One Month In Buenos Aires

My young friend Amy, recently in Comme Il Faut purchasing her obligatory pair of red shoes, met a woman who was buying NINE pairs of tango shoes to take back to ONE friend in the States. A bit excessive? What’s she compensating for?

If you can’t blame a man’s tools for the work he does then you certainly can’t attribute a woman’s dancing to her shoes. Why then do some women need so many pairs of tango shoes?

I’ve been dancing for eight years and I have not quite that many pairs of tango shoes. I rarely wear them – partly because I don’t go to a lot of milongas. I haven’t purchased a pair in the past year that I’ve been here. But, before I go home I will probably buy one more pair of stllettos and a pair of Darcos new slipper style. My first tango partner used to say in his feigned foreign accent – “It is more important to look good than to feel good.” He was kidding of course . . . I think . . .

Most of the time I wear my very comfortable tango runners or my jazz slippers. I’ve been known to dance in my hiking boots, my Birkenstocks, and my bare feet at Plaza Dorrego. Today I rather successfully led and followed milonga in my flip flops. It’s true that I look and sometimes feel better in heels. It’s likely true that I dance better. I also dance better if my feet don’t hurt. I don’t always carry extra shoes with me and am not going to give up the opportunity to dance just because of ‘improper’ attire.

Insider information has it that milongueros speak very little amongst themselves about women at the milongas but when they do it goes something like this:

“See that one? She looks good but she don’t feel so good. That one over there – she don’t look so good but she feels good.”

He may ask you once because you’re gorgeous but if you don’t dance well he won’t ask you again. It may take him a while to ask you if you’re not complementary eye candy but once he does and he enjoys his dance with you – he’ll not only ask you again but he will also recommend you to his friends.

As I was walking home tonight in the rain after class, instead of the milonga music continuing in my head as it usually does, I am remembering a song from my childhood. As a very young bailarina I listened repeatedly to my Rosemary Clooney record and I still remember all the lyrics to all the songs. I’ve heard The Little Shoemaker used in a short film about The Red Shoes – my favorite Hans Christian Anderson fairytale about a young girl whose dancing gets out of control when she wears a special pair of red shoes. I am obsessed with the many songs and stories based on the theme of the Red Shoes.

At some point you start wondering just how the old milongueros do it. How do they ‘keep it up’ all night – so to speak – especially if they are still working during the day. I realize a passion, an obsession, can be extremely motivating but the body just can’t physically endure extended periods of sleepless nights, nicotine, alcohol, a heavy diet and dancing.

I’ll tell you how they do it: cocaine.

“It’s so cheap here,” my American friend said, “For 50 pesos I can buy enough coke to last me from Friday’s milonga until Tuesday’s milonga.” A recent Tuesday night’s milonga, for this organizer, happened to be 12 hours long. That’s a lot of work. Already suffering from a heart condition and a myriad of other health problems including a current sinus infection, he was in no shape to be going out that night. But having a (perceived) responsibility to others is one of the only things that keeps him going these days. A combination of cocaine, fernet and cola, nicotine and sheer determination got him through one more night – and a good time was had by all.

How many times a night do those milongueros get up from their seat at the bar to go to the bathroom? Prostate problems? Maybe that too. One milonguero telling me some of these stories excused himself from the table three times during the four hour dinner party we attended.

In the past month the tango world has lost two well known milongueros. One was only 46. Both had pre-existing heart conditions. Both had ‘nose problems’. Both died doing what they loved to do best – by cocaine-induced myocardio-infarctions.

My dear American friend almost died once from a heart attack and had a close call a year later. With several stents keeping the physical gateways to his heart open, he still experiences pain regularly and doesn’t receive enough oxygen rich blood to his heart at times. Still, he insists on getting a regular burst of ‘feel good’ to keep him going at the speed that he’s used to. Cocaine (along with everything else considered an unhealthy lifesytle) constricts his already compromised blood vessels. It’s just a matter of time (and one more bife de chorizo) before he just shuts down completely.

Already having surpassed his expected life span by over a dozen years, my friend is lucky to have had the time he’s had. I’ve been fortunate to share some of that with him. “I just want to make it until 2012″, he tells me, “I want to see how it all goes down – at the end of the Mayan calendar.” I hope he makes it that far.

One more night, one more milonga, one more tanda. Live hard and fast, tango on.

I can’t sleep through the night anymore. No, I’m not going to milongas; I’m learning how to lead tango. Now that I have some control over the dance I am being controlled by the music; I’m obsessed with what I can do to express it. The tango music in my head on endless loop wakes me up in the middle of the night. I wait for a cortina but none comes. If dawn has peeked into my bedroom I’m doomed to toss and turn while repeating a variety of sequences in time to the music. It’s tango torture.

