bought them. Casually showing her the name on the black velour carry bag that the shoes come in, I said, “Buenos Aires.” She was impressed. I was happy.
I had my first occasion to wear the shoes that first afternoon at Moira’s Studio. I have a painful history of blisters with unconventional footwear: football shoes, golf shoes, bowling shoes and the like. So I feared that the dance shoes would conform to this pattern. But, nothing of the sort. They were comfortable, flexible and made me such a better dancer that I would have paid twice the price.
It was during this lesson, by the way, that Oliver danced a milonga with Joey that was so perfect, so beautiful, and obviously so much fun for her, that we both realized that she had broken through to a new level of proficiency. Back and forth across the floor they went, with me following on the side as best I could. I will always remember the smile on her face as she realized what might have been a lifelong dream: to be a really GREAT dancer. That afternoon, dancing with Oliver, she looked and danced like a pro.
After our lesson, we played golf at The Jockey Club, one of the Country’s oldest golf courses. I had arranged a couple of games through the Concierge before the trip. The Concierge, in turn, had contacted a small company called “Golf in Argentina” to accommodate us. This company consisted of two young American educated Argentineans: Mike Viale and Manuel Artagaveytia. Mike was a lawyer and Manuel a salesman for the local phone company. They had been friends since school days and had begun the golf business as a way of getting hard currency during their economic crisis.
For eighty U.S. dollars cash per player they would rent a van, hire a driver, pay your greens fees and caddy fees, drive you to the course, play with you or behind you, buy your lunch and drinks afterwards, then van you back to the hotel. I thought that was a pretty irresistible deal. It does make you wonder how these two guys could afford to take the day off from their other jobs and do all this for $160. Nevertheless, they did it. And seemed to really enjoy it, too.
When we got to The Jockey Club, I saw Mike taking his clubs out of the van. I asked him if he was going to play. He said that he was going to play behind us. I didn’t understand why he wanted to do that and so convinced him to play with us. Manuel had hurt his shoulder playing soccer and couldn’t swing, so he just walked along with us the whole way. The driver waited in the parking lot.
One thing that made this day memorable was the intense security on, and all around, the course. Intense as in armed and uniformed private guards in the parking lot, on the first tee and at various street crossings on the course. I guess the fear of these “kidnappings” was such that the people who had a few bucks were terrified of the people who didn’t. It wasn’t until I got back home that I realized that Mike wanted to play behind us as a security precaution, while Manuel covered the front, Mike would cover the rear. Oh well...
The clubhouse was classic English Tudor red brick and very beautiful, but course was mostly forgettable. It wasn’t quite Spring yet and there were some bare spots here and there, but overall it was enjoyable. On the first tee, Joey’s caddy took her glove from her bag and tried to put it on her hand for her. That was pretty remarkable. Neither one of us had ever seen that before. She graciously thanked him and put it on herself. The caddy smiled throughout.
But, really the most interesting thing happened when she had to make a nature run on the course. She saw the bathroom and with a wave, took off for it. Manuel, who was looking the other way initially, turned, saw her and appeared quite upset with her about this for a moment. Then, he went running after her, and catching up, escorted her right to the door, where he stood guard outside. It was at this point that it occurred to me, “He has a gun, and he’s not going to leave her alone for a second. Hmmm.”
Mike was a great guy, but painfully deferential to us, and a little arrogant with the caddies. Class and social status are still issues in this society. Additionally, he was a real hacker. And he insisted on finding Joey’s ball on every hole before he would go look for his own. He was also reading every putt for her and consulting on every shot. All of this takes a lot more time than it normally would.
This, in addition to giving me a non-stop history of the Country, golf in Argentina, and his ultra conservative take on the Government’s infamous crackdown on the leftists in the Eighties. “Geez,” I wanted to say, “Mike, shut-up already!” But I didn’t. As a result of all the high maintenance, we didn’t get into the clubhouse until fairly late. Then after a few beers and a snack, we headed out for the hotel. But by the time we arrived back downtown it was very late. We were both exhausted from being massaged all afternoon. And so, rather than going out dancing, we turned in early and just watched more lessons on Tango TV. I was transcribing the steps as best I could.
