| About a week
before Tom went into hospital there was an article in the paper saying
men who dance are better lovers. Later on that day, he said to me, “We
should start dancing.” This from a man who was on a waiting list for
heart valve surgery! I laughed and said, “I read that article too. You
did just fine at Joe’s wedding. I think we danced better than we ever
have.” I remember, with pleasure, our bellies touching like the middle-aged
couple we never quite believed we had become.
Then, just
a few days later, outside a room I was sitting in, he lifted up his voice
and said, “I know what is going to happen. You are going to lose weight
and - ” He didn’t finish. I knew he was thinking about his death. What
was he going to say I wondered? (Someone told me it is probably good
he didn’t finish the sentence because it leaves the future open to me.)
During the
fifteen years Tom was declining in health, I had comforted myself with
food. And gained “heaps” (as we say in New Zealand) of weight. It wasn’t
his fault; it was the unhealthy way I coped. It was safer, I rationalized,
than worrying about being a widow with four small children and having to
cast my eyes around for someone new.
But those were
only fears and instead Tom was able to experience his most productive years
in the States, see our children grow up and us settled in New Zealand.
It
was a difficult marriage at times, but it was a marriage and the passion
for each other never left. As a good friend tells me, You made it. You
endured ‘til death parted you.
However, while
Tom was living, seeing me grow OUT had grieved him terribly. He was worried
about my health. The week he was on life support following his surgery,
I began losing weight. And it has continued. After I had lost about 30
pounds a friend told me it was time to go to the gym. It was time to
get toned, said - it would take a while, but I would begin to actually
feel muscle groups being worked one fine day. And so it has been.
But, at
the time I met Elizabeth, in the early stages of weight loss and before
the gym, I could not see myself doing the Tango.
So, how
did it happen?
One sunny winter
Sunday about three months ago, I drifted back into Lyttelton and down London
Street, noticing that the sign outside The Door announced it was Tango
Sunday, 3-5PM. It was 3PM. I drove the car up the hill to my house, parked
and walked right back down into town and through the doors into The Door.
I ordered
a decaf mocha (What else for someone not yet old enough to drink coffee?)
and tentatively made an entrance into a wooden-floored room cleared for
dancing. People sat on couches or in chairs on the edges of the room. I
pulled a small table over so there would be a place for my mocha when it
arrived and looked around. Over on the other side of the room were two
women who had arrived just ahead of me. I motioned for them to come and
join me at the little table. They did. Marjie and her friend were there
for the same reason I was: curiosity and, while we might not want to admit
it, loneliness.
What did we
see? Couples moving in a counter-clockwise movement around the room, some
in embraces closer than others. No chatter. Intense expressions. In between
dances some couples would stand and wait for another song. Others when
a song ended would say Thank You to each other and return to their seats.
No one seemed offended. No one seemed a wall flower. Chatter was for
the seated. Congenial. It seemed perfectly fine for us to be there. Smiles
welcomed us.
What did
we hear? The beautiful music of Tango, communicated in a variety of beats:
thumping and throbbing, feet almost stomping to faster tempos; sweeping
and plaintive, precise and calculating in slower ones; instruments and
bodies at once on the offense, now the defense. Without drums. Piano. Violins.
What sounded like an accordion. A few bird calls. Intensely human.
What did I
feel? I felt like I was ready for lessons. Marjie was too. She and I have
been Tango friends ever since. Tango lessons are given all over the city
of Christchurch on many nights of the week. Once you start going to
the lessons and people know you know the basics, you will always have someone
to dance with, male or female.
For $10 Marjie
and I get an hour of instruction from Aki, a beautiful young architect
from Turkey, whose body seems made for Tango and Rima, a graceful and elegant
Kiwi photographer. The lessons are upstairs in a unique blue building
on a corner of Tuam Street near the Polytech and across from a McDonald’s.
They are also given at the Deaf Society on Armagh Street.
What have
I learned? Much more than how to Tango.
At its roots,
the Tango (http://www.todotango.com/english/main.html
, http://nfo.net/usa/tango.html
) is the dance of immigrants, for those who are strangers in a strange
land, alienated, lost and lonely.
No wonder there is an international revival of the dance happening! The
intensity of the dance comes from this connection with the music and our
personal experience.
I have found
the society of Tango - and, yes, there is a society - to be a safe place
socially. It is that way in Christchurch and from websites I have explored
it seems to be that way around the world. There is an etiquette to be learned
(http://www.inscenes.com/etiquette.htm)
and a learning curve.
Most thrilling
of all for me, initially, was learning about being a partner in a male
and female relationship. While you will see females dancing with females,
and sometimes when lessons are given males will take the female part just
to know how it feels to be in that situation, the tango is a dance of
life best portrayed by males and females as partners.
