A Connection

Because I was meeting an out-of-town friend, I went to my regular milonga straight from work, with just a pause for food. I got off the Tube train and realised I was early.

Rather than sit in a cold room all dolled up at the milonga, I sat down on the platform seat for a minute to finish watching a video in my ipod - it happened to be the one below.

A young lady sat down next to me and politely attracted my attention. What sort of dancing was that? Was it Argentinian tango? It's a milonga, but, yes, yes it is. She had had her first tango lesson this week. Oh, who were the teachers? She didn't remember their names - what did they look like? Er, quite small ... didn't recognise their description, but she thought they did a lot of ballroom as well. Well, what had she been taught? To focus here and walk backwards with the feet brushing. She never walked forwards at all, not like in this. Well, it sounded OK for a first lesson, she hadn't been taught anything bad, even if they were ballroom. That video looked wonderful. Really wonderful. They hadn't done anything like that, not even walked forwards once. Well, you have to work at tango, you start simple and then go on. Could I do that? Yes. I can. I had some more in here, here was another one. I have people in my ipod ... Oh, her hand in this second video was different. In the lesson it was like this, and were told to give a bit of resistance with this arm, for the turns. Oh, there is a lot of variation in how people do it, don't worry about it. There really are a lot of differences, it's not too important. In this one they don't need to do that because she's getting all the information, here. Can you dance tango and not be in contact? You can, people do, in my opinion there's not much point. Who are these ... and these other two? She would try to remember their names. But the lesson was such a nice experience. It felt like ... as though you fancied them, but not actually. It's not surprising straight men like it, is it! Yes, that's one of the best bits, you get to do this and it's so much fun you feel like you should get arrested, and then nothing bad happens. Actually, I have a video in here of two men dancing together as well. If you like that feeling, totally stick with it. I was going out dancing now, she could come with me, if she liked. She couldn't, she was meeting her sister. But one day. Definitely.

We didn't ask each other names - in my tango frame of mind, it just didn't occur to me. But if it was you, drop me a line, address top right. Here is the video, and here is another that I really like.