Wednesday, however, was a different story. Maybe it was the realization that our week in B.A. was already half over. Or maybe it was the realization that if we didn’t buy everything that wasn’t nailed down, we’d regret it after going home. Or just possibly it was the feeling of almost complete freedom that this goofy dance vacation had brought us. Whatever it was, we were pretty charged up and headed into the second half of our trip with voracious appetites for everything we encountered: we took no prisoners in the dancing, shopping, eating, drinking and carousing departments.
After our early afternoon lesson, we stopped at a couple of local record stores and I bought every tango CD I could find. It was all too good to pass up. In fact, the shopping bug hit us pretty hard and before we got back to the hotel we stopped off at another store near the hotel, one that specialized in polo gear.
The whole store was polo only, and not the Ralph Lauren kind. Gorgeous boots, saddles, riding gear, bags, uniforms, bridles, hats, wallets, belts, sweaters, coats, rain gear, etc., etc. You name it, if it had anything to do with polo, this place had it. Except for the one particular item we went in there to buy. That was a blue and white Argentine National polo jersey with the number 3 on it. That had been Joey’s father’s number when he played polo at Stanford and we thought it would be a great ‘bring home’ gift. But that was the only polo item that they didn’t sell, but only because National jerseys, or even replicas thereof, simply weren’t for sale. More culture shock? No, by this time not much surprised me.
We spent a good hour in the store. I kept looking at these incredible natural leather riding boots, trying to develop the logic that I needed in order to justify buying them. It went something like this: I did ride, I had taken a few riding lessons a couple of years previous; and I often thought about taking more riding lessons in New Jersey; it was always possible that I’d find them useful during the winter; one of Joey’s friends is an amateur jumper, maybe we’d attend a jumping contest some time; or even a polo match; I could always wear the boots with pants over. And, if you were ever going to buy riding boots, why not buy the best from the best source? On the other hand, I had just bought the tango shoes the day before. And I already had many pairs of shoes in my closet that I didn’t wear including two pair of cowboy boots. The last thing I wanted were comparisons to Imelda Marcos... Back and forth I went.
You can see that I wasn’t comfortable with the argument yet. It wasn’t ironclad and irrefutable. I needed at least one more good reason “for,” no matter how thin, and then they’d be mine. But before I could come up with it, Joey had made friends with the owner and who had promised that the polo belts that Joey wanted to buy would be delivered to the store the next day. And since the store was right around the corner from the hotel, we’d be happy to return and pick them up, etc., etc. And before you knew it, we were walking out and all I had was the vision of those beautiful boots in my mind and not the boots themselves in my hands. Probably just as well. I mean can you see me wearing my polo boots to work? Ridiculous. Sure, but I’m still thinking about them.
That night, we were able to get our regular driver, a wonderful young guy named Sergio, went out to a wonderful local restaurant for dinner, then to a new milonga, this one being held at the Armenian Cultural Center and called La Viruta.
We went to La Viruta because Oliver was teaching there that night and he had suggested that we try it that afternoon. It’s a fairly common practice at most milongas to give free group classes for the first hour or so of the evening. And when Oliver told us that we would be in the level two class, as opposed to the rank beginners, well we couldn’t resist.
La Viruta was a very large hall with a tile floor surrounded by the usual tables and it had a bar/kitchen combination at one end. As usual, the music was all recorded. The crowd was very much younger than any we had seen so far. And it was a big crowd, too. Luckily we saw Oliver when we entered and he helped us get a table and steer us to the level two class right out in the middle of the floor.
Even though most of the instruction was in Spanish, the class was great and very helpful. I learned a wonderful step that night that I now use all the time. And it was great fun because you regularly had to switch partners and dance with strangers. I made a few mistakes with one of my partners and tried to apologize. She replied, “no problem.” It turned out she was from Seattle. That was a shock. And sort of pleasant, too. She had come to B.A. with her girlfriend to dance, just like us. We ran into her again on Friday night. We all felt like regulars by that time, making the rounds of the clubs.
