Jeff with his new partner, Clara, 94
EMBRACEABLE ME – Tango for my fellow Americans
When President Barack Obama called our nation to a day of service, I looked no farther than my two arms and feet. I would bring tango, the dance of love, to elderly residents at the Redwoods, a senior community in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco.
Argentine tango fits perfectly with the new era we, under Obama’s leadership, are ushering in. Tango is a contact dance that elevates the hug to an art form. It’s a paragon of transparency: you can see intimacy at work as two people embrace in heart to heart connection. Tango is a dialectic, an open dialogue, a three-minute story of conflict and peaceful resolution.
In Buenos Aires, I’ve watched Argentines of all ages dance this sultry folk dance and learned that anyone of any age can take their first steps, so I was eager to introduce it to the elders.
I arrived early for my Redwoods debut, decked out in glittery dress and five-inch heels. I found my way to the dark auditorium, threw all the switches to the footlights and bright overhead ones. By and by, my “show-biz” partner, Jeff, and another dancing couple, Alex and Karina, arrived. We were ready to dazzle our audience.
Then, my heart sank. Half of our white-haired spectators began to roll in, fronted by walkers. Part of the plan was to get them up dancing tango after we performed.
Oh well. The show had to go on. I hit the music and Alex and Karina, native Russians with dance in their
Alex with Maria Estella
blood, performed the first rhythmic numbers with all eyes trained on Karina’s agile, delicate flexing ankles. Next, Jeff and I glided on stage and embraced with slap-happy smiles. We plied our dance with irony, playfulness, and improvisation to cover the mistakes that only we knew about. Did I mention that in addition to transparency, tango affords a wide margin of adaptability? Yes, it is forgiving – if you know how to ask for it.
It was easy for us four performers to feel blissed out. Such is the mysterious nature of the dance’s embrace and the warm envelope that fuses two as one. But when our spectators applauded loudly, I felt that we had connected with them, too. Between numbers, I took the mic and explained the origins of tango, a dance that arose among poor immigrants, of the primal urge for intimacy. I heard some hearing aids squeak and some ooohs and ahs.
I shared my personal story—of love, loss, getting mad, and finding tango to save my soul. I said tango could bring world peace. I was perhaps overstepping the bounds of plausibility there. Tango does this to me. I wrapped my arms around myself and said you cannot hold stranger after stranger—I stopped counting after 1,000—to your bosom and come away unchanged. You want this brightness, this affirmative spark, for the entire world. There were a few beats of total silence. I waited. Some more hearing aids buzzed. I asked meekly, should I talk more. The reply was unequivocal: No! Dance, they yelled back.
And we did. We let it rip. We swayed and did ochos, voleos, volcadas, sacadas— flashy stage–fantasia— tango— to more applause. Then, we invited volunteers on stage to dance. Two women trotted up unhesitatingly. Maria Estella, in her eighties, and Clara, an incredible and proud 94-year-old. Spry and eager, they received the embrace and did the tango, not perfectly, but with gusto—and unrestrained smiles.
“No brave men out there?” I teased the crowd and heard a few chuckles. I approached one tall smiling man, attractive and slim in jeans and impeccably pressed golden silk shirt. “I used to dance,” he lamented, “but I have bad knees now.” I saw something—primal—in his eyes. So I took a chance with yet another stranger.
“Embrace me,” I commanded. “We’ll see . . .” He hooked a strong arm around my back and raised his palm to meet mine, just until our pulses touched. He trembled, rocked a bit, and then settled into that ineffable still place of intimacy. That’s tango.