CONTINENTAL HUMOR: ONE TO TANGO

Who says you need two to tango? Sometimes a solo tango can be the right solution for the senior dormant lover you are. You have been alone for a while; you don’t know where to start. Tango is your solution; you begin alone, you will end in a couple. All you need is a video or a book showing the steps and a good collection of CD. There where a partner should stand, you acknowledge the void, embracing the air. Dance! Tango will work its own magic. One step, one step, and one step, one step in a four beat, and you are done with rhythm. Walk behind, then again, walk behind, then again, walk behind, turn to the right, then to the left, and start all over again while Osvaldo Fresedo and his Orchestra play “Tinta Roja” that is to say, “red ink.” Tangoes are written with the color of passion and if you feel your body has been sleeping for too long, awake it! You are a song away of being reborn as a lover.

Who says age makes of us sleepy grand parents with no lust or interest in sex? We may feel discouraged, rather, as some teen agers do, because we don’t have a companion with whom to share the rest of our unlived passion. We are widows, widowers, or divorced and we doubt we will find at sixty, seventy, eighty or ninety, someone to share our dreams of naked togetherness. More on the tender side than on the aggressive approach, we shy at the time of confronting a possible partner. Tango eases everything and whether you practice it on your own before getting to the ball room or you are decided to engage in a tango lesson’s group, you will discover that the sensuous music and the calculated choreography have been created to allow a whole sensorial awakening. Emotional and sexual cobwebs are magically brushed away by the languishing though steep rhythm, and legs, hips and spine are sent into an unforgettable trip. Practicing tango on your own, surrendering to the music will get you there where you want: to the arms of who has been waiting you for a long time, dancing in the dark, as you do. Solo players are doomed to meet.

Tango is not an easy dance, but its difficulty is made out from the same walls people face at the time of being bodily connected. It’s true that in the classical tango the man leads and the woman is led, as in a macho sex game, where the woman is a chosen object to please and to get pleasure from. However, the primitive tango was a two men dance, and not at all a homosexual dance, but, once again, a macho dance where the body skills to interconnect were tried between men at a time women were not as easy available for such a trade. A solo tango is then the supreme nirvana of consciousness about how far our body may go if we let it follow the music. It goes as far as it can, because of the power of the music and the strict choreography where the torso remains quiet while the hips, the legs and the lower part of the spine do the job. Never mind if you have slow or clumsy feet, they will follow the pulse of your lower chakra. As always, sex commands.

Not only Osvaldo Fresedo climaxes to magic, also Anibal Troilo and his incredible “bandoneón” –that sort of small accordion which gives tango its unforgettable sound- or the bright Orchestra of Mariano Mores – tango’s Glen Miller’s equivalent- can make you peak to glory. There is a musical treasure to discover in the orchestras of the 40’s and 50’s and exploring it can give you an additional reward if you enjoy the refined quality of an achieved national rhythm. Dance! Dare! Tango is the only dance in which being one calls for two and succeeds in the appeal.

After your solo dance is over, not because your passion is exhausted but because you just want to get a rest, you can relay on Astor Piazzolla and his romantic tango with touches of classical Vivaldi. He has recorded the four seasons as lived in the most bewitched southern city. Try his “Verano Porteño,” the port of Buenos Aires' summer. You cannot dance under his spell, but your soul will. Then, you will reach perfection: a soul mate might be on his way.