The thing that was most remarkable about La Viruta was that we had fun dancing, a lot of fun. We had gotten past that elementary stage where I had to think about every step, and progressed to the stage where I could hear the music and move to it. We both sensed and enjoyed the freedom that that created. The combination of our daily lessons and our nightly dancing was beginning to pay dividends. We could actually dance some tango.
It didn’t compare, of course, to the teachers at La Viruta. There were twenty of so of them and they danced a few numbers just by themselves as a sort of demonstration of what was possible. It was like a private floorshow. Terrific. We watched the smiling happy Oliver as he made his way around the floor with a couple of different partners and it was easier than ever to understand just exactly what had waylaid that young guy. Ah, the life of the tanguero! We stayed until we couldn’t dance anymore. Then went back to the hotel and collapsed.
Thursday after our early lesson – I didn’t think Oliver was going to show, but he made it a few minutes after the appointed hour and looking like he just rolled out of bed – we took a walk around the downtown shopping district. I had seen this store called Arandu that specialized in leather hats, boots and polo gear and I wanted to take my wife there. It had one of those very flat crowned, wide brimmed hats with the chin string that the Argentine cowboys, the gauchos, wear on display in the window and it looked incredibly smart. I thought Joey would look great in it. And so I steered her to the shop.
She didn’t like the way the hat looked on her and we didn’t buy it. But once Joey saw the merchandize and met the owner and they started to talk about how various items were made, well... I just decided I would go outside, sit on a bench and wait it out. After an hour or so, I looked back in the store window and they were working over the silver picture frames. I stayed outside. It’s best not to interfere in these things. But after another 30 minutes I started to get nervous, we had another golf game scheduled that afternoon. I went back into the store to see how they were coming along. The answer was great but not nearly finished yet. I milled around for a few minutes, then told my wife I’d meet her back at the hotel. I couldn’t take the pressure any more.
When she returned to the room, she looked like a cartoon from “The New Yorker,” the happy shopper with fourteen shopping bags bulging with all manner of stuff. And the caption would read: “They didn’t have everything in stock, I have to go back tomorrow and get the rest.” Okay.
It was quite a haul. And if you’re wondering where we got that marvelous Christmas present we sent you last year, now you know.
We had just enough time to change and meet Mike and Manuel again. This time they took us way out of town to a lovely Club called L’Orchida, or The Orchid. The charm of L’Orchida was that each of the holes had been modeled after the eighteen greatest golf holes in the world. I didn’t recognize any of them. But the variety, beauty and difficulty made for a very interesting day.
I hit a screaming four iron into a very heavy wind to within two feet on the first hole, made the birdie and loved the way my caddy, Leo, smiled. As a former caddy myself, I recognized that smile. He had a winner, it said. I later tipped him as much as I could. Mike and Manuel paid the caddy fee itself, but we couldn’t be sure how much they were paying the guys, so Joey and I both tipped our caddies on the sly. Though they didn’t speak any English, they understood the old fore finger to the lips gesture, meaning “ssssh, don’t say anything.”
Mike played with us again, and again it was painfully slow. By the ninth hole, it was dark and cold, and I was ready to quit. I went into the clubhouse and had a couple of beers while Joey and the boys played a few more holes. I watched a local TV show while I waited for them. It was a lot like Italian TV: pretty girls in tight fitting clothes, a goofy middle-aged host whose job, it seemed, was to make the pretty girls giggle, old-fashioned big band music, cleavage to spare, firm and very active buns pounding around all over the stage like the objective of the ‘game’ was to see who had the best working set of buns, and an old character woman with purple hair who made salacious remarks and laughed at her own jokes.
It was dark by the time we got back. I added to my growing collection of transcribed tango steps that night by staying in bed and watching tango TV. Joey tried on all her new things. It was a fun fashion show.
