But it didn't turn out that way. In fact, I didn't even dance at all! I would have if I knew how to salsa or dance to cumbia (Argentinian style).
The evening started with a very grumpy drowsy me dragging my body to the grocery store (which, by the way, are all run by Chinese whose dialects I can't understand) to buy a cheap bottle of wine. I was invited to a house-warming party that was also the birthday party of one of the co-owners of the house. I arrived exactly the same time my Montrealer friend arrived. The world is small. And it would get even smaller.
The house is huge! And being inside you would never think you're in Latin America. No hint of Latin America. It's supposed to be a bed and breakfast (minus the breakfast, I have been told) for Tango Tourists. I was in a "tour" of the house with three women and the birthday boy, all four of whom were Francophones (I am constantly finding myself among French speakers!). The house was impressive.
Then there was the usual yapping. I was expecting tango music to come up, but eventually, the only music played was salsa, cumbia, and Latin hip-pop. I wasn't bored, but the wine made me really tired and by 3AM I was ready to call it a night. Although there were plenty of famous milongas happening till way past that, I doubted I could really enjoy a dance or offer any enjoyment to any woman willing to dance with me.
I waited in the middle of nowhere (not really, it's a nice part of the nice Palermo) for ten minutes before the bus came. The night ended there.
But what happened at the party? Not much, no worries. Only about half the people were Argentinians, and all of them spoke English to me. I am still not frustrated yet about my lack of Spanish speaking opportunities, but I will soon if I don't start speaking more than just "Two spicy empanadas, please". But knowing English obviously has its advantages (except in China). I got to hear stories.
This blog is about people I met on a night where no tango happened. (This happened after my matinee milonga with the old ladies, so it's not like I didn't dance yesterday!) My thoughts. So if you're only interested in knowing what tango stuff I did, you can change the URL to NY Times and read about the stupid oil spill that is destroying my country's already polluted Gulf Coast. But do scroll down to the "In other news" where I will talk briefly about today.
The first person (and obviously, it's a woman) I talked to was one of the Francophones in my tour. She's from France and was working in Belgium until she decided to come to Buenos Aires for I don't remember what. She discovered a new reason to live (my words are not exaggerated). She found this technique that brought her some rejuvenation. Here, in this city of tango and beef and flea markets. She wants to stop being a graphic designer and become a proselytizer of this new way (whose name I can't remember). ("Proselytizer" would mean a paid teacher here.) She was speaking with growing energy and I could see she was both animated and troubled by her conviction to change her life.
Some background: I don't go to parties much anymore, and when I do, it's at Yale and the conversation is usually so boring that I struggle to keep awake. People at Yale only talk about their work. Really. Or politics, fun! So when this woman started talking about her life changing experience in Buenos Aires, I was intrigued.
But the wine, and we are talking about no more than four sips, was tiring me out. But I was lucid enough to see that this woman really did undergo some psychological change in her recent past, but that there was still plenty left to sort out, which, I think, she didn't really realize. But I wasn't her best friend so I didn't want to say too much.
Then there's the woman from Sweden who has a job in Norway that has allowed her to work in Buenos Aires half of the year (lucky!). Her sappy story was that she came, tried tango, and didn't really like it (how could she!!!!). And around that time she met a man and fell in love (outside tango, no less!). But then, love came and went like the seasonal hurricane in the Caribbean and she ended up being single. But she found her love for tango again (start crying), and fell in love with it. But the climax of the story is that she met her first boyfriend from high school (here?) and they started dating again. How weird is that? Dating your first (ex)boyfriend? And now she's moving to Paris (again with the French) to live with him (what happened to tango?).
Next was this Dutch woman, very tall, whose name is "Flor", what I thought was only Spanish, and who also had a life changing experience here in Buenos Aires. Her story is that she had been living here for nearly a year. By the way, everyone I have encountered had been living here for months! It seems that no self-respecting tango dancer comes here for just four weeks! Anyway, I can't remember what sappy story she told me; I was getting tired by that time. It started sounding all the same. I met people in classes who told me how they fell in love with tango, but some drama, blah blah. The point of these stories I am repeating here is that I felt I was in some movie last night. Like in some bohemian party where intellects spoke about their exile in Paris (again with the French) and their revolutionary ideas over lots of alcohol, except that in this mega house the topic was Buenos Aires, tango, and the influence of the two on people's lives. While I seem to be belittling these stories, they were important to me because, as some of you might know, one of the three main reasons I came to this wonderful city was to see if I wanted to live here (the other two? You should know if you've been reading this blog!).
