My First Private Lesson, Part 4: Gancho!

I would never do a gancho. They look cheesy. And lethal. In the wrong hands (that is, on the wrong feet), stilettos could cripple a man.

I am the wrong feet.

I have no spatial awareness, no ability to calibrate expenditure of energy to desired effect.

Once I meant to kick a girl lightly with my knee, and she ended up in the nurse’s office.

Do you want to gancho with me?

Grisha is fearless.

He throws one in without warning. He explains the technique. We try a few more.

I am working very hard on not sending him to the nurse’s office.

He senses my hesitation and stops.

“I’m afraid I’m going to kick you in the butt!” I say. “Sorry,” I add. (One does not say butt in polite company.)

Grisha looks puzzled. “My butt is not there,” he replies.

I think I should know. I’m the one wrapping my leg around his. But I don’t correct him. I only make a face.

We move on.

At home, I am practicing. I decide to try a gancho on The Man on the Wall. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll learn to patch drywall.

We stand in an open embrace, allowing ourselves plenty of room.

Ready? I ask.

The Man on the Wall smiles trustingly. Fool.

I step, feel the pressure of Grisha’s thigh against mine. Shift my weight—gancho!

I freeze.

This is how I get a sense of where things are in the world. I freeze. I examine. I take my time. I have been known to get out a ruler and measure.

I examine my leg as it hangs in the air.

Ah. Now I see why Grisha said his butt is not in danger of my heel.

The foot-bone is connected to the ankle-bone.

Not the knee-bone.

Gancho-men, rest assured. Your butts are safe from my heels.

(But you might want to keep an eye on my knees.)

My First Private Lesson, Part 3

We dance a bit. Then Grisha pulls the chair out from under me.

“You’re off balance,” he says.

I thought I was pretty OK. Mostly.

“… because you’re falling backward,” he finishes.

I did not feel that at all! As he speaks, I review our dance in my head. Certainly not!

“…wings..” he is saying.

Ah. The wing thing.

Since my first follower’s class, Nina has been hammering away at my wings.

I have wings. I picked them up in Hawaii.

**************************************

Years ago, Michigan went to Hawaii. He wrote: This place is great! Come and see! I went. Soon, an emergency called him away. Soon my money ran out. I ate fruit hanging from the trees, littering the roadsides.

The sunlight was so thick with honey you could eat it. And it would sustain you.

Every day was once in a lifetime, thick with myth and jungle, volcanoes blowing and steaming, the whole cosmic ocean allowing to exist for this moment, this tiny, tiny island.

I failed to notice I was starving.

When I got home, I was a skeleton. Every time she walked by me, my grandmother would rub my shoulder blades.

“Angel wings,” she’d say.

She was senile, but she understood. I had been to paradise. I was a banished angel.

When I am old and lying on my back in a nursing home, staring at the ceiling, I will remember the taste of rose-apples found by the side of the road and will be transported to heaven.

So I have these wings. Skin and bone, souvenirs of the time I wasn’t quite of this world.

“…like this. Yes,” Grisha says, adjusting my arms.

Yes. I am lifting my wings.

My First Private Tango Lesson, Parts 1 and 2

My First Private Tango Lesson, Part 1

I start by telling Grisha I have no balance.

“I have never noticed that,” he says.

I am sitting on a barstool just off his living room/studio, putting on my tango shoes. I lean forward to fasten the buckle—and fall off the chair.

Thus begins my first private tango lesson.


**********************************************

What Price the Tango Smile?

My dentist hands me a tube of extra-heavy-duty bleaching agent. I am an extra-heavy-duty drinker of coffee and red wine.

“You’ll want to avoid those for a few days after using this stuff,” he says. “Your teeth are more susceptible to staining just after you bleach.”

No problem. For the sake of a beautiful tango smile, I can master the craving …

… for four hours.


*********************************************

My First Private Tango Lesson, Part 2

What would you like to work on today? Grisha asks, graciously ignoring the commotion. He squealed a little when the chair went over but quickly recovered.

Me too.

When you start your lesson by falling off a chair, you have pretty much gotten the worst out of the way, so can settle down and enjoy yourself.

My goal is simple: I want to take Julio and Corinna’s classes in three weeks and I don’t want to embarrass myself.

Not as a follower, anyway. Apparently I can’t control what happens re: chairs, tables, stairs.

That’s what I tell Grisha. But embarrassment is beside the point. The point is: I don’t want to get in the way of my partner’s learning. The men work hard in class. The least I can do is follow their lead.

Before I even get a chance to explain what I’m thinking, Grisha seconds it.

“The men will be working very hard,” he says. “They will be thinking ‘My foot goes here. Where’s her leg?’”

My job, according to Grisha, is to attend to my technique so the men can concentrate on learning each step.

When Grisha says this, I hear an echo of Chas. In class after class he drove the point home:

Followers don’t have to help.

As a matter of fact, we shouldn’t.

As a matter of fact, we shouldn’t even know that there is such a thing as helping.

As a matter of fact, we shouldn’t even acknowledge there’s a class going on.

Instead, we should attend to our role: being the best damn follower on the planet.

When I am practicing with Grisha I am not thinking of anything but technique and connecting and being the best damn follower on the planet.

But here in this quiet interval before the music starts, I think of Chas.

