In 1960, before Dodge motorhomes were mass produced, John Steinbeck had a vehicle built made for a road trip around America. He had eight years left to live. At the start of the resulting book, Travels with Charley he wrote: "I wanted a three-quarter-ton pick-up truck, capable of going anywhere under possibly rigorous conditions, and on this truck I wanted a little house built like the cabin of a small boat." He named it Rocinante after Don Quixote's horse. Thinking he might do some writing, he filled it with the requisite paraphernalia. He writes:
I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless. I knew very well that I rarely make notes, and if I do I either lose them or can't read them. I also knew from thirty years of my profession that I cannot write hot on an event. It has to ferment. I must do what a friend calls 'mule it over' for a time before it goes down. And in spite of this self-knowledge I equipped Rocinante with enough writing material to take care of ten volumes
Likewise, after a trip I can never find the right notebook or finding it, cannot read it. On largely that basis proceeds the story of meeting a man I will call José though it is not his real name.
DescriptJosé
DescriptioJosé .
On that third night in Buenos Aires, José was also at the Obelisco club. I was glad I had finally got my dance virginity in that city out of the way before we danced. It is nice when, for various reasons, people set up dances with someone you have noticed but how much better it is when you do it for yourself. These things can take time and they need the right conditions: the right mood, the right music, the right moment. But there is nothing better than to dance when the desire to do so is mutually discovered, desired and agreed silently, by look and at a distance.
He did not, I thought initially, look Argentinian. When, later, between tracks, I glanced briefly into his face, his eyes were very Argentinian. How strange that we can dance so close, feel every movement of the partner's body, know that there is nowhere to hide and, when embracing the partner, embrace that too and yet it can be so hard to simply look into their face. It is not like that in the man's role though, or at least it is so different as to bear little comparison.
Dancing with him was better than I had hoped. We were compatible. But being so out of practice in the woman's role, and now also so keyed up, as before my hips were tight and would not respond easily to the tiny swivels he proposed. At the prospect that my dancing days in Argentina, so soon begun must be over almost as quickly, my heart sank. But he was gentle and from that trust grows. Then he proposed the same small movement again. What - had I misjudged, been too hasty? Was this yet another man deaf to what the woman likes and can do? Yet to my great surprise he moved his hand to support my lower back and hips and somehow eased me through the movement. Curiously, it was not now unpleasant. In fact I was relieved to know that those movements peculiar to the woman's role were still possible and I was grateful. Mostly, I was surprised because there are guys who are accommodating, which is lovely, but to find a dancer so competent that he can help you in a way unanticipated, that is vanishingly rare. Those tiny, hip-swivelling movements were nice with him and discreet, the way I feel they are supposed to be with guys, not those grotesque gate-opening pivots taught in class, which, were they not so noticeable in some guys as to be easily avoidable, I might otherwise dread. This happened a few times until I got used to and relaxed with the movement again. It was lovely when he sensed I could respond without help. It all happened not by language but by sense. Among the thousands who dance the good dancers seem extraordinarily few and José was the rarest of these. He had a deep sensitivity to, understanding of and responsiveness to women that I have not found present in most other men who dance.
He did not, I thought initially, look Argentinian. When, later, between tracks, I glanced briefly into his face, his eyes were very Argentinian. How strange that we can dance so close, feel every movement of the partner's body, know that there is nowhere to hide and, when embracing the partner, embrace that too and yet it can be so hard to simply look into their face. It is not like that in the man's role though, or at least it is so different as to bear little comparison.
Dancing with him was better than I had hoped. We were compatible. But being so out of practice in the woman's role, and now also so keyed up, as before my hips were tight and would not respond easily to the tiny swivels he proposed. At the prospect that my dancing days in Argentina, so soon begun must be over almost as quickly, my heart sank. But he was gentle and from that trust grows. Then he proposed the same small movement again. What - had I misjudged, been too hasty? Was this yet another man deaf to what the woman likes and can do? Yet to my great surprise he moved his hand to support my lower back and hips and somehow eased me through the movement. Curiously, it was not now unpleasant. In fact I was relieved to know that those movements peculiar to the woman's role were still possible and I was grateful. Mostly, I was surprised because there are guys who are accommodating, which is lovely, but to find a dancer so competent that he can help you in a way unanticipated, that is vanishingly rare. Those tiny, hip-swivelling movements were nice with him and discreet, the way I feel they are supposed to be with guys, not those grotesque gate-opening pivots taught in class, which, were they not so noticeable in some guys as to be easily avoidable, I might otherwise dread. This happened a few times until I got used to and relaxed with the movement again. It was lovely when he sensed I could respond without help. It all happened not by language but by sense. Among the thousands who dance the good dancers seem extraordinarily few and José was the rarest of these. He had a deep sensitivity to, understanding of and responsiveness to women that I have not found present in most other men who dance.
