Learning Boleo: May 20, 2007 - June 12, 2008

2007: May 20

Nina is teaching boleos. These things are impossible! Stand strong on one leg, let the other go dead.

Seven women, facing the wall, pivoting and swinging away.

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In the movie of your mind, let that scene play and replay, interspersed with images of One Heart missing the boleo with every lead, in every practica and milonga, every single time it is led. Watch the seasons change. Watch her hair grow long. Watch her other dance skills come along. Choose a nice piece of background music. This is the B-roll.

Voiceover:

Here’s the thing. Boleo can’t be done. It’s not physically possible. To see why, think back to Nina’s followers’ class:

Noodle leg! Nina calls out. All of the women line up facing the wall, leaning against it with both hands. We stand on our left legs, let our right legs go limp and swing and swing.

Limp is a relative thing. Kari’s leg flops around like a cooked noodle. Mine is straight out of the box.

Like this, Kari says, laughing and swinging away. Kari is always laughing and catching on fast.

I go silly and overcooked, too. That’s fine if you’re dancing with a wall, but it’s no use at all with a live partner.

Think about this: You cannot have some overcooked noodle for a leg when you are dancing tango. You don’t know what the next step is. What if it’s not a boleo? What if he sends you to a step? Your noodle leg would collapse beneath you.

I have not been able to convey this idea to one single person. Still, I persist. I know I am right! It is logic.

Think about it: Your working leg has to bear weight, it has to be strong. How can you let your free leg go limp if you have no idea whether in the next microsecond it is going to become the working leg? You can’t transform from limp to strong in a microsecond.

Think further: More often than not, he is not going to lead a boleo. You can’t go all noodle-y with every step in anticipation of a boleo that happens only a few times in a dance.

No. If you let your leg go limp and the next step is not boleo, your noodle-leg will not support you, and you will fall down. A strong leg is the only defense against the hard floor. Do not relax your defenses.

I have explained this to Nina a half-dozen times. Yeah, she says. Do the noodle leg.

I have explained it to Grisha. He looks at me as if I am speaking a foreign language.

I have explained it to Tom. To Stan. To Kari. The boys are polite. Kari laughs, nicely.

I will explain this again if you don’t understand. By understand, of course, I mean agree.

I will repeat it again and again, louder and louder, if that will help.

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Summer 2007 to Spring 2008

I don’t like boleo. It’s too sharp and sudden, like the flash of a switchblade. Every time I see it, I flinch. When Gustavo and Giselle performed here, I flinched so much I got sore.

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A small boleo is lovely. Maria has a small boleo. Her foot traces a little crescent moon on the floor. A crescent is a lovely shape. I wouldn’t mind doing that. … If it happens. I am not going to push it. This is never going to be one of my steps.

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Grisha doesn’t ask what I want to learn. He just leads it.

You have a small boleo, he says. That’s OK. That’s your style.

Nice.

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I am in a class on boleo. I am faking it. I have learned how to do that.

The teacher notices, works with me for a minute.

That’s your first real boleo! he says. He is pleased. I give him a smile.

I faked it better.

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I’m late every time because I have to go noodley before I can fake it.

I think Grisha is on to me.

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Grisha brings up boleo almost every week.

Good grief. He may be as stubborn as I am.

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Into the floor with your foot, Grisha says.

There is a swishing sound on the floor, just like a real boleo. Sounds nice. Also, I like the feel of the floor pressing on the sole of my foot.

My boleo barely comes off the floor, but I like it that way. Very tasteful. You wouldn’t see Audrey Hepburn doing a Giselle-style boleo. No. That would be unseemly.

Audrey would not carry a switchblade but a stiletto. With a pearl handle. In an embroidered silk sheath in a tiny designer purse with a diamond on the clasp, which she would carry everywhere, including to Tiffany’s, where she would foil a trio of armed robbers by charming them as she fumbled prettily in her purse.

Yes, that’s my boleo!

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I practice tango every day. Boleo is part of my practice. I hang onto the doorframe or the bookshelf, noodle away to Canaro.

I push into the floor, and the push down makes the leg go up all swirly. It’s a little gust of wind; not wild but not controlled, either. This is a little unnerving. The leg could fly out in any direction with any kind of force without warning. It does that kind of thing. It’s good I’m practicing on drywall.

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You can tell when boleo is coming, a man says. It may have been Grisha, or another teacher, or a lead, or a video lesson. I have lost track of my sources.

Boleo comes out of back ocho, the man says.

Clearly, it’s not Grisha speaking. He’d never limit his choices that way.

Still, there’s a broad shaft of hope. If you can tell when boleo is coming…

I need to think about this.

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2008: Mid-March


You have to learn this, Grisha says.

It’s just mental, he adds.

He’s right.

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2008: Late March

I go to Florida. At the conference hotel, the elevators have marble floors and big mirrors. I get caught practicing my cool new hip action when the doors open unexpectedly.

A week later, I’m in another hotel, in a huge bathroom with a huge mirror. My cool new hip action is coming along, but boleo refuses to leave the starting gate.

It’s a good thing you’re not a racehorse, I tell my boleo.

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2008: Mid-April

Most of the time you can tell what step is coming next, Grisha says.

Of course he can. He’s leading.

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2008: The following week

I’m still faking it, I say to Grisha.

I know, he says.

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2008: The following week

We are perplexed. I am also frustrated. I would like to start catching on.

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2008: Early May

I concentrate very hard on noodleizing my leg.

Don’t think about your leg, Grisha says. It comes from your hip.

I give up.

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My hipbone makes a handy shelf. He puts a hand there and pushes down on my hip at the same time he leads the boleo. My leg swishes up all by itself.

Wow!

I totally get it! Your hip is a hawk’s wing, on the air of the music. Why didn’t anyone say so in the first place?

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… that very night at the Merc

Wow! Tom says. You did the boleo! He falls away from me, grinning.

Me too. It was a big swishy one, and I did it for real! I don’t know how; it just happened.

You led it, I say.

He scoffs. That’s not the point.

I agree.

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2008: Denver Memorial Day Festival, Alternative Milonga

This is my favorite milonga of the year.

All the leads I dance with are out-of-towners or The Five. I let it all hang out, as the hippies used to say. Audrey Hepburn on a single, tastefully elegant toke.

Casually I toss off a couple boleos. Acutely self-conscious and resolutely not faking.

Groovy!

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2008: Post-Alternative Milonga, the drive home

Faking is a crutch. Enough is enough. No more arguing (though I know I am right!). Swallow the story, accept the dislogic.

If bumblebees can fly over the rainbow, why can’t I?

Boleo or bust!

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2008: Every Day for 2 weeks Following the Festival

Front and back, back and forth. Knees together. Cross in front. Use your hip. Don’t think about your leg. Don’t think about think your foot. Don’t think about the swish. Don’t think…

I am channeling Grisha and Nina and the guy in the video and Tom Stermitz and a half dozen helpful leads and Kari and God knows who else. Every day I stand in a doorway or up against a bookcase, swinging my leg from my hip. After a while, I don’t talk to myself, just watch my hip swing my leg around. After a while I don’t even watch, but stare at the wall, enjoying the feel of my hip as it swoops like a wild bird’s wing.

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2008: June 12

Yes, Grisha says, you are getting it some of the time.

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Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. (Rumi)