This year
of loss has involved thoughts of what might have been, how I could have
been a better marriage partner…but, it takes two to Tango!
In Tango it
is the man who leads, basically walking in a forward motion around the
room. He is the one who looks ahead, keeping watch for the danger of colliding
with other bodies. The female walks backwards, in trust. She must keep
her chest—or heart—oriented to his. What is the danger if she doesn’t?
She will lose her balance. And no one wants to fall over on the dance floor.
Balance. Working together. Having a vision of the way it’s supposed to
be.
Some of Tom’s
and my best friends over the years was a circus couple, Tino and Olinka
Wallenda-Zoppe. Tino is the grandson of Karl Wallenda(http://www.freep.com/news/local/qfly4.htm).
One
of their high wire acts involved Tino riding on a bicycle from one side
of the arena to the other. One of his daughters stood on his shoulders
while his wife hung below from a trapeze attached to the bicycle!
Tino would
pedal slowly out to the middle of the wire and stop, the daughter on his
shoulders, the wife seated on the trapeze below. Then the wife would begin
to move. She would turn herself upside down on the trapeze, position herself
on her head, spread eagle her legs and there they would be for all the
world to see. (I have seen them do this rain or shine, day and night.)
At that point, Tino would give a humorous little talk about how what we
saw above our heads was like marriage and family life. Balance. Working
together. Getting and communicating the picture.
The etiquette
of Tango has been problematic for me. It is so accepting and forgiving.
The fact that everyone was once a beginner is very real. Once after a lesson,
during the social time following, I was dancing with Aki, my teacher.
I light-heartedly mentioned one man who had been described as a “rude dancer”
because of the jerky way he moved his partners. I didn’t think I was being
negative, but she said, Well, we just forgive them, don’t we? So gracious.
Tango society
is not one of judgement. It is not always that way in life or in our hearts,
but it is the way it should be. How easy it is to judge each other or get
into requiring perfection, comparing. It is not polite in Tango society.
We were all once beginners. The pain of life should help to temper any
tendency to judgement. This is at the heart of Tango.
Last month
I went to my first Milonga at the Kaiapoi Working Men’s Club, about 45
minutes outside of Christchurch. Marjie and I were like a couple of teens
getting ready for a prom. A free lesson for beginners was given in the
first hour. Alberto and Natalia, Argentineans, who now live in Melbourne,
taught us the Ocho, the Sandwich and other basics. We were given instructions
and practiced the steps in a circle with one partner. A song was played
and we moved from one partner to another to practice the steps.
The variety
is good. You learn from everyone. As we do in life.
People came
from as far away as Timaru, Ashburton and the West Coast. I got my picture
in the paper. The reporter, who wrote the article, mistakenly thought we
were all there in a strange kind of speed dating exercise. Not so. The
Tango takes so much concentration and discipline that, despite how it may
appear, thoughts of “making whoopee” could only happen in dreams!
And guess who
was there? Elizabeth! I didn’t seek her out because I wasn’t sure it was
her, but when I went to The Door on Sunday, I knew it was. I could see
she was a good partner to dance with. Bold, too. If she wanted to dance
with someone, she didn’t wait to be asked. Her choices were happy to dance
with her, young or old. Another year and she has set the bar high!
What do I see
week after week? What do I see when I watch the dancers weave around a
room? It is the dance of life passing me. It is a dance for the young and
the old. Grandparents glide. Years of familiarity with each others bodies
lends them a particular intimacy. Their grandson plays at my feet while
Nana and Poppa embrace. It’s good.
There on
an outer edge of the circle, a couple expertly twists and turns - she’s
Argentinean, on the tips of her toes in the softest of shoes. He’s a Kiwi.
What is their story, I wonder?
Two sisters
who share a home and the husband of one as their practice partner - they
have been tango-ing just over a year - show the expertise that comes from
constant practice.
A tall thin
couple, mainstays of the scene, move around the room. They will soon
relocate to Buenos Aires: they have realized they can do work from a homebase
in Argentina and Tango to their hearts’ content. They will be missed,
but tanguerros and tanguerras make pilgrimages to Argentina and plans are
in the works.
I am getting
to know these people. Marjie and I no longer refer to individuals as Speedy
or Tall Man or the Kaiser…they are human beings. They have names. And we
have all been brought together by something named Tango.
Margie and
I have an open invitation to Tango in Nelson. There is a Milonga in Geraldine
in a couple of weeks. The working artist, who owns the building where lessons
are given on Wednesday nights, steers Marjie past me. I can see her confidence
growing.
An announcement
is made that the room will be used for a New Year’s Eve Milonga. No charge.
Perhaps
Elizabeth will be there.
The following
are the previous articles that Candy has written about New Zealand for
the magazine:
To contact Candy
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