I like dancing tango in many different ways, with men, with women, in both roles, just as I like the many different styles of the different orchestras. But José elicited femininity in women, not by provoking some false exhibition of it, he simply elicited the feeling. A very few men can do this in ways that don't really lend themselves to description. That ability in turn enhances that male-female charge which powers the ineffable something that is at the heart of the kind of dancing I most enjoy.
We danced twice that evening. Thereafter, we danced at least once in many of the milongas where we met. Even among the sceptics in Buenos Aires he was regarded as a good dancer. The sceptics seemed to be more among some of the ex-pats. Perhaps that has to do with the Anglo-American analytic tradition of thought. The Latin countries put more emphasis on feeling. Dancing with him was like being rocked to sleep in a boat under stars were it not so simultaneously enlivening. It was a kind of surrender, to what I am not sure - to the man, to the universe, to the universe through the man, I still don't know. You don't think about these things at the time and afterwards, looking back it feels rather dream-like.
It was not all straightforward. After our first dance, he held on to my hands and said those flattering, attentive things, that some Argentinean men do say between dances and that so many Argentine women - dancers and non dancers - stranded in Europe, seem to miss. That, I can understand as a cultural difference but this hand-holding I didn't think was normal. I wanted my hands back. Yet, perhaps it was normal in Buenos Aires where everything is so different. I was dubious but, with all that novelty, not so clear thinking to see that, being dubious, I should perhaps do something. After the second or third track I did and we seemed to reach an understanding.
It was not all straightforward. After our first dance, he held on to my hands and said those flattering, attentive things, that some Argentinean men do say between dances and that so many Argentine women - dancers and non dancers - stranded in Europe, seem to miss. That, I can understand as a cultural difference but this hand-holding I didn't think was normal. I wanted my hands back. Yet, perhaps it was normal in Buenos Aires where everything is so different. I was dubious but, with all that novelty, not so clear thinking to see that, being dubious, I should perhaps do something. After the second or third track I did and we seemed to reach an understanding.
More than anyone else it was José I saw, or noticed in the milongas I went to especially in Gricel on Tuesdays and Thursdays or at Milonga de los Consagrados on Saturday in Salon Leonesa. One evening we were exchanging a few words between tracks before the ronda got moving. In Buenos Aires this can easily take up a whole minute of your - roughly - three minute track I don't recall exactly what I asked, perhaps whether he preferred dancing with local women or tourists but I remember his oblique answer. He said: women who dance well give you their heart. Some dance well but don’t give their heart and that means nothing.
I even saw José way out of town at the Caricias milonga. That night he only danced with the same two or three women. He did not acknowledge me which was strange because the venue is small. I put it down to his characteristic absorption in the dance but there seemed more to it than that. I didn't consider he had 'dumped' me in dance because we seemed to dance too well and because in the busy, central milongas he continued to invite me. Once, I left Gricel early, not liking the music. It wasn't the night for Daniel's milonga in that venue, where the music was better. At the next milonga at which we met, he came over and asked why I had left. He had missed me there and had wanted to dance.
One day during my last week we met at Milonga de Los Consagrados. It was mid-evening, the end of that afternoon milonga; It was probably around 11pm, mid-evening if you are running on milonga-time, which for me meant finishing increasingly often at 3AM. I was thinking of going on to watch the scene at Cachirulo, a milonga for the jet set of the tango scene which at that time was in nearby Obelisco club on the brightly lit main drag of Avenida Entre Rios. But I had to walk three and a half blocks down Humberto Primo to get there. I had walked between milongas all over the centre of Buenos Aires and well after midnight, often alone, but those few blocks and the people who hung out on them felt distinctly menacing and I was scared. But in Buenos Aires you cannot leave certain milongas - and that included nearly all the milongas I went to - with a man you did not arrive with. Or if you do, it sends a clear message to him and to everyone watching about your subsequent plans. In the language (so they say) of the codes you have 'accepted going for a coffee' a 'coffee' you are going to have at one of the telos, the albergues transitorios or love hotels. In conversation with José I mentioned I was going on to Cachirulo. So am I, he said. My heart leapt. Perhaps, I thought but didn't say, I could meet him outside and he would walk me down the street with all face saved. But I'll be working he continued, casually. Sorry? I said. I couldn't imagine José as a waiter or the guy who seats people. Seeing my puzzlement, he explained: he would be taxi dancing. I was dumbfounded. My disbelief must have been evident because he showed me his card not at all in the way of 'come and do classes with me' but simply to prove it. But we've just danced here I gasped, my mind unable to accommodate the idea that I had been dancing with a taxi dancer - and not known it. I have seen you dancing socially in lots of places. José was always quite inscrutable. Yes, he said. calmly, possibly amused. I don't always work. I was too shocked to register, properly, the compliment. Things fell into place. The nights where I had seen him with women, tourists, when he did not acknowledge me, he was working. The nights he was alone when he danced socially and when we danced, he was not.
