Take tango dance lessons in Buenos Aires

“I had just landed earlier that morning at the Ezeiza International Airport in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires, and less than eight hours later, I was at the feet of tango instructors Ines Rossetti and Fernando Bietti learning the dance of the people of this city. My very first milonga or ‘tango party’ was at Zona Tango Milonga, an intimate setting commencing with a lesson of only eight dancers. The space was familiar, a bit cold at first, made up of smaller rooms with antique furniture and weathered wood flooring. It was dark, and the lesson had begun with us walking forward and backward; it was a stylized walk based on movement we do every day of our lives. That’s all it needed to be.”

“Confident in Benny's recommendation, I reached out to Maria and scheduled my first private, one-hour lesson. [...] I met Maria José at a shared studio space in downtown Buenos Aires one afternoon. I could immediately tell she was passionate about the dance, and her passion began to rub off on me. She warned me, right from the start, that once I got a taste of tango, I may soon forget salsa. I brushed her comment off, but as she began showing me the proper posture, and basic steps, I realized she might be right. Dancing tango felt overly formal, yet incredibly intimate. The intimacy is bred by the close proximity with which the partners dance. There's a subdued sexual tension I never experienced with salsa or any of the other Latin dances. The hardest part, by far, was trying to keep my upper body still. In tango, the man leads with his chest.”

“I feel like a spy that’s just been handed an assignment. I dress in black. Black pants. Black t-shirt. I pace, I sip wine, I check and re-check the mirror. I seriously contemplate a night in with Netflix. I do this on loop until 11.30pm, when I throw back the last of the wine and valiantly order an Uber. Avenida Córdoba 5064. An industrial building. Large frosted windows inset with grids of wire. Terrifying shapes moving on a dark floor framed by a haphazard border of small tables. In perpetually embarrassed Spanish I make it through my first three trials: paying the person on the door, ordering a wine from the bartender, not spilling the wine as I tremble to a free chair. As always, my eyes are drawn to the (intimidating) pairs of feet and their elegant, improvised conversations.”