Friday started like every other day, we went for our lesson with Oliver. Only this time we arrived at Moira’s a little early so we could find a good bottle of wine to give to Oliver as a token of our thanks. He seemed to genuinely appreciate it. As did we. We loved the lessons and were sad they were ending. We took some “tango pictures” with him in the studio, had our lesson and bade him farewell. Before we left, he advised us to stop by the Armenian Center, La Viruta, at the end of the night – say about 3 or 4 in the morning – because that’s when the professional dancers from all over town who had finished their shows would come to La Viruta and dance for themselves. It sounded like the kind of thing new tangueros like us wouldn’t want to miss. And we didn’t.
Now, given that this was our last night in town and since we wanted to stay out all night dancing, we thought we’d try taking a more sensible approach to the problem of staying up late. So, we took a siesta. It did take more than a few minutes to get over the strangeness of getting into bed at four in the afternoon and pulling the covers up. But after those few minutes, it was heaven. Or maybe I should say, decadent. Yeah, decadent is the better adjective for that.
We arose late, had some wine, and just like they do in the old Fred Astaire movies, dressed for dinner. Manuel insisted that we try this parrilla down on the waterfront called Cabana Las Lilas. I had told him that I had been eating beef at every meal but still hadn’t been really wowed by the kind of beef for which the Country is supposedly famous. He told me that I had to go to a parrilla, a steakhouse for that kind of beef. He didn’t say “stupid,” when he explained this to me, though he might have thought it. I did.
To that point I had been a little disappointed in the beef, expecting this knockout stuff, you know? I mean it’s supposed to be better than our “prime.” And I had been ordering it in all the restaurants. What I was getting was really good, don’t misunderstand me, like a good “prime” cut you’d get in New York, but it wasn’t the new taste experience I had been expecting. Until we went to the parrilla, Cabana Las Lilas. Then I got the real thing. And it was incredibly good. It was a new taste experience. And it was much different, and definitely better, than anything I had previously known. I sat there thinking, “You’ve missed a whole week of this! ... Okay ... you’ll just have to come back and eat some more!”
After dinner, it was off to a new milonga, the Belgrano. This was the smallest of the dance halls we visited, and like all of the others, it was unadorned, unpretentious and swinging. It was Friday night and the crowd was lively and wanted to dance. We put in almost two hours of non-stop tango, then a surprise: live music. The band assembled and began to play the old standards and crowd favorites. After a while they switched to more contemporary tango music and we tried out best to stay with it.
Just as we were about to leave, we saw the girls from Seattle. They had come from some other milonga and were on the make. At least for a few more dances, anyway. We talked a bit, then headed out for La Viruta. It was almost 3:30.
La Viruta was just magical this second time around for us. The pros indeed were there, though they didn’t really begin dancing until well after 4. And since we could now manage to stay on the floor without embarrassing ourselves or maiming anybody, we had a great hour or so of tango before taking our ringside seats and watching. When you see it up close like that, it’s hard not to get hooked. We were hooked. No doubt about it.
I don’t know what time we left, or when we got back to the hotel. It was morning. And we left for the airport in a few hours. The packing was fairly quiet and trance like. We kept saying things like, “I can’t believe it’s over.”
The check out was sad. The goodbyes were emotional and heartfelt. The bags went into Sergio’s car. Then we discovered that Joey had lost her passport. Frantic searching, questions, recriminations, shouting and trips back to the room, etc., finally produced it. And we were on our way to the airport. A sad leaving. A great hotel. A fantastic vacation experience.
Everything it seemed had been absolutely perfect the whole time we were in Buenos Aires. And I mean perfect. Every person was cordial, polite, helpful, friendly and courteous. It was a completely happy time. Like being at Disney Land for a week. And we all know that that’s simply not possible. We needed to experience that “one exception that proves the rule,” as the Jesuits used to say. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the last Argentinean encounter we had before leaving wasn’t quite up to these previously encountered lofty standards and did, indeed, prove the rule.
