Tragi-comedy

Garry Knight

Over the years I came to seek only connected, musical dancing so that it has been aeons now since I have danced tango with guys who dance for themselves or for show. If I accidentally encounter them, I feign injury and walk away rather than endure more than a few moments, never mind a quarter hour. 

About six months ago I did find the kind of dancing that is wholly about music and connection. I danced with the guy half a dozen times and each time it was like a match flaring, a reminder of what dancing tango is all about. But he was a casualty of that tale that had so much fallout. I almost never see him now. My dance relationships are never more than friendships at most, nor, I am certain, was anything other desired on either side, but those dances were wonderful.

 The last time I saw him he was dancing with the protagonist of that story who looked like the cat who'd got the cream. It might as well have been the story of a tango albeit in a dance context - heaven then loss, lack (falta) and absence (ausencia). The tangos, 100 years old some of them, are full of such words and can seem like caricatures. Made into headlines they would read  "He loved her like no other" "She abandoned him" "Betrayal!" "Revenge!"  Outdated in their exaggerated expression of two-dimensional feeling, for all that we love the music, we sometimes poke fun at the lyrics.  Yesterday's tragedies become the tragi-comedies of today.

And so it is with this darkly comic story.  I travelled Europe for years looking for great dancers only to find one of the best on my doorstep. Soon after he disappeared, reappearing dancing with the fledgling who once confessed that jealousy had incited them to try to spoil our dance relationship.  Sad, indeed, but there is already something comical in all that and the tale is so close in style and format to the tangos that it is doubly so, a case of life imitating art.  Life is funny and seeing that helps with the darkness. 

Time slowly washes away all things but I am grateful for the handful of videos to look back on of those dances.