Great Moments in Tango Teaching: Corina, Part II

In my church, we call the disabled “differently abled.”

This is--let’s say it--stupid.

Sibling Five-of-Six’s legs have been disabled. She has not been gifted with a different ability to make up the loss. When she fell in an icy parking lot last fall, she did not find herself differently abled. She found herself stuck.

I, on the other hand, am differently abled.

I can write like a fiend. Can you? We are differently abled.

Five-of-Six can reach girls whose minds are so messed up they wish they were dead. In this way she is differently abled.

You can <<>> like nobody’s business. You are differently abled.

Some teachers are differently abled. Corina is one. I have resisted singing her praises too loud, lest I offend.

I have written circles around this. Rond de jambs. Turnabouts. Crop circles. Orbits. At the center of it all, the nut: Some teachers have a gift. What is its nature? I don’t know.

How is it that Corina, stopping me after a half-step, could say, You are having these troubles in tango, and here are the reasons why … and trace it not to a mistaken application of technique but to the way my body skews standard technique … and advise me on what to be aware of in my body so when I listen to teachers, I can alter their instructions to sit well on me. And how is it that she tapped into the whole discorporeal bit?

I think Corina has intuition and a gift to see the world in the certain way. When a person has a gift, that’s not something added onto their being. It is their being. They are not differently abled, they are differently existentialed.

Corina is a dancer and so she receives the world as movement and space and rhythm and relations and who knows what else. But she also has intuition, radar of the heart.

I think what makes Corina an exceptional teacher, what allows her to put her finger on everything all at once, with so little visible evidence, is that she senses and receives in the artists’ way—before or beside seeing and analyzing as teachers do.

In the fable The Little Prince, the title character says, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Like I said, I don’t know. I’m making all of this up. Based on my own experience, which is not necessarily relevant to her. Maybe they teach this in BA tango-teacher courses. Maybe she was just guessing.

I am not writing any more circles around this.

My private lesson with Corina was a Great Moment in Tango Teaching because it was art. If I am not enough of a writer to express it, so be it.

Great Moments in Tango Teaching: Corina de la Rosa

We must do different things to achieve the same tango posture, because we are starting from different natural stances, Corina says.

This is a truth so obvious I want to slap my palm to my forehead.

At a glance Corina sizes up my stance: my shape and how I hold myself, where on the span of my arch my weight sits, how high my center floats, how my joints stack and lean like a house of cards.

Each bit and piece is part of the whole; every adjustment evokes ripple effects, she explains, though she doesn’t use that language. She uses the language of tango: relations.

The toe-bone is connected to the breast-bone to the thigh-bone to the finger-bone to the brain-bone to the heart. You are the sum of your relations.

But, Corina says,

One Heart, you are not connected to your body at all.

That's true. Body would be part of that whole corporeal gig, which I have sort of given up.

Listen, Corina says…

She reads the story of my body to me. Then she alters the story, one word at a time.

This is not tango, not yet. Nor is it body mechanics. This is introductions. Rapprochement.

Curious. Like easing back into the lake after a winter away. Saying hello to a stranger you sense you have known before.

Um...

Enchante, I say to my body.

Enchante, my body replies.

OK. Good! Good enough. You don't throw yourself at a stranger, even one you have known before.

Now Corina brings forward the tango. She tosses it into the air. It floats and settles like her blue silk dress.* With her words, she fits it to me.

I have understood tango as hard-molded plastic, I have contorted myself to conform to its contours.

Is this right? Is this right? I ask Corina.

When you are connected to your body, you will feel when it is right and you won’t have to ask, she says.


*Comitango video, 2000.

How We Learn How to Learn, Part II

“You can’t swim,” the camp director says.

Apparently, she hasn’t heard. I’m a little legend, a regular mermaid. (Read that story: go to October 11.)

“You’re out of breath,” she says.

I am. I have just completed a quarter mile of front crawl.

“You’re afraid of the water,” she says.

Excuse me?

