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.

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.