This post first appeared on the Sugar Mountain. I’m republishing it here for those who eschew the saccharine slopes, preferring their words crisply ironed.
As usual, he dances many tandas with me, most of the tandas with me, at this informal práctica, a place where we regularly practice. He glances over from time to time, in the direction of his girlfriend’s chair. She’s a very popular partner and is usually dancing with some of the best leaders in the place. Having done a quick check to make sure she is enjoying herself, he turns back to me and we continue trying to improve our giro. If it turns out that “she’s not having a good night tonight; for some reason, they’re not asking her” — we part amicably and he goes over to dance with her. It’s not gentlemanly to leave your girlfriend sitting miserably while you dance tanda after tanda.
On other occasions, when I’m not dancing, I seek her out and sit with her and sometimes change into my leading shoes to take her out for a spin. She’s one of those people who have a calm, reassuring presence that makes you feel instantly comfortable, one of those people I am immediately drawn to, one of those people who make you feel you need to up your ethical game because they are such models of good behavior. Tonight, it’s the last tanda. “Do you want to dance with him?” I ask. “No, no, go ahead,” she says and instantly starts scouring the room with her eyes, soon catching a twinkly cocked-head cabeceo.
I’ve spent most of my adult life in long-term relationships. And my boyfriends have always had their own connections with others: their tennis opponents, their drinking buddies, their female best friends, their pianist-accompanists, their favorite dance partners. So, no, I don’t feel guilty at all that right now, when I happen to be single, I dance with so many other women’s boyfriends, husbands and lovers. Tango is a way of communicating with, collaborating with, someone else. But is it really more intimate, more sexual than other ways — such as playing sport, making music, having heated debates, co-authoring a book — because it is, by nature a coupled activity or because it involves physical contact? Perhaps, to some degree. But, I would argue, not so much that it makes sense to shut out others, to try to corral and control and restrict your partner (unless you both agree that you want to only dance with each other — a rare occurrence in my experience).
The tango embrace is a very unusual thing. It mimics the appearance of real-life affection. Perhaps, if you are a very jealous person, you shouldn’t watch too closely, just as you might not want to watch your actor boyfriend rehearse a love scene. You hold another person close to you for a length of time which would have all kinds of implications outside a dance context. If you gave someone four long consecutive hugs of three minutes each, without moving — and they happily let you — well, things would probably get pretty steamy quite speedily, unless you have exceptionally snuggleable friends. But, as always with touch, context and intention are everything. We don’t embrace because we are longing to touch each other; we don’t dance because we want to snuggle. It feels snuggly at times, it feels sensual, at least to me, but that’s the nature of this dance. It’s not personal. Our intention, our wish, is to dance. The focus is not on us, we’re not a couple and we certainly wouldn’t hug each other for three minutes at a time in any other situation.
Tango is a liminal space between sex and art: but almost always situated deep within art’s side of that boundary. Its relationship to the sensual often feels less like raw attraction and more like an allusion to romance. You feel more like a student actress reciting Juliet’s lines to whoever the director happens to have cast than like a happy girlfriend walking hand-in-hand along the beach with your lover. The sensuality of it, the intimacy, isn’t fake. But it isn’t real either. Which is why I can dance in close embrace with other women with great enjoyment, but cannot have sex with them; which is why a friend of mine guiltlessly dances with his sister; which is why most people are monogamous in their love lives, but dance with a wide variety of people at the milonga (we need the bumper sticker that says “Tango dancers do it all night long, changing partners every fifteen minutes”). Sublimated into art, we can take something which is usually exclusive and, without getting rid of all its eroticism, transform it into something which can be widely shared. It’s a magical mutation, a midwinter night’s dream, a topsy turvy approach, a land of lavenders blue, lavenders green. I’m not threatened by this when I’m in a couple. And I’m not guilty about it when I’m not. I think it’s subtle, hard to explain to non dancers, but fundamentally both innocent and deeply life enriching.