Tango in the Lion's Den

Every time I walk into tango, I am tempted to walk right back out. I’m anxious. I feel dread. Of what I don’t know. I only know this: In any situation, anything could happen.

I suppose there’s a name for it. I suppose there’s a drug. (One of my writer friends encourages me to try better living through chemistry. “I’m on ---,” she says. “I walk around thinking, ‘This is what normal is like!’ ”)

Lots of writers are jittery. It's the curse of the overactive imagination. The absurdly inventive graphic artist Robert Crumb has been described as a nervous hamster. William Styron used to write like a madman; he's written no decent fiction since he started on Prozac.

A coil must be tense before it can spring.

That said, reading old posts even I must wonder: What kind of nutjob deliberately walks into her own dark wood …

… four times a week?

There are people who skydive without checking their chutes.
There are people who step between a man’s fist and his wife.
There are people who bang hammers on nuclear warheads.
There are people who free climb, free dive, free love, freely speak up for the lost.

We are adventurers of the present.

I have never been able to pass up a lion’s den without sticking my head in.

Tango tonight, 7 p.m.

Dancing with Grisha, Part 3

Grisha is using women from the class to demonstrate steps as he teaches them. My turn.

Two songs are playing: the tango on the CD and the jingle in my head. Feel free to sing along. It’s quite catchy:

Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Soft knees, soft hips, chin up, oh!
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Axisaxis, get set, go!
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Stand up straighter, raise your wings.
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Be here now, don’t think about things.
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Don’t look down, but spare his toes.
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Mm-hm-mmm…nice cologne.
Don-- Oopsyikessorry!
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.
Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up. Don’t anticipate. Don’t mess up.

Dancing with Grisha, Part 2: Classmates Demo

Grisha, teaching on his own, is using the women of the class as his demo partners. It is fun to watch my classmates dance beautifully with him. They say they are nervous, but you can't tell.

a
A sashays as only A can. She is cocky and classy and oozes lighthearted, self-mocking grace. She’s a dancer, she’ll tell you. She’s performed ballet and tap and modern and who knows what else. Am I imagining that she said she twirled flaming batons en pointe on the back of a galloping pony suspended by ropes in the Circ de Soleil? I wouldn’t be surprised if she had.

b
Imagine Atlanta in sweltering July. A woman saunters. Her skin gives up a fine sweat. Her joints have melted, her whole body gone soft. She takes one step. ... Another. Lazy and loose and precise all at once. There is nowhere she’d rather be than here in this moment, in her own body, in sweltering July. She thinks of iced tea, of eating a peach. Replace the tea with tequila, and you have B.

c
C giggles. This has nothing to do with Grisha or being nervous. C giggles a lot. She enjoys herself immensely. When you are around her, you enjoy yourself, too. She knows who’s who and what’s what. She likes men and she knows how to keep them in line. She whirls through the demo with Grisha, laughs when she misses a step and kicks him in the shins.

Demos over. Now we dance, Grisha says.

Great Moments in Tango Teaching I: Roberta

There is one extra woman at the Blue Ice tonight. It is me. I am glad.

I am indulging a mood. My game face is slipping, and I don’t feel like dragging it back into place.

I am not staying home, though. I am here. I like to learn to dance. I like to work on the moves.

It’s just that tonight, I’d rather do it alone.

Roberta shouts hello every week as I walk into Blue Ice. She loves to see me. She loves to see everyone. She tosses out warm fuzzies as if she had an endless supply. I believe that she does. Love is like that.

Roberta loves it all. She loves the costumes. She is wearing an adorable outfit from BA. Cheerleader skirt, short and pleated, with a wide-striped sweater. Soon the sweater will come off and underneath will be some tiny top. Her shoes are tinier still, She is a little tiny doll in little tiny clothes.

A tiny dolly dynamo.

“Hey kids, let’s get started!” she says. She wriggles, stamps her feet in her tiny tiny shoes. They ring like jackhammers.

Roberta dances over to the CD player. Blip. Blip. Blip. Looking for something that strikes her just right.

The CD player is eager to please her. When it does, she says, "Thank you!" Flicks her feet, strikes a pose.

We stretch. We do Evil Hooks Behind. These are familiar warm-ups. They are like barre work in ballet: Warming up the body, shedding the day, bringing us into the moment.

But it’s not working for me. Not tonight.

I don’t want anything to do with anyone I don’t know. I don’t want anyone in my personal space. This would be a good night to do my own kind of bar work: ochos at the stand-up bar, turns around the stools. Sometimes an inanimate partner is the best kind.

Roberta tells us to take partners. If you’re in a class with extra women, she who hesitates is lost. I hesitate good and long.

Roberta sets the partners in motion. She comes over to me.

"What’s up?" she chirps.

"I don’t want to dance with a stranger tonight," I mumble.

She must think I am nuts. I’ve danced with these guys for six months. And … This is tango.

Roberta goes quiet. She nods like the mom that she is, hearing a child’s complaint.

“You’ll dance with me tonight,” she says matter-of-factly, taking me into her embrace.

She’s a good mom. She doesn’t tell me to snap out of it. She doesn’t laugh at the incongruity of a woman in tango who’d rather be alone.

Neither does she let me off the hook. She makes me work hard. She knows I like that.

Intermittently she leaves to coach the other dancers, to demonstrate a new step, change out the music. Every time we change partners, she comes back to me.

Shut up and dance, indeed.


Roberta