Since we were bringing half the manufactured goods in Argentina back to the U.S., we thought we should try to claim our V.A.T. taxes. It amounted to a significant little pile. In order to do this, one had to fill out certain government forms and leave them at a certain desk at the airport. Of course this isn’t easy to do. I mean, in some ways, I don’t think the government really wants you to figure it out and so they make it as difficult and confusing as possible. Most people probably just give up after and hour and say, “the hell with it. Let’s go get our plane.” But not me. Not us.
I asked, I read, I figured it out. I got the forms and filled them out. Then found the right floor, and found the right room on the right floor, and found the “desk” at which they needed to be stamped and officially deposited. The “desk” was a card table set up on the edge of the room and manned by a rumpled, unshaven, mustachioed, civil servant of undetermined age who was wearing a uniform from the movie “Pancho Villa.” There was a restaurant breadbasket on the table, one of those plastic things you see everywhere, which held what looked like completed forms. Or perhaps it was the remains of his breakfast, which also decorated the “desk” in the form of crumbs, grease blobs, and chunks of indeterminate foodstuff. He held a cigarette in his fingers, the ash of which was easily an inch long. The only accoutrement he didn’t have was a bandillero.
He sat back on his chair resting against the back wall with the front two legs of the chair off the ground. He didn’t move for the longest time, preferring instead to stare at us like we were an unknown species. When he tipped his chair forward, he did so carefully, so as to not drop the ashes on his ash covered pants. He didn’t make it. The ashes went all over his pants. And then, with an exasperated grunt, he brushed them everywhere they didn’t naturally fall.
I tried to ask him if this was the right place for me to leave my VAT forms? He looked up at us through heavy lids and pretended he didn’t speak English, “no comprendo, senor.” I showed him the filled out forms. I gestured like the cabezazo, “Yes? You want these forms?” He shook his head “no,” and took a long drag off the now very short cigarette and looked at me kind of funny. Maybe he thought I was asking him to dance.
I looked at Joey. “Is this the right place?” she asked. “I think so,” I replied. “Well, we don’t have too much more time,” she added. I started that nervous little twitching that signals my frustration. The tempo and rhythm of all my internal mechanisms accelerate unevenly producing little jerks and twitches in the body. You might think I was going to have a seizure. Something bad or very embarrassing usually happens next. I know this from past experience.
Then I saw the slightest of smiles start to play on the old caballero’s lips. “Ha ha, gringo,” he was thinking, “listen to your wife and run for your plane! My government doesn’t want your stupid VAT forms!”
“Oh, so that’s how you play this game, eh, amigo?” I thought. My internal machinery shifted gears and started to purr in a nice steady rhythm. I was past the crisis. “I see right through this orchestrated little ploy of yours, and I ain’t fallin’ it!”
I looked over at the smudged forms in the breadbasket in front of him. They were right next to the overflowing ashtray. The forms in there were just like mine. And they were all signed, just like mine. And they were stamped, too. Which mine weren’t. That was the trick. The next step in the dance. I had to get my forms stamped.
So I put the forms in front of him. Then turned them around so he could read them. I knew he couldn’t read, but he probably knew did know up from down. I wasn’t taking any chances anyway, of his playing dumb again. Once I had them properly arranged, I made a stamping gesture with my right hand on each of the two forms. “Por favor, senor,” I snarled with that obvious and somewhat cruel note of superiority that I had seen and heard Mike use with the caddies.
The caballero’s eyes went wide for a millisecond; he understood very well my tone. “Ai, carumba!” he must have thought. Then he slowly reached into his vest and produced the official governmental stamp, stamped the two forms and put them in the breadbasket with the other forms. I smiled and said, “Gracias, senor.” “Te nada,” he replied with another little smirk as he ground out what remained of the cigarette in the ashtray. Ashes spilled onto my forms. I thought for the briefest of moments about reclaiming them and brushing them clean. “But no,” I thought, “with the ashes on them, they’re official.” And we were on our way home.
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