I have earned every Red Cross swimming card this summer camp has to offer, including junior lifesaving and advanced survival. Thanks to the latter, I can jump off an aircraft carrier without breaking my nose. Surface through a burning oil slick and swim through the flames. Remove my jeans underwater and turn them into a life preserver as deftly as a clown can turn a balloon into a dachshund. Cross a deep, fast river without getting my gun or ammo (i.e., broom and backpack) wet.

Now I am taking the entrance exam for the capstone course: senior lifesaving. I am 16. Becoming a lifeguard would upgrade me from Kitchen Girl. I like working in the kitchen, but there is something more important to consider.

There are two kinds of Cool Counselors in camp: those who play guitar and those who work the waterfront. Only one person does both: Finnegan. She is the Coolest.

I already play guitar.

The only thing standing between me and double-whammy coolness is the camp director. She lets me finish the exam before delivering the news:

You can’t swim. You’re afraid of the water.

You have good form, the camp director says, but you’re uncomfortable with it.

How can she say that? It’s true, but how can she tell?

When I do the front crawl, I can’t get a full breath. There’s not enough time. I can swim that way for quite a long distance, but I always feel like I’m drowning. Still, I have good form. So how can she tell what I’m feeling?

My body insists on moving to its own rhythm, at its own pace, she says. The intrinsic rhythm of the front crawl is quick and steady. Most swimmers conform to the rhythm of the stroke. Because my body resists, the front crawl is always a battle.

I have not been taught badly, she adds. Red Cross instructors teach the stroke as they learned it. That’s what they know, and it works for most people.

The problem is that teachers teach from their own experience--but their experience may not be your best teacher.

The standard form will work for me, the camp director says, if I do it in a way that respects my natural rhythm. Instead of fitting myself to the stroke, fit the stroke to me.

Now when I swim, I always do the front crawl. It enhances the meditative mood that swimming creates in me. I inhale on a long, slow eight-count while my left arm saunters through its orbit, exhale on ten or twelve or sixteen counts while my right arm powers through. My legs lackadaisically flutter to no particular beat. I am the slowest swimmer I know, but I can do this meditative front crawl forever.

Walk, Corina says

Walk, Corina says.

OK, I say.

Corina smiles. She is encouraging me.

I smile back. I am encouraging myself.

I slide one foot forward.

She shakes her head.

Mind you, I have not actually shifted my weight. Officially, I have not taken a single step.

Corina comes to stand beside me.

Stand, she says.

I have recently learned that I have terrible posture. Carefully, I arrange myself. I feel like a duck.

Stand natural, Corina says.

I stand upright.

She lifts her smock. Look how I stand, she says. Look how you stand.

I thought that we were standing just the same, that we only look different because she is curvy and I am a stick.

No, she says.

This is how I naturally stand, she says. She has a lovely s-shape, solid and dainty.

See how you naturally stand? she says. I am upright, but still my hips rest more forward than hers, my shoulders more back. My S-shape is there, but it is flatter than hers.

When I walk forward, I shift like this, Corina says. Sinuously, her S-shape changes. When I walk back, I don’t shift so much, because my relation (she means chest to hips to feet) is already there, she says.

Corina continues: When you walk forward, One Heart, you must shift differently than me, because you are in different relation. When you walk back, you need to shift even more. She demonstrates, and I copy her. Now her S-shape is exaggerated, but my S-shape is just right.

I look right. But I still feel like a duck. We move on.

What about lifting my energy, drawing it up from my center? I ask. Teachers often tell women to do that.

Not for you, Corina says. You are already too up. Draw down.

We must do different things to achieve the same posture, because we are starting from different natural stances, she says.

My heart perks up its ears.

Last May when I left my lesson with Corina, I felt quintessentially inadequate. Are there some people who are just so wrong they can never make it right? I wondered.

You have to be careful with a question like that lest it spread like a puddle in rain. Your reason must build a dike around your heart, or soon you will be doubting your Self. But reason is not always stronger than the heart’s attraction to the dangerous stranger. Then what?

Reason can be buttressed by evidence.

Corina stands next to me, her S-shape and mine.

I see.

My soul smiles. This I can work with.

