Angelina Tango: Warrior Woman

               Angelina Tango rode her black Ford F-250 down Highway 550 towards Albuquerque. Barreling along at 80 mph the large wheels and heavy suspension struggled to create the impression of control. A sticker on the pickup truck's bumper read, “Silly Boys Trucks Are For Girls.”  On the edge of New Mexico's Navajo Reservation her speeding vehicle painted a disappearing black line in the fading winter sunset in this desolate land of sage brush and tumbleweeds.
               Working as a superintendent for Haliburtons's southwestern gas well operations, she was mentally fried and physically exhausted after weeks of riding herd on hillbilly oil-riggers from Louisiana. She needed to get away, to relax and do something feminine, something social, or she feared she would lose her identity and possibly her sanity. The gas industry was a man's world and she worried that she would become one of them if she didn't get back to civilization for some gender recognition. She was going tango dancing.

               From her large leather purse she produced a tube of hand lotion and squeezed out a dollop onto her hand as she passed two young Navajo bucks stumbling down the side of the road, thumbs sticking out at their sides. Slamming on the brakes she stopped and waited for them to run up to the truck, spreading the lotion over both hands thoroughly, hoping she could soften them up before the dance tonight. She needed to feel like a woman and she didn’t want the men she danced with to react to her rough hands as they often did. 

               As the young men neared the vehicle she wondered if this would be the last time she picked up strangers in the desert. She laughed and unlocked the doors with the touch of a button.

               “Don’t mind the mess,” she said as the two climbed in, one clutching a bottle of liquor, both smelling of cigarettes and alcohol.

               Forty miles later darkness had fallen when she dropped them off at their shack near a mesa, two miles off the highway and down a dirt road. She was glad to be rid of them and their stench but she had done what she thought was right, wondering what their night would have been like walking as the temperatures dropped way below freezing.

               Her thoughts flashed to her two daughters who were in college a hundred light years away, spending her hard earned money. In her rear view mirror she saw one of the men pissing on the side of the shack in a cloud of frosty steam, she imagined her oldest girl, Chloe, with a frat boy stumbling home on her own adventures this night.

               Two hours later she was showered, dressed and parked in front of the dance hall.
               Usually she went country dancing with the cowboys but lately she had soured on the rodeo mentality of the men. That was exactly the kind of atmosphere she was trying to escape. She needed a man but not that kind of machismo.
               Recently she had been learning the tango and liked how close it got her to the men; she like the anonymity maintained by the dancers. She found the men masculine but also civilized.  

               Looking at the steel door illuminated by a yellow light dancing above it on a wire in the chill wind, her thoughts went back to Max, her husband, who was killed by an angry spouse while he was sleeping around on her when she was deployed as an Army chopper pilot in Iraq.

               “I miss you Max,” she said to no one as she sat there in the throne of her truck, “you cheatin’ bastard of a man.”

               With that said she drew a breath of warm air and stepped out into the cold to cross the narrow strip of pavement to the doorway. It was 10 o'clock and the street was deserted but she scanned both directions thoroughly, looking for snipers and signs of landmines.

               Before she opened the door to the hall she freed another button on her silky red shirt just in case the men didn’t notice her. She was almost certain they would, they were, after all, men, primal creatures slightly more evolved than apes and often not as bright. She paid her money to a gentleman seated at a table inside the foyer. She mused that he must be gay because he didn’t look when she leaned over to sign the register.

               Moving to the main hall she felt at home. The room was large, the ceiling so high that it could not be seen in the darkness. The space was illuminated by two large lights hanging above the dance floor surrounded by cocktail tables covered with red tablecloths. Each table hosted a vase with a fake rose and a small tea candle. She liked the ambiance. It was like an airplane hangar in Kuwait without the smell of oil and gas.

               Sitting down at a table by herself she was thrilled to feel that she was slightly nervous. She felt young, adrenalin coursed her veins in anticipation of attention from the men around her. She did not look around the room as she bent over to put on her heels, her breasts dancing inside her shirt like children playing without a care. Her nipples hardened as the gaze of a hungry wolf locked onto her.

