STANDING at the side of a stage watching a couple glide effortlessly around it, I was mesmerised.
The look of intensity on their faces; the way their bodies moved as one. It was hard to believe this wasn’t something that had been practised and polished in a dance studio for months beforehand.
But the tango is a way of life in Argentina, a chauvinistic ritual where the man leads and the woman follows.
“This,” said an expert beside me, gesturing towards the stage, “is not a happy dance but one filled with sadness and passion.”
“She left me,” he continued, slamming his fist to his chest. “She’s found another. This will be our last dance,” he concluded, almost too forlornly.
After a flurry of perfect spins, the couple parted and the crowd erupted in applause.
The passion was over. They had danced their last dance.
Unfortunately for me, this was just the beginning.
Cursing myself for volunteering for a lesson, I wobbled up the stairs to the stage and stood awkwardly under a hot light.
Ivan and Natalia, still breathless from their performance, showed me the basic ‘walk’ – a series of long gliding steps – knees bent, toes pointed.
It looked easy enough, and after a couple of individual trial runs, I was starting to get the hang of it.
Ready to try the walk in an embrace position, Ivan forced my rigid arms into a waltz hold and pulled me so close I could no longer see my feet.
Panic set in as he started to move. I bent my legs as instructed and immediately knocked my knee against his, lost my balance and tripped over his left foot.
Flushed, we tried again but once more my legs got in the way, his grip so tight I couldn’t find anywhere to put my feet.
It was obvious this wasn’t a British invention – nobody in their right mind would get this close to a stranger at a tea dance.
Just as I was about to start quoting something from Dirty Dancing about “this being my dance space, that being yours”, it all fell into place.
My leg went backwards as Ivan’s went forwards; it moved left as his went right, and I knew what was coming next with no idea how.
What I didn’t realise was that the calculated pause wasn’t a chance for me to grin inanely at my accomplishment but to lift one leg and move it around in a smooth tango-style motion.
I’d seen Natalia do this before and it looked both graceful and sexy.
When the pause came again, I lifted my leg to do a fancy little flick but froze with fright and ended up looking more like a flamingo than an Argentinean babe. Graceful, it wasn’t.
Still, my 15-minute taster was over too soon and I left vowing to have another go one day. But in the meantime, I’ll stick to the funky chicken.