Julio and the Secret Handshake

.
“I’m nervous,” Andrey says.

This is how he greets me moments before our first class with Julio and Corina.

“No,” I remind him. “We are ready. Remember? You said it last Sunday. You said ‘We are ready!’”

He shrugs.

He leaves me no choice. I’ll have to be the confident one tonight.

* * *

Each of The Five has a reassuring move they make whenever I misstep badly. One moves his hand to my tense shoulder blades, which is cozy and much better than being ordered to “relax!” One says the F-word, to make me laugh. One holds me more securely because he knows my balance is the first thing to go. Glenlivet sails on, steady and calm; I think leads a step that gets me back on track, but he is so smooth I can’t be sure.

Andrey murmurs “Don’t worry” in a lighthearted voice. This disarms me.

Wednesday night, driving to the first lesson with Julio and Corina, I make a plan. Before the class begins, Andrey and I will tell each other, “Don’t worry.”

We will say it in just that lighthearted tone. It will be our secret handshake.

We don’t really need it. We are not worried. Andrey said it last Sunday: We are ready.

But now as class begins, Andrey says, "I'm nervous."

“Don’t worry,” I murmur.

* * *

"Dance!” Julio says.

Andrey squares his shoulders, looks right past me, over my shoulder. No grin. No secret handshake.

We walk around the floor. Julio stands in a corner, sizing up couples as they go by.

Andrey is a lead of great fortitude. His palm is damp, but he is walking right through me.

It’s quite lovely, actually. I forget we are being watched, close my eyes and enjoy the movement, until a murmur touches the edge of my reverie.

“Yes. Sir. Yes.”

Andrey does not respond. When the dance is over, I say, “Did you hear Julio when we danced by him? He said you’re doing well.”

“He was talking to us?” Andrey asks.

I am not sure. Grisha and Nina are dancing beside us. Perhaps that yes-ing was for Grisha, but I doubt it. He hardly needs to be told he can walk. And, anyway, does it matter? At this moment, Andrey needs the compliment more than Grisha does.

“He was talking to you,” I say.

* * *

By the end of the first class, Andrey has racked up four or five nods from Julio and Corina.

But now we are in the second class of the night. It’s a milonga class, and Julio and Corina have just demonstrated a tricky step that builds on a previous step that Andrey and I have not mastered.

Andrey is looking preoccupied and worried. He often looks like this when he is learning. One of the best things about learning with Andrey is watching the uncertainty morph into a grin when he gets the step right.

But he hasn’t got it right yet.

“Do it!” Julio shouts. As he brushes past us to turn on the music, he sees Andrey’s worried expression, says in a low, lighthearted voice:

“Don’t worry!”

We’re Ready, Andrey Says

Last Sunday afternoon at Patricia’s, Andrey and I have just had the best dance we’ve had in months.

This is the week of Julio and Corina. Andrey is going to be my partner for all of the classes.

I have spent summer and fall working like a dervish, trying to get the basic technique worked out. I think Andrey has had a hard-working summer, too. It seems that most of the times we dance, he is practicing something.

I am feeling good, satisfied that I have worked this dance into my bones as much as it will go.

Now I am letting it all go, dancing for pleasure.

I think Andrey is, too.

Sunday afternoon at Patricia’s, we’ve just had the best dance we’ve had in months. We are looking at one another with a little amazement.

Andrey smile comes on slowly, rises up to his eyes.

“We’re ready,” he says.

We are.

Corina and Julio Here. One Heart on Air.

That's what Mary Alice wrote on the calendar a month ago. She likes to keep track of the house's comings and goings.

There are too many classes for her to note all of my comings and goings. Instead she drew a fine purple line running straight through to Sunday.

That line has been running through my life since last spring.

* * *

Last spring, when Julio and Corina came, I was a wreck. Lousy balance. No technique. Shyness out of control. Insane hunger on a stomach that refused all offers of food …

This is an old story. Let’s just say there were many tears and many hot, soothing baths.

For a month after, I was a shipwreck. Think Titanic. Then I got tired of myself.

* * *

Six months in, six months out: The end of My Tango Year was well in sight.

