Fashion Tip for Male Dancers

Costumes are 10% of the fun of tango. Ladies get all the fun--skin and faux and sparkles. It's easy for us to look good--as long as we aren't dancing with someone who's outfit outshines ours.

Serious fashionistas would refuse to dance with anyone whose clothing didn't coordinate with theirs. Here's a better solution from Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore's partner:

Go with black. "Matching is not her job. It's yours. You're the purse."

Tango Faster to Get Smarter

According to “My Four-Week Quest: Be Smarter” (Wired, 15.01), we need 8.2 to 8.4 hours of sleep per night to achieve good memory, quick thinking and spatial orientation.

When a milonga runs until 1 or 2 a.m., what’s a dancer to do?

Radio SASS (Short Attention Span System) takes classic tunes and whittles them down to about two minutes. Editor-musicians trim the songs to their catchiest parts by pruning seconds from a guitar solo here, lopping off a chorus there. (Wired 15.03).

Imagine this: Milongas trimmed down to two hours. Stay to the end, grab a quick bite, and be tucked in by midnight.

SASS founder George Gimarc says listeners don’t miss the snipped bits. You decide: Check out the SASS versions of popular songs at wired.com/extras.

DJ Dave: Care to comment?

Tango: Your Best Retirement Investment

If you’ve ever had second thoughts about the money you spend on tango, put your mind at ease. You’re making a valuable investment.

According to Money magazine, your best retirement investment is general fitness. For boomers, that doesn’t mean running six miles a day. Just the opposite.

“Boomers need to know that there’s a new fitness paradigm,” says Marjorie J. Albohm, a certified athletic trainer quoted in Money’s March issue. “It’s not about how many miles you run or how much you can bench press. It is about balance, strength and mobility.”

Sounds like tango to me.

Note to Self

Best not to call sisters fat-asses, then invite them to read your blog.

I AM A BADASS!!!

Never use all capital letters when you write. It gives the impression of shouting. For a serious writer, it’s a sign of weakness: You should be able to convey your meaning by word choice, not typography. Ditto the exclamation points.

I AM A BADASS!!!

Chas is losing patience with the pretty girls like me.

“Look,” he says, digging his fingers into his hair and tugging.

“We all know about pretty and light.” He tippy-toes, fluttering his arms.

“That’s not tango,” he says. “Tango is heavy. It’s into the floor. It’s this attitude.” He snarls, grabs Gaia and drives her around the room.

“You,” he says to the women. “You need to get this. Tango is nasty and—”

“Why can’t it be pretty and light?” asks the other ballet dancer among us. “Why can’t it be beautiful?”

“Nasty is beautiful,” Chas says.

No. Ethereal is beautiful. Floating on air—exquisite. You might think it’s fragile and weak. Think again. It takes stevedore strength to be airy. Think Michael Jordan. Think Emmett Smith. Ballerinas are powerhouses. Men, you should fear us. We can take you out.

Nasty is grinding. Gum on the sole of your shoe. Spit on the sidewalk, condoms and worse in the gutter. Piss stains on buildings. BO. Nasty is the switchblade in every man’s pocket. Nasty is Detroit, where I come from. It’s not pretty or light, but…

“Nasty is earthy,” Chas adds. “It’s the street.”

Talk on, brother, I hear you now. Eight Mile. Motor City. Motown. Where I come from. Nasty is fat-assed women, my sisters included. They turn heads, they are gorgeous. No one can resist the gleam in their eye.

Ballet don’t fly here.

Nasty is funk, but it also is soul. Our dancing is not dirty but real. It comes from the piss and spit and switchblade, the resilient, undefeatable heart, the incorrigible womb. We are the female gods of the street.

Women have moves, and we don’t need feeble-assed men to make them. We dance with our girlfriends or take the beat straight. Yeah, it pounds us and yeah, we like that. Yeah, there’s a switchblade in every man’s pocket—and my pocket too. Do what you can to keep up, boys.

I AM A BADASS!!!

On my radio: Eartha. Aretha. Fannie Lou Hamer. Mary Blige. Pissed-off women, taking no shit. The first someone who tried to kill me was a girl. I was 10, she was maybe 13. She pulled the switchblade out of her pocket. My older sister carried a hunting knife, my little sister a blackjack. My mother wielded an ax to keep a carload of drunks away from her girls. I ran away from the knife; we little rabbits have our own brand of strength.

Chas and Gaia go at it again. He is a 350 LT1, gazillion horsepower, overmuscled Stingray Corvette. Barely holding it in check, he drives her. But wait!—she is a powerhouse, too.

“We are communicating with our bodies,” Gaia says as she strides backward. “I am saying, ‘Oh, I hear you. What is it you want? I hear you say something, I’m not sure what. Give me more, tell me more. Oh yes, now I see. Thank you. I go.’