Women learn to lead for two main reasons: they want to teach and/or they’re bored. So many times I hear a piece of music (usually milonga or nuevo) that I particularly like and want to express it wholeheartedly with my body. Often the man I’m dancing with is incapable (technically or creatively) in expressing the dance to my satisfaction. I have to remember to surrender to him and not to the music and my own desires. I’m often like a dog, sniffing a banquet and pulling at the leash. I think about how I would dance it if I had any control of my own. I’m determined NOT to be held back in my dancing. So, I’m learning to lead.

I always had a cognitive appreciation for how difficult it is for a man, with all he has to do, to become a good dancer. Now my appreciation is experiential. I get it. But, what I don’t understand is why I’m able to learn both the lead and follow simultaneously and some men in the same class have difficulty learning only their part. Do men and women learn differently? It’s not like I’m a genius or anything (just ask my computer tech) but maybe I have some kind of aptitude for this. Maybe after so many years of following I have some kind of inherent understanding of how to make the woman move the way I want her to. The most difficult thing is to execute the many aspects and maintain them simultaneously throughout the dance – navigating through traffic on the dance floor, oh ya – my posture, chest out, shoulders down, hips back, turn the lady . . . ooops – forgot about my own feet . . . it’s so much to think about, then forget about and just feel your way. My brain hurts, my feet hurt and I can’t sleep at night – but I’m having so much fun!

I’m tired of the complaining: national complaining, ex-pats complaining and my own complaining. When I walk out the door now I make an effort to appreciate at least one thing about this city.

Yesterday, a young man riding his bicycle down Santa Fe was playing his harmonica – with both hands.

We don’t have rats in Alberta. Over 50 years ago the provincial government waged war at the border to keep out rats traveling from the east where they disembarked European ships after WWII. I saw my first rat en vivo surveying the trash banquet one night on Av. Corrientes. It didn’t particularly bother me – because he seemed to be minding his own business. But, when I saw the silhouette of a rat skitter along the outer edge of my 13th floor balcony through the open door of my bedroom I became uneasy. I understand that rats are extremely resourceful creatures but how do they get up to the 13th floor – elevator? The balcony door is the only access route for fresh air into my stale, sweat-oven apartment and when the A/C broke down I had to leave it open overnight. Luckily, no visual memories of horror films including rats are etched upon my mind and the only midnight intruders challenging my vigilance were mosquitos – and their bites are annoying enough.

I think the rodent that I caught a glimpse of out of the corner of my eye as it scooted across my floor tonight was just a mouse . . . but I’m not sure. whatever size it was – there’s not enough room in here for the two of us.

I’m looking forward to returning to Alberta. Our government may not be as intelligent as the rats but they have bigger guns and they’re not afraid to use them.

As if it’s not bad enough that it’s the end of the year and I’m spending the holidays far away from my family; as if it’s not bad enough that I’m still mourning several losses; today’s worst news is now I can no longer even get a decent brunch in Buenos Aires. Amaranta Bistro has closed its doors.

You know what breakfast is like here – almost nonexistent – monotonous at best. Amaranta was my favorite place to go and be nurtured with good ol’ North American breakfast food: smoothies, pancakes, French toast, waffles, and a variety of egg dishes including my favorite – a smoked salmon Benedict. They even started serving REAL maple syrup and REAL bagels. I would often stop by just to pick up a few bagels para llevar. Now what am I supposed to do? I already bought the cream cheese in anticipation.

There’s no point in me going on and on about how great this little restaurant WAS – I’ll just have you peering through the bars into an empty interior salivating over the fantasy of a Sunday (of breakfasts past) that centers around eating all of your favorite foods. No more. Sorry. From now on it’s just going to be medialunas like the rest of the week.

If any of you ex-pats are looking for a business – there’s a huge gap left to be fiilled.

The good news is (there always has to be something . . . ) that as I trudged home in dismay along Callao I noticed that Notorious has reopened.

I call them tango ourbursts. If you’ve never been to Buenos Aires you likely imagine that people here spontaneously dance tango in the streets, the parks, the cafes and even while waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store. They don’t. I have never seen anyone dance tango anywhere other than a prescribed location at a specific time. You do see tangueros in the streets performing for tourist dollars – not because they are struck by the passion of the moment, the beauty of the music heard in a restaurant or while walking by a music store.

