Chacarera

Here’s how it starts:

Fast, tricky music. Then clapping. Then Daniel and his partner. She sways and skips. His feet fly. He follows the geometry of the rhythm. Who knew? I never imagined rhythm had geometry until I saw it in Daniel’s feet.

Chacarera is a flirtatious dance. The man shows off his fancy footwork to impress the girl, his partner.

The girl has it easy. She just has to raise her arms in a bowed way, as if she were carrying a huge basket filled with flowers, and skip around like a chorus girl in a B-grade American movie about Greece. If she is wearing a very full skirt she gets to play around with it--lift the edges and swish!, showing her knees.

How much fun is that?!

In two hours I am going to find out.

Since the announcement of the classes a month ago, I have been deciding not to go. I have to keep deciding not to go because I keep being tempted to try it.

I am not cut out for Chacarera. It is fast and vigorous, and fast and vigorous scares me. For no apparent reason, but still, one does not have to have reasons to feel fear.

Also, there’s the matter of rhythm. I have none. Whatsoever.

Hmm…

Tuesday night at the Turn Daniel and his partner performed. Last night at the Merc they invited dancers who know Chacarera to join them. Carla and Brian got out there. They had no idea what they were doing. They didn’t look foolish; they looked like they were trying something new.

Hmm…

Later, chatting with a lead, he said he wanted to take the class but had no partner.

Hmmm…?

I am going to stink at this. Really stink. My partner expects he will, too. That will make it easy for both of us.

Even better, we will be in a room full of people who get it … that you have to start somewhere, and some of us start pretty far back in the pack.

They deal with it in the same way that golfers do: give one another allowances, so everyone can play. In golf they call it a handicap; in Tango Colorado they don’t call it anything, it just goes with the territory.

It’s the blessing of Tango Colorado. Sometimes the community is described as a dysfunctional family, but that is not the whole truth. We are a family in this good way too: Even when we are yelling at one another, we preserve a sense that we are all in this together. We stink and then we get better in ways that encompass much more than dancing.

But for today, I only need the space and grace to really stink at this new kind of dancing. I will get both. Not only from the tango community, but from me, too. In the past year I’ve learned that, for all the slings and arrows, my harshest critic is me. But I can also be my biggest fan. When I started this essay I wasn't sure I could go through with the class after all. I’ve just spent the last hour writing myself a pep talk. Here’s the finale:

I am going to really stink at this today … and then I am going to get better. The dance of a thousand intricate steps begins with a single one, etc., etc.

I am enamored of freedom, and there is nothing more freeing than agreeing to let yourself be, really be, a beginner.

I am an Adventurer of the Moment!

The Adventurer must go get dressed. I’m wearing my blue dress. It’s casual and pretty, and the skirt goes Swish!