Volver

So many people are visiting Buenos Aires, dancing, writing, having fun, and not having fun. I read the blogs and always there is an adjustment, arriving back home and looking around and wondering, "what now?"

Travel changes us. To be an aspiring tango dancer and to go to Buenos Aires, is like going from a little pond right into the ocean. A hundred years of songs, a rich intricate web of connections between dancers, musicians, families, businesses, houses, lovers, friends, enemies. We drop in like paratroopers with dollars swirling out of our pockets, and we buy some tango. That is probably how they see us.

An Argentine man tells me, that some of the guys in Buenos Aires, they are looking for love, for the love of their life, and some are looking for "fun". Fun, meaning sex. Many are looking for money. Who can blame them? Tango is a big business, or a big collection of small businesses, in Buenos Aires. Of course it is more than that. People take the tango seriously. Shows staged for tourists are just that, glittery etravaganzas leaving tourists satisfied that they went to Argentina and saw some tango. These shows are fine, and probably some people actually get inspired to look deeper. Many of the dancers in the shows are first rate, reportedly. I have never seen one. It would take time away from the milonga! The people can see who is serious, and they will want to make those students happy. It seemed to me that it is personal for them, that they do want to share the city, the dance, the feelings of the place, to people who will receive it.

To tango, and to know tango, is to dance it, to research the music, the history. It takes years. I am in my third year, and only in the last couple of months have I known enough to surrender to the dance. Three years is nothing in tango. I know how much I don't know, and it continues to be painful and exacting, and exhilarating, humbling, crazy making. There are few perfect moments. To have a few of those moments in three years makes all of the difficulties melt away.

Returning to Seattle, looking forward to holidays, family, friends, flying in over the glamorous mountains, the half moon follows us, dropping through the clean mist, we are home. A day later we are in our small milonga. Our friends greet us, we visit, we dance. It is the same city, the same room, the same music as before. But everything is changed. What now?