I am just a teeny bit embarrassed at what I am about to do, at the display of public onanism I am about to give. My students take their seats on the uncomfortable wooden bench at the side of the room, turning from dancers into spectators at a performance, and I am struck by a momentary doubt. Is this terribly self-indulgent? Is there real pedagogical value in this or do I just enjoy skipping around this sun-filled room? I look over at Agent 57, my silky-haired magician’s assistant, in his glassed-in DJ booth. “The Donato please”, I request.
It’s just us two, now: me and the music. To me, this tango has always had a bright quality, a happy sound which belies the sadness of its lyrics. I am circling the room, chasing it, like a snuffling dog on a scent trail. It is full of playful dotted notes, like a Celtic folk song: little off-beat accents, tiny rising flourishes at the ends of phrases. I know my head is bowed and I am looking down, but I can’t help it. I need a focal point and I intuitively transfer the music to the floor, straining to see it through half-closed eyes, looking diagonally downwards as though it were laid out before me, a magic flying carpet, a giant score rippling with semi-quavers, my free foot tracing the swollen belly of a spirally treble clef as I draw a rulo on the floor. The floor is like a giant xylophone and I am the one producing the sound, leaping from note to note. My arm shoots up as eagerly as it did in primary school: oooh, oooh, oooh, Miss, I know the answer; listen, here it is, in these notes on the piano. I am a wandless Hermione, signalling upwards at the magic police boxes, travelling backwards in time to the 1930s. My finger twirls in the air to signal a bandoneon flourish, twitches like a conductor’s. The students are now my orchestra, my musicians — watch the baton there in the violin section! I bite my lip and shake my head in slight embarrassment as the musicians tease me, changing the phrase just a little, altering it deceptively, so that I step with confidence right into an empty place without a note, a Hans Guck-in-die-Luft, a dreamer boy tripping over my own feet and falling into a stream amid astonished fishes. And, while I am lamenting my own mistake, I miss a sneaky off-beat I should have pounced upon. I have heard this tango a thousand times and it still has the power to catch me off guard.
Like the butterfly of the song, I have no wings. There are no warm arms embracing me. I am alone on the dance floor in the dying afternoon. As the music ends, the magic carpet turns back into a dusty wooden floor, the score is rolled up, the Tardises are just paper lampshades again. The students applaud politely, embarrassed perhaps or baffled. I hope not. I start to recap, to sing them little snatches. “Well”, I tell them, “that’s what I hear in this tango. Now it’s your turn. Yes, on your own. Explore. Play. Dance.”
