While I was packing up my things to return home for Thanksgiving Vacation, I came across my tango shoes. Still wrapped in the five cent plastic bags I bought at the grocery store in Argentina, I could see their fake gemstones sparkling and their too-tall heels poking through.
I've never written about how I ended up in Tango class in Buenos Aires-- I desperately needed an Arts and Humanities General Education class, and my Spanish Advisor suggested that I could maybe stretch and get a tango class to count. After some paperwork and creative syllabus translation, I enrolled in what IU calls "Argentine Rhythms and Dance." The course offered in Argentina was just for exchange students and was half dance and half theory and history of tango.
I was apprehensive about this class. I went to a tango class in August, and the instructor told me to relax, loosen up, and not be so awkward several times during the one-hour lesson. (This is especially impressive because there were 25 people in the class.) The tango is also a passionate, expressive, and warm dance, and Americans by nature are not. I have no rhythm nor ability to dance in an organized way, but I was up for the challenge.
The first order of business was to get tango shoes. I don't own heels for going out in the evenings, so I had to buy myself a pair in Buenos Aires. However, I have incredibly large feet even for U.S. standards, so I knew this would be a challenge. I went around to all the stores in and around the mall near my apartment, and no one had anything in my size. I ended up asking Delfi, my host, and she recommended that I try a transvestite store. Thankfully, on my way to that kind of store, I came across another place that had one pair of shoes in my size. I remember hugging the salesperson with excitement and relief.
The class itself was one of my more memorable academic experiences Tango is the combination of musical traditions, cultural practices, and linguistic elements of the gauchos (Argentine cowboys), immigrants from Europe, and African slaves brought to the region. Every tango is a history lesson and a case study in the evolution of dance and social relations in Argentina. For our class, we took field trips to see a musical about a tango singer who falls on hard times, the national tango museum, and even to a milonga (used here as a place where one goes to dance the tango). I liked getting to be involved in the tango culture and to learn firsthand how the dance evolved.
My tango class. The man and the woman in the middle in the black are our professors. Because John was the only male student, we all had to learn both the lead and following parts of tango.
And the dance itself... tango is more like a dance framework. There are certain moves that can be done in any order, arranging and rearranging with the music and mood of the dancers. The relationship between the partners is important. If the person dancing the lead part knows what he/she is doing, tango is easy. The lead partner's hand movements physically keep the other person from going in the wrong direction. This doesn't mean there aren't risks to tango-- you have to watch out for heels flying in the air, crashing into other pairs, and hitting your partner with any part of your body.
At the end of the semester, I still had a lot of room for improvement. I went to a tango dance night with a few of my friends, and to my horror there was a free dance portion of the evening. An older gentleman named Marcelo asked me to dance. I hadn't worn my tango shoes for fear of towering over everyone at the event (I'm over six feet tall in those shoes). I was explaining this to Marcelo, who replied, "Well, it's a good thing you're not wearing them, because then it'd be like dancing with Michael Jordan!" My class really got a kick (pun intended) out of that anecdote.