When we reached the port town of Ushuaia a while back, two professional dancers from Buenos Aires tangoed up the gangplank and boarded our ship to teach all of us walking two-by-fours the art of the Tango. We've had enough classes now to know the mechanics of the dance and can actually do a tricky sashay called an 'ocho' both backwards and forwards as well as other fairly impressive moves. However, being armed with knowledge doth not a dancer make. I would love to have a movie of our classes. The same steadfast little group showed up day after day and grabbed onto each other and got the hang of it. Now, it wasn't pretty--and some of us looked remarkably similar to tree trunks--but; we were dancing. And sweating and swearing under our breath. When the gorgeous professional couple, Cecilia and Mattias would dance, it was mesmerizing. We all had visions of ourselves in a sleazy backstreet bar dressed in black sequins and getting whipped around and lead by a gaucho. And the men all had a distinctly macho attitude at class end. Hysterical. Apparently gauchos wore chaps that had hardened from the foam and sweat of the horses they worked with. Hence they walked with their knees flexed. They would take off to the local clubs and ask the poor girls to dance. Since the gauchos hadn't showered, the ladies would dance in the crook of the man's right arm holding her head back. How tempting! Her right hand would be held low on his left hip, close to his pocket, looking for payment for dancing with him. The nasty couple would then dance around the barroom in tight little circles in between the round tables trying not to spill the drinks, thus avoiding a major brawl.
No wonder the tango gets a bad rap. Sleazy, sexy, fraught with crime and very enticing indeed!! My kind of dance!! So now that we just arrived in Buenos Aires, we're off to a big Tango show in an hour to watch the major leaguers go for it. I'll spare everyone and stay off the dance floor.
For now.
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