Repost: Tango Search: Farmington, NM January 2012

Today, I checked out the local college, San Juan College, for a spot to host a practica. It was closed when I got there so I went to a bar. It was a nice bar, very comfortable and beer was cheap because it was happy hour. I met a lawyer there, told him what I was doing and he also suggested the college. Thinking he might be privy to women who may be interested in tango, I gave him my card.

               This is a pretty big town, 50,000 people, so it is possible to get a tango community started but it all depends on me. First, I’ve got to find a place with a wood floor that is good for dancing. It has to be free, or close to it, because my budget is zero. 

                Second, I’ve got to find people who are interested in tango. There’s not a whole lot of Eastern Europeans here, so my hunt is going to be tough. Women from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, etc., I have found, have a greater propensity to pursue dance as a form of recreation. 

                One thing in my favor is the uniqueness of the area: located at the butt-hole of the Rocky Mountains and sandwiched in between three large Indian reservations with huge mineral deposits just waiting to be exploited, this area feels like smoke just before it becomes flames.

               Third, once I’ve found a place and the people, then I’ve got to teach them how to tango. 

               I danced with a woman in Albuquerque who wondered what I was doing there and where I was going. When I told her I was going to Farmington, she said there was no tango there.

               “Well,” I said, “I’ll just have to teach them then, won’t I?”

               She replied, coldly, with a certainty I found unsettling, “Good luck with that.”

               I went hiking today, training for a backpacking trip in Mesa Verde with my daughters. This place is incredible, lying at the juncture between the canyonlands of the Southwest, the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains. At 5300 feet above sea level, I found jogging and hiking with a pack much more arduous than it was back home, below 1000 feet in elevation. I found the challenge invigorating. I could easily forget I had ever danced tango and begin chasing a new activity but the words of the tanguera from Albuquerque haunted me. She seemed to know the area I was dealing with and had given up hope.

               She was very sure of herself. She knew she was a good dancer. She was sure tango could not grow in the town where I was headed. However, I didn’t know that. I found her technique lacking, her overconfidence an impediment.

               When I talked to the lawyer, I felt like saying tango is mostly danced by professional women but I knew that would not be true. Tangueras are unique and each one arrives by a different path. Armed with this knowledge, I am sure my task is not hopeless but it sure seems like it at this time.

Three-Legged Dog Dancing Tango

A woman recently told me that she read one of my books, Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure. It was an interesting exchange. We were at a milonga, dancing in the tango embrace, a place where I could easily decipher much more from her expression and body language than if we were conversing otherwise. I do not know what she expected to find by reading my book but I could tell she was a little disappointed. She was tactile in her choice of words, taking great care not to hurt my feelings lest I take offense and never dance with her again.

She needn’t have worried. I am always grateful for any feedback I can get because it is such a valuable tool to becoming a better writer. A face-to-face exchange tells me more than I ever could learn from a thousand online book reviews. That it was done while we were dancing tango, in between songs but still connected, made it that much more useful.

I know my word-craft is not the best but I feel that my book  is an honest insight into the life of a man learning how to dance tango. I suspect my honesty was a little too much for her comfort and she learned more about me than she really wanted to know.

This is a curious thing: readers are picky about what they want inside their head.

It is an author’s job to put together sentences in such a way that they flow off the page and into that space between your ears. Once the process has started it is difficult to turn it off and, once inside, it is not easy to get rid of the images they create.

It is much the same way in tango. The leader hears the music and translates it into cues for movement. It is an automatic process that happens without thinking. It is automatic as well for the follower who takes those cues and translates them into motion. She will not be happy if the leader’s cues make her appear awkward.

It was my intent, in writing this book, to say that I was a wounded animal, the broken daddy, and that tango cured me. I  guess I succeeded but now my friend can’t help picturing me as a three-legged dog or who-knows-what.

You may think I’m being negative but that is not my aim. What I am pointing out, I believe, is a key ingredient in what makes reading a book so satisfying. Coincidentally, it is also akin to what makes a tango dance register as a fond memory.

My friend helped me greatly in ways of which she was unaware. There are subtleties to the reading experience that are much like those of an enjoyable tango encounter. Maybe even more so, for the writer is in the reader’s mind and that is a much more intimate space to invade.

My books are available on Amazon and Kindle:

River Tango
Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure
A Beginner's Guide to Women
Revelations of Wiccans