Tango Lessons
Voulez Vous Danzez Avec Moi?
Do you know how to tango?
C’est facile -
You place your hand
Softly on my back
And it's
Step, glide, glide...
If you will lead
I will follow
And gently bring you back
Dance is just
A matter of trust
A simple exercise
In parry and thrust.
Can you tango -
Will you tango with me?
From Tango Confidential 2007
© Marcy Goldman
Tango Confidential looks like a blog but it is the architecture for a print book that is already in the midst of its creation. In essence, this blog is really a staging area for me as author but it exists for those who need just a touch of art and layout to imagine the tango book that has long existed in my mind’s eye.
Tango Confidential is a series of essays and personal memoirs from my life on the dance floor. Each chapter exists on its own but taken as a collection, it a series of tango snapshops that focus and broaden, as the pace of tango itself changes.
If you have always dreamed of tango but were too cautious to go, this is your opportunity to explore it from the safety of your day-to-day life. If you are drawn to romance and wonder where passion lives, then that too, you will find it here, in the shape of the tango twilight place that few but true tangueros are privvy to. But I warn you. What you will encounter here, in the words and between the lines, will have you smitten; even more so, beguiled. Your toes will begin tapping; your heart will start a quiet drumming and your senses will reel in a not-so-subtle impatience to be out there – in tango. It is impossible to read about tango and not want to experience it...and so you shall.
Tango is worldwide; there is always place to tango somewhere, 24-7, in some time zone – in tango classes, in tango soirees and dance halls, outdoor milongas, and as I do, on the streets where you live – spotlighted by a full moon and glow of the stars. Those are the times you don’t even need a partner and you never miss a step.
I have danced every step and nuance of the words that unfold here. Yet for all that, for all the pairs scuffed tango shoes, black stockings, and perfume del tango that make up the mileage of my experience, this is only a taste of tango. Doubtless such a morsel will leave you hungry. There is no cure for that hunger but there is a temporary tonic each time you dance. It soothes the soul and such dances are solace for the sensualist. But dances end. The hours between them pass, days stack up and then you think, it is time to get back to tango. And so you can - for I am your emissary between the winged world of tango and the other world we live in by default - that world without the wings.
Welcome to this special demi-monde that starts after dark and struts its stuff long after most of the world has gone to sleep. What did Rumi say? Don't go back to sleep. Come with me instead. Come to tango. It begins now and with one simple phrase that is the same, no matter what the language. It is simply and always:
Shall we dance?
And the answer is simply and always:
Yes.
Voulez Vous Danzez Avec Moi?
Do you know how to tango?
C’est facile -
You place your hand
Softly on my back
And it's
Step, glide, glide...
If you will lead
I will follow
And gently bring you back
Dance is just
A matter of trust
A simple exercise
In parry and thrust.
Can you tango -
Will you tango with me?
From Tango Confidential 2007
© Marcy Goldman
Tango Confidential looks like a blog but it is the architecture for a print book that is already in the midst of its creation. In essence, this blog is really a staging area for me as author but it exists for those who need just a touch of art and layout to imagine the tango book that has long existed in my mind’s eye.
Tango Confidential is a series of essays and personal memoirs from my life on the dance floor. Each chapter exists on its own but taken as a collection, it a series of tango snapshops that focus and broaden, as the pace of tango itself changes.
If you have always dreamed of tango but were too cautious to go, this is your opportunity to explore it from the safety of your day-to-day life. If you are drawn to romance and wonder where passion lives, then that too, you will find it here, in the shape of the tango twilight place that few but true tangueros are privvy to. But I warn you. What you will encounter here, in the words and between the lines, will have you smitten; even more so, beguiled. Your toes will begin tapping; your heart will start a quiet drumming and your senses will reel in a not-so-subtle impatience to be out there – in tango. It is impossible to read about tango and not want to experience it...and so you shall.
Tango is worldwide; there is always place to tango somewhere, 24-7, in some time zone – in tango classes, in tango soirees and dance halls, outdoor milongas, and as I do, on the streets where you live – spotlighted by a full moon and glow of the stars. Those are the times you don’t even need a partner and you never miss a step.
I have danced every step and nuance of the words that unfold here. Yet for all that, for all the pairs scuffed tango shoes, black stockings, and perfume del tango that make up the mileage of my experience, this is only a taste of tango. Doubtless such a morsel will leave you hungry. There is no cure for that hunger but there is a temporary tonic each time you dance. It soothes the soul and such dances are solace for the sensualist. But dances end. The hours between them pass, days stack up and then you think, it is time to get back to tango. And so you can - for I am your emissary between the winged world of tango and the other world we live in by default - that world without the wings.
Welcome to this special demi-monde that starts after dark and struts its stuff long after most of the world has gone to sleep. What did Rumi say? Don't go back to sleep. Come with me instead. Come to tango. It begins now and with one simple phrase that is the same, no matter what the language. It is simply and always:
Shall we dance?
And the answer is simply and always:
Yes.
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