I guess I should own up to those scant few who don't already know: I have been going to tango lessons for the past month or so.
It's part of an attempt to make up for me not going to the gym any more, though ironically the practice hall is even closer than the gym to my apartment. The school is called To Tango, and it teaches the Argentine form of Tango. The school even has a website. Here's a picture of instructors Anton and Anna ripped from the site:
Anton is a fantastically cool guy, and he also speaks English, which is useful seeing as I'm the only foreigner in attendance. Unfortunately, Anton has been on tango sabbatical to Buenos Aires for the past few weeks, leaving us to Gennady and Lena. I don't have any pictures of Gena, but he has danced far longer than Anton, so the class is in good hands.So why bring this up now? Well, the past two lessons have made me realize that I can't possibly dance in a crappy pair of dress shoes for much longer, so I went out and bought a proper pair today. Hopefully these will stop me from ruining my knees.
Shiny.Tango is... challenging, but it sure as hell is fun and I heartily recommend it to you all. Even though I suck right now, at least I'm picking up various dance vocabulary along the way, such as: осанка (oh-san-ka) which means "posture"; ось (oz) which means "pivot" or "axis"; шаг (shag) which means "step"; and поворачивать (po-vo-rah-chi-vat) which means "to turn" among many others.
So far I'm only doing the basic technique classes (базовая техника, baz-oh-vai-ya tekh-ni-kah) once a week, which last two hours. With time I'll maybe join the other group classes later in the week, and pluck up the courage to take part in a milonga. While it might sound like a dignified event, from what I gather with conversations with classmates, folk just get shitfaced and dance with each other for three or four minutes at a time.
And in that time, you live, you love, you die - or so Gena tells us.
Play us off, Gotan Project
