Celebrate Tango Week NYC, July 19th – 26th, 2009 was proclaimed The Official NYC Argentine Tango Week by Mayor Bloomberg & the City of New York ! This year’s Elegant Black & White Tango Ball was the place to see and be seen on Saturday July 25th at Stepping Out Studios 37 W 26th Street. By the time the clock stroke midnight, a capacity crowd was primed for some amusing entertainment after having danced for a solid two hours non stop.
THE MIDNIGHT SHOW
Sid Grant and Gayle Madeira as the Tin Man and Dorothy
The 3rd USA Tango Champions! Alberto Paz and Valorie Hart
Tonight is the night when we fulfill a personal dream that began a year ago while totally unexpected I found myself being wheeled to the operating room of East Jefferson General Hospital. Conflicted and uncertain of the outcome, I was haunted by thoughts of life after the unthinkable. My dearest love and life partner continuing the journey without her Tangoman was a thought hard to formulate. A cynical New Jersey housewife wrote later, “Bud, she’ll do OK,” projecting in the reality of her statement a possible lack of partner intimacy, the kind I have been so fortunate to nurture with my dancing butterfly.
Most social tango dancers I know reach a level of mediocrity where they begin to view the way others dance in a negative way, passing judgment and lamenting their shortcomings on account of others behavior. I stopped playing the game of judging the way others dance when we began to dance together. I realize now how much I love the way we dance, the way we economize movement and milk the three minutes of any tango, and how each time feels like a new beginning. It’s almost sinful not to share it.
During the recovery process I promised myself to enter the US Salon Tango Championship held annually in New York City in July, the birth month of my dear Valorie. What could be better than to treat my dear Mariposa with a reunion with friends from the previous life while doing what we love the most in our current life. The perfect birthday present that keeps on giving.
So here we are getting ready to head for the Stepping Out Studios, pouring rain or not. We will be dancing three pieces with eleven other couples in front of a panel of three judges. All the preparation, the long walks, the late night milongas, have got us ready to go out on the dance floor and dance tango, our dance.
As Father’s Day approaches, we don’t expect getting greetings cards from Walter, Joe, Ann, George, Nicole, David, Mario and a few other long forgotten tangosons and daughters whose names have faded down memory lane. These are people we gave birth to as tango dancers, teachers, promoters along with helping them build their fledgling communities since 1996. Today, from Anchorage to the Hudson Valley, across the Pacific Ocean to Honolulu, and across the country through Champaign-Urbana, Sarasota, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee, our tangosons and daughters are the trunks who have grown from the tango seeds we’ve been sowing since the days when the passion for tango really meant that. Until recent, we even had a special mention at the bottom of one those communities websites, where forever gratitude and appreciation for having started it all was wholeheartedly expressed with the exuberance of those who still have not lost their bearings. It is a fact of life that kids who never grow up renege of the experiences of the early years, denying the existence of those parental figures who took them by the hand and taught them how to walk without tripping, and how to skip around the potholes of tango life. They continue to be children in oversize bodies being bound by the shame that blinds them.
As the years went by we slowed down the itinerant nature of our lives, settled in the South, downsizing and investing time and money in a local community, only to see it wiped out by Katrina. Boo hoo, boo hoo… Well there are things that needed to be said while being alive, because we are seeing an alarming increase in the death announcements of people we know. Paraphrasing Ana Maria Rabatte’s poem IN LIFE, BROTHER, IN LIFE, let’s not wait for people to die to talk about our affection. Let’s do it while they’re still alive brothers and sisters. If you want to give a flower don’t wait until someone dies, send it today with love, while they’re still alive.
Anyway, when we were looking forward to sitting on the porch, sipping Malbecs, and watching the jazz funerals pass by on their way to the Lafayette cemetery nearby, we got the call to go out and help bring to life a new tango community. Right in the Emerald Coast, the Hamptons of the New Orleans well to do, the Floridians Redneck Riviera. Let me tell you, if feels good to be taking new steps all over again along with our newest tangosons and daughters… The planting of good intentions yields a harvest of kindness.
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