A deadline! My life’s organizing principle.

I put the shy girl away. Gave the left brain the lead.

I am really good at strategic planning. Here’s my secret:

Focus.

If you had only six months to live, what would you do?

I would be kind every chance I get, and I would dance as beautifully as Corina de la Rosa.

I signed up for all of Nina’s follower’s classes. Joined the Grisha Groupies, traipsing from Blue Ice to Patricia’s house to the Mercury, wherever he was teaching.

You don’t have good posture, he said. Dancers should always have good posture in class, even when they are listening to the teacher talk. I started watching Glenlivet, started standing up straight.

By (foolish) choice, I found myself suddenly homeless. But there’s good news in that: Living like a vagabond frees up plenty of cash for tango!

I signed on for weekly private lessons with Grisha. When the follower’s classes ended, I signed on for privates with Nina, too.

I raided the Tango Colorado video library, watched Julio and Corina in performances and lessons.

Practiced like mad with all my inanimate partners: the piesafe, the Swiffer, the kitchen counter, one of Mary Alice’s shoes placed just so on the floor.

I worked like a dervish. Very determined. Loving it very much.

Finally it happened: One night in a private, Nina began to laugh wickedly, laughed and laughed as we swept around the floor.

“One Heart, you’ve got it, you’ve got it!” she whooped.

A few days later I went to my lesson with Grisha. (Heh-heh-heh. I am going to knock his socks off!)

Not so much.

He looked puzzled. He said I feel odd.

Inside my head I swore like a sailor. Inside my car on the drive home I cried.

Went into hiding. Avoided Blue Ice. Patricia’s. The Turn. The Merc.

Despaired.

How does a thing like this happen?

I can’t quit. There’s a challenge with a bright, pretty promise. I could never resist a challenge, nor a bright, pretty promise.

I am only despairing. This is no reason to quit. Weak-kneed and hopeless, I carry on.

.

.

.

Click!

.

.

.

Weak-kneed! Who knew?

Since the day it clicked, I have gone on a dancing binge. I am afraid if I don’t dance every single night, I will lose it.

The Rule of Five (the list of men I would dance with) went out the window. I have to keep trying out my dance on every body type, every size and shape and gender.

I rarely practice alone any more. My inanimate partners miss me. I miss The Man on the Wall.

* * *

Finally, it comes down to last Friday.

“Don’t try to impress them,” Grisha is saying. He is coaching me on the coming week. I am taking privates with both Julio and Corina, and seven classes.

As if.

More likely I will fall off a chair while putting on my shoes, as I did in my first private lesson.

Grisha talks a little bit more about what to expect, washing away the last bit of anxiety. I like to know what to expect.

During the last dance of the day, I give it one final grill. Am I doing this right?

Yes, he says.

Hips? Knees? Wings? Right? Right? Right?

It's OK, he says.

Well, then. That’s it. I'm prepared.

Now I turn it all off. Relax. Eat. Dance. Read a book.

Julio and Corina are coming.

I can feel myself growing lighter.

One Heart on air.

Why I Don't Lead

Last night I decided to go to the Avalon, the cool new tango venue in Boulder, just 40 miles north of Denver.

I left at 6:30. Drove on the highway called I-25 to Boulder, missed the exit, drove north quite a way, noticed something wasn't working, turned around, missed the exit to Boulder on the way back down, drove south several miles, turned around, headed back toward Boulder.

Saw the exit for Foothills Parkway/Table Mesa Drive.

I knew one of them had to be the right one. Somone told me they take Foothills Parkway to Table Mesa Drive.

I remember this is quite an easy drive. After you turn right on Foothills Parkway (or possibly Table Mesa Drive), you just keep going until you find the Avalon.

I took Foothills Parkway. There was no right turn, but I kept going.

I found Longmont, 20 miles east of Boulder. Turned around, found Boulder again.

Apparently missed an exit because Foothills Parkway suddenly transformed into the highway I-25, going back to Denver.

After 2.5 hours in the car ... I arrived at a different milonga, this one at the restaurant Little Europe, which is 15 minutes from my house.