One night I saw him in a milonga in the centre, again with the two or three American women I had seen him with in Caricias. I never saw him teach her but the young girl learnt fast with him. It was clear she was in heaven and it was a pleasure to see that enjoyment. When José was absent, I said hello to them and exchanged a few pleasantries. Before this family trio left the milonga with him I saw him introduce them to Flaco Dany, the famous milonguero - part of the experience I guessed.
I never contacted José after I left. I don't know what happened to him or if he is still dancing. Once or twice I enquired after him. Janis told me last year that he was 67. I couldn't believe it. He danced so smoothly. I have never knowingly danced with a man that age and had such a feeling of a much younger man. Janis said that they all had that, that dancing keeps them young.
His card said Profesor: José. I didn't understand. How could you 'teach' someone to dance the way he does? How could you teach that attitude towards women? But I am not sure that he teaches men. The card says :
So, what it mostly says about José himself is that he will practice with you and take you to dance in the milongas. In short, he will dance with you. When women dance with more experienced men, that is how they really learn.
I am happy that my dances with him were social. I am grateful that I met him and that he never so much as hinted that I should do a private, paying milonga tour with him which would have ruined everything. The other taxi dancers I saw in Buenos Aires danced exceptionally well. It was not always easy to tell who they were. Even the regulars and the hosts did not always know. I can't think of a time when anyone I asked was entirely sure if a guy I asked about was a taxi dancer. I saw some in Confiteria Ideal. That gorgeous tourist trap was the ideal venue for it. I asked the waiter / DJ if those young men were taxi dancers. But he too was hesitant: "I'm not sure, I think so, probably'. For all that I imagine taxi dancing is the mere simulation of a feeling, that was hard to tell too.
Even with Janis there, my initiation in to the milongas in Buenos Aires was not quite stratightforward, in as much as walking into a venue, sitting down, ordering a drink and waiting for an invitation to dance can be thought tricky. Still, I am not altogether sure that I would have swapped exploring the milongas alone, when later I did that, to be taken round by a taxi dancer for a few days. But that is a personal choice made with hindsight which can never be trusted. Dancing with José was so good, perhaps I would have. Had anyone I did trust suggested it I might well have tried it. Yet, despite the reservations I have about taxi dancing, seeing those dancers in Buenos Aires improved my view of it. And if you were alone in Buenos Aires and nervous or new to that city's milongas or new to dance, I wouldn't hesitate to say, get in touch with José and ask him to introduce you to the milongas. I have his details.
Renta de departamentos temporarios.
Pista de baile - Clases de tango en [a building which seems to be closed now]
Profesor: José - Prácticas el el lugar
acompañante para bailar en las milongas
I am happy that my dances with him were social. I am grateful that I met him and that he never so much as hinted that I should do a private, paying milonga tour with him which would have ruined everything. The other taxi dancers I saw in Buenos Aires danced exceptionally well. It was not always easy to tell who they were. Even the regulars and the hosts did not always know. I can't think of a time when anyone I asked was entirely sure if a guy I asked about was a taxi dancer. I saw some in Confiteria Ideal. That gorgeous tourist trap was the ideal venue for it. I asked the waiter / DJ if those young men were taxi dancers. But he too was hesitant: "I'm not sure, I think so, probably'. For all that I imagine taxi dancing is the mere simulation of a feeling, that was hard to tell too.
Even with Janis there, my initiation in to the milongas in Buenos Aires was not quite stratightforward, in as much as walking into a venue, sitting down, ordering a drink and waiting for an invitation to dance can be thought tricky. Still, I am not altogether sure that I would have swapped exploring the milongas alone, when later I did that, to be taken round by a taxi dancer for a few days. But that is a personal choice made with hindsight which can never be trusted. Dancing with José was so good, perhaps I would have. Had anyone I did trust suggested it I might well have tried it. Yet, despite the reservations I have about taxi dancing, seeing those dancers in Buenos Aires improved my view of it. And if you were alone in Buenos Aires and nervous or new to that city's milongas or new to dance, I wouldn't hesitate to say, get in touch with José and ask him to introduce you to the milongas. I have his details.
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