“Followers: Don’t go until he makes it clear,” Gaia admonishes. “He has to do the work before we respond.”

This raises the question every man who has ever owned a muscle car has pondered: Who’s driving whom?

Now Chas and Gaia take turns dancing with the women. Their mission: Smoke the ballerinas. They’re gunning for me, but I am ready for them.

Gaia goes first. “Like this,” she says. Then she says something else I don’t hear.

I am in Motown on a mid-July night with a breeze off the river that’s caught fire again. Everyone is steaming. I get my groove on. You gunning for me? Bring it home, baby.

“Yes,” Gaia says uncertainly. She senses something.

I free my Inner Brick Shithouse. I move my fat ass with one hand on my switchblade. Keep up if you can, Gaia. This ballerina is bringing the street home to you.

“Good!” Gaia says. The sweet little tango song ends. She walks me across the floor. “You are going to be a bad-ass tango dancer,” she adds softly.

You are what you are right this minute. For the rest of the night, I am smiling.

I … little rabbit … pretty ballerina … thin-skinned and wary and too tender in the heart …

I am a badass.

The Yup-yup Game

When I was a kid I played a game with my brother. We were hooked on Sesame Street, and lots of our games came out of it. One of our favorites was the Yup-yup game. This is how it went:

Yup. Yup. Yupyupyupyupyup. Nope. Nope. Nopenopenopenopenope.
Yup. Yup. Yupyupyupyupyup. Nope. Nope. Nopenopenopenopenope.

And so on. Until we fell on the floor laughing.

Today at the office a colleague did something in a tenative way, looking for my approval, and to encourage her to keep going, I said, "yup-yup-yup." She is a very beautiful and chic person, so when she twisted around, eyebrows raised, face impassive, I cringed. One yup sounds helplessly old-fartish. Yup-yup-yup is inexplicable.

Until she burst out: Yup. Yup. Yupyupyupyupyup.

And we both nearly fell out of our chairs laughing.

One week ago today my brother-in-law -passed away. The clan gathered from all over the country, from Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Michigan. One group drove 24 hours straight; my aunt, who suffers from chronic fatigue, made it in two 12-hour days.

We came to be with my sister, to be with each other. Alex also came from a large clan. For many years we have been partying together at holidays and graduations, births and weddings and funerals.

For four days and nights the two families gathered at my sister's house. There were 20, 30 and more. We slept on floors and sofas and air mattresses in every room. We devoted ourselves to excess; at times it seemed we flirted with the line between wake and bacchanalia. We drank and ate, played cards, joked and told stories, hugged and hugged and hugged. We were riding a runaway train toward a cliff, and our obsession was to not think of the cliff.

A neighbor, a newbie paramedic who had helped my sister perform CPR, cried and cried and cried. My brother was a pallbearer. Outside the church in a private moment, he watched as the priest said a personal prayer over his friend, gave the casket a farewell pat. Then my brother cried.

Tonight I stayed home from tango. I called my brother. I wanted to tell him about the yup-yup game, but it's not the kind of joke that carries well over the answering machine. It's the kind of joke that will keep, but I don't want to keep it for long. I want to hold every single person I love close to my heart.

Tomorrow I will call my brother at work. When he answers the phone. I will say, "Yup. Yup. Yupyupyupyupyup. "

Weighing In

I live in a surreal world.

My family believes that I criss-cross between this world and my “real” world, some kind of parallel universe. That explains a lot. I am not so much the black sheep of my family as the odd duck. They love me in the way you might love ET. Or your crazy Aunt Flo.

They call me The Nut Magnet. Extreme personalities gravitate to me. Sometimes they want to love me, sometimes they want to kill me. Sometimes they want to tell me things, give me messages to pass on to this world. A friend once introduced me to an old geezer who lived in the mountains with a dingo for a pet. Untamed. It tore at the tires with its teeth as we drove across the field to the house. Every room was wired with old stereo equipment--turntables, receivers, amplifiers--to receive messages from outer space. He explained it in detail; he was particularly troubled by the difficulties of translation. The problem, he explained, was that he was all conduit; he needed a translator. It would be a simple matter to insert me into the rigging. He showed me where: between a receiver and amplifier. Needles and wire nuts would be involved.

Once I was once rescued from a gang attack by a silent white dog that appeared and then vanished. Once I saw a unicorn. Once I saw the northern lights. Once I went for a walk outside my office. I walked around the block—right turn, right turn, right turn—and ended up two blocks away. Once a man said to me, “I can turn into a cat. I killed my roommate’s girlfriend because she didn’t believe me. I still have the gun in my pocket.” Once I saw my best friend as a ghost, and then she died. She has not spoken to me since.