Before Flor finished whatever sappy story she was telling me, (and really, people love telling me stories, I don't know why! No one cares to ask anything about me beyond "¿Cómo te llamás?" and "¿De dónde sos?") I heard my name! The voice was faintly familiar, but the pronunciation was correct, which was something no one could do here. Furthermore, I really only have two acquaintances here, and both refer to me as , "hey". So you can imagine my surprise when I heard my name pronounced. Then I looked up and saw a face I could hardly believe I was seeing here, in the Southern Hemisphere.
No, it's not someone you know!
She was one of the members of my Yale Tango Club before graduating last year. (Don't tell her, but she isn't someone I particularly liked, as a person or a dancer.) I was without words. She, on the other hand, in her usual loud-mouth tradition, screamed out, "What are you doing here?" To which I responded with the same question.
So here's expat story number four. She is a graduate of the Yale Law School (it's not as prestigious as you might think), and went back to San Francisco, but decided that being a lawyer in a suit was not her style of life, so she came down to Buenos Aires for some humanitarian work. She would have been one of my closest friends, being such a humanist person, if she didn't have such a potty and loud and outrageous mouth. Yet, at that party, we were like friends, sharing the past and talking about the present (really, her present because, as you know, people like to tell me stuff).
I asked her, "Sum up what life in Buenos Aires is like."
"You have to be in the flow, everything is moving and you have to move with it."
Sounds like New York. Really? I thought everything here was relaxing, easy. But, suddenly, I was reminded that I didn't really know this city at all. All I have been exposed to was tango in the best neighborhoods of the city. I don't know anything about the other neighborhoods, I don't know what people's daily experience is like. Today I saw from the bus a man getting preparing his bed, which was a mattress under the awning of some posh apartment building, one of the few without a security guard outside. It would have been a comical scene if the story was that he got kicked out by his frustrated girlfriend. But I have seen already enough homelessness to know that there was nothing comical about it.
I don't know this city. I just know a little bit about tango. And there's a part of my heart that is yearning to know more about the city even at the expense of tango.
But tango, as this party shows, isn't just about dancing in a milonga. Tango in Buenos Aires isn't just New York tango with Porteño settings. It's also about the people. Half the people in the party were Porteños. They were dancing and enjoying other types of dances. But in the tango community, like in New York, there's this hierarchy I've been talking about. And this party was my glimpse into some of the top crème de la crème of the tango community. The woman who opened the door for me (and my Montreal friend) was a short woman, and as with almost all young Porteñas, extremely beautiful with piercing dark eyes. But I was so used to seeing beautiful eyes in this city that I didn't pay extra attention, not to her name either. When my Montreal friend told me that that was Mariana Dragone, I was a little embarrassed, but my friend was even more embarrassed that I didn't know who she was, one of the best dancers and teachers in Buenos Aires (and so, by extension, the universe). Yes, I was embarrassed, but at the same time, I remembered that she was very humble, beautiful but humble, no air of royalty, but somehow the part of the pyramid below her and other teachers seem to look up to her and her colleagues with demigod praise. Today in class a woman was so excited to have danced a dance with Pablo Someone-Famous that she couldn't stop shaking for a minute (she did so to help him demonstrate something. I was amused. In the party, if anything, I came to realize even more that these demigods were really just human beings whose had put effort in something just as many of my friends had put effort in something else for the same goal of a profession. And yet, my friends don't get this stardom treatment. It's too amusing for me.
At the party I also bumped into another Argentinian teacher who had come to teach at Yale once, but I was too ashamed to remember because I think I even hosted him and his partner at the time! I also met a woman whom I met at the Miami Marathon, at which time she had just started dancing. Small world. Now her story was that she was staying in Buenos Aires for three months before returning to the US for grad school (stupid idea!).
Yes, a night of small world, long stories, and lots of non-tango music. I was told that later on people went to La Viruta and danced until 7 in the morning. Good for them, but I couldn't have survived. Tonight I hope to make up for the dancing. But the party was not at all a waste of time. I had my first glimpse of life in Buenos Aires. It's complicated, it's alluring, but it's not what you expect while it is what you will make of it, at each moment of your life.
In other news:
- I went to class today at DNI. The co-owner, Pablo Somebody was teaching rebotes. It's fun, but I think it's too nuevo for me. I will take just the class with his partner, Dana, in midweek on milongas.
- Another private with Marcelo. More guy talks about how women work in tango. I can't reveal more, since many of you I dance with and I prefer to surprise you.
- I've been here for five days, and I have only had Argentinian beef once! At a pizzeria! I have to find a good one. So far, it's been a lot of empanadas. Tonight I bought stuffed zucchinis and had it at home
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