               She didn’t need to look up to know he was staring at her, waiting for her to strap on her shoes so he could invite her onto the floor. All of a sudden the hot flash came, much to her annoyance. The buckles secured, she sat up and saw who was staring at her. There were several, it was going to be a good night.

               She tried to smile as she made eye contact and accepted the purely visual invitation but her body had become so hot she hardly felt comfortable. A white-haired man dressed in black walked over to her table and extended his hand; she rose to take it.

               Suddenly she was back in Iraq, in the desert heat, she could hear chopper blades whirring and the shrill scream of massive engines whining penetrating through her earplugs.

               Then she was back, moving towards the gentleman’s chest with her own. With her three inch heels she was just as tall as he. She easily slung her left arm around the top of his shoulders and made a soft landing on his frame. 

              Man at last, she thought, and briefly forgot about everything: her job, her children, her bills, menopause.

               He slipped his right arm under her armpit and around her back, his hand resting lightly beneath her right shoulder blade. His chest pushed firmly but not offensively against hers and his shoulders offered not a hint of tension. She inhaled; he smelled like a man and nothing else, freshly showered.

               Red lights flashed in her mind as the music began to play and she grasped the thumb on his left hand, trying to make as little contact with his skin as she could so he wouldn’t notice the roughness of her palm; she did not succeed. She felt him recoil ever so slightly, his muscles tensed; there was disappointment.

               She began to sweat. She was uncomfortably hot. Her head was spinning. Why did she come here, she asked herself. She thought about cold beer and rock n’ roll music. She began reciting the the pledge of allegiance to herself in preparation for being captured by the enemy. 

               She could hear the music, it was sad, like her. She could barely discern a rhythm when the man began to move.

               Hopelessly she rested on his diaphragm and rode him live a wave on an ocean of despair. The music was relentless, it was so sad and together they became friends because it was more hopeless than she, sadder than she could ever be. Barely aware of the man in front of her she moved backwards through the crowd, trusting him to steer the ship that was them, taking care to stay on her toes lest her heel catch the ground and cause her to stumble.

               A river of emotion flowed out of her and into her partner. She felt relief in having a place for it to go and the room began to cool down for her. The song continued with its rhythm and sad melody. His frame relaxed and suddenly she could sense his intention much more clearly, the disappointment was no longer evident and there was something else, something primal but remote. She listened to his body more intensely to hear a feint sound in the wilderness that was a man. It was barely audible but she could still hear it. It was the sound of a lonely wolf howling softly.

               The song ended and she stared at him meekly, trying to smile unsuccessfully. In tango the dance does not end with one song, there would be more, two, maybe three, before the cortina plays and the two could disengage.

               Another tune began and he presented his hand. She charted a course and landed in the same spot but with more familiarity, with ease and grace. She could feel him swell with confidence and she fed on it like a starving baby sucking on the tit. She couldn’t get enough at first, moving with him to the melody, stopping with him when he paused passionately as he breathed her in.

               Her perfume was working, she mused with an audible sigh, worth every bit of seventy dollars. She began to feed more calmly, steadily, the river was flowing back in her direction. She could tell he was feeling the music, letting go of his own emotions, relaxing into her embrace and moving with certainty. 

               She imagined a wolf running through the snow of an open field. He wanted her.

               The song ended and she stood there again trying to smile. She did not manage it but she was able to look into his eyes and try to express her gratitude for making her feel like a woman again, to let him know that he was……he was winning.

               Another song began and she melted into him. The tune was sad, sadder than the previous two selections. She closed her eyes and let him lead her to the melody, through the crowd which then disappeared. She found herself on a boat in the ocean at night. The waves rocked her gently. She became warm again but it was not a hot flash this time, it was a soothing warmth and she bathed in it like a hot bath.

               In his embrace she felt safe. He was confident and hungry for her. She felt like he could protect her from the others in the room so that he could devour her all by himself. She wanted to be his meal, to feed him in return for what he had done for her, for helping her to remember who she was once again…a woman, not just a worker, a mother, a paycheck. She was half of something wonderful and she was alive in a world full of promise, full of things that could happen, joyous things, horrible things, any thing. She could go on again.

               The song ended and the cortina played. She found it awful and shocking, part of some rock n’ roll tune. It was the cortina, definitely not tango.