What will the scale say to me today? I approached with trepidation, chanting 120. It cannot say less. Drastic measures—I can’t imagine what—will be called for. Yesterday I ate like a pig: miso soup, pizza, V-8. I came home from tango and snacked on nuts until midnight. I feel heavy and bloated. It cannot say less than 120.

I walked to the clubhouse, to the exercise room. I took off my shoes, my jacket. Stepped onto the scale. My number is up. It said: Low.

This Is It

Ok, I've had enough. In the sixth grade, I was 5'7" and weighed 121. Today I am two inches taller and 2 pounds less.

Six months ago, my stomach went ballistic on me. I have been trying to stay out of its way, eating during truces or sneaking food down when it wasn't paying attention. Now I'm all done with that. I have my own kind of war.

I will cater to it with bites so ethereal, so delectable it won't think to resist. I will enclose it in my barely-there embrace. If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, the way to a woman's stomach must be through the heart.

If love can overcome all, I'll weigh 120 tomorrow.

Teacher's Turn to Talk

Here's an etiquette tip:

Don't talk during class. Don't chat with your partner, even if he's sexy . When someone asks a question, let the teacher answer. Don't offer coaching to your partner or the class.

When the teacher is done explaining and turns you loose to practice, it's OK to talk to your partner. OK to clarify a step. To ask for a retake. To murmur compliments. That is very OK.

My weakness is talking to my partner about the step while the teacher is still explaining it. The teacher says, "A lot of you are not leading the cross." "You do that right," I say to my partner. Meanwhile, the teacher has gone on and we have missed his next sentence.

If your partner speaks out of turn, simply ignore it. I am blessed with two practice buddies who do just that: Glenlivet and The Man on the Wall. I am quickly learning to keep still.

In class, it is best to keep your two cents to yourself. If you have a tendency to talk quite frequently, and you exercise self-control, then by the end of class you will have enough pennies to reward yourself with a nice cup of coffee. Possibly a latte.

Even the Trees Are Dancing

Trees by Hermann Hesse

Trees have always been the most effective preachers for me. I revere them when they live in nations and families, in forests and groves. And I revere them even more when they stand singly. They are like solitaries. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, isolated men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. The world murmurs in their tops, their roots rest in the infinite; however, they do not lose themselves in it but, with all the energy of their lives, aspire to only one thing: to fulfill their own innate law, to enlarge their own form, to represent themselves.

Nothing is more sacred, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree has been sawed off and shows its naked mortal wound to the sun, one can read its whole history on the bright disc of its stump and tombstone; in its annual rings and cicatrizations are faithfully recorded all struggle, all suffering, all sickness, all fortune and prosperity, meager years and luxuriant years, attacks withstood, storms survived. And every farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that, high in the mountains and in ever-present danger, the most indestructible, most powerful, most exemplary tree trunks grow.

Trees are santuaries. He who knows how to speak to them, to listen to them, learns the truth. They do not preach doctrines and recipes, they preach the basic law of life, heedless of details.

A tree speaks: In me is hidden a core, a spark, a thought, I am life of eternal life. The experiment and throw (of the dice) that the eternal mother ventured on me is unique, unique is my shape and the system of veins in my skin, unique are the slightest play of foliage at my top and the smallest scar in my bark. It is my office to shape and show the Eternal in the distinctively unique.

A tree speaks: My strength is trust. I know nothing of my fathers, I know nothing of the thousand children which come out of me every year. I live the mystery of my seed to the end, nothing else is my concern. I trust that God is within me. I trust that my task is sacred. In this trust I live.

When we are sad and can no longer endure life well, a tree can speak to us: Be calm! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is hard. These are childish thoughts. Let God talk within you and they will grow silent. You are anxious because your road leads you away from your mother and your home. But every step and day lead you anew to your mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is inside you or nowhere.

A yearning to wander tears at my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind in the evening. If one listens quietly and long, the wanderlust too shows its core and meaning. It is not a wish to run away from suffering, as it seemed. It is a yearning for home, for the memory of one’s mother, for new symbols of life. It leads homeward. Every road leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is the mother.

Thus the tree rustles in the evening when we are afraid of our own childish thoughts. Trees have long thoughts, long in breath and calm, as they have a longer life than we. They are wiser than we, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned to listen to trees, the very brevity and swiftness and childish haste of our thoughts acquire an incomparable joy. He who has learned to listen to trees no longer desires to be a tree. He does not desire to be anything but that which he is. That is home. That is happiness.

From First German Reader edited by Harry Steinhauer, Bantam Books, pp. 12-17, 1964. In that book acknowledgment is made to Suhrkamp Verlag and Miss Joan Daves for “Baume” (Trees) from Wanderung by Hermann Hesse, Copyright 1963 by SuhrkampVerlag, Berlin.