If there was any question

Here is a hint, ladies of tango: When you kick over the vase of flowers on a table at the edge of the floor, your boleo is too damn high.

(Or, possibly equally, the leader is a pretty poor navigator.)

And a tip for everyone: When it happens twice in one evening, you're not at a very good milonga. But we also knew that from the hopping (!) couples, the floating tango à trois going on at various times throughout the evening, and the music that shifted nonsensically between alternative and traditional within the same tanda. (Even the DJ started to get the message when couples cleared the floor, thinking that his next song was actually a cortina. Looking embarrassed, he faded the music out and went into the next tanda.)

How I wish I were making any of this up.

The pianist

I haven't had the time and energy to write much lately--nor the inspiration, because life events have been so busy and often tiring that I've hardly been able to really reflect on anything very much. This is just a quick note to breathe some life back into my poor neglected blog!

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Today, tapping my fingers as I listened to tango music at work, I remembered--in that intense way that the body remembers physical sensations--dancing with a partner who is also a pianist with some tango in his musical repertoire. That night, I felt him tapping the fingers of his right hand where it rested on my back. Hoping not to make him self-conscious, I asked him about it between songs.

"I guess I was playing along with the music," he told me.