               Almost smiling, she said to her partner, “Thank you, thank you very much.”

               Wobbly kneed she made her way back to her table and sat down, the room spinning. Fixing her eyes on the flame from the tea candle she exhaled completely and said to herself, “I needed that.”

               Leaning back into chair she could feel the eyes of another wolf upon her. She met his gaze without fear and waited for him to come over and to be devoured once again.

Salsa, Guns and Tango

               When I was a whitewater river guide it was not unusual to run into hillbillies with guns. More than once a shot was fired in my direction but not with the intent to kill, only to put the fear of God in me. Whatever the intent, the act was irresponsible and dangerous.

                I became interested in dancing when I saw a movie, Born Romantic, that featured salsa dancing at a club in London. I was no stranger to guns when I finally learned how to salsa dance. I was not surprised when I was searched for weapons with a metal-detecting wand at many of the salsa events in the towns on the eastern half of the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. A lot of New Yorkers lived in these communities and they were well-versed on the latest security procedures used in the night clubs of the Big Apple. Coming from the western side of the Pocono Plateau, I assumed everyone had a gun and that the desire to keep them out of the places where people danced was a good thing, especially since I was usually the only gringo in the hall.

               After a year of searching for a decent place to dance salsa, I decided I was doing more harm than good. My presence at many of these events caused the participants a lot of discomfort. Though I was never approached, I rarely danced. The men were uneasy because they felt obligated to protect their women from the outsider and the women were on edge because they knew the men were going to do something stupid on an occasion where everyone was supposed to be relaxing after a hard week of work.

               All I was trying to do was to find a place to dance, the style did not matter. When I started, I assumed there was dancing everywhere. I learned that a good dance place was a very special thing and a lot harder to find.

               Once I quit salsa dancing, I tried ballroom and swing. I found a good swing place in Allentown (http://allentownswing.org/) but the ballroom dancers were either too snotty or too old. Shortly after I found the good swing club I took up tango.  

               Today we have a big debate going on in our country about guns in our society. It is my experience that the people with the guns are afraid. Folks that move up to the mountains from the city are fearful of wild animals and the absence of law enforcement officials. Small town Americans going to the city are certain they will be attacked by gang members, drug dealers or worse, so they bring guns with them whenever they move to Urbana.

               Unfortunately these are not the people having the debate. The people for and against gun control are the braggarts and gun manufacturers on one side and the victims of gun violence on the other. Eventually the former group will lose because our cavalier attitude towards weapons ensures an ever growing pool of victims.

               The braggarts have no fear because they have not yet experienced pain. They are usually single men with few responsibilities and very little to lose except their guns. There are responsible gun owners but they don't do enough to counteract the stupidity emanating from the young bucks among them or from the  firearms industry. 

               The victims of gun violence essentially become the walking wounded. They have no fear because they live in constant pain and cannot be hurt any worse. I meet them when I dance tango. Their agony is evident and deep but they do not want to talk about it. To discuss it brings them anguish which is one of the many reasons we should not talk when dancing tango. The hurt usually forces them to withdraw for a while from the community but they eventually come back, sometimes through tango and always as forceful advocates against the proliferation of guns.

               It is my belief that many people come to tango because they are wounded. They are in need of healing and tango welcomes them, literally with open arms. They are saying, “Hold me, I am hurting. Let the melody carry my pain for a little while and allow me to relax while I enjoy the warmth of your body. I will listen to the sound of your breathing and try to remember what it was like to live without this constant ache.”

               

Durango Tango Amorio: Feb. 1-3, 2013 with Daniela Arcuri and Qtango Orchestra

               Argentine tango is a style of music and the social dance that accompanies it. While a version of tango is performed in professional ballroom dancing, a social style is practiced in communities all around the world that is much more intimate and passionate. Social Tango, as it is known, is much less rigid than its professional cousin.

               On Feb. 1-3, Fri-Sun, Daniela Arcuri, Master teacher from Buenos Aires http://www.danielaarcuri4tango.com/ will be conducting an Argentine Tango Dancing workshop weekend beginning Friday night at 8:00 p.m. at Four Leaves Winery in Durango, Colorado. She will teach a free lesson and other milongueros, people who dance tango, will be practicing their moves for an open social dance with live music on Saturday night.