The music was lovely, the company was fine, but it was not what I intended.

Best I don't lead, really.

Sorry.

Norman Mailer Does Tango

“Even processed paper still contains an ineluctable hint of the tenderness God put into his trees.” (Mailer, The Castle in the Forest)

A man who could write a sentence like that, who could place those words in the Devil's mouth, is a man who would tango naked.

Not undressed. Tango is not sex. It is revelation.

There is no such thing as safe revelation.

Mailer’s tango would be untamed. Entering his embrace, you would know you are crossing the line. You’re never safe with Mailer.

His tango would not be pretty; his ego has no respect for the bounds of musicality. No respect for your boundaries, either.

Mailer’s tango would be all visceral, all aggression and tenderness. He would charge, he would walk right through you. Gathering you to his breast, he would carry you as part of his heart.

He would not ask permission. He would not let you wriggle away.

Mailer had his own way of saying “namaste.” In his mouth, it didn’t mean “the sweetness in me recognizes the sweetness in you.” It delivered a blow, the greeting of one raging ego cherishing the same in another.

Aggression and tenderness. Ego and oneness. Tango.


P.S.
To NM: Sorry about the earlier entry, especially the bacon. Forgot you were Jewish. Had no idea the health you were in. Got carried away by the rhythm of my rant.

(I want to delete the old post now. It seems small-minded, not the lovely One Heart I’d like to present to the world. What would Mr. Mailer do?

“He never committed the ugliness of insinuating that he screwed up for art’s sake. He let the ugliness and the imprudence of his actions speak for themselves.” [NYT])

OK, it stays. Namaste, baby.

In Memory, Norman Mailer

In January of this year, The New York Times Book Review ran an article “Maestro of the Human Ego,” reviewing Norman Mailer’s last novel, The Castle in the Forest.

The reviewer took nearly four pages of tiny type to get to the book at hand; all that came before was big-picture analysis of the author’s beliefs and being, and how they evolved over 60 years to arrive at this grand work.

Readers wrote to complain. Who did the reviewer think he was, wasting their time on context?

But the reviewer knew this: The Castle in the Forest would be Mailer’s last major work. (His final book was already posthumous, prepared with the help of his literary executor.)

The review eulogized Mailer’s whole body of work, the only eulogy a writer needs. After a summer of near-homelessness, the article is still here in my briefcase, wrinkled and marked up and torn:

“Insofar as the forest represents natural goodness … ‘forest’ and ‘castle’ are, you might say, the two poles of Mailer’s work and life. The popular conception of Mailer sees only the former: unrestrained expression of impulses and instincts; sex as freedom; absolute candor as the ineluctable hint of God’s presence.

“But Mailer is also … a castle-builder, expert in the different paths along which people can wander and become lost in a forest without a castle, and yet trick themselves into thinking that they inhabit a resplendent fortress or chateau.”

* * *

Mailer is the next great American writer after Hemingway. You almost have to compare them.

Hemingway was a romantic. He fought in WWI, when the world still believed in regeneration through violence. He chronicled disillusioned romantics who were oriented always to what they had lost. In the end, he could not bear the disorientation, could not reorient himself to postmodernism. It’s no wonder he couldn’t survive the 1960s, a blessing he never survived to the ’70s.

Mailer fought in the war of Catch-22. The death of romanticism left a void. Mailer filled it with himself.

End of story? No. Only the beginning. Mailer’s tendency is to communion.

* * *

You shouldn’t reveal so much, Carleen tells me.

Why not? I ask.

She shrugs.

Mailer argues for me: You are never safer than in plain sight. Naked truth is power. Don’t let others usurp it. They are pretenders to your throne.

Own your ego. Reveal your Self. Say it all. Get naked in public, or don't go out in public at all.

* * *

The NYT reviewer says this:

“One way to take the measure of a writer is by considering the weight, quality and consistency of his obsessions. Mailer, from the beginning, has had a rage for what he calls ‘nakedness.’

“It is a passion for emptying his psyche onto the table in front of the reader, much as a person who has just been arrested will be ordered by the police to empty his pockets.”

