It takes two...?

Year two of TangoSutra was, despite my apprehensions, almost entirely undisappointing.

Sure, I was secretly hoping my favorite dance partner of 2008 would appear and atone for his grievous error of brushing me off post-weekend, but I found a new favorite dance partner, or 3, instead, which inspired me to spend exactly twice as much time dancing as sleeping in a 3-day period.

There is a certain je ne sais quoi about Argentine tango which makes describing it to the uninitiated a bit like describing Dali's The Last Supper to a blind person. "For those who understand, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible." I don't know who said that or what they were originally describing, but I have an affinity for hobbies that can be described thusly.

And yet, in my brain always a budding authoress, I must make some attempt to convey at least a piece of the puzzle that is tango, because it ultimately leads to a story, or stories, about single serving friends, and this blog is about them.

I love tango at least as much as I love commas; I suppose I could live without both but I sure wouldn't want to. Tango is always surprising, which does not always mean unsettling (but sometimes it's that too). Every dance is a fingerprint, or a snowflake, or whatever other cliché indicating absolute uniqueness you like, because it is the culmination of an infinite number of variables: the song, the partner, the location, the floor, the other dancers, the mood, the shoes, the temperature, the time, the chemistry...

Some factors have more influence than others, but all these factors blend together to create a piece of art for 5 minutes or 5 songs. Sometimes it's awkward pre-school finger-painting, sometimes it's divine Sistine-Chapel-ceiling masterpiece, and sometimes it's gaudy fabric-wrapped-building-ala-Christo-esque fraudulence, but it is always art.

Every leader has his own lens through which he interprets the music and the scene and communicates that vision to his follower, and every follower has her own lens through which she receives the communique and acts accordingly. In that way, it really does take two to tango. Significantly, the conversation that takes place during a tango isn't one of words, or eyes, or gestures (not if it's done right), but one of energy, essence, aura... yes, chemistry. I can usually get a fair sense of a guy's character and personality as soon as we've danced a song. There are those who are fun to dance with but absolute drama off the dance floor. Or maybe they are self-centered, generous, pretentious, sarcastic, shy, passionate, genuine, playful, outgoing, sensitive, intellectual... there are all kinds.

The part where the theme of this blog comes in is this recurring phenomenon I've recognized when people walk off the dance floor at a milonga. The nature of tango lends itself to quickly-formed, passionate, and very intimate connections - people jokingly (or not so jokingly) refer to Argentine tango as sex on a dance floor - and much to my dismay, a shockingly large number of tango dancers seem incapable of distinguishing between dance-floor chemistry and the rest of life. I'm not afraid to admit that I have been one of those fools. I understand why it happens, but it remains a frustrating reality that time and again perfectly great dance partnerships have been destroyed by the expectation that it's more than just that - a dance partnership. If we dance well together that does not obligate me to laugh at your jokes or sleep with you or be your girlfriend, and it doesn't give you the right to be jealous or possessive. It kills me how many guys I've met in tango make such assumptions, when really they are just single serving friends.

That being said, this weekend uncovered for me three dance partners whom I sincerely hope will not be relegated to the single-serving-friend shelf, and two whom I wish I could put back there. But those three - completely distinct from one another in personality and dance style - do have potential for more. At the very least, I can count on them to ask me to dance the next time I see them, and perhaps we'll become great friends in the rest of life as well. If only misguided assumptions wouldn't get in the way, if only they remember that it always takes two.