               The music will be performed by Albuquerque’s well-known tango orchestra, Qtango. http://www.qtango.com/QTANGO.html

               The workshop classes begin at The Dance Studio on Rt. 160, on the Durango southern city limits, Saturday, starting at 12:30 p.m., followed by a milonga beginning at 7 p.m. A ‘milonga’ is a place where tango is danced. Sunday the classes continue with Daniela plus a special musicality class taught by Qtango band members, Erskine Maytorena and Olga Tikhovidova.

               Dancing is a great way to lose weight and relieve stress as well as to improve coordination and confidence in how you present yourself to the public. It is a great mental exercise that will keep your mind active, improve circulation to the brain and help stimulate your memory when you choreograph a personal interpretation of a song with  your partner. It is also a great way to meet new people.

               Singles and couples are encouraged to attend as no partner is needed to learn fundamental tango skills and a dance with strangers is usually an integral part of the social tango experience. Switching dance partners is suggested during class but by no means is it a requirement.

               For more information about tango in your the Durango area go to: http://www.tangodurango.com/ or find them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/353689751341313/

Riding A River of Tango

                 It takes two to tango but it is not tango without tango music. When I began dancing tango I found the melodies disconcerting and laborious. My initial attraction to this dance was the proximity that it put me to members of the opposite sex. After eight years of single parenting I found that I was unable to deny myself the chance to hold a woman in my arms and move with her to the music.

               When the initial euphoria wore off I found myself asking why I kept coming back. I was hooked and it was a mystery to me as to how the barb was set that kept me searching for more dances with different partners in cities far and wide. I was forty-eight years old and my two daughters were in college. I was free to do other things than laundry and cooking meals for princesses.

               What made my obsession even more perplexing was that I always looked at dancing as an effeminate activity and an affront to my machismo. I had difficulty talking about it to my friends and was somewhat ashamed to admit what I knew I had become: a dancer.

               When I was young I worked as a whitewater river guide on various rivers of the Appalachian Mountains: the Lehigh, Upper Hudson, Youghigheny, Nolichucky and Moose Rivers. I never stopped being a river runner and raised my girls to be river rats and adventure seekers. When river guides dance it is not pretty and it is best to stand clear: arms flail, legs fly and the sound of their voices will crack your ear; it is the unbridled expression of a very passionate person. The rhythm of the river flows in our veins; it is the melody we hear and it dictates how we move in spontaneous response to the pulse and surge of the unpredictable current.

               I was in the process of writing a book when my tango obsession grabbed me. The hand that grasped me was a familiar one, it was my own, the one I used to pull customers back into the raft after they had fallen overboard. I didn’t know it at the time but I was drowning, lost in the River of Life and I had slipped below the surface, overwhelmed by my responsibilities as a father, worker, friend, neighbor, brother, son. Inevitably my book changed course and covered two topics: the river and tango. It eventually would be released as ‘River Tango’.

               Back in the raft I could steer and there were rough waters ahead of me. I lost my job, my investments tanked and my roof sprung a leak. My problems seemed insurmountable but I was no longer alone, I had a dance partner wherever tango dancers gathered and the rhythm of the music affected me like a river flowing through my heart and soul.

               I left my home in Pennsylvania and headed south to the Carolinas to work as a contractor in the telecom industry, renting out my house to a neighbor for next to nothing just to keep it from becoming an abandoned building to be vandalized by the young punks in town. I danced tango in Charleston, Raleigh, Wilmington, Charlotte, Atlanta and Asheville. At that time I still did not know why I was so compulsive about attending the tango events, called ‘milongas’, but eventually the clouds parted to reveal the answer; it was the music.

               Tango is like sex. Anybody can do it once they find a partner. Even though the two participants are inexperienced they can still make it happen. So it is with tango, if you can walk to the music with another person you are dancing tango as long as the music playing is tango music. The key is tango music. It is the sex drive of the dance that motivates a person at the subconscious level to constantly seek it out. It is the vehicle by which this cultural, anachronistic import has rapidly repopulated itself around the world.