And this:

“The overflowing force of Mailer’s egotism endows him with respect for the power and capacity of other people’s egos.”

Dropping Back to Move Ahead

Did you know that in Germany, memoir is sold in the fiction section of bookstores?

No wonder.

People writing 30 years after the fact aren't likely to give you the fact. For example:

1.
Thirty years after the fact, who remembers exactly what was said?

(Frank McCourt answers testily: Of course I remember exactly. If a conversation weren’t that important, I wouldn’t include it at all!)

2.
How can you be sure you are telling what really happened, and not your own interpretation clouded by sentimentality, face-saving, sibling rivalry, general cussedness, lousy coffee or the need to make sense of things from a 30-years-later perspective?

(Norman Mailer’s answer: *&!?^!

Oh wait. That’s Norman Mailer’s answer to everything. [Imagine him in his bathrobe and slippers, rat’s nest hair, bleary eyes—hung over if your imagination serves him up young, hacking his lungs out if you get the current picture. The maid comes in as she does every morning: “What do you want for breakfast?” Mailer replies: *&!?^! The maid brings him bacon and toast and coffee, as she does every day. Mailer falls upon it with gusto. “You’re welcome,” she drawls on her way back to the kitchen, where fresh fruit and croissants await her. “*&!?^!” Mailer barks. Bacon bits tumble into the scrubby brush he calls whiskers.]

That’s the short answer. Mailer gave his long answer in Armies of the Night.)

* * *

What if there was another way to write memoir?

What if you could write your memoir with the immediacy of a war correspondent?

What if you eliminated the possibility of retrospection and the imperative to make sense of things, to impose an order on experience so that the whole long arc of your life's story makes sense?

What if instead of starting inside your head (with the story you have told yourself about your experience for the past 30 years), you started outside your head (with your experience as it happens), and worked your way in?

What if you approached the writing in such a way that authenticity displaced literary construct?

What would all of that do to fact, memory, subjectivity? Would the memoir remain literature or become merely a diary?

This blog is my literary experiment: Memoir in the moment.

* * *

Life is a school of dolphins. If you want to write memoir, you have to be able to see the school for the fish.

All those arcs, rising and falling ...
… on one shared trajectory.

(Not to mention the tuna, which apparently lacks the cuddliness of dolphins. Save the dolphins! Can the tuna!
[Shane, is that you? Get out of my blog!])

Many story arcs, each independent, rising and falling not in concert, on a shared trajectory, with the occasional tuna. That’s life.

Memoir is not about life. It’s about trajectory.

* * *

How can you plot the trajectory while you are in it?

Here’s a proverb:
God helps those who help themselves.

This means:
Never trust life. Trust your ability to follow its lead.
The same goes for writing.
(And your tango partner.)

* * *

Tom Stermitz says tango is a Rorschach blot: everyone reads into it what they will.

From the second Shane asked me to join tango, I knew what my blot would be. Blots change their shape but never their nature.

Once you know your blot, you can pretty much see your dolphins. All those arcs. That trajectory. The nets.

* * *

Here’s what I’ve learned about writing memoir in the moment:

No matter how good your memory or ubiquitous your notes, you’re going to have to fill in some gaps.

Memoir is sleight of hand. I am a magician of literary technique, a master of strategic omission.

It's impossible to avoid the temptation to infuse experience with meaning. Or to mess with readers' heads.

A researcher should never become involved in her subject.

A writer can devise more distractions and avoidance mechanisms than you can imagine. News items. Photos. Poems. Riffs on Normal Mailer.

Eventually you empty your bag of tricks.

I am becoming visible. So are you. This is a slippery slope.

No wonder people don’t write memoir as it happens.

My neural pathways are becoming accustomed to the sensory input patterns of tango*

Something has happened.

People call me by name. I recognize their faces and ways.

I have become a fixture at the door of the Turn, taking money and greeting people. Every week, a certain lead walks out the door at the beginning of the community dance. He averts his face as if that renders him invisible. I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd, but in that moment I know him.

I eat even on days I have tango.

