By Deirdre Guthrie
A tragic-looking creature dressed with Amish severity, a long brown braid streaked with gray hanging somberly down her back, ochos demurely, scissoring in a series of tight kicks with an almost invisible lick of pleasure on her lips, while her partner, despite being nearly two heads shorter, anchors her with his firm stance. Beside them a haughty woman brushes one fishnet-stockinged leg across the floor in a slow semicircle before abruptly hiking a spiked heel to her thigh and leaning into her partner, who appears a bit bland in comparison, as the bandoneons swell to a close.
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“It’s positively dangerous out there tonight,” says a woman, fanning herself with a Japanese paper fan, gold earrings like pieces of sculpture weighing down her earlobes. Her partner nods and remarks that the floor has exceeded its dancing capacity–it’s now an arena more suitable for bumper cars.
“Tango should be accessible,” says Bob Hall, an interior decorator who studied ballroom dance previously and has been tangoing for five years. “It’s seen at weddings, among old people and little kids.
We’re upstairs at the 720 and I’m wobbling in black lace-ups with an ambitious heel for someone who spent the better part of her debutante years in combat boots. Despite my determination, I’m finding it excruciatingly difficult to hover without anticipating Tom’s next move. My foot itches to step backward but no, I’m suspended, leaning forward with one foot crossed behind the other, waiting…
In tango, the woman’s skill as a follower is as important as the man’s ability to provide a strong but subtle lead. Each partner offers me new suggestions. “Remain calm, be patient,” Hall whispers gently, sensing my frustration as he scuffs my slow-moving heel. “We’re just walking.”
As a teenager in Michigan, Tom would search the radio, sampling old Latin rumbas, or squat in the weeds outside a black piano bar called “Busties” and listen to the strictly forbidden “whorehouse blues.” But the moonlight tango of Flying Down to Rio never left him.