So far, it’s only happened to me twice. Once on the sidewalk after a class – trying to work out the move we just learned and once in an icecream shop unable to resist the music being played. That’s not near enough – I’d like it happen a lot more. You have to be walking with, or at least within close proximity to, a willing partner when the mood strikes.

He calls it guerrilla tango. In his hometown the email or text message would go out to the tango community, the sender would bring a boom box, and the group would gather within the hour at a central public location and dance. This shakes up an otherwise monotonous workday.

In BA this kind of subversive activity would not only be tolerated but encouraged. Elsewhere, I’m guessing, there would be rolls of red tape: necessary permits, public safety issues, liability insurance, people’s sense of propriety and all kinds of other bureaucratic bulllshit – not to mention – people’s internal barriers.

But let’s give it a try. Let’s meet in the Devonian Gardens – or – whatever the appropriate (or inappropriate!) public central location is in your city – and let’s perform random acts of Tango.

Let’s make a New Year’s resolution: everyday, everywhere, whenever the mood strikes us – DANCE. And maybe, if we remember to hold each other close, shut up and just move to the music, we can stop the fighting.

As of this week the Buenos Aires Club (Peru 571) has been deemed “unfit for tango” and permanently closed. There was no official Health Inspector’s notification on the door – only a handwritten notice from Mariana saying that Tango Queer has moved to a new location at Perón 2450 (La Capilla). According to El Afronte’s website they have suspended both Bendita and Maldita Milongas. That leaves a huge void in the San Telmo area for dancing tango in the first half of the week.

What exactly does “unfit for tango” mean? It’s true that the wooden floor could be detrimental to those in spiky heels but for the most part, Peru 571 was a very casual venue where most dancers wore flat shoes. Is the building a fire hazard? Are the kitchen and bathrooms unsantiary? Or, were these milongas taking precious tango tourist dollars away from other milongas? If any of those is true, I can assure you that there are other venues that will be, or should be, shut down.

After the Cro-Magnon fire in 2004 all dance venues were closed. Some never reopened. Although Club Español somehow miraculously stayed open during that time, the popular venue has since closed its doors. Other milongas have been ‘frozen’ in the past until money gets put into the right hands. Confiteria Ideal remains “scandalously dilapidated” even after a huge financial infusion by the government to spruce up the historic building went mysteriously missing. I’m sure there are many more stories like this that I, an outsider, am not privy to.

Tango is big business in Buenos Aires. With the current global economic crunch only the most dedicated tangueros are making their annual pilgrimage to the southern milonga circuit. The organizers are suffering from the lack of tourist dollars and it seems it might be time to get mean.

UPDATE: Within less than a week enough money went into the right hands and Peru 571 will reopen Monday, Dec. 21. Even without renovations – 10,000 pesos apparently makes the Buenos Aires Club now fit for Tango.

From Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt – p. 26

“ . . . Savannah Morning News, April 2, 1914 …

TANGO IS NO SIGN OF INSANITY, HOLDS JURY

DECIDES THAT SADIE JEFFERSON IS NOT INSANE

It is no indication of insanity to tango. This was settled yesterday by a lunacy commission which decided that Sadie Jefferson is sane. It was alleged the woman tangoed all the way to police headquarters recently when she was arrested. “

After 12 days at a spiritual retreat in Abadiania, Brazil I was looking forward to getting home to BsAs. I hooked up with an Australian couple from the retreat to share a taxi into el Centro. When asked about the taxi situation here I assured them that in all my time here I have never had a bad experience with a taxi. But, this day, my street savvy had been dulled by a loving environment in the Brazilian countryside and I allowed the taxista to ‘take us for a ride’.

When he said the fare would be 129 pesos I questioned that – saying 2 weeks ago I had only paid 115. He said it was because we wanted 2 stops. My bullshit detector must’ve had a short circuit because I kept walking to his car – which I realized, once the mist of the belief in the good of all people began to lift, was not actually a taxi.

By the time I’d reached full city consciousness (mas o menos) we were on the autopista heading toward town, and I didn’t want to worry my companions, so I continued to hang onto my faltering belief in the good of all people. Even at the increased fare we were still getting a good deal by sharing. We dropped them off at their hotel and headed to my apartment.

I handed over 130 pesos and prepared to disembark when he said it’s 129 – and showed me that I had given him 2 tens and a twenty. Surprised, I second guessed myself – but – I knew I’d given him a 100 peso note because I only had one in my wallet and it wasn’t there. I proceeded to yell at him in English wishing I had paid better attention in my Swearing in Spanish 101 class. If I’d been really thinking I may have also reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out my 100 peso note – but we only think about all these things later – don’t we?

Next time I take the bus.