A tanguera whom I admire told me my dance is coming along.

Leads have begun to invite me to dance. I accept dances with those who attend the same classes I do ...

… and with one who doesn’t.

I can make my presence felt in the embrace.

The girlie-quotient is rising. Still, I never do faux, flash, skin. Except when I wear the biker-bitch cropped-and-zippered vest that Andrea insisted I buy, along with an earring made from a real saw blade. It’s a pretty cool outfit. What with the cigarette-leg pants and stilettos and all.

I wear it once a year, at the Denver festival alternative milonga, Well, yes, there are two festivals each year. So that’s twice.

And on Halloween.

But that’s all.

I make eye contact. Every few weeks I try the cabaceo.

I changed the time I work at the door of the Turn so I am free during the community dance. Normally I go home. Twice I followed The Man with the Averted Face outside. (I pretend I don’t see him; he pretends he doesn’t see me.) Once I joined in the dance.

I let some people do the tango greeting thing on me—hugs, cheek-kisses, whatever. Not everyone. Some.

I once kissed a lead on the cheek. Voluntarily.

I have gained five pounds.

I engage in social contact outside of tango venues: I send email. I returned a call from a classmate.

When I walk into a milonga, I look to see who is there.

I recognize shoes.


I am no longer around tango but of it.

I am becoming visible. So are you.

This is the prelude and the conclusion.

___________
(*The title is a quote from Data, Star Trek Generations. With a few changes. He didn't dance tango. Too bad.)

Less Ego, More Work

Have you given up the blog? Stan asks.

We are between dances, a time for chit-chat. But this is no idle question, not for me.

As a matter of fact, Stan and I don’t do chit-chat so much any more, not since he learned I write this blog. He wrote a note to the Tango Colorado listserv, I responded as One Heart, and he answered back: Who are you?

Uh-oh.

I don’t tell. When asked I keep quiet. I change the subject. If pressed I evade the truth. A few weeks ago someone pressed hard, and I lied.

Anonymity is at the core of this kind of writing. All researchers struggle with the same constraint: The presence of the observer influences the outcome.

I learned this on the job. As an investigative reporter I infiltrated an Ozark hillbilly religious revival. My colleague infiltrated the local KKK. (He got the plum assignment, but mine was the more dangerous one: If he screwed up, he got tossed on the bonfire; if I screwed up, I burned in Hell.)

Anonymity allowed us to get our scoops. If people know you’re observing them, they act like the people they’d like to be rather than the people they are. In a word, they become self-conscious.

Clearly, it would be unwise to tell.

* * *

Nice story, if you can get someone to buy it.

In truth, I know better. It is not they who are self-conscious, it is I. I can’t do anything right when people are paying attention.

This works well for writing

... but presents a challenge for tango.

To solve it, I dance very light. This says to my partner: Carry on! Don’t mind me, I’m not really here.

When I was a beginner, my primary concern was to stay out of the way of my partner. My teachers reinforced this. They instructed the leads: “She is your puppet” and “Walk right through her.” They instructed the women, “Don’t think!” They said, “It’s always the fault of the lead,” allowing the follower no agency, not even in her own missteps. When you’re a beginning tanguera, it’s easy to feel like an accessory.

I don’t mind. I like being around things but not of them.

The beginning leads make it easy: They are the Henry Fords of tango, all about interchangeable parts. They have been told that I am their puppet. Absorbed in the assembly of their own dance, they notice me only when I snafu the line. They stop and tinker with me. Then we restart, but it is hard to get rolling again. Now they are aware of me, and I can’t do anything right.

Ah … see how that works? How, as truth circles close, we shift the focus to someone else? Surely my obsession with invisibility is the fault of … of course, how convenient! Like everything else, it’s the fault of the lead!

This shift of focus is a neat trick, especially useful to mystery writers. The more convincing the writer, the more fun for the reader-detective.

I am a lousy mystery writer; I cannot even fool myself.

* * *

I like dancing with beginners because they are so intent on their own dance they pay no attention to me. I like being a beginner for the same reason.