               Tango music is to dancers what anti-oxidants are to the human body. Anti-oxidants keep us young and healthy. Tango music is what draws dancers together and it keeps them moving to the melodies long after their muscles have become fatigued and their brains addled.

               Dancing tango is a journey into your soul on a river of rhythms and melodies. The only way to steer on this voyage of self discovery is with a rudder comprised of self-honesty. By being true to myself I was able to learn about the other half of our species. It took me three years of tango to learn how to hold a woman. To do it I had to exude my manliness and be relaxed while doing it.

               All of the things I learned I already knew. A lifetime of misinformation had gotten me to believe in things that were false. To be honest with myself I needed to become a better person, to quit stereotyping people. I needed to be unbiased in my opinions of others. Only then could I be alone with a woman in a crowded room and be able to tune everyone out so I could hear the music, so I could get into sync with my partner.

               I had to learn where my point of balance was and how to direct my momentum to my advantage. It was like learning how to maneuver on the river all over again only now I was riding down the rapids towards my own center. Once there nothing else matter, only my companion and the music. I didn’t care if she was skilled or a novice, all I needed to do was to hold her and move to the song in complete harmony with her.

               As I navigated the River of Tango the obstacles I encountered ceased to be problems, they became rhythms in the melody of life. I danced around them and eventually I started to become the center of my world. I could make sense of the chaos and could adapt to the fluctuations in the events of my life like a dancer navigating a crowded dance floor. The stress in my life decreased dramatically.

               All the while, as I explored who I was I kept moving, I kept dancing and working in different cities, moving west to San Antonio, Austin, Albuquerque and finally Durango. Here I found a river waiting for me, the Animas River. Here I found love and happiness. 

               Now that my first child has graduated college I find that I am not an old man looking to the end of his life with trepidation; I am alive and washed clean everyday by the events in my life. I look forward to the struggle to maintain balance in my relationships, in all my endeavors and on the dance floor. I know I will not fail because failure doesn’t exist for the person who does not try to conquer life, who moves with the flow instead of against it. I hear the music and move to its rhythm because I am a dancer.

              

              

               

The Tangueros' Responsibility

               Dancing is good for your health. It is a low-level aerobic activity that satisfies our need for physical contact with the opposite sex as well as our desire to be part of a community of human beings, not just cowboys ‘watching over the herd’. It is my belief that a man who learns how to lead a dance must eventually acknowledge his responsibility to the community by sharing his experience with all the female dancers of his group.

               Before I started dancing I was an extremely uptight, homophobic, stress-out mother fucker. I worked with a devil and cut him no slack. I could play ruthless with the best of them: stab me in the back and I’ll stab you back…twice as hard and three times as deep. I was a father looking out for his family and I viewed myself as a shield for them against the brutal world.

               I’m sure being such a wretched soul contributed to my divorce.

               One day I began learning how to dance. I think it was my mid-life crisis. I always thought it would be bird-watching. Leading a dance is not easy and I spent many thousands of dollars and drove a hundred thousand miles to acquire the skills I needed to accomplish this to my satisfaction.

               Now I am a dancer. Not just a dancer, I am a leader of the dance…I can lead. This means a lot of things and it is not just a simple statement.  As a result of my journey, I have less stress and am not as homophobic as I used to be. I think I am a better person now.

               I have to reason that if I was a wretch before I started dancing then it is probable that the women who are beginning their journey are coming from a similar place and that they will end up in a comparable situation, a better one. They won’t get there on their own; it is up to us leaders of the dance to help them evolve and we do that by dancing with them, asking for nothing in return other than their gratitude.

               I have been to many dance communities, tango and otherwise, and have seen with my own eyes the men with skill fulfilling their responsibilities to maximum effect. I can name a few: Fearless Fire Company in Allentown, PA; Firehouse Tango in Maywood, NJ; Dance Manhattan Saturday practicas in NYC and the Wild Horse Saloon in Durango, CO. All these places have a great group dynamic. Walk in to any one of the aforementioned weekly events and a person will immediately feel the good vibrations emanating from the crowd, yes, the crowd, these places always draw a crowd.

               The situation you find will not be an accident, it will be the result of the efforts of many men who undertook the difficult task of learning how to lead a dance and then shared what they learned with the women who will surely find them.