That said, there’s no time when it’s more important to be a perfect, interchangeable puppet-part than in a group class. The leads are struggling to learn the pattern of a new step and to communicate that pattern to the follower. They struggle to master the bare bones and then to give it panache. That’s a lot to assemble in a one-hour class. Especially when you are trading out puppets every two minutes. In this setting, the least I can do is be perfect. Do not snag his attention on missteps. Stay out of his way, be his puppet.

I like group classes for this reason. It is impossible to be so perfect as to be invisible, but it is a good challenge.

Private lessons are different.

Here I am solid and real. This is my time, for my dance. In the puppet-master’s workroom, the puppet gets worked over.

You think the teacher is the puppet-master, but don’t be so quick. I am of the family of Pinocchio—a puppet with ambition.

Whatever the teacher offers, I ask for more: more clarification, more retakes, more time to figure things out on my body, more technique, more cool moves, more retakes. When I am satisfied, we move on.

In private lessons, the teacher and I are a team; my body is the puppet we work on together.

I am both student and teacher. All eyes are on me, including my own.

When I am a student, I am a beginner again, so intent on my dance I pay no attention to me.

And thus become visible.

.

After the Labor Day Festival, I was twitchy and jittery and sure to slap any lead who got near me. As a service to the men of Tango Colorado, I avoided every class and gathering. Until the appointment for my private lesson with Grisha.

He’s an exceptional teacher. A dreamy lead. From all indications, a nice person. Surely he doesn’t deserve to be slapped.

I tell myself this as I drive across town, walk up the sidewalk, ring the bell.

Seconds away from a tango lesson, I’m poised to jump out of my skin.

What to do?

When the teens I work with are having a bad day, I set out a box and tell them to toss their junk in it. They can pick it up when they walk out the door. But while they’re with me, it stays in the box.

Grisha has a different solution.

He brings out new, tricky moves. He hammers away on technique. The person of me is put away. Grisha and I work over the puppet. We work its ass off. I am a beginner again, so intent on my own dance I pay no attention to me.

.

“In the end … your initial fear becomes a fake fear—just a manifestation of your ego. I didn’t want to waste my time asking myself, Will I be good or not good? I realized I just had to have less ego and do more work.”

--Marion Cotillard, on her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose

* * *

When Stan wrote, “Who are you?” I did not write back. I don’t tell.

But.

Stan first invited me to dance when I was a rank beginner, dressed in bulky layers and ratty shoes. Striving to be light. Incorporeal.

In his dance there were no surprises; no steps I couldn’t do well. Or if (more likely) there were, he never let on. Trusting his lead I could forget myself, forget him, lose myself in the dance.

I have a soft spot for the leads who danced well with me when I was awful. So the next time we danced, I told him, “I am One Heart Dancing.”

We finished the tanda. We chatted briefly. Nothing changed. Only the silence was broken.

(The flit of a butterfly’s wings in Buenos Aires affects the weather in Moscow.)

Since then, Stan occasionally mentions the blog, tells me what he thinks. He likes my writing. I like his thinking.

Now he is looking at me with a kindly, I’ve-been-around-the-block-a few-times-myself openness that elicits honesty—not the skirt-the-truth kind, but the come-clean kind. He is waiting for me to answer his question,

which, in case you have forgotten, is,

“Have you given up the blog?”

I have been asking myself the same question--and dodging the answer. I would like to dodge some more, but at this moment, face-to-face, I can’t serve up a flippant flapjack answer.

So I tell the truth: I’ve been overwhelmed. Not the “I’m busy” kind of overwhelmed but the “I want to go to bed and stay under the covers until the year 2010” kind.

* * *

And what is it that has been so overwhelming? Here it is, in the form of a series of thought experiments:

I think, therefore I am. (Descartes)
How do I know what I think until I see what I say? (e. e. cummings)

If I can’t do anything when people are watching
...how can I write when I know you are reading?

If I can’t write, how can I see what I say?
… and therefore know what I think?
… and therefore know who I am?
... or (yikes!)
... that I am?

And lest you think it’s all about me:
Who would you be without your